The Yummy Mummy

Charcutepalooza. Nearly The End.

2011-12-04T22:32:00.017-05:00

When Cathy and I first talked about curing meat together, it was barely more than an idea for me, a sexy idea.

I envisioned myself hanging salamis and standing in the basement, cutting off hunks of the stuff for people to sample, with the jack knife I just happened to have in the back pocket of my jeans. I imagined myself talking about mold and humidity, as if it were second nature. I envisioned a passion for meat so deep, I would give it all up to make artisanal charcuterie, which I would sell out of the back of our jeep, under-ground style, to restaurants, chefs and Brooklyn hipsters.

That never happened. I love curing meat, but not so much I want to sell it on Flatbush Avenue. I also love brining, making bacon and even tangling with sausages. I like the feel of the meat in a way I never had before, probably because I never felt so much of it, so intimately. I learned just about every kind of cut of meat can be confited, which is both weird and amazing and makes you want to try it out on anything you have lying around. I am no longer afraid of opening Michael Ruhlman's book and doing something from it, anything. It’s not my calling, but it has changed my kitchen, changed me.

But more than meat and the kitchen swagger, what made this year great was you, or really all of us together - being a part of a school that wasn't a school, the bad sausage jokes, people bickering about pink salt, the moment we made something we were quite sure we couldn't make and it came out amazing, how we stared botulism in the face and confronted our fear that we might kill a family member with our home-cured meats, how we figured out that mold is sometimes something you can just scrape off and move on from, the idea we were all in it together, not doing this alone. That was the best.

That's why you should read every single one of the posts below, because these people made something bigger than meat. And that's what we had hoped Charcutepalooza would be. Thank you for that.

Final Challenge Reminder

Just to remind you all: December 6th is the due date for the final challenge. THAT IS TOMORROW! We must have it by midnight. Please send us:

•your name, blog URL and email address
•a profile photo (jpg format)
•50 words describing your Charcutepalooza experience (not your bio, just what you learned this year)
•links to the 12 Charcutepalooza monthly challenge posts on your blog
•links to TWO of the Charcutepalooza blog posts you want to nominate for the grand prize competition

Send all of it to CharcutepaloozaATgmailDOTCOM. We will be looking for an overall knowledge and creative undertaking of the challenge, your original or adapted recipes, good writing, good photography.

This is going to be so ridiculously hard for us. We have been blown away with all the posts lately. But we are so excited to see what you've done. Thank you for playing along this year. I can't even begin to describe how I'll miss the #Charcutepalooza hashtag on my Tweetdeck.

Best Posts

1. Bite Me New England
Spanish Chorizo as food…and jewelry

2. Hounds in the kitchen
Six year old Lilly makes lardo in what may be the best food video ever.

3. One Vanilla Bean
Home-made Chorizo with a recipe for Lentejas Estofadas con Chorizo

4. Taste Food Blog
Wilted Spinach Salad with Warm Balsamic Vinaigrette, Toasted Pinenuts and Cured Pork

5. In Scott’s Kitchen
Man on a meat-curing mission….salami, bresaola, soppressata, Noix de jambon, proscuitto

6. A Cook Blog
Salami & Cheddar sandwich…totally from scratch, top to bottom

7. Eat, Drink, man, Woman, Dogs, Cat
Duck Salami

8. Naomaly
Facing Fears: This is way bigger than Chorizo

9. Vivek's Epicurean Adventure
Turning Pepperoni failure into inspiration.

10. Belm Blog
Salami, Bresaeola, Lonzino in steps, or...being unwilling to "cop to the suckage."

EXTRA: A Cook Blog
Eight amazing Thanksgiving courses using charcuterie in EVERY COURSE.

Best Photos

1. Dabblings & Whimsey

2. Snappy Service café

3. Nic Cooks

4. Eat Live Travel Write

5. Butcher's Apprentice

Chicken Gallantine

2011-10-02T22:42:00.017-04:00

This month's Charcutepalooza Challenge is stretching. That means we are taking a duck or chicken and making it feed as many people as we can, using all the bits and scraps, letting nothing go to waste.

I made a Chicken Gallantine - a precious rolled-meat concoction that requires you to flay the skin off the chicken - Spanish inquisition style - in one single piece, debone the whole chicken, make pate out of the forcemeat, fold the forcemeat over the partially-grilled breasts so they are a snug surprise in the middle of the roll, and force all of it back inside the skin - that you just took off the chicken - and poach it in broth.

It sounds epic, like a kid who takes a radio apart and then reassembles it in a totally different way, and it's a little like that. Making a Gallantine is part mischievous kid and part mad-scientist-with-a-boning-knife, but the exercise helps you really get to know the chicken. It forces you to see and feel everything. And it does take a smallish chicken that might feed four people and turns it into a lovely, flavorful dish that feeds eight easily.

Also, this was much easier than any of our casing challenges. Once you've stuffed your own sausages, made your own hot dogs, the Gallantine is child's play. Cathy got us in tip-top shape over the summer.

I used Ruhlman's recipe out of Charcuterie. I did a few things differently - I added sauteed spinach to boost the flavor, used more chicken liver, added some extra chicken fat I had in the freezer instead of the pork fat, and poached it in broth made from a smoked chicken - thanks Peter! - to give it a little kick. You can really play with this dish.

Here's one of the side dishes that worked well with the Gallantine. It is, I think, the very last hurrah of summer: Yellow Beans Braised in Cream & Thyme. It's rich and fatty along-side the dainty, elegant slices of Gallantine. Serve it with roasted root vegetables and a salad, and the meal blends together all the best of late summer and early Fall.

Yellow Beans Braised in Cream & Thyme

This recipe was one my mother made for me as a child when dad's garden beans came in. Actually she made the dish much differently, but this is how I eat it now. It is a marriage of an old food memory made better by reading Jennifer Perillo's Milk-Braised Zucchini recipe, something she made after we ate (and swooned over) the same dish at Prune. I used her technique for coating the beans in a roux, something my mother wouldn't have done, but makes a simple dish all the more decadent. That and the copious amounts of cream and butter - that was my touch.

Ingredients

4 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon or so flour

1 lb. yellow beans, trimmed and cut into spoon size lengths

1 1/2 cups cream

1/2 cup milk

Thyme

Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation

Melt 1/2 the butter in a sauce pan over medium heat. Add the flour and stir into the butter. Let it cook for about a minute. Add the beans, making sure they are well-coated by the four/butter mixture. Stir in the cream, milk, the remaining knob of butter, thyme, and salt and pepper. Turn heat to a simmer and let braise for 10-12 minutes. The cream will occasionally froth up, just give it a stir or bring your temperature down a little. Just make sure you don't over-cook your beans or they'll get soggy. You want them to have just a little bite.

Serve in a bowl with flecks of thyme.

Here are the best posts from September's Packing Challenge:

1. Foodie Lawyer
Pate de Campagne

2. Cookbook Archaeology
Pork & Prahok Terrine - Cambodian style

3.Lighter & Local
English Pork Pie

4. Butchers Apprentice
Gala Pie

5. Good for the Palate
Vietnamese Spiced Paté and Banh Mi

6. Naomaly
A very piggy birthday & Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Pork Pie

7. Do Love Walk
Pate & Fried Oysters

8. Bite Me New England
Pate en Croute (Duck Breast and Pork) - hilarious, beautiful & Goober makes an appearance

9. Saint Tigerlily
The Titus Andronicus Meat Pie

10. Biscuits of Today
Rustic Chicken Liver Mousse with Pistachios

And the best photos:

1. Tasting Notes from the Edge

2. Eat Drink RI

3. Leave Me The Oink

4. Nic Cooks

5. Dabblings & Whimsey

Chicken Liver Pate

2011-08-31T23:07:00.019-04:00

This month's Charcutepalooza challenge is packing - and that means pate.

I love pate of all kinds, so does David, but as we get further into the challenges, I struggle more and more with what I can make - dishes that work with the rules of Charcutepalooza and ones that my kids will eat. It never pays for me to make anything that only half the family will eat, which is why I never make headcheese, or stuffed trotters. We were great through sausages, and bacon, and we flew through brining, and somehow I managed to inspire them to eat a shrimp terrine last month, but loaves of compressed meat were going to be a hard sell even on a good day.

Could I make a pate that the whole family will eat?

I knew that doing something rustic would never work - too many weird obtrusive pieces sticking out here and there, and forget inlaying a little meat surprise in the middle of the pate. That's the kind of weird science that would have me banned from the kitchen.

I decided on a pate that was smooth, spreadable, could be served without turning it out of the pot into a loaf. It could be sold to the children as a fun spread, the way almond butter is a fun spread. I went with my favorite pate of all time - chicken liver. It might take a few go-arounds, but I figured I could sell this.

Chicken liver pate is not just simple, it is also inexpensive, even if you are buying the best livers, from the best chickens, at the happiest farms, and it barely requires a recipe. In fact, I'm not going to give you one.

I'm going to just tell you to buy chicken livers - you won't need many of them, a little over a half pound of livers makes three small pots full - take them home to your kitchen, gently saute them in copious amounts of butter, onions, garlic, add salt and pepper, and handfuls of fragrant herbs, whatever beautiful herbs you've picked up at the market, let it all cook together about 5-6 minutes until the livers are not red, but a lovely pink inside, and add your favorite booze. I added tequila, but you can go right ahead and improvise, bourbon, cognac, it's all good. Heavy-handedness is mandatory here.

Put the boozed up livers in a food processor, give them a whirl or two, or ten, until you have a nice thick consistency, no solids, just something like a thick, thick shake. Check for seasoning and add some salt if you think it needs it. Pour the mixture into pots. Cover the top with a few sprigs of herbs and pour a little clarified butter over the top. Put pots in the fridge for a few hours until they set.

Serve a cold pot with toasted rounds of baguette, quartered figs, a hunk of good manchego, some slices of duck sausage, cornichons and if my kids are around, a few slices of star fruit and raspberries.

As of tonight, I am working at 50%. Lucy loved pate, slathered on toasts with side helpings of cheese and fruit. Edie just ate the toasts. But I take my victories as I get them. I'll be making this again, and I'll take another crack at her. Someday, even if it kills me, she'll love it, just as I do.

Kim

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Here are our best-of picks for the binding challenge:

1. Chow Eng Down
Tempura Head cheese

2. The Messy Epicure
Saffron and Seafood Terrine

3. Artful Wish
Chicken Liver Terrines with Shallots

4. Dabblings & Whimsey
Chicken Liver Terrine with Chipotle and Raisins

5. One Vanilla Bean
Chicken Liver Terrine & Home-made Ritz Crackers

6. Eat Live Travel Write
Insane head cheese

7. Inspired By Wolfe
Xiao long bao

8. Sensible Worlds
The Big Two-Headed Hog Dish

9. Good For The Palate
Toe Cheese (Trotters)

10. In Scott's Kitchen
Scallop & Crab Mousseline Ravioli in Leek Brown Butter

Best Pics:

1. Taste Food Blog
Kale Wrapped Salmon and Scallop Mousseline with Tomato Coulis

2. Bona Fide Farm
Parsleyed Ham in Aspic

3. A Cook Blog
French dip bánh mì

4. Hounds in the Kitchen
Almost All-Ohio Trout and Shrimp Mousseline

5. Naomaly
Tip to Toe Terrine

Salad d'Imbécile

2011-07-31T20:32:00.034-04:00

It takes great talent to mess up a Nicoise Salad. I mean, it can be served many ways but basically it has the same ingredients - tuna, potatoes, capers, a lush bed of buttery greens, red onions, a pile of cornichons, a tangy mustard-y vinaigrette, some quickly-blanched haricot verts, maybe a strip or two of anchovies from a tin. And of course, the olives. The briney little suckers that make the salad, that salad.

I was going to be tricky. I was going to sub-out the tuna and replace it with delicate terrines of seafood - the kind I was tasked with making for this Charcutepalooza "binding" challenge - and create a funky take on Salad Nicoise. I was quite sure you would never miss the tuna. I made the terrines the night before. Rock shrimp (Lucy's favorite) and crab (Edie's favorite). I got all my ingredients ready in the morning. I tasted the terrines. Beautiful, light, delicate, still tasting of the sea, and slightly reminiscent of the shrimp salad sandwiches my mother made for me as a child.

Then, that thing happens where you have this idea that you should ask your husband for advice about something. Like how to set up your photo. It seems like a good idea in the moment, I mean he is competent about so many things. So you do it, you ask him, and then 10 seconds later you realize asking your husband about food photography might be the biggest mistake ever, because pretty soon, he is arranging beans and peppers into an aerodynamic, architectural, 1980's era Nouvelle Cuisine-inspired tower and waxing poetic about food photography.

He produces theatre and concerts. He is not Penny De Los Santos. Still, he made me stop and shoot his plate.

Then, it was my turn. I called my version "rustic". I denounced his blatant use of a single nugget of lettuce. I called it un-real, ridiculous. He countered by telling me my rustic interpretation was "throwing lettuce on a plate". He talked about precision and design. I talked about homey-ness, comfort and practicality.

I mocked his perfectly-placed pickles. I asked him how many people he thought four pickles was going to feed. He accused me of using more ingredients to beef up my photos. He whined about unequal treatment and standards. He lectured me about how photography is art, not a literal plate that he would bring to the table. He mocked my deconstructed salad, calling it "silly". I countered with an oration about cooking, the ins and outs of actually producing food so that real people, not tiny mice, could eat it. He used this is an opportunity to remind me how mind-numbingly literal I can be.

We bickered. We bitched. We criticized. We blasted each others creations. We accused each other of secret sabotage. We were merciless, as only a husband and wife can be, safe on ground we created together, with rules we both understood.

It was absurdly fun. More than once, we caught each other smirking. It was all safely violent, all that sparring and squaring off.

And that is why, when I took my picture, and my head was full of theories and ideas and one-upsmanship, while driven to be right and make a better plate, a prettier plate than David, with my head in this game we created, I served a table full of guests at tea and promptly forgot the potatoes, the olives, the anchovies and the hard boiled eggs. Just left them in the fridge. Forgot they existed.

It was an Idiot's Salad. And I'm pretty sure that's all David's fault. But yours will be different. You will refrain from asking your spouse about food photography. Or what's happening in Congress. You'll stay on task, and make these adorable little terrines. They are very light, perfect for tea, easily adaptable with different herbs and seasonings, and if you remember all of the heartier ingredients you left in the fridge, perfect with a Nicoise Salad.

Kim
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Shrimp & Crab Mini-Terrines with Cilantro & Chives

This is a simple take on Michael Ruhlman’s “Maryland Crab, Scallop, and Saffron Terrine”. The secret here is to keep it no frills, and use shrimp so fresh that they smell of the sea the minute you pop off the lid. When I made this dish with four curious six year olds - too nosey and curious not to join in - they passed the container around and “smelled the ocean”. That’s how fresh it should be – kids should think it smells great. I use backfin crab with the rock shrimp. It's sweeter than lump, has a stronger crab taste, and it’s more affordable.

One other note – since the kids made this terrine, the herbs are cut roughly, certainly more rough than I would’ve preferred, but their big chunks of herbs made for a much more visually appealing terrine once sliced. I might try it their way next time.

Ingredients

¾ cup cream
1 lb. rock shrimp, chopped
½ lb. crab, back fin, in chunks
2 large egg whites
Chives, a handful, chopped
Cilantro, a handful, chopped
Juice of a medium-sized lemon
Salt (to taste)
Pepper (to taste)
Chives for garnish

Preparation

Put the blades and bowl of your food processor in the freezer and chill for 15 minutes or so. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line four small terrines with plastic wrap, so they are ready when you need them. You’ll want the wrap to hang out a bit so you can fold it over and cover the top of the terrine.

When the gear is cold, assemble processor and combine shrimp and egg whites in the processor and puree until smooth. While the machine is still running, add cream to the mixture and process a little longer, just until everything is mixed well. Turn off the machine, add chunks of crab to the mixture, and season with chives, cilantro, lemon, salt and pepper. Gently mix everything together.

Push spoonfuls of your shrimp mixture into the terrines so that it touches all edges and sides and fills the mold. Pack the shrimp mixture into the terrine with the back of your spoon, so it’s even on top and fills the terrine completely. Cover with the remaining overlap of the plastic wrap and place terrines in a roasting pan. Pour hot water, from the tap or boiled on the stove, into the roasting pan until it comes half way up the sides of the terrines. Bake for about a half hour. You’ll know it’s done when you feel it get slightly spongey like a cake.

Remove terrines from the water bath and cool them a bit before putting them in the fridge. I put stones from my kid’s rock collection on top of each one to weigh it down. Let it rest just like that overnight in the fridge.

When you’re ready to serve, remove the rocks, unwrap the plastic wrap from the top and turn over the terrine. The little shrimp cakes will pop right out. Garnish with freshly cut chives. Serve with crackers and a hearty salad where you remember all the ingredients. Perfect for an afternoon tea out on the deck.

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Here are the best of the Charcutepalooza Posts for July. The challenge was Blending. Love the dogs!

1. Sir Foodalot
Hot Dog Emulsion is F*ugly.

2. Healthy Green Kitchen
I made Hot Dogs and that’s something I thought I’d never say…

3. Nic Cooks
The One I Didn’t Want to Do
A really great survey of hot dogs in various countries.

4. Eat Live Travel Write
How Hot Dogs can be Dangerous to Your health

5. Sir Food A lot
Second That Emulsion (Sir Food A lot Holds Nothing Back)

6. Inspired By Wolfe
Ode on a Mortadella Sausage (with apologies to Keats)

7. Do Love Walk
July 4th and Half Smokes

8. Dabblings and Whimsey
Muffaletta Salad

9. Locavore in the City
A Daughter Makes Dogs with her Dad

10. Bite Me New England
Janis kisses the bung. Literally.

Best Pictures!

1. Cookbook Archeology
Gorgeous step-by-step Mortadella-making pics

2. Lighter and Local
Chicago Hot Dog

3. Taste Food
Bratwurst

4. Leave Me The Oink
Pigs Wrapped in Brioche Blankets

5. Belm Blog
Bung & Mortadella

Summer

2011-07-11T19:52:00.009-04:00

Our tired, lazy, dirty, comfortable, sweltering, familiar, life in the grass.

xo YM

Strawberries & Cream Bars. Kinda. Fingers Crossed.

2011-07-07T20:53:00.029-04:00

Last weekend, I wanted to do a fun cooking project with the girls. Their friends, Nakamae and Kissa and their parents spent the weekend in the country with us, so there was lots of help.

I want to fess up right here and say that if you think I cook with my kids for lofty, ethical reasons, think again. I do it because playing Barbie sucks. The very idea of Edie being Malibu Barbie and me having to be crazy Ken with the bad hair, fake tan and no genitals, and having to make interesting conversation over the Malibu corvette, makes my eyes roll back in my head. Give me a messy kitchen, tiny hands and a bag full of sugar tipped over on the floor any day.

This time, I decided we should make Everyday Food's Strawberry Cream Bars. There was much fighting at first - I want this, give me that, I'm sitting here!- so I divided up the kids into two groups: Little Girls (Edie & Kissa) and Big Girls (Lucy & Nakamae). The Little Girls drew the strawberry part. The Big Girls drew the cream.

Edie and Kissa ate the strawberries. And put a few of them in the blender.

There was pouring.

And tandem tipping of the jar to get every single drop into the pan.

Then, we popped the strawberry mixture into the freezer, and I excused the Little Girls, and called the Big Girls to the kitchen.

The Big Girls were tasked with cracking seven eggs, which is like a dream job for six year olds.

And we learned that separating yolks from whites is easier with our fingers, than tossing it back and forth in the shell. And that picking yolk bits out of a puddle of whites is not fun or terribly easy.

Then the girls figured out that funny things happen when you turn the Kitchen Aid up to 10, while Mommy has her back turned.

Like you can spatter your best friend and your mom's kitchen with cream, and laugh, laugh, laugh your ass off.

I found cream on the ceiling.

There was the ritual eating of the cream with our fingers. Constant testing of the food is a given in my kitchen.

And then we folded the cream onto to the slushy strawberry and put it in the freezer to harden into a beautiful bar that Martha Stewart says should look like this:

But Martha doesn't really understand my kids. Because after a couple of hours in the freezer, our bars looked like this:

I started moaning under my breath about how we should've waited, and they don't look like bars, and how we ruined the bars with our insistence that they should be eaten too soon, and David, like a guru, said: If we waited for them to form into bars, we wouldn't be able to eat them now.

Which, I have to say, is a darned good point.

So we grabbed spoons and ate. And it was messy and formless and soupy and I have to say, luscious, creamy, fruity, and frosty. The perfect outdoor, sitting-on-the-deck-before-plunging-into-the-sprinkler, kind of treat.

Also, they were good enough that you might find your husband, alone in a dark corner of the house, with the last of the bowl, secretly polishing it off when he thinks no one is looking. Someone call the Paleo Police, my husband is eating sugar.

We will make these again, but we will never even try for the fussy bars, (which aren't fussy unless you are six and terribly impatient.) Instead, I plan on taking Lucy's advice and waiting until no one is looking and swirling the cream into the fruit and freezing it that way. Big, fat, white, careless swirls. For some things, children are smarter than Martha Stewart.

In case you don't get Everyday Food (which you should - it's practical, simple, straight-forward and the recipes are do-able for every level of home cook), here is the recipe. Make this instead of playing with freakin' Barbie. La la la, Ken you're such a superstar...I love your tan...Wanna climb in my pink corvette and go for a ride?

You'll thank me.

xo YM
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Strawberries and Cream Bars
from Everyday Food

2 pounds fresh strawberries, hulled, halved if large (6 cups)

1 1/2 cups sugar

coarse salt

7 large egg whites

2/3 cup cold heavy cream

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

In a blender, combine the strawberries, 3/4 cup sugar, and a pinch of salt. Puree until smooth. Pour into a 9 x 13-inch baking dish. Transfer to freezer. Every 30 minutes, for 2 hours, scrape the fruit mixture with a fork until it’s thick and slushy. Smooth top with a rubber spatula.

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the egg whites on high until foamy. With mixer on medium, gradually add 3/4 cup sugar. Increase speed to high and beat until stiff, glossy peaks form, 3 minutes.

In another bowl, beat cream and vanilla on high until you stiff peaks form, 1 to 2 minutes. With a rubber spatula, gently fold whipped cream into the egg white mixture. Pour over the fruit mixture and smooth top with a rubber spatula. Freeze until firm, about 4 hours (or covered, up to 3 days), before cutting into 12 squares.

Serves: 12 (unless you're my family and it serves 6-8)

I Like The Kind of Dinners...

2011-07-05T22:20:00.012-04:00

Where I make egg rolls for an appetizer to a much bigger dinner...

And everyone decides they'd just rather have them for dinner and nothing else. And they want to eat their egg rolls while watching mindless TV, in this case Bullwinkle and Rocky, and read their books about how to build a deck, (obviously that's David) and disobey all the rules about how families should eat together at the table. How we should be having stimulating conversation and sitting up straight in our chairs.

Bah Humbug. I sometimes need a dinner like this.

Because the Fourth of July is over. We ate a lot of food together, and cooked together, and ran around playing with our friends in the grass and the woods, and demo'd some of the bigger parts of our country house, (picture me with a crowbar and matted hair) and had some seriously late sleepovers, where all the kids slept together in the same bed and that was fun, but didn't get any of us very much sleep...

And now we need to recover.

So, give us bad TV, home-made egg rolls and Daddy's lap. That is just the post-holiday therapy we need.

xo YM

PS: I use Steamy Kitchen's recipe for egg rolls. I adapt them pretty heavily these days, but this is a terrific egg roll recipe from her mom, with a great wrapping pictorial. Try them. They rock.

Bratwurst

2011-06-30T05:47:00.019-04:00

I learned a few things while making bratwurst this week for Charcutepalooza - like how every time you turn on the meat grinder, children march into your kitchen, look at you with mad scrunched up faces and accuse you of ruining their Bullwinkle viewing time with your loud, banging machine.

And how the kitchen counters fill up with a clutter of dirty, raw meat-caked dishes and pots, until the dish washing takes almost as long as the sausage-making itself. And how every time you finish, no matter how well you clean, there's a tiny voice in your head that wonders if every time a kid touches the counter, they aren't really dragging their little fingers through a patch of lingering salmonella and we'll be spending the night in the ER. There's a sense with sausage-making that it could all go well, or just very very badly.

There's also the smell of the hog casings, if your nose gets a little too close. The fact that you have to bribe a member of your family to stand there pushing meat through a pig intestine - fun - so you can actually create something that resembles a sausage.

And there's the little unexpected problems, like how people - small whiny people - might clamor for pancakes in the middle of your sausage-making and you have to stop and make a whole other meal in the middle of your raw meat explosion. (Thanks Jennie Perillo, for your "instant" home-made pancake mix. You saved me.) Or how you're chugging right along stuffing your sausages, you're in the flow with your unwilling partner, child or neighbor, the stuffer is cranking, sausages look imminent, and the hog casing breaks and meat is flying through the air, scaring the cats and freaking out the lingering vegetarian neighbor, who you didn't think was coming over, but did, and is now more resolute than ever about not eating meat. Yes, that happened.

Sausage-making always feels epic to me. No matter how many times I do it, it always ends up feeling like an episode of "I Love Lucy". But weirdly, I like it a lot. The craziness and chaos and unpredicability are what I love about the kitchen and cooking. You just never know what might happen.

Like the platter above. After making the bratwurst from Michael Ruhlman's book, the rest is all down hill. There's Kate in the Kitchen's Home-made Garlic Mustard, pickled asparagus with recipe by Mrs. Wheelbarrow and pickled carrots made with basically the same recipe, only with 1/3 cup of Florida Gallberry Honey. (Big thanks to my good friend Merry Jennifer for the honey). And the Shaved Brussel Sprout Salad from Merrill, which moves brussel sprouts out of the Fall and right into the Summer. I used her recipe almost exactly, except I subbed out the cheese and added bacon.

What I like about this platter is that it's simple, because each of the individual components is made by hand or with some kind of love and attention - because the ingredients themselves are fresh and taste good - the whole thing is pretty simple and spectacular all at once. If you make everything ahead, leisurely over a couple afternoons, you're just plating right before lunch. But if you're a nincompoop like me, you just do everything in one time-intensive, crazy, mad-dash across the kitchen. And it's still worth it.

xo YM
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Here are the Best of the Blogs for the Stuffing Challenge:

1. The Messy Epicure
Asia Dogs with Mango Slaw and Hoisin Mustard

2. The Butcher's Apprentice
Merguez, Tabouleh, grilled peppers and Mom's bread

3. Maurine's Kitchen Thoughts
Italian Sausage with Duck & Pancetta (and a tribute to mom)

4. Hounds In The Kitchen
Mint Lamb Sausage

5. Lighter & Local
Spicy Garlic-Ginger Chicken Sausage

6. Eat Drink man Woman Dogs Cat
The spectacular fail - duck sausage

7. Sir Food Alot
You Must Respect the Process (with gladiator pics)

8. A Cook Blog
A Tale of Two Sausages

9. Au Jardin Potager
My 10 year Old Wurstmeister

10. Edamame Eats
Kofta-esque Bison Sausage

And the Best of the Stuffing Photos:

1. Smoke Cure Pickle Brew

2. David Dadekian

3. Taste Food Blog

4. Buttermilk Party Cake

5. Foodie Lawyer

The Magic Wood Fairy Smoke Dance

2011-06-28T06:52:00.014-04:00

This is a picture of Edie. Eating smoked salmon.

Word to the wise - don't leave your meat or fish hanging around our house because as soon as you turn your back to make a cocktail, someone will throw it in the smoker. And then magic wood fairies will do the smoke dance around the backyard.

I think a lot of cookbook authors underplay the importance of the magic wood fairy smoke dance, but I find it to be a critical step in the smoking process.

Later after the chanting has stopped, we have this:

Little children stuffing their faces with salmon and making ravenous beasts of themselves.

And then, like vultures descending on dying prey, they tear through the food, leaving only scraps

And satiated, surveying the carnage, put their tiny hobbit feet up on the table like barefoot heathens...

And then make complete pests of themselves until their poor mother photographs them pretending to be catatonic.

I don't know why. I've stopped asking.

xo YM

What David Got For Father's Day...

2011-06-19T10:03:00.009-04:00

Two little girls peeking into the back window to secretly spy on Daddy as he goes to the bathroom.

So, basically David's Father's Day present is...not getting a single moment to himself.

But this is what happens when your kids want to be around you as much as they can, even when you are taking a pee, because they think you might be the most wonderfully magical, intensely fun, consistently and predictably loving person on the planet. He'll just have to deal with that kind of constant adoration.

He's also going to stain the back deck today. And he's making me help him. Lord. Doesn't he just want a tie or something? Is hard labor really the appropriate gift here? He bought me my own paint brush.

Obviously, he's right in his glory.

xo YM

Before The Show

2011-06-13T08:32:00.022-04:00

Yesterday, Edie had her ballet recital.

She wasn't nervous. In fact, she was giddy. And unlike last year when David and I had to be recital helpers so one of us could always stay near her, something she demanded, this year we sat in the audience. And Edie went with her class. She sat with them through the whole show. She went backstage with them and her teacher. She walked onto the stage without us nearby in the wings.

When we checked on her at intermission, she smiled, waved, and then turned back around to talk to the little girl sitting next to her in the same identical billowy dress. Not one bit of her needed us. She was so this other girl, one I'm just starting to know - confident at her core, sure of who she is, unafraid, comfortable in a path she chose for herself.

I thought when this day came, I'd be sad. Maybe I'd feel like I lost something. But I'm just so unimaginably proud of her. These pictures are of Edie before her show, just moments after she put on the dress, and pointed her toes, and turned from girl to ballerina.

xo YM

When Adventurous Eating is Really Just Picky Eating in Sheep's Clothing

2011-06-08T20:35:00.037-04:00

When people compliment me on what good eaters my kids are, I tell them this story:

I was invited to a wonderful brunch for bloggers at Loews Hotel here in NYC by my well-connected and good friend Carol Caine. The food was terrific. There was a station with short rib eggs benedict that I still remember. I remember it in my mouth. It was that good. And I had seconds. Maybe thirds. And I made googley eyes at the chef and then he told me his secret short rib technique, which involved an absurdly long cooking time and juicing up the Hollandaise with short rib braising liquid.

And there were other stations, omelettes made fresh and at the direction of the diner, pancakes like they had been pumped with air, thick slabs of brioche french toast smothered in berry compote, buckets of beautiful fruit and yogurt and granola. And there were lunch stations, too. The room was littered with stations. Lucy ate eggs, made especially to her liking by some young chef who probably owed $150,000 in culinary school loans and wondered why the hell he was taking direction from a 6 year old. But he did, and he made her eggs just the way she liked them - whites only, over easy, fried in butter, just a little salt, no pepper.

I carried Edie around the room, looking at all the food, asking her what she might like to eat, pointing out this scrumptious sandwich or that panko-breaded, asian-inspired, crunchy fried chicken. Nothing. Just lots of head shaking. She didn't want any of it. Not breakfast. Not lunch. We went round the stations again. Nothing. I gave up. I knew we were headed for a meltdown if we didn't get something in her stomach and Lucy was having too much fun with the other kids to leave.

I quietly asked someone from the kitchen to get me a chocolate milk. I could get through the event if she had chocolate milk. A little pick me up. It was survival parenting. There was no shame in that. I could feed her something wholesome and nourishing later. For now, it was about getting by.

And then we saw it - there was a room just off the side with a whole new undiscovered station in it. Why hadn't we seen it before? Sushi! We rushed to the station, almost no one was there. Maybe it was too early, maybe it was off to the side, but that sushi chef was our bitch for the rest of the brunch. He made her california rolls, eel avocado rolls, and spider rolls. She sat at my lap at one of the many little tables, where people mingled and chatted and kids played around us, and stuffed big fat slices of maki into her mouth in between running back to the sushi chef, where he would hold up his sushi rolling mat and slowly, step-by-step show her how he made the sushi. She was in heaven.

That's when it happened. Bloggers, moms, strangers - seduced by the image of my kid with soft shell crab legs hanging out of her mouth - started coming over to me and telling me what a "New York City Kid" I had, what an adventurous eater, how their kids would never eat sushi, how they wish they knew my secret, how they wish their kids would try different foods. It went on.

I stammered a lot, nodded and smiled. It was a lie that I couldn't really explain in a quick 20 second conversation in a loud banquet room after getting drunk on short ribs and mimosas, with my cute kid, who - oh look! - just shoved another piece of raw salmon into her pie hole.

But here's the truth - that's the only thing in the whole room she would eat. Not the plainest eggs, or most barren, syrup-less pancake, or bone-dry piece of French toast. There isn't a sandwich in the world that would pass over her lips unless you put Nutella in between two slices of toasted bagel. The only thing she would eat at Loews was the sushi.

And do you know why?

Because Lucy went to preschool next to a very good neighborhood sushi joint on the Upper West Side. They had a terrific lunch special, very cheap. Two days a week, before we picked up Lucy, Edie and I had a ritual - we stopped at Ozen, ordered spicy tuna hand rolls, and miso soup, and had a little lunch together. I always ordered a secret Diet Pepsi. She was two. Who was she going to tell? Two days a week for two years. We could have gone to McDonalds. That could've been our tradition, but we did this instead. And now, sushi is her comfort. Her special treat. Something we do together. Lucy likes it, but not the way Edie does. I made her love sushi. She really had no choice.

But the point is, some things are not what they seem. A kid who is eating sushi might not be a great eater. She just might love sushi. You never really know what goes on at the dinner table when the front door is closed and no one is watching, no matter what people write on their food blogs or brag about at school functions. In fact, I'll say it: my kid is picky. If what we mean by picky is - she likes what she likes and that sometimes inconveniences the hell out of me and drives me to the brink of insanity.

My daughter will only eat a croissant for lunch at school. That's it. A croissant. Everything else I pack gets returned smushed and uneaten. She could live out her days happily eating only brown-buttered corn, guacamole and tortilla chips, roast chicken, shrimp cocktail, pizza, French fries, hot dogs drowned in ketchup, fish chowder or really, any cream-based soup no matter how weird or obscure, bagels smothered in Nutella and any festival of carbs - dishes that are comprised mainly of noodles or rice. She can eat a half loaf of ciabatta at the playground without swallowing. But she'll pick every bit of veg out of her fried rice, one tiny little bit at a time, using the pointy end of her fork, as if she were a neurosurgeon working a testy brain tumor out of someone's skull. I swear she's in training for med school.

Yesterday, I offered her stuffed shells at a playdate. While Lucy and her friends happily ate, she cried for noodles and then when she got it that the shells were actually noodles, and that she liked them, she inspected every side of the shell for tiny specks of stray spinach and weird, unsavory looking bits of cheese. It took an hour to eat two shells.

But I know this won't last. Lucy just asked if we could go to a French restaurant and eat snails and it made me remember that Lucy wasn't always so adventurous, that she didn't revel in trying and discovering new foods. That's what happened this year. At six. Six is a big food year for us. It's the year they are so in the world that trying new things - trying everything - makes them who they are. Their sense of adventure gives them a purpose and confidence. They've already rebelled and stood their ground against your home-cooking and now they've proven their point - they are rebels, they can drive the grown-ups crazy, they have the real, tangible power to mess with your life, but it's all sort of "been there done that" - now, they just want to experience it all, and if that means trying Grandma's green bean casserole with those weird, crunchy onion-like things on top, just to see what that's all about, well, bring it on.

Edie is turning five next month. We have some time to go before six. Until then, we have croissants and sushi and clam chowder and Nutella. And, I think, that's just where we're supposed to be.

xo YM

Screw Sausages!

2011-06-01T09:06:00.041-04:00

Every once in awhile you take on a kitchen project and somewhere in the middle - when the sink is piled high with dirty, grimy dishes, when raw chicken and chunks of fat back cover nearly every inch of the kitchen counter, your clothes, your arms up to your elbows, and there isn't a single inch of uncontaminated space, when the children are clamoring for food and a meal is still hours away - and you think, "Why the hell do people do this?...Why am I doing this?"

That's the question my best friend Jennie Perillo was asking when I invited her and her family to come our place in the country and make sausages in casings with me. Okay, I didn't actually invite her to the house to make sausages. She was duped. It was Memorial Day weekend and we were planning on hanging out, having fun, relaxing, our girls running around the house playing together, our men, with a couple of long necks, kicking up their feet on the deck.

Boooooring.

So,I had this great idea, or at least that's what it seemed at the time - what if we did the Charcutepalooza challenge together? What if two old friends got together in the kitchen and made a couple different kinds of sausage and stuffed it into casings? I had never used my new fiery-red Kitchen Aid stand-up mixer with stuffing and grinding attachments. See it there? Gorgeous.(Thank you, Kitchen Aid.)

It was perfect. I couldn't even see where there'd be a hitch. We'd laugh. We'd gossip. We'd cook. We'd drink wine until we couldn't stand. We'd eat home-made sausage for dinner. Everyone would love us. We would love ourselves. Jennie would wear her trademark sunglasses, even in the kitchen.

It was the perfect plan.

Until we couldn't find the blade for the grinding attachment. Of course this doesn't seem like a big deal unless you consider that we had been trying to grind meat without a blade for an hour and a half. There was the slow whining of the Kitchen Aid and the long strips of fat back entwining themselves around the gears, never getting smaller or grinding up, and jamming up the machine. Countless times we stopped, pulled the attachment apart, pulled out all the meat by hand, washed the pieces and started again. There was raw meat everywhere. Eventually, Jennie went on YouTube. Apparently, if you don't have the little piece of metal that actually, get this - CUTS UP THE MEAT - grinding cannot take place. This is when you start feeling a little like Mo and Curly.

We plan B'd it. We decided to grind with my food processor, but neither of us was really prepared for the fact that my processor was made circa 1977 and could maybe process a banana into baby food (which was why I had it, to make baby food) but couldn't even remotely tackle the big chunks of pork fat. Instead it kind of mulched the meat and the fat clogged the blade, and more raw meat sort of went everywhere. And that meant more dishes to clean, and counters and surfaces to scour - which was made doubly hard by the fact that our old, struggling boiler went down that morning and we didn't have hot water, so we could barely wash a dish let alone allow our guests to shower comfortably - and we were no closer to making food or having it in our mouths.

That's when Jennie started mocking my food processor. And me. And muttering unintelligently under her breath as she cleaned raw pork fragments out of her fingernails. It wasn't pretty.

The situation was made worse by my husband, who was charged with going on a booze run and instead took a detour to Loew's and, like many men in the middle of a house renovation, started ogling tools, and supplies, parts for the boiler, and then happened upon a clearance sale on smokers, and during this whole time, had been happily, gleefully sending me 12 different text-pictures of smokers he'd like to buy, from different angles, with price comparisons and pithy commentary. He had no idea how badly we needed the booze.

But the kids were the tipping point - they meandered into the kitchen looking pale, pathetic and half-starved, asking if we could just let them have popsicles for dinner. Jennie and I looked at each other. And we caved.

"Let's make meatballs, skewer them, and stick 'em on the grill." Jennie said, wiping her pork fat-covered hands on her apron and leaning against my sink, where she had just washed, with ice cold water, the last of three loads of meat-strewn dishes. She was resolute.

It was over.

I felt nothing but relief. Screw sausages! I was done. I was already writing this post in my head. That was the title: Screw Sausages! I mentally prepared myself to call Cathy and tell her about my sad, disappointing kitchen fail. I was going to tell her, first thing: Screw sausages!

I chopped down the rest of the meat by hand. We fried off a small patty of the chicken sausage with apple, maple and sage and I brought it out to Jennie's husband, Michael to taste test. He was out on the deck with a beer and a magazine, oblivious to all of it. That's where I told him the news about the sausages, and how it had all gone bad, and nerves were frayed, and hopes were dashed, and everyone was going to be having meatballs for dinner.

He was completely disappointed. Heart broken.

"No sausage in casings?" he asked. It was more whimper than question.

"Nope. We're done..." I told him. I was firm. No way was I going back into that sausage-making hell.

"Um...unless you want to stuff the sausages?" I heard myself speak the words and couldn't pull them back in. Dammit.

Before I knew it, Michael - who isn't a recipe developer, line cook, celebrity chef, cookbook author, or food writer - had changed the whole kitchen. He was interested, inspired, funny, adventurous, curious and game. He saved us. And that gave Jennie and I our energy back. We had renewed purpose. We had sausages to stuff.

We also had perverted jokes to make about lubricating the stuffer and how impossible it is to lubricate the stuffer without it looking like you're giving it a hand job. And there were lots of jokes about sausages and penises, and who was the best "luber", which seems like something out of middle school, but was actually thoroughly enjoyable and primal. I made more than one "playing with my meat" reference, which never really gets old. (We have it all on video, which probably wasn't such a smart idea.) And David, like a prince on a white horse, came back with booze, stories of smokers at drastically-reduced prices, and a much lighter wallet.

Things were looking up.

I chopped all the meat down by hand into a mince. There were still some unruly chunks in the Italian sausage which didn't quite work, but the chicken sausage tasted great, just a little pulpy, a little weighty, which I think served them well. Hand-chopping the chicken was a happy accident. We twisted the sausages, tied them off with kitchen string and wondered how they would ever stay together once they were cut into links, but they did. And we think the 5-7 minutes of par-cooking before grilling really kept the meat holding together in the casing.

We stood over the grill marveling at how the sausages looked perfectly packaged at the ends. And that somehow we had done that. How this wasn't so shabby for our first time. We decided that even though our sausage size wasn't uniform, we felt that this was proof that they were truly "artisanal" and if we sold them at the farmers market, surely we could charge more money for them this way.

But standing there, Michael and I knew it - it was really all so worth it.

We probably could've had an easier time with our bare feet up on the railing of the deck, watching the girls take turns on the tire swing or eating s'mores by the fire, but we wouldn't have gone through this together. We wouldn't have this ridiculous story. I'll be telling the sausage story to our girls when Jennie is old and gray, cranky and decrepit. And I'd never have tried making sausages in casings again.

Michael went back to Brooklyn with a bag of hog casings - which he clumsily, some might say, stupidly, stowed in Jennie's expensive designer hand-bag. Oh, he caught some hell for that - so, there will be artisanal sausages coming out of the Perillo household soon.

Jennie still has a little sausage chip on her shoulder. She thinks Michael and I are nuts, and that there's a brilliant little sausage shop in Brooklyn that can give her home-made sausages without all the fuss, and the dirty dishes, and the contaminated counter tops. She would also prefer it if the bag of hog-casings in the freezer didn't actually touch, rub or come within six inches of anything of hers in the freezer. She's still a little touchy about the sausage. You probably shouldn't mention it to her.

I, however, am making them again next weekend. A true convert. Bring it, Charcutepalooza.

xo YM

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Chicken Sausage with Apples, Maple & Sage

I used Michael Ruhlman's recipe for Chicken Sausage with Basil & Tomatoes from Charcuterie as my guide for this recipe. I used his ratios, Cathy Barrow's idea for topping off the meat with a little cream at the end, and added flavors I knew my kids would eat. As you probably can guess from the post, I was in the weeds for most of the cooking, so I didn't leisurely measure as I went along. But that's the beauty of sausage, really. You can get the basic ratios set in your head and personalize it, add whatever you want and just fry off a test patty and give it a taste. You can keep seasoning, re-seasoning and tasting until you get something you love and that's all your own.

Ingredients

3 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cubed
1 1/2 pounds pork back fat
3 tablespoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 1/4 teaspoons minced garlic
3 tablespoons, finely chopped sage
1 apple, diced
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup cream, ice cold
1 teaspoon, olive oil (for lubing the stuffer)

Preparation

Combine the chicken, fat, salt, pepper, garlic, sage and apple in a bowl. Mix everything together. Put meat mixture in fridge to chill.

Grind and paddle the meat as per Cathy's instructions.

Add the syrup and cream. Work the liquids through the meat with your hands or the paddle attachment. It should have a smooth, even consistency.

Fry off a small patty and taste for seasoning. Put the rest in the fridge or place the bowl back in the ice bath. While the patty is frying, get your hog casings ready.

Taste your patty. If you need to re-season, do so and fry off another taste. If it's good, dismantle your grinding attachment and set up your stuffing attachment.

Stuff your sausage as per Cathy's instructions.

After you get a long chain of sausage links, you're going to par-boil them. Put on a pot of water and let it heat to a boil. Drop the sausages in and cook for about five to seven minutes. This will get the cooking process started and also help bind the meat together inside the casing.

When the sausage is done, either store them in the fridge until you're ready to grill them or take them right out to the grill. They will cook for about 15 minutes while you let them brown up. Turn them every five minutes or so.

Serve immediately with a spicy mustard, slaw, Jennie's Pickled Watermelon Rind, corn on the cob and a nice cold beer.

These sausages are even better the next day where they can be sliced, served cold on a platter with pickles, olives, nuts, cheese and a nice crusty loaf of bread.

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Charcutepalooza Round Up

Here they are! The Very Best of May's Grinding Posts. Fantastic posts!

1. Grow It Cook It Can It
Honey Biscuits & Sausage Gravy

2. Leave Me The Oink
Jalepeno & Cheese Smoked Sausage

3. Naomaly
Chorizo Tamales

4. The Messy Epicure
Tortas de Chorizo Con Huevos

5. Saffron & Salt
Hummus with Ground lamb & Pine Nuts

6. Cookbook Archaeology
Creole chicken sausage/Sausage and Egg Ramekins

7. Taste food
Merguez sausage

8. Lick My Spoon
Chorizo sausage

9. Hounds in the Kitchen
Taco Truck Chorizo Sopito

10. Well Preserved
How to Make Breakfast Sausage

Cathy and I can't wait to see what you all do with the stuffing challenge!!

Aussie Girl

2011-05-30T23:37:00.009-04:00

It's happened. Time after time, I've been setting out plates of beets when we throw burgers on the grill at our country place.

Not locally grown, organic beets carefully and gently roasted in the oven with garlic, and sea salt, and expensive Spanish olive oil. Nope. Just sliced beets from a can. The kind Australians use on their burgers. That's right, order a burger in Australia and someone will throw a slice of canned beet on it and expect you to eat it.

I was a non-believer that first time. I stared at the plate. I stared at the burger. I wasn't sure about this thing pinking up my hamburger bun. But after a run-of-the-mill, but also kinda-awesome burger at Taronga Zoo in Sydney, I was converted. A burger at a mediocre cafeteria changed me forever. I haven't looked back. Now, I have a pantry stacked with small cans of sliced beets and I never grill a burger for myself or David without piling a few beets, onions, tomatoes, greens and ketchup on top.

Lucy, like pretty much all Americans, was also a non-believer. Who wants a vegetable on their burger? A vegetable when it isn't actually necessary to eat a vegetable with your burger? Why chance it? Why not just ignore the plate of beets into oblivion? Why chance having your pee turn pink?

All good questions.

It took me years. Just putting beets out there on the table, pushing the plate a little closer to her, getting her interested, seducing her with my stories of pink pee. Once, I even told her they were sweet, like candy, on your burger. I'm pretty sure she thought I was drunk.

But this Spring it happened. When she was ready - Lucy does everything on her own time, in her own way. She grabbed a slice of beet and shoved it between her burger and bun.

Then she smushed it all together to make a "squeeze burger", which is just a burger compressed to it's maximum in the hands of a kinder-gardener. She's famous for it in the school cafeteria. It's a culinary marvel.

And she loved it. Just as I did. Just as David has his whole life. The three of us eat our burgers with beets now. (Edie is still a hold out, as expected) But what Lucy always asks, as she's eating her burger, all pink-stained and smushed down into its most compact form, is whether the act of eating it makes her an "Australian girl".

And we think it does.

xo YM

How Edie Got A Black Eye...

2011-05-27T08:40:00.007-04:00

This is how it was supposed to go:

Swinging from the branches of the willow tree in Central Park, with our best friends, like the girls on the flying trapeze.

And this is how it went:

Please don't call my mother and tell her her grandchild has been maimed in a small circus accident. The girl is fine. But we have war wounds to show off. And the story to re-tell a couple hundred times. It all gets bigger and more dangerous and more spectacular every time we tell it. We are awesome in our own minds. Our black eye is proof - Fosters are tough.

Hope you get to swing from a few willow branches this holiday weekend.

xo YM

A Quick Thought about Going to Conferences...

2011-05-25T10:30:00.019-04:00

A bunch of us food writers recently went to a food writing conference.

It always happens that after a conference, there is a good deal of consternation and analysis across the internet, about ourselves and each other, and then, a general blood-letting of anxieties where everyone confesses how insecure they are at their core, how they weren't popular in high school, and will never be in the food writing world. There are hurt feelings, people feeling snubbed. It always makes me sad to read it.

So, I thought I'd share this with you all...

On the way to the conference, I jotted down a few things. To remind myself where my focus should be. To be mindful. To be grounded. To be aware of what was happening around me. These words served me well for the conference, and probably for more things in the future. I read them every morning. I pulled the book out to remind myself during the day. I carried the book everywhere with me. When I felt myself deviating from it, or forgetting it, or getting focused on something that felt wrong in my gut, I pulled it out and re-read it. Once, I read it in a bathroom stall. It was my road map. It was one of the last things I looked at before I fell asleep.

Life is about meaningful connection. That's it. That's all. We need to focus on the people who get us. Impress them. Care about them. Listen to them. Everyone else can go to hell.

Here's what I wrote. Maybe you can use this for something...

1. Act the part.
2. Fake it if you don't know what you're doing.
3. Be in the moment.
4. Own it & have a blast.
5. Make people feel special.
6. Ask lots of questions & listen.
7. Talk "The Family Talk" (which means don't talk badly about people)
8. Do not soak up other people's crazy.
9. Believe in who you are.
10. Be happy at your core.

xo YM

Things That Happen While I Try To Make Dinner...

2011-05-25T09:04:00.027-04:00

xo YM

It's All Australia's Fault

2011-05-16T10:11:00.019-04:00

David is in Australia this week on business, and even though the girls and I are keeping ourselves busy with birthday parties, our very first real, over-night, sleep-over with our best friends, back-to-back play dates all weekend, and turning a spare closet into a cozy, pink, secret clubhouse strung up with pink lights and tons of pillows, we're still very aware that something, someone, is missing.

We are a group, us four, and when one of us isn't around, well, things can be good, and fun, and even exciting, but they're also just a little off. And things have been a little off without David, for sure.

I mean, not one person has left their dirty, black, balled-up socks on the floor. Weirdly, I miss that. And when I tried to make coffee in the French Press yesterday, it was runny, brown, coffee-tinged water. And no one has read my writing this week and told me that it reads like "the rotary club year book." That was harsh, but true, and I think it might be the best piece of literary criticism I've ever gotten. And the orange sweater? I even miss...no, I don't miss the sweater. Not at all.

I miss the sex, but no wants to hear about that here, and there's a new episode of Friday Night Lights I'm dying to watch, but can't because we watch it together. And David takes the kids to school every morning, so I ready for that little piece of hell to be over, and he does the laundry, and so I'm wearing dirty clothes. Also, the cats won't sleep with us because David isn't here. I found out this week the cats hate me and only tolerate me because I feed them and come with the marriage. And I think I might be on the verge of menopause.

It's all going to shit around here. I blame it on Australia.

I haven't spent much time in the kitchen this week either and that too, I think, is Australia's fault. My main kitchen responsibilities seem to be keeping juice cups washed and also retrieving beverages for small children. That's really all I do. When David's home, I cook longer, more complicated, more deeply textured meals, because I know he appreciates them, because we appreciate them together. The girls, on the other hand, for all the good food they eat, would be just as happy eating pizza every day. And so, when we are going it alone, there's no sense in making a big elaborate dinner because they eat like tiny field mice. It's a lot of effort for not a lot of results.

So, I’ve been making simple dishes: one or two pans tops, under 15 minutes from prep to table, and things I’m sure the kids will wolf down without too much shouting and dismay. Even though it's not pizza. Or noodles with butter. I try to avoid that moment where they look into the bowl, realize what's there and then make some kind of stink face. I don't want to see that stink face until David comes home.

Yeah, that's the one.

Here's two easy meals for people who are really pissed off at Australia...

xo YM

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Cold Shrimp, Guac & Chips

This is one of the girl's favorite meals and it feels more like a fun snack than dinner.

Buy the shrimp cooked and peeled and you save a ton of time. Put the shrimp in a bowl and add a couple good squeezes of lemon, a handful of chopped cilantro, a pinch of salt. Mix it all together and chill in the fridge for a few minutes. Make the guacamole - a couple avocados, a squeeze of lemon, a little salt, chopped cilantro - mash it all up with a fork. Put the cold shrimp and guac on a platter with some chips and serve.

Herbed Lamb chops with Sautéed Broccoli & Bacon

The broccoli in this dish is really for me. But the kids like to eat the chops with their fingers like lollipops. In the end, everyone is happy.

For the broccoli: Chop bacon into slivers (the bacon in the pic is home-made) cook until crisp, let drain on paper towel, set aside. If there’s too much bacon grease in the pan, pour some out. Add a handful of chopped green onion or leek to the remaining bacon grease. Add a hunk of butter. Let the onions get soft, about 5 minutes. Add broccoli florets sauté for another five minutes over medium heat, until just starting to get soft. Salt and pepper to taste. Add bacon. Mix everything together.

For the chops: Put chops in a bowl, add olive oil, salt, chopped garlic, and herbs, thyme, rosemary, sage, tarragon, chives, whatever you have. Here I used thyme. Let it sit in fridge all day, a few hours or a few minutes, whatever you’ve got. Heat a pan and add a little olive oil. When the oil is nice and hot, add chops. Let them sear on one side for five minutes, check for a nice brown color and flip. Cook 5 minutes on the other side. The meat should have give when you touch it. You want it medium-rare to rare. Take it off the flame and set aside for a couple minutes. Let it rest. Serve with or without the broccoli.

The Great Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Dinner Debate In My Head

2011-05-07T18:24:00.017-04:00

David is in Vegas and then, LA on business. It's just me and the kids and a long expanse of togetherness. I like all the girly togetherness, so that's fine with me, but last night while hiking the kids through our neighborhood Duane Reade (the drug store for you non-New Yorkers), I walked past a shelf of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Dinner boxes. Nice blue and yellow boxes. I stopped.

And that's when my mind started having a conversation without me:

David's out of town. No one has to know. The kids will love me for this. One pan, virtually no clean up. A one dish dinner in minutes. $3. Dinner for $3. The box says it's the cheesiest. I know it's not really cheesy but still, it says it's the cheesiest. It must be a little cheesy. There's got to be some cheese in it. But cheese-schmeeze, who cares anyway? My kids eat from-scratch meals all the time. They are the healthiest kids on the planet, why Edie hasn't had a fever in two years. I'm awesome. I rock. I made my own damned bacon, for Christ sakes. People who make their own bacon can feed their kids the box once in a while, right? No need to become one of those brittle pedigogical psychos who never let their kids have a Tic Tac. Oh My God, I have this huge stain on the front of my shirt. How the hell long has that been there? One night of crap isn't going to kill them. That's right, and they are gonna think you are the coolest mom ever for this. The coolest. For 3 bucks! And on Mother's Day. After they made you those cute cards with feathers and pom pom balls and all those hearts. There were so many freakin' hearts. Seriously, I can't go out anymore with stains on my tits, I look like I'm breastfeeding. They DESERVE to eat the crap this once. That's why you're such a great mom, you're flexible, open to anything, a revolutionary, not stuck in a grind or an ideology. You are bigger than ideology. You are a slave to no one...

Damned right. I am a slave to no one.

So, I plucked the box from the shelf trying to forget that I had written a terribly sarcastic, mean-spirited attack on Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Dinner just a few short years ago. How had I fallen so far, so fast? This stuff is like crack.

I shook off the thought and tucked the box under a bag of beef jerky (why am I not making my own freakin' beef jerky?) and made my way to the check out. I didn't have to blog about it. No one would know. I searched the store, surveying the aisles, looking for foodie neighbors - I'm talkin' to you, Red Cook - and assessing my chances of making it from aisle six to the check out lady without being spotted. I considered tucking it under my sweater but that looked a little like shoplifting. No need showing up on Food News Journal busted for a box of mac and cheese in my shirt.

Two ladies were in line in front of me. I tried to look non-chalant. Not a care in the world. Like I had bunches of kale in my trolley.

Finally we reached the cashier. I pulled out the box. Edie looked at the box, looked up at me. And she said, "I don't like that. I want something else." And then turned back to the stuffed monkey in her arms and started talking about something nonsensical and totally unrelated. Something about sparkly hair and unicorns.

I handed the box to the cashier, lowered my eyes in shame and said, "We won't be taking this...sorry."

Then, we went home and while the kids played, I made miso soup - from scratch - with home-made dashi. I eyeballed the dashi from watching Youko make it at Gomen Kudasai in New Paltz, New York.

It did not cost $3 dollars and it took more than 15 minutes. Way more than 15 minutes, although if I had made the dashi ahead of time it would've taken minutes. The dashi needs to be romanced and that is not a snappy process.

Frankly, I lucked out that I had all the ingredients in my pantry and fridge. I lucked out that I have access to a real Asian market. I lucked out that I had time. I lucked out that we aren't living paycheck to paycheck and can't invest in a surplus of spices, herbs and pantry items. I lucked out that my kids have a wide enough palate that I know they'd eat this soup and I wasn't wasting my time and my money, only to still have hungry kids staring up at me at the end of the night asking for something else. I'm lucky that I'm not so overwhelmed by life, depressed, screwed over, miserable, disease-riddled, poor, or life-challenged that even the simple act of making dinner from real food seems like a herculean task. I'm just lucky.

Everybody ate. Everybody was happy. I didn't have any guilt. My brain stopped talking to itself, gratefully. I'm certain I'm no longer delusional. I'm glad I didn't buy the box. But I get why people do.

Can't wait for David to come home.

xo YM

E-Books: Why Today is a Good Day to Be A Writer

2011-05-05T08:32:00.026-04:00

I was really surprised by the response to my Angry Mom post. Thank you for the stories you shared either in comments or in emails to me personally. It got me thinking...there's more to say about this topic. And there are more people who will want to read about it.

I couldn't think of a magazine I felt was right for a longer piece on anger and motherhood and truth be told, I didn't want to write a journalistic piece - something smart but distant, with lots of quotes and research to back up my thoughts. I wanted to keep the raw-ness and intimacy of the original piece. There just aren't many places for that. And I didn't want to write a whole book about it either. In my head, I shelved it.

But after talking to David, we decided I should write a longer version of the Angry Mom post and submit it as a Kindle Single. Think of it as being the size of a New Yorker article, more full but just as personal, a real story. This will be my first Kindle Single (if it is accepted)- my big toe in the water of self-publishing.

Many of you know that I've ghostwritten other people's books for years. Some of those have been self-published by vanity presses, some e-books, and some by traditional publishers. Back in the day - like last year - there was still a second rate status to self-publishing and all kinds of barriers for marketing and getting seen at the bookstore.

Self-publishing just didn't have the same rep, because it wasn't vetted by the New York gatekeepers. It didn't have their stamp of approval, which was proof the work must be good or at least of some professional and worthy quality. So many self-published books suffered from bad cover art, poor editing and a simple lack of professional writing ability and insight. It seemed only the unpublishable self-published. It had the mark of defeat.

Even last year as I spent nearly 11 months writing, re-writing and re-tooling the book proposal for my hopefully-insanely-funny memoir about cooking with four year olds in Lucy and Edie's East Harlem public school, I would never have even considered self-publishing. It would've been a step down, like going to the prom with a perfectly nice, pimpley-faced boy who rides a scooter and wears high-water pants. I wanted to go to prom with a quarterback.

That was four months ago. Now, everything has changed. All of a sudden, Lord help me, I love high-water pants.

I have a perfectly awesome agent - thanks to all the virtual pavement pounding I did last year and fellow writer Beth Lipton - and Cathy and I are at work on a Charcutepalooza Cookbook proposal that we hope will find a home somewhere. I don't want to say too much about that book project since we are in the middle of working on it and it doesn't just involve me - but we are stupidly excited about it, as we are about anything that has to do with meat, making meat and Charcutepalooza.

Still, nothing is the same in publishing and I can't shake the idea that big things are in the works for writers. Maybe I've been reading too much Joe Konrath - I now get it when people find you and love you immediately and start reading your blog backwards devouring every word, that is me with Joe Konrath - but it seems to me that for the first time since the invention of the printing press, good writers are no longer beholden to publishers.

This is fantastic news for writers who have some experience under their belts. These are the writers who have several discarded novels sitting in their drawers - what I mean by that, is that they've written a few book-length projects and know what goes into it. They have enough solid professional writing experience to know what is compelling storytelling and what isn't (most of the time anyway). They know they need good cover art and they are savvy enough to recognize it when they see it. They know they need a top notch copy editor to clean up their slog. They not only know how to use social media to sell their work and themselves, but they absolutely love it and would do it even if they didn't have anything to sell. They want to write a lot and connect with readers immediately. They don't want to wait around for the slow, mud-clogged wagon wheels of traditional publishing to give them a pat and a nod and venue.

I've decided to take the summer to finish the entire food memoir and publish it in the Fall as an e-book. (Thanks for all the nice comments here telling me you are looking forward to the book. Those comments helped me make this decision. They made a huge difference. Huge.) And I'm not settling. That boy on the scooter is looking pretty hot these days. Truth is, after these last few months I can't even imagine trying to sell this particular book to a traditional publisher.

How's that for a turn around?

As a writer, I am drawn to e-books. I want to connect with the audience faster. I want to take my chances finding my own audience. I trust that after four years here, I know who my readers are and what they, and new readers, will want to read from me. If I can't, well, I shouldn't be doing this. I want to make more money, share less of the returns, and have total say in what I'm putting out. I want to please only readers, not gatekeepers because if I focus on pleasing the readers, the gatekeepers will love me anyway. I want to work with good people - designers and editors - who will make my work better, at my own expense, and know that it's my vision, what I want to do. I know that also means some things won't fly sometimes, and I'll make some hideous mistakes, but I can live with that.

And Joe Konrath is right - there will still be gatekeepers. But it won't be publishers. It will be readers. The same people who find the best stuff amid hundreds of tedious cable channels and a plethora of internet-watching opportunities and lift up the ones who resonate. Not even the best, just the ones that speak to us where we are.

I do not think that print publishing is over, by the way. Nor can I say that I wouldn't publish a book with a traditional publisher. Our plan right now for The Charcutepalooza Cookbook is that it go with a traditional publisher. But that hasn't stopped us from thinking about apps and all kinds of accompanying technology. Publishing is just changing. Agents and publishers roles are changing. Writers roles are changing. Think about it - the field is wide open. Every good writer has a shot. You don't have to be The Pioneer Woman to write a well-received book. No offense against Ree, love her. But that is damned exciting stuff.

Sure, there is still luck and randomness and market savvy, and e-books will see their share of surprise bestsellers and un-predictable clunkers, but still, it is a good day to be a writer. You have more options than ever. Instead of spending time convincing publishers why you are worth it, producing blog stats and page after page of proof/bullshit that you can market a book and spending countless hours doing stunts to drive up your traffic, a process that actually takes longer than writing the book itself, you could just be out there writing/selling your book. You actually get to prove your worth by what you're writing/publishing and how you can move it through the market place.

Radical. Freeing. Revolutionary, I think.

And Oh My God, think about the Kindle Single - you don't even have to write a whole book for God's sake. You can submit a single essay, a long-form idea, a novella, a short story. Just make sure it is great, something people will want to devour. That's why I'm starting there with my Angry Mom piece. It'll be an experiment. My toe in the water. My first dance with the high-water pant guy. David is pushing me to finish it. I'll keep you posted.

Remember, it is a good day to be a writer.

xo YM

To Grind or Not to Grind?

2011-04-29T10:42:00.034-04:00

I realize something about myself – I am not a gadget person. Not even in the kitchen.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about reading Grace Young’s The Wisdom of The Chinese Kitchen and her ideas about being mindful in the kitchen, cooking as meditation. I was inspired. Her stories are really some of the best in food writing. I also bemoaned the fact that I had to buy a scale in that post and suffered a tragic beat down by scale-lovers on Twitter.

I get it. Scales rock. Please don’t write me anymore and tell me that.

Truth is, I rarely use my kitchen machinery. I don’t own a mixer anymore, since mine was maimed in a terrible house-moving accident, and oddly, was never replaced. I have a beautiful, fully tricked out food processor that only gets used when the woman next door borrows it. Still, it looks pretty and very technical sitting in my cupboard. I couldn’t even bring myself to buy a simple meat grinder for this Charcutepalooza challenge. I just wanted to drag out my big cheap cleaver that I bought at a knife store in Chinatown for $12 and have at it.

I like to make a mess. I like to eyeball it. I like porky hands. I realize this is weird, and not conducive to order, ease of preparation or even success in cooking. But it is, I think, good times in the kitchen. So, for the grinding challenge this month, I hand-chopped a boneless pork loin into a pulpy, fleshy pile of meat shards and made Kian Lam Kho’s Pork & Chinese Chives Pot Stickers.

No, pot stickers are not sausages, technically. But the challenge this month was grinding and seasoning. Grinding is a primer for all kinds of sausage-making. It's about getting to know the meat, taking it apart, breaking it down into little fatty pieces, feeling it and watching it go from one form to another under your eye and tutelage. Then, it's getting the seasoning right, playing with those spices, tasting, reflecting and tasting again. Kitchen mindfulness at it's best. In Cathy's words, the insides of a pot sticker are the same as the insides of a sausage. It's ground meat and seasonings. Revelation.

The hand-chopping was so fun, I watched an evening of YouTube videos in French - didn't understand a word - and decided I wanted to make steak tartare next, which is always hand-chopped to get that sinewy, corpulent texture that feels both buttery and slightly knotty in your mouth. And then, I watched Chef Hubert Keller hand-chopping his burgers on Chow and decided I wanted to make all our burgers this summer from hand-chopped meat. I wouldn’t have gotten that from a meat grinder. It's all in the porky hands, I tell you.

This recipe for pot stickers comes from Kian's blog, Red Cook, which is up for a James Beard Foundation Award this year. And deservedly so. Both the dough and the fillings for these pot stickers are deceptively simple to make, but give yourself time and kitchen volunteers - making dumplings is always heavy on the labor, and if everyone is sitting around the kitchen, drinking something shamelessly alcoholic, and wrapping pork filling into pot sticker dough, well, that will really set the tone for the meal.

In Kian's post he talks about the imperfections and joys of communal dining in Chinese culture, and one of the things I love best about this dish is that it can be a family dinner in every sense of the word - a platter of dumplings surrounded by dipping sauces, arms reaching across the table, no one politely stuck to their seats, all the requisite stories, squabbles, and if you have kids, the inappropriate use of chopsticks. Up your nose anyone?

Also, forming the dumplings elegantly is a learning curve. Kian has a great photo primer to get you started if you've never done it. My children's dumplings always end up looking like vaginas, but over the years mine have looked less and less like genitalia, which proves patience truly pays off.

Kian Lam Kho's Pork and Chinese Chives Pot Stickers (Pot Sticker Photo by Kian)

Preparation time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Rapid cooking time: 15 minutes

Hot Water Dough

2 cups flour
3/4 cup boiling water
1/4 cup cold water

Pork and Chinese Chives Stuffing

8 oz. ground pork
8 oz. Chinese chives (韭菜)
1/2 cup finely chopped scallion
1 teaspoon finely minced garlic
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper
1 tablespoon sesame oil

Put the flour in a mixing bowl and gradually add the boiling water while mixing the dough with wooden chopsticks or a wooden spoon. The hot water will slightly cook the flour and it will form lumps. Continue to mix for about half a minute then add the cold water. At this point start using your hands to knead the dough. It will be sticky initially. Knead the dough until it is elastic and smooth. Let the dough rest for about half an hour before use. Cover the dough with a damp cloth or seal it with plastic wrap.

Chop the garlic chives into small pieces of about 1/8 inch. Mix all the stuffing ingredients together and set aside.

Divide the dough into three equal portions. Roll each portion into a cylinder about 1/2 inch in diameter. Cut the cylinder into pieces about 1/2 inch wide. Roll the pieces into balls. Flatten the balls into rounds and roll them into wrappers with a Chinese rolling pin. When rolling the wrapper use one hand to roll the pin back and forth, while using the other to push the round dough under the rolling pin. Turn the dough about one quarter turn just after the rolling pin presses down on the dough. Repeat until the dough becomes a thin round wrapper. Fill with about 1 tablespoon of stuffing. Pleat the edges into a crescent shape dumpling and press to seal.

You will need a thin Chinese rolling pin of about one inch in diameter to roll the wrappers. It is often available in Chinatown markets or from mail order outlets. You can use a regular baking rolling pin but manipulating the wrappers under this thicker bulky version can be tricky.

Pour about 1/8 inch layer of vegetable oil in a frying pan then arrange the dumplings in the cold oil. It is fine to arrange the dumplings touching each other. Fry the dumplings on medium heat for about one minute. Add 1/2 cup of warm water to the pan and cover. Let steam for about three minutes or until all the water has evaporated. Uncover the pan and let the bottom of the dumplings continue to brown. As they brown they will loosen from the pan and can be flipped onto a plate. Serve with thinly shredded ginger in Chinkiang black vinegar.

April's Best of Smoking Posts

Congrats to the best of the best this month!

1. Smoked Whitefish
Good for the Palate

2. Smoked Ice
Lighter and Local

3. Croque Monsieur
Saint Elk

4. Eggs Benny with Kale and Roasted Tomatoes
Oui Chef Network

5. Charcutepalooza Goes 80's
Bite Me New England

6. Beer, Bacon, Breakfast
Snappy Service Cafe

7. Smoked Poultry, Smoked Pork
Dave Being Dave

8. Babies LOVE Smoked Salmon
Dabblings And Whimsey

9. Smoked Lamb
In Linda's Kitchen

10. Smoked Pasta
Cook Blog

Top Smoking Photos for April

1. Glutton for Life
Canadian Bacon

2. Leave Me The Oink
The Pigenator

3. Good for the Palate
Tasso Ham

4. Affairs of Living
Porkgasm

5. Eat Live Travel Write
Eggs Benedict from Scratch

And...

From Grow it, Cook It, Can It, check out this awesome photo primer on how to use a smoker.

And...

Our first Charcutepalooza Smoking Video

Charcutepalooza loves our sponsors. Kinetic Web Solutions and @VinoLuci regularly saves Cathy from having meltdowns over the computer and generally helps us navigate technology. D’Artagnan, generously offering 25% off the meat-of-the-month. If you aren’t receiving your email with the secret code for Charcutepalooza members, you can register with Cathy. And the trip to France – an awesome grand prize deliciously designed by Trufflepig and Kate Hill at Camont.

For Those Following Along...

2011-04-26T22:48:00.027-04:00

The egg hunt at our house went much better than the one last week. Hallelujah.

The winning formula: Three kids. Four hundred plastic eggs strewn across our front and back yard. Plenty for everyone. Our choice of outfits to wear. No tears. Chocolate for breakfast.

Better. Yes, much better.

xo YM

The Worst Easter Egg Hunt Ever

2011-04-21T17:17:00.019-04:00

Saturday was the town Easter Egg Hunt at our country house in New Paltz. Last year, the egg hunt was unmitigated joy, face painting, baskets loaded with colored eggs, an appearance by the Easter Bunny himself, candy eaten scandalously in the backseat of the car, little faces smeared in chocolate. In a word, awesome.

This year, the egg hunt began with weeping. And ended in nudity and weeping. This is sometimes how it goes for us.

Every Easter Sunday, David gets up at the crack of dawn with a garbage bag full of plastic eggs - that took us hours the night before to fill with candy and little tiny annoying useless toys - and litters the yard and the surrounding woods with them. The kids jump out of bed on Sunday morning to find a proper Easter basket. They rifle through that for awhile, pop a chocolate or ten into their mouths for breakfast, and then, grab a bag and hord - I mean, find - as many eggs as they can.

The town egg hunt is a whole different affair. The whole town comes out. There are firetrucks, a huge bunny walking around shaking hands and posing for pictures. There are moms selling cupcakes, an easter basket raffle, and several large expanses of grass flush with colored plastic eggs. Then someone blows a whistle and seemingly sweet, nicely-raised kids knock each other down and rip eggs out of each others hands, all so they can fill their baskets with crap, as parents look on proudly.

It's a nice event. With nice people. Which is why I was surprised when the whole thing turned to shit on me.

This year, David was working so I took them to the hunt by myself. We have ballet (Edie)and gymnastics (Lucy) Saturday mornings, so we each brought outfits to change into for the hunt...well, not Edie, she forgot hers, so we swung by the house on the way to the hunt and David handed us a fresh change of clothes through the car window, with the motor still running, and everyone agreed the clothes were good - or so I thought - and we sped off toward the hunt.

Did I tell you it was cold? It was. And that it started to rain? It did. Which is fine. We are Fosters. We are tough (Lucy hates it when I say that) We parked the car and started to change our clothes. The hunt was about to start. We had five minutes. We could do this. Lucy was in and out of her clothes in under 30 seconds. Nothing gets between her and a good race with candy at the end of it. Edie was looking at her clothes. The wrong clothes. The ones David got very very wrong. She burst into tears.

Lucy was looking out the window at the kids lining up for the hunt. Edie started screaming and throwing the clothes and sobbing harder. I had a brilliant idea. I was calm. We could solve this problem. She could wear her ballet outfit, her tutu even. She loved her ballet outfit.

That's when she became inconsolable. The very idea was a misery. The rain was really coming down. Lucy was antsy, eager, afraid she'd miss something important, but still trying to be patient, still thinking of her sister before her own needs. I knew we had to get out of the car and start heading over or we'd miss the whole thing. I didn't want Lucy to miss any of the hunt because of Edie's tantrum. One way or another we were going to cross this grass and go to a friggin easter egg hunt. I gave Edie the choice: ballet outfit or Daddy's outfit.

Screams.

I grabbed her spare clothes, the hated clothes, thinking I could get her to put them on, picked her up and told Lucy to head on over to the hunt, we'd be right behind. Edie started screaming... "Go home...Change...my...clothes...Change...my...clothes..." She wiggled out of my arms and went full throttle into a kicking tantrum right there in the wet grass which just totally pissed her off. Parents were staring. Kids heading to the hunt were staring. I tried to stay focused on Edie, getting her through this, keeping my own temper at bay. To hell with those nosey starers anyway. Had they never had a crying child before? Let 'em think whatever they think.

She went limp on the ground, kicking, screaming and raging from the wet grass and...this is where it gets worse...taking off her leotard. It's 40 degrees, it's raining, I can no longer see where Lucy is in the hords of kids with Easter baskets and Edie has pulled her leotard around her waist and was screaming, I want to change my clothes...I want to change my clothes..."

I grab her off the ground. It wasn't easy lifting her from a dead lift, but I do it, awkwardly, losing a leg here and picking up an arm here, hoisting her up against my hip and then into my arms. It wasn't pretty. I see more staring. All the while people think my next move will be to dump her into a non-descript white van and pull away into oblivion. At this point, no one would be able to tell the difference between me and a hideously motivated stranger. There's not a single inkling this wailing child knows me, let alone loves me.

I head into the crowd to find Lucy. Edie is wailing and half-naked in my arms. She's thrusting her torso so I can't get a solid grip on her and I keep having to wheel her around in different directions in my arms. I have no idea where Lucy is. I know she's there, but I hate not being able to lay my eyes on her.

Also, I have a huge winter coat on, so I look like the most selfish person on the planet, holding my nearly naked daughter in my arms. I see Lucy is okay. She is shaking hands with the Easter Bunny. She's smiling. Such a big girl, able to take care of herself. Twinge of guilt. I see a friend of David's who has a child Edie's age and I ask him to look after Lucy, which he does. He has no choice, really. I'm struggling in the deep end and he's the only one with a life vest. His act of good will gives me some room to manuever.

I take off my winter coat, while holding Edie's squirming body with one hand and whip it around her and head to the cupcake stand. So, now, I'm cold. But I don't care because she is much less visibly naked than she was a few seconds ago. But she's still fighting it. I go to the cupcake stand mostly because there is a tourist building there and I think I might be able to go inside, talk to her, settle her and get her warm. But no, the Cupcake Mom, says it's closed.

I decide to buy Edie a cupcake. There are moms there. I know there is camraderie here. They've been here. They'll get me. I just need a reassuring smile from one of my sisters, a bolt of energy to help me find what Edie needs and give it to her.

The Cupcake Lady hears Edie asking for a change of clothes and assumes what she thinks is obvious - that I am actually preventing my daughter from wearing warm clothes and that I am subjecting to her to be naked in winter weather. The Cupcake Lady shoots the Cupcake Lady next to her a look. She comes around to the front of the table, and gets up in Edie's face and in a sugary voice asks the child in my arms: Honey, do you want mommy to get you some warm clothes? You are so cold, arent you?

Edie: Change...My...Clothes...

Then, she looks at me as if I have no clue and says: Oh look at her, she's freezing. You have to put some clothes on her.

Edie: Change...My...Clothes...

Cupcake Lady to Edie: Are you asking Mommy for warm clothes? You just want to wear clothes like the other children...

The mere mention of clothes makes Edie start flipping out again and wiggle even farther out of the coat I'm trying to keep around her. I realize I have no friends here. And I'm surrounded by police and mandatory reoporters and God help me, Waldorf school teachers, and if I don't get her out of there right this minute, I might actually end up in a child protective services office having to explain to David why they took custody of our daughter.

Sometimes, I write stuff like this for impact, for laughs, but I seriously had a moment where I thought these people were actually thinking I was mistreating, punishing, hurting my child. It was frightening.

I grab three cupcakes, get the last look of judgement and horror from the Cupcake Lady and sit with Edie in the warm, running jeep, semi-naked, eating cupcakes and watching Lucy scurry around the wet grass picking up eggs, until the hunt for eggs is over and David's friend - who saved my ass - returns her to me. I have a spare cupcake waiting for her. The screams have stopped. There are only wet cheeks, reluctant hugs and amends, whimpers and cupcake crumbs. We are putting it behind us. She's sitting on my lap in the front seat.

Turns out Lucy only got six eggs, two of which she shares with her sister. There is secret candy eating in the backseat and chocolate faces after all. But six eggs is a crushing Easter blow. No one can dispute that. We discuss it in detail on the ride home. Lucy decides this is only a runner up to the real one at our house on Easter Sunday. She decides this might be the worst Easter egg hunt ever.

Edie and I agree.

xo YM

The Kitchen Scale

2011-04-11T09:51:00.021-04:00

I do not own a kitchen scale.

There is a growing number of food writers out there - people I love and follow and read voraciously - that are encouraging and inspiring cooks to put down their teaspoons and cups, and embrace the scale. Measuring by weight gives you better results, more precise amounts, it helps you use a recipe with more efficiency. It gives you, they say, better food.

And I believe them. But I can't bring myself to buy one.

And until I read Grace Young's elegant, beautifully-written book, The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen I couldn't figure out why. Why was I balking? It's just a scale. But when I read Grace's chapter, "Cooking as Meditation", I understood what I was feeling. If you've never read her book, you should. She is a graceful storyteller. She writes with economy, every word is essential and necessary. You never feel like it's too much. It's just what it should be. Her writing is precision, craft and heart.

How much do I love this book? I've photocopied this chapter and have it in my kitchen drawer, so I never lose my way in the kitchen. That's how much.

Grace writes:

I was taught early in my life to appreciate the fragrance, texture, succulence, and taste of a well-composed dish. Baba and Mama pointed out to me how a chef achieves greatness only after years of practice. They called this honing of skills mastery, or si fu. I have since learned it is also possible for nonchefs to master cooking without relying on elaborate techniques. When certain virtues are applied, an experienced cook can take the simplest ingredients and techniques to form a work of beauty. The most important virtue is alertness to senses; knowing when an ingredient has the correct visual cues, smells, sounds, tastes, and texture is more valuable than mastering the intricacies of a complicated recipe.

In the modern home kitchen, the true art of cooking by instinct is diminishing, partially because of the emergence of so many appliances that replace the need to rely on one's own cooking judgement. Kitchen gadgets have replaced culinary expertise. Rice cookers alleviate the cultivation of judgement of when to slow the fire and when to simmer the rice to begin the steaming process. Deep-fat-fry thermometers indicate when the oil has reached the right temperature for frying, and instant-read thermometers take the intuition out of knowing when the meat is cooked. Food processors grind meat that was once hand-chopped with a cleaver...My parents maintain ardently that the patience to hand-chop or hand-shred produces a tangible difference in taste and texture.

...My parents teach that when you cook you must be able to change directions, chun bien. You must use your powers of observation, regarding every situation as unique, and adjusting accordingly...The high heat on my parents' front burner is more powerful than the setting on the back burner. This simple fact affects cooking time.

...As in life, one must observe the subtleties of cooking and adjust, remembering not to be enslaved to a recipe's cooking times or measurements. It is mindfulness, attentiveness, and gaining self-confidence through experience that nourish success.

Sometimes the reason we cook or write about cooking gets lost. We think it's about complexity and difficulty and impressing people. We think it's about gadgets and equipment and perfect outcomes. We stupidly think the meal is about us, our way to express ourselves, and show who we are to an audience of hungry eaters. But what I want to be in the kitchen is also what I want to be in life: mindful, attentive, self-confident. And this is what I want my girls to be.

This isn't really about the scale, which has it's usefulness, but I think I just want less stuff, more intuition in my life. And the kitchen seems like a good place to start.

Thanks, Grace.

xo Kim

The picture (above) is from Splorp

Naked in a Chicken Coop

2011-04-04T13:00:00.009-04:00

Sunday, we were at my friend Winnie's house. She was taking my picture naked in her chicken coop.

I should tell you why, but I'm not going to. It's a little stunt for charity. Just imagine me in 40 degree weather, in nothing but rubber garden boots, a big scarf and a chicken covering my bits and weeing on me. Imagine my right thigh covered in a thick smattering of brown chicken poop. That was my Sunday afternoon. Just like any Sunday afternoon really. This picture (above) is a rather tame outtake from the day.

While all that was going on, and Winnie was taking my picture, and David was giving me posing directions, and shifting the scarf this way and that to cover all the nekkid bits, the kids ran into Winnie's hen house. When Lucy emerged she was carrying a warm, just-laid egg.

She wouldn't let it go.

She held onto it until we got inside and she asked Winnie to cook it for her. It was pretty simple really. Winnie made it over easy in a little butter. Lucy ate all of it. And not just ate it, but devoured it. Like she had never eaten an egg before.

And when we got home she made me make her another one, just the exact same way Winnie made it. And she gobbled that down too. She's always liked eggs in various incarnations, but this was different. Winnie's egg was better than my store-bought organic. She decided we should have chickens.

Of course, we can't. I had to break that bit of bad news. We're only in the country on weekends, so if we had them there, they would thirst to death by Wednesday. And having them in NYC is obviously impossible. So, no chickens. But I did have an epiphany, something about Lucy actually harvesting the egg herself, and holding it warm in her hands while the chickens ran around under her feet, actually made a difference in how she ate.

I know, you're thinking, "Duh!" We talk about it, sure. How being close to our food changes the way we think about it. It seems true enough, but sometimes it feels like preachy foodism. I mean, how many times have we spent hours with our kids making some scratch dish in the kitchen and at the end, they eat NOTHING? They climb off the counter, leaving our kitchens covered in flour dust and egg shells, only to thumb their little noses at whatever creations it took us hours to make with them, and ask for crackers instead. Little shits.

But this was different. She got that eggs come from chickens, not supermarkets and she appreciated that, and allowed herself a moment to taste the difference.

That might not mean much. But it's somethin'...

xo YM

Smokin' Somethin'

2011-03-30T22:34:00.024-04:00

I thought, somehow, it would be a good idea to smoke almonds at a play date with four year olds.

Call me crazy but this Charcutepalooza smoking challenge seemed like a no-brainer to me - a fun, slightly off-beat activity with enthralled kids, with lots of time to play Barbie while all the smoking is happening, and at the end, a wholesome snack. I find that kids expect you to make muffins or something lame like that with them, but if you smoke something or light something on fire, get some steam happening, some broth bubbling and popping, if you play with the elements, well, that just catches them off guard. Then you have them.

But this time they had me. It was hell the minute we stepped out of the school doors. Edie had a 45 minute meltdown in the barren parking lot that serves as our school's playground. 45 minutes sitting on damp concrete weeping over a headband. But we soldiered on, my kids and Edie's best friend, Sofia. We calmed ourselves, walked two feet and stumbled into the Italian Ice man, which started a cacophony of begging and more weeping. I tried to convince them about my smoked nuts. Smoked nuts are sooooo much better than Italian Ice, I told them. I had on my excited face. But they didn't buy it and really I wasn't buying it either. I caved. I bought them Italian Ice.

Still, I thought I could save it. I was focused on my nuts. We dislodged ourselves from backpacks and winter coats when we got home and I set about lining the wok with foil, and called them all in to join me for adding the wood in the bottom of the wok, and setting up a lattice of chopsticks across the pan that would hold a plate of almonds and covering it tightly with foil to create a little oven. They were interested for about 20 seconds.

I barely turned on the heat and they were done with me. Someone yelled out "Princess Dress-Up!" and two seconds later they had discarded all of their clothes on the kitchen floor and were streaking through the apartment buck naked running for first dibs on the dress-up box. Leaving me, of course, alone holding my nuts.

The apartment didn't start filling with smoke until they were all dressed in various ball gowns watching Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" together. We live on a high floor so we have child locks and can only open the windows just shy of a kid being able to get their head through the crack. And we have a pretty lame hood exhaust. Our only option is to open the door and make the neighbors pay for our indiscretions and experiments. That's when Sofia started coughing like a four pack a day smoker and Edie joined her. Then everyone was hacking and clutching their throats, as if nerve gas had been released in the apartment. It wasn't that bad. Really. But then Lucy came into the kitchen and asked if we were all going to die in a fire, and I heard Edie say something to Sofia about "stop, drop and roll".

Which is why I stopped smoking the almonds. I know when to accept defeat.

Instead I made Mrs. Wheelbarrow's Tamari Almonds, which toast up quick in the oven and make a pretty addictive snack. I didn't mess around with them. I wasn't in a messing around mood. They were perfect just the way Cathy wrote the recipe. Pretty soon I had three girls dressed in gowns, drinking sparkling water out of champagne glasses, wearing garish flower petal headbands and popping warm, freshly-toasted almonds into their mouths. I wish I had a picture for you, but by then I was too busy pouring myself a glass of wine and cursing my wok.

I'll save my smoking for the country house from now on. This weekend I'm smoking bacon on the deck. Outside. Far away from the children.

For now, here's Cathy's simple, but life-saving nuts. Great for emergency snacking and after school rehabilitation.

Cathy Barrow's Tamari Almonds
(almond picture also by Cathy)

1 lb raw almonds
1/4 c (scant) low sodium tamari

Preheat oven to 325°
Line a sheet pan with parchment paper.
Toss the almonds with the tamari until they are well coated.
Spread the almonds out on the sheet pan and allow them to dry a little while the oven heats up.
Toast the almonds in the center of the oven for 18 minutes.
Remove the pan from the oven and loosen the almonds from the parchment paper using a spatula.
Remove the paper and spread out the almonds on the hot sheet pan, shaking well.
Pop them back in the oven for two minutes to dry out a little more.
Remove and allow the almonds to cool completely on the sheet pan.
Store in an airtight container.

Now for some Charcutepalooza monthly business:

Monthly Give-Away

The winner of the Charcutepalooza apron is...STEPHIREY from Food52! You've won the adorable apron, which you can check out here, made by Charcutepalooza-er Pam, who blogs at Snappy Service Cafe, and can be found on Twitter at @LeakySpoon. Get in touch with Cathy. She'll hook you up with details about your apron. We have fallen in love with it!

For this month's brining stars - check out these blogs. The bar is getting higher and higher every month. There's some amazing food coming out of our Charcutepalooza kitchens.

Best of the Blogs - Brining

1. Curing The Heart
Rye Spaetzle

2. Affairs of Living
A Vegetarian Cowers in the Corner

3. Smoke Cure Pickle Brew
Building the Perfect Scratch Reuben

4. Former Chef
Pastrami

5. Chez Us
Whiskey Glaze

6. Good For The Palate
Side dish - Collard Hash Wraps with Jameson Mustard Cream Sauce

7. Viveksurti
Corned Beef Goes Indian

8. WTF Am I Cooking?
Crisped Poached Brined Duck with Lentils

9. Foodie Prints
Ox Tongue and Ox Heart Sandwiches

10. Butchers Apprentice
Classic Danish Luncheon Meat Roulade - Rullepols

Best of the Photos - Brining

1. Eat This Lens (Marshall Wright)

2. Tiffin Tales

3. The Hungry Photographer

4. Toast

5. GirliChef

Charcutepalooza loves our sponsors. D’Artagnan offers 25% off the meat-of-the-month. If you aren’t receiving your email with the secret code for Charcutepalooza members, register here. And the trip to France – an awesome grand prize deliciously designed by Trufflepig and Kate Hill at Camont.

On Being An Angry Mom

2011-03-27T13:38:00.015-04:00

I had another post planned for today. But then something came up.

Sitting in a restaurant, I happened to mention to David how "hippy-dippy" our parenting was. You know, all that co-sleeping and extended breastfeeding and hugging and empathy and carrying our kids around in pouches on our backs and soothing them through temper tantrums. All those nights we didn't go out together, because we didn't want to leave our kids with a sitter/stranger/potential pedophile. All those neighbors and friendly critics who gave us the occasional look or comment like we baby our kids or hover too much. Like we were too involved.

In the middle of my talking I looked over at David. He had no idea what I was talking about.

That's when he said it: We are pretty tough on our kids. We yell at them. We are impatient with them. Then he started giving me examples. Real life examples. He was being kind of course, using "we". I mean, David might be many things, he might have extraordinarily bad taste in orange sweaters, but the man isn't a yeller. He gets short with them when they dilly dally getting ready for school sometimes, and he's had a tussle or two with Lucy over settling into bed at night. But I'm the yeller. What he could have said, and maybe should have said, was that I'm the impatient one, the intimidator, the one who can light a fire under their little bums with my blasts of furnace-like anger. He was also pretty sure the neighbors knew we were yellers as well.

To be fair, I'm loud by nature. When I'm happy, I scream. If you walk into a bar and I see you, I will leap from my chair, run across the room, clumsily bumping people out of my way like a drooling hyper-active Labrador, shout your name, give you a huge hug, and shriek about how gorgeous you look, so that even the table in the back of the room will hear it.

I get a lot of credit around this blog for being patient - all the cooking with kids, and the messes that I allow the kids to make in the kitchen, and the countless quelled temper tantrums and crazy brisket-wearing behavior that I write about here, and I'm pretty good at those moments of hysteria. I like the craziness, the nuttiness - but the truth is, I wish I was better at parenting. And I'm not looking for reader sympathy here. Sometimes I just do a piss poor job at this. It's a fact.

I wish I didn't lose my cool with them. I wish I could let Edie have her temper tantrums, where she lays on the floor and kicks her feet in the air and wails like a two year old because I'm not getting her chocolate milk fast enough. I wish I could just let her be angry, and unseemly, and not make her feel terrible for having the audacity for showing her true, ugly feelings.

I wish it didn't drive me bananas that Lucy is afraid to be alone in any room of the house and so when she has to go to the bathroom, I have to stop whatever I'm doing and sit on the edge of the tub while she poops. I wish I could just remember that I was the same way when I was little. I always thought there were boogey men behind the shower curtain and mice under the sink. I wish I didn't grumble about it and remind her she's six and this isn't what happens with six year olds. I wish I didn't make her feel small for sharing her deepest fears with me.

I wish that when the house is a total and complete wreck I didn't get resentful, muttering bitterly as I pick up discarded sweaters, stranded toys and bits of smushed bacon in the rug. I wish it didn't bother me that I found all of their Barbie clothes stuffed into the heating vent and I wish I didn't go on a tirade so epic that they feel their mother has vanished from the room and replacing her is a ranting, nagging, manic, dust-bunny fighting lunatic.

I wish I didn't show my disappointment, my seething pissed-offness, when Edie kicks over my wine glass for the third time in a single two hour time span. In the moment, I wish I could just see it as an accident. A stupid, unimportant accident. I wish I remembered that what I really wanted her to do was go to sleep so I could relax, maybe spend a few moments with her father, but she couldn't, and that's not really her fault at all.

I wish I didn't get grumpy with Lucy when she plops herself into my lap, with the grace of a camel, and slams the laptop lid shut just as I'm about to write something utterly brilliant and necessary. I wish I could see it for what it is - her message to me that she needs me. That I need to pay attention. I wish I could calmly explain to her in the moment what I needed to do to finish, and when I'd be able to give her my focus. I also wish I didn't get sucked into thinking that email needs to be sent immediately or that arbitrary deadline I assigned to a particular project has to met at the expense of time spent with my girls. I wish I had more balance.

I don't wish that I was perfect or an angel. That isn't the kind of role model they need to get them ready for the world. I always try to talk about my screw-ups with them, let them know why I blew up, but the yelling isn't the worst. It's when I show my unmitigated disappointment about something they've done or didn't do, when I momentarily - just for 30 seconds or so - withdraw my love, respect or admiration for them. When the frustration rises up in me and I can't push it down or away, or pretend it isn't there, and I feel the need to pelt them with it just a little, to send them a little message. And what they learn, I'm afraid, is that their mother can turn on them, will turn on them, will squeeze a bit of lime into their wound. That she can't be trusted to always be on their side. That I can't be trusted to always be on their side.

Just writing it down gives me chills.

What I'd rather do - what I'm going to try to do every day now - is reign myself in, be in the moment, think about my reactions, what I'm saying to them with my body, my words, how often I smile, take a second to think before I talk, and give them the benefit of the doubt first. Because if David and I don't, who the hell is going to?

As I'm writing this, Edie drops her melting ice cream bar into David's shoe. I really want to get this post written, just a few more words to go. I told her it was okay, no problem, just a spill. I got the paper towels and we wiped it up together. The ice cream in David's shoe was kinda funny actually. It took all of an extra minute. Not a single hurt feeling for her or flash of guilt for me. I still finished this post. Baby steps.

xo YM

The Girl Without A Brisket On Her Back

2011-03-22T09:18:00.010-04:00

I swear this wasn't my idea.

Lucy decided on her own that laying on the ground with a plate of brisket on her back would make a good photo. She tried several brisket poses, but decided this one was best. She also decided it should be shared with all of you on the blog and also that I should tweet it.

Last week, David pointed out that nearly every picture on the blog recently had been of Lucy. He also pointed out that someday the children would scroll through this little blog as adults and Edie would see she was featured less and maybe she'd think we loved her less. And maybe she'd start doing coke and having sex with the New York Knicks just to get us back.

So I'm now going to speak to my daughter, grown-up Edie, who might be wondering if I didn't love her or think she was adorable enough to make the blog. Here goes:

Dear Edie,

Your sister is a ham bone. If someone raises a camera within a radius of 200 yards, Lucy drops into her ethereal, angelic, contemplative face and gently, softly picks at the petals of a flower, as if she were a fair maiden lost in the woods, dazed among the daisies. You, on the other hand, put your hands over your face, make scrinchy troll faces and throw things at the camera. I know this is a phase, but the only pictures I get of you lately are the ones I sneak. And even then, you say "Don't tweet that, Mommy!" as if I were going to tell everyone you got your period or something.

Also, you don't want me to talk much about Boily, Shapian and Sarah, your imaginary friends, who I'm afraid we will lose someday soon and they will go unrecorded and undocumented and eventually we will all forget they even existed. And that would be a shame because last week, Boily, Shapian and Sarah ate a human in my living room and sucked the blood out of it. Or at least that's what you told me. I feel like they should be writing their own blog.

Mostly, Edie, I want you to know that whether your picture is posted here these days as much as your ham bone sister is of no matter. These things ebb and flow. And anyway, girl, you shine without trying. You've never needed to jump in front of the camera or push someone else aside so you can be seen. You have quiet strength. You are sure of who you are, like no one else I know. You are a wild goat on a near-vertical rocky cliff. Sure-footed. Hoof over hoof on crags. Hoof over hoof across ravines. Dangling off the rocky edges. Skipping up the side of mountains. Without fear. Without faltering.

If you are wondering where you got that, well, that's all your daddy. You might have my eyes, but you have his core. That will get you places.

So, grown-up Edie, even if you don't see your photos here as much these days, know that I see you. Really see you. Every day...Even if you won't pose with a brisket on your back and let me write about it.

xo Mommy

More On The Orange Sweater...

2011-03-18T08:23:00.007-04:00

For those of you following along with David's obsession with his orange gardening sweater, the mystery deepens. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, read my last two posts)

I awoke this morning to an email from my father-in-law in Australia who sent me this picture of David' mum bushwacking with her father in the Royal National Park in Sydney in 1964.

That's right. David's mum was wearing a similar orange sweater before David was even born! Obviously, his obsession is genetic.

This also begs the question, how did my father-in-law even remember this sweater from 1964? Was it so burned into his brain that he knew if he went back to pictures from the 60's he'd find my mother-in-law's orange sweater? Is the orange sweater so memorable it can survive decades of lost thoughts and memories?

Any fantasies I had about secretly getting rid of David's orange sweater are gone. It has special powers now, a lineage, a history. It will, I'm sure, outlive me.

Dammit.

xo YM

The New York Times & A Sweater

2011-03-17T10:24:00.005-04:00

Just a quick word today...

Wanted to let you know Charcutepalooza was mentioned in the New York Times Diners Journal yesterday, as part of the DIY Cooking Bibliography, a companion to Julia Moskin's DIY Cooking Handbook. Kinda fun.

Also, thanks to the readers who noticed in my last post that David wears the same ugly sweater every time he gardens. It's his "New Paltz Gardening Sweater". It's orange. It's a staple. The fact that you noticed it allowed me to harass him about it for several hours last night. Thank you for that. That felt good.

xo YM

I Love You Hydroponically

2011-03-14T23:00:00.022-04:00

At our country place in New Paltz, New York we've surrendered.

David and I cannot be weekenders, inhabiting the house only sometimes, and keep legions of wildlife, raccoons, mice, moles, weasels, and assorted birds and rodents out of our vegetables anymore. And the deer - the nearly domesticated beasts that think they might be dogs who hover in our backyard waiting for the slightest whiff of something cooking, and will eat anything with any kind of green on it - will climb fences, leap through the air, practically walk in the house to get at whatever we are growing or making.

I hate those deer.

When we first moved in, we used to gaze out the window and look lovingly at the deer grazing in our front yard. This was nature right up close. It was amazing. The kids ran to the window, pressed their faces up against it, and took turns pointing out various attributes - antlers, hooves, flicking tails. And one of them would become convinced one of the deer was looking right at them. There was real excitement. Deer rocked.

David and I were pleased with ourselves in those moments. We glanced at each other over the kids heads, smiled, happy that we made this decision, that we bought this house, that we are giving our city kids a little taste of the country...

Now, we talk about picking off the deer one by one with a rifle out the back window.

It's funny how I like nature but don't actually like when it gets out of my control. I like nature when she sits in a corner and quietly reads a book. It's nice to have her around then. She's pretty. She makes a great backdrop to my life. And when she occasionally looks up from her pages and smiles at me, I'm elated. I might even go over and give her a quick hug or a wink. I often appreciate her when she turns her face back to the words on the page, when she's there, but not looking directly at me.

But the minute she gets up and starts dancing around, or singing a loud song off-key, or telling salty jokes when she hasn't been asked, or - as in the case of the deer - rudely eating all the Hostas out of pots on my deck two feet from my back door, well, then I don't love her so much. Then, I just want to jump in our Jeep and head back to the city where it feels like nature is something invisible, removed, and controlled, where it is manufactured in the form of parks and playgrounds, with safe walls and clear paths, and where I can choose to accept it or ignore it. Where I can get the best of the trees and the flowers and let go of all that messy unpredictability.

This is the delusion of civilization, isn't it? That we have some control. And then, of course, I remember Japan...and that we have no control. We are specs. And nature is our master.

But sometimes I feel a need to assert our independence under the master. In that spirit, David and I decided we should grow vegetables and herbs indoors in our green house, which is a window-paneled sun room we are converting to a working greenhouse.

David suggested we do this hydroponically, so that we weekenders had a shot at proper watering. My old strategy was to drown the plants on Sunday and then, find them shriveled and gulping for air on Friday night, where I would dump a lot more water on them and shock them back to life with a rip tide of water.

My tomato plants hated me.

Still, despite my inadvertent attempts at killing them, my tomatoes thrived. They've bore crops January, February and into March.

Now by "crops" I mean every weekend we get 6 -15 cherry tomatoes. Meager, I know. This without grow lights or any fancy strategies or techniques. They have given us fruit despite me.

We get tomatoes in our Saturday morning omelets and a salad or two. If we were depending on tomatoes to actually eat, well, we'd be screwed. But the upside to growing in our greenhouse is that the deer can do nothing, but press their desperate, wet noses against the glass and be tortured by our amazing little red jewels. Ha!

David McGyvered together a hydroponic system with some storage bins and an aqaurium filter. He went to the local hydroponics store - we're a college town, there is a BIG interest in hydroponics here, if you know what I mean - spent the children's inheritance on clay balls from Germany.

They started planting...

We mocked the deer while we planted.

David got a little attached to his seedlings.

There was a lot of hovering. And gently stroking and talking to the seedlings.

Love in the form of over-coddling, poking and prodding.

Baby spinach and arugula...in March!

And still more love in the form of obsession.

I love you hydroponically, baby spinach and baby arugula. Mwah. Mwah.

Tell me the deer aren't screaming with envy. All that bark they're eating must be tasting like a cardboard box right about now. Bwah ha ha ha! And yet a few feet away some of the most succulent baby leaves ever grown by complete bumbling amateurs.

We enjoyed tormenting the deer so much we are planning on going to six hydroponic boxes. We'll grow leafy greens in the cool months, tomatoes and herbs in the summer. David dreams of setting up a year-round hydroponic farm in our basement.

No pot. Just veg.

xo YM

Why I Have Grey Hair...

2011-03-09T23:41:00.012-05:00

This is my daughter eating something she made herself...a butter popsicle.

This is my daughter, naked, and sitting in a bowl of water. Just because.

And this is my daughter eating tuna out of the can. With the cat.

Crazy girl. I love her.

xo Kim

Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Blogger

2011-03-06T22:58:00.008-05:00

Four years ago yesterday, I started writing this blog.

I didn't know much about food blogging back then. I hadn't heard of Julie Powell or blog-to-book deals. I didn't think my blog would ever make me a dime or that anyone would recognize me in the supermarket and say, "Hey, aren't you that blogger lady?" I had only read a couple of food blogs anyway. If a lot of people were writing them, I certainly hadn't read them.

I had a 1 1/2 year old and 6 month old and a family that could no longer go into a restaurant without upending tables, littering the floor with mashed up little pieces of bread, screaming, demanding boob, and causing either David or I to take one or the other child out for a soothing walk on the sidewalk. We barely ever had time to finish a glass of wine, much less a meal, before something screechy and unpleasant happened that forced us to drop our forks and rush a child to the bathroom.

It wasn't worth it. If I didn't become a sensational cook, we might never eat good food again.

So, I started writing about it here. David thought up the name "The Yummy Mummy". It was cute back then. Get it... it's about the food, not how hot I am. And that was part of the joke. With two small kids I was the opposite of a "Yummy Mummy", one of those high heel-wearing, brunching with the girls, perfect hair, totally clean mommies with lots of hired help and the ability to whip up a perfect scone while making it all look breathless and easy (I'll leave all that perfection to this Yummy Mummy). I was the complete opposite. I was constantly leaking milk out of my breasts, rarely showered, left the house on numerous occasions without brushing my teeth, and had roots like a strip of asphalt across the top of my head. I was lucky to even get food on the table, much less have it taste good, or look appetizing in the eye of my instamatic camera.

I remember catching a glimpse of myself in a Starbucks window once. This strange woman carrying a baby in a pouch who was removing my shirt to get at my breast, pushing a howling toddler in a stroller, with a gigantic bulging diaper bag, big, bungly grocery bags hanging off the handles, a large caffeinated beverage in the cup holder, hair in a scrunchy, not a stitch of make-up, stained yoga pants and a completely unmissable muffin top. I didn't recognize myself. For two whole seconds I had no idea who she was. Then I saw.

That's what I wrote about. Food, cooking, my attempts at entertaining, learning new skills, the many dinners gone a mock that ended up in the trash can, all the crazy, de-glamorized shit that happens in the kitchen when no one else is there, the real stuff, the gory details, and the things that come with feeding kids and a carb-phobic husband. And that woman. I wrote about getting to know this woman in the Starbucks mirror. That was "The Yummy Mummy".

But things have changed. I'm not that woman, anymore than I am the woman before her, the one before kids. I am freshly showered, at a relatively decent weight, six years older and wiser, writing about kids but more than kids, looking to not just ghostwrite other people's books, and hide behind other people, but write my own, with my own name on the spine, be out front and center for all the world to see, write serious pieces (or seriously funny pieces) for talented people. Coming out the other side, I have things to say.

And that's why the name of this blog doesn't quite fit anymore. Maybe it's because I realize - just now realize - that there will be no more babies for us, that I'm too old, that this part of my life as a young mother is behind me, that I don't really feel like "The Yummy Mummy" anymore. In fact, I cringe when people say it. What was once funny and ironic, now feels weird and uncomfortable. Whether it makes me happy or sad - and truth be told, it makes me both - I'm not that woman in the Starbucks window. I'm not the woman surrounded by tiny, clamoring egomaniacs anymore. I am not the woman who can't get dinner on the table because the kids are hitting each other over the heads with ladles.

My children are old enough to pour Mommy a glass of wine. I need to make a change.

So, I'm going to still write here, (Of course. How could I leave all of you?) but I'm going to change the name and look (and maybe even the feel) of this blog. If you have suggestions, please tell me. I have no idea what I'm going to do. David suggested I discuss it with you, get your take. Many of you have been with me from the beginning. You know me. You really do. I'll take all your suggestions to heart.

What should I call this blog? Should it just be my own name? Something cheeky? or something more serious? Seriously, I could use your advice...What do you think?

And thanks, for being around through all these incarnations. That feels pretty damned nice.

xo Kim

There is no Corn in Corned Beef

2011-02-27T21:35:00.030-05:00

When I was a kid, Saint Patrick's Day meant three things - Going to school dressed head to toe in green, wearing a very large "Kiss Me I’m Irish" pin - which was as good as asking to be kissed and pretty provocative Lady Gaga stuff in my upstate New York middle school - and after school, as soon as Dad got home from work, eating a boiled dinner my mom had made. Corned Beef, cabbage and potatoes.

The tradition was inked into my yearly calendar through the 70's, as part of me as multi-colored striped knee socks and my bay city rollers scarf, although by highschool I was tired of getting beaten up in the girls locker room for being a dork and all that remained of the tradition was my mom's corned beef homage.

Later, when I moved to NYC on my own, I spent nearly every Saint Patrick's Day howling with my neighbors at a dark Irish pub on the Upper West Side, sitting low in a leather banquet with an ale in my hand, strangers reveling all around me. I always ordered the corn beef, boiled potatoes and cabbage. Never deviated. Because that dinner is locked in my Saint Patricks' Day DNA. To me, that day and that meal are linked. It feels authentic. Irish. I had been known to step out of the bar into the cool night for a smoke, and call my mom, just to say "Hi". For no particular reason.

Corned beef can do that to a girl.

As we're making corned beef for Charcutepalooza, and Lucy and I are making our brine, and Cathy is holding sandwich-making contests and weighing in on which is better, The Reuben or the Cloak and Dagger, I've also been trying to explain - stupidly explain - to my girls why there is no corn in corned beef. This simple and completely logical question forced me to start googling and find out exactly what I was making and eating. Why is it called corned beef? Apparently, the corn refers to the coarse kernels of salt used to cure the beef back in the old days. The children still looked at me baffled, but okay, mystery solved.

But my whole idea of a traditional Irish dinner shifted when I stumbled upon Francis Lam's terrific piece on corned beef and the Irish in America. I suggest you read it. If nothing else, it explains how the idea of an "authentic food" is subjective, ever-changing, personal, loose, transient, and never really to be pinned down for very long.

Corned beef is Irish, technically, but then again, not very Irish for many Irish families. It is different things to different people and always seen and changed through the lens of our own times, and personal experiences as we look back on it. I know this, of course, on some intellectual level, but I hadn't given corned beef and Saint Paddy's day even the slightest thought. I just accepted. The day was about green, corned beef and that ridiculous overly-large pin that begged people, damn near provoked people, to kiss me.

But it's more complicated and frankly, more human that that, isn't it?

I think I may never use the word authentic to explain anything again, like - let's go to that Japanese place, I hear the food is pretty authentic - but I'm still going to cook a perfectly simple, no frills, boiled dinner for the family on Saint Patricks Day with my own home-corned beef, because - Irish or not - my mother made it a tradition, a simple one that I will pass on to my kids and hope that it gives them a sense of ritual and comfort, the idea that some things in life are steadfast and predictable, coded into our sense of selves.

And maybe someday when Lucy is celebrating in some dark pub on Saint Patrick's Day, she'll think of corned beef and me and order the boiled dinner. And maybe she'll step outside into the cool night and give me a call.

That would be nice.

Now, to deviate away from corned beef for a moment, Cathy and I want to announce some of the best reads and best photos of last month's bacon challenge. We are so enjoying reading all the posts. They are remarkable. Thank you for diving in the way you do. Here are our favs this month:

Posts

1. Rabbit meets pork.
A Year Without Groceries

2. It ain’t milkshakes that bring the boys to the yard.
Braise Boil Bake

3. Sauce that makes you think of your wife.
Leave Me The Oink

4. East meets...Bacon.
Redcook

5. Gorgeous step-by-step bacon photos.
Learn to Preserve

6. A chef remembers his dad.
Bread and Cup

7. Duck Eggs in Pancetta Cups with Porcini Mushrooms and Cheese
Duck and Cake

8. From sourcing to hash browns: Porky Comfort
C Plus C Design

9. Smoker Girl
Diabla's Kitchen

10. Lamb's Brain Terrine Enveloped in Bacon
Inspired By Wolfe

And just for fun and because we missed this last month...Kangaroo Prosciutto from Sydney, Australia
Nic Cooks

Photos

Pancetta from Eat Drink RI

Lamb Pancetta from The Paupered Chef

Bacon from That's Some Pig

Miso bacon from Cook Blog

Scratch BLT from Viveksurti

Enjoy!

Kim

Charcutepalooza loves our sponsors. D’Artagnan offers 25% off the meat-of-the-month. If you aren’t receiving your email with the secret code for Charcutepalooza members, register here. And the trip to France – an awesome grand prize deliciously designed by Trufflepig and Kate Hill at Camont.

The Dishes That Won't Stop Being Dirty

2011-02-25T07:02:00.010-05:00

On Monday the girls will go back to school. They've had a week off and even though David has been working hard, I've thoroughly enjoyed my time with them, mostly doing nothing.

I have enjoyed telling people that I won't be able to meet that deadline or send out that email because the girls were off and I wanted to spend time with them. Oh, I did a few work things, took a phone call here and there, during little moments of TV watching or drawing, but mostly, I was out of service. And I loved it.

I enjoyed cooking this week. I found a bunch of recipe ideas I wanted to try - simple things mostly and weirdly, because I'm on a one-chef kick these days, most of them from Jamie Oliver. When I had to stop making crafts to make lunch, the girls made it with me. (In the picture Lucy and I are making asparagus soup topped with a ciabatta toast and a poached egg. Gracias Jamie Oliver) They didn't always eat what we made. Sometimes they made faces at me (Green Soup? Gross!)and asked if I had gone mad on them, but mostly they were game.

I enjoyed the cooking. Veal and ale stew. Eggplant parmigiana. Squid and potatoes. A roast chicken so juicy we ate with our fingers. I enjoyed Lucy drawing a picture of me with my hands up around my ears and blowing raspberries and then falling into a hysterically laughing lump on the floor unable to catch her breath. I enjoyed the slowness of the way the day unfolded. The way Edie hugged me a lot and told me she loved me with her arms looped around my neck. The way my husband was often working in the other room and not in his office in Union Square and I could sneak over and wrap my arms around him and kiss his neck. In the middle of a work day. That is a gift. I loved all those things.

But here's what I didn't miss...

The dishes. With three full meals a day and snacks that don't come pre-prepared in bags, I spent nearly any free time I had without the kids, making breakfast, washing breakfast dishes, prepping lunch, making lunch, washing lunch dishes, making snacks, cleaning up after snacks, finding soiled dishes under the couch, washing the soiled dishes, prepping dinner, making dinner, cleaning up after dinner, more washing dishes. Then, after we had a drink or two when the kids went to bed, there were a couple waiting for me in the sink the next morning.

I realize with the kids in school and David at the office most week days, I only do the dishes once, maybe twice a day. (David does all the laundry - thank God - so this is my chore and mine alone.) I am not looking forward to sending my kids back to school on Monday, to going back to my unopened, waiting emails, to the grind of early morning wake-ups and school pick-ups and drop-offs, all our running around the city, shuttling my two and their friends to a play date at our house by way of a crowded public city bus. I'm not looking forward to my looming writing deadlines or David working from his office again. I am still savoring our time together.

But I am very happy to give up doing all these dishes. For that alone, Monday could not come soon enough.

Kim

When Good Restaurants (Parents) Do Stupid Things

2011-02-23T21:55:00.022-05:00

Maybe it's because I just battled the flu, or because Lucy battled the flu too, and for awhile we were losing, with our night sweats and 102 temperatures and the days where all we wanted to do was have people leave us alone and let us nap, but we're feeling kind of snappy now. We're coming out the other side. And frankly, I feel like kicking a little ass.

The questions is, who's ass do I want to kick? Well, just this week, I've knocked two restaurants off my list of places to eat. Two, in one week. Two among a handful of places that had been fun for us adults and also for the kids - good food, good vibes, good folks. Not perfect, not worthy of critical accolades, just easy, un-stressful, comforting, not expensive, welcoming.

It's not easy to eat out with kids, but we've done it since they were babies. I've breast fed under blankets in restaurants, pulled screaming toddlers out from underneath tables, ran after one that ended up startled but weirdly happy in the arms of the chef in the kitchen. My children have dazzled guests and staff with their strangely obedient and demure behavior and table manners, and occasionally people have complimented us, told us how great our kids are, how mature and sane they are in public places, how cool we are as parents.

Also people have given us pissed off glances, rolled their eyes at us, and loudly remarked about how kids shouldn't be allowed in restaurants. We've been a beacon for other parents desperate to get out of the house, and social pariahs ruining the dinners and good times of the childless. It just depended on the day, really.

We've never allowed our children to destroy someone's meal and on more than one occasion, we've thrown in the towel, and simply left or when we couldn't leave, one of us took the hit for the team and walked up and down the sidewalk, comforting and coaxing our child to sleep while the other one stayed inside and entertained out of town guests or colleagues.

We're glad we did all of that...

Our kids know good food and good restaurants. And because of our whacked out sense of adventure, they know bad food and bad restaurants. But I'm finding it isn't enough to just eat out anymore. Just being out in the world and learning to eat in public, sit quietly and amuse oneself in a banquet, and try new food is no longer enough. The girls are older now. They are starting to develop habits, see certain things as normal. They are taking it all in. I have to be more conscious.

The truth is, we've been in a restaurant rut. At our place in the country, in New Paltz, one of our favorite places is Gomen Kudesai. We go there and love it - you can see why here, but that's not what this post is about. It's about how a restaurant the kids call "The Treasure Chest" and another called "Main Street Bistro" just got on my every last nerve this week. Maybe it's the fever talking, maybe it's my sleep-deprived, cranky self, but I've wiped them off our list. I won't be going back. I can hold a grudge.

The Treasure Chest (better known among adults as McGillicuddy's) re-opened last year with a bright new chef fresh out of the CIA and a manager/owner who was trying to upgrade everything about the place; the outside facade, the food, the clientele. He was on a mission. Every time they saw us, the chef poured out of the kitchen with the newest steaming dish they created and were just about to add to the menu. They proudly offered us a sample. We loved their joy, their sense of hope, their anticipation of the future, the way they wanted to create something.

They also instituted "The Treasure Chest", a big plastic pirate trunk filled with dollar store toys. The kids got to pick a couple and spent the majority of the dinner playing with pink fairies or painting little wooden flowers. David and I got to have that extra glass of wine and sit for a little instead of eating and running out of the restaurant with irritated, crazed children.

We also felt catered to. They wanted to attract families. We got that the treasure chest was a cheap marketing ploy - a step up from a McDonald's Happy Meal, I suppose - but we appreciated the effort, the attempt to woo us. The food was definitely bar food, nothing new or surprising, but they were trying and that meant something to us. We wanted to wait them out, give them a shot. Anyway, the steak and salmon fajitas were fresh, hot, predictable in a good way, and we stuck to what was good.

That is until this week. The kids begged to go mostly because of the damned treasure chest. As if it were Disney World. We went. We chose our toys. We all ordered food and with the exception of David's steak fajita, it was all bland, limp, flavorless, gross. The salad I ordered was mushy globs of head lettuce. The pasta the kids ordered didn't even have salt. I cursed myself that I didn't order them the salmon fajita, but I want them to be independent, have choices, not have a food nazi mother.

The food was so bad it was a revelation.

The food had been getting worse lately, but I had turned a blind eye, wanted to give them a chance, hoped they'd pull it together. I let the stupid trunk of toys set the agenda for where we ate even though I knew the food was getting more and more pathetic. The bright young chef from CIA either sucked, or he gave up, or they let him go. We won't be going back. They are off the list.

I just can't send a message that one of "our places" is full of mediocre food, prepared with a flippancy and lack of care that you can taste on the fork. That is not a message I want to send for an $80-$100 family outing. Or any outing.

The other restaurant to get thrown off my list, The Main Street Bistro, cooks all kinds of wholesome vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free menu items. They are hippie-dippie. Cheap food, nothing fancy, but real food. Try to get a table there for Sunday brunch, just try, the line heads down the street. The Main Street Bistro is the kind of place that attracts brunch-goers, foodies looking for a casual lunch, and college students. The kind of place where you know when you order that burrito, it will come out to you hot, fat and over-stuffed with tomatoes, avocados, chunks of chicken and thick globs of salsa and sour cream. Just the way you want to eat it after a hangover.

I got exactly what I thought I would, which is why when Edie said she wanted chicken nuggets, I said great. She wanted clam chowder or another kind of soup, but I knew the jalapeno soup wasn't going to go down well. So, I figured these people probably did a decent nugget. Surely a place like this - so focused on healthy food and things garnished with alfalfa sprouts - would make their own chicken nuggets.

It didn't even occur to me that the processed, crap food on the menu at this restaurant was reserved for the children. That healthy was for adults only. That all that catering to food preferences and food allergies didn't extend to catering to children. Maybe because they don't have a voice. Maybe because they'll accept whatever crap we put in front of them.

Truth is, The Main Street Bistro pissed me off more than McGillicuddy's. I expected mediocre bar food from a third rate bar. I expected our kids would get the shitty food we got. I saw it coming. In my heart of hearts, I knew it, saw the decline coming, the lack of attention, the enthusiasm waning, even if I didn't want to admit it. Even if I was rooting for them. But the Bistro really pissed me off.

Don't flaunt your cool, wholesome, hip, organic, vegan, gluten-free menu options at me and then deliver my kid completely gross, processed chicken nuggets from a box. Put your money where your mouth is and roll a few bits of chicken in panko, salt it and bake it. A little parsley garnish wouldn't kill you. Don't make it so obvious that you care about the people with the wallets but you're willing to serve my kids the crappiest food available.

Do not short-change my kid. I'll pay a little more if I have to. I'll order an app size of a main for my kid when I can - some shrimp on the grill and a good hearty soup maybe - but every so often my kid wants some chicken nuggets and I want to say yes. Serve your own kids the box stuff at your own house, but don't do it at your healthy restaurant. Be true to who you are. Be healthy, hippie-dippy or just make crappy bar food and bring out a treasure chest full of cheap gifts.

Either way, I'm not going to back to either of your restaurants. Because my kids are watching what we do. And I need to do better. That's on me.

Lesson learned.

YM

What People Talk About When they Talk About Making Pancetta

2011-02-14T22:59:00.026-05:00

David: What are you doing?
Kim: Rolling the pork belly into a roll to make pancetta.
David: What about the botulism?
Kim: Eh, we'll be fine. I'll taste it before I feed it to the girls.
David: You know my cousin died of botulism?
Kim: The transvestite?
David: That's my other cousin. And she wasn't a transvestite. She KILLED a transvestite. She's in prison in Sydney.
Kim: Got it. How did your cousin get botulism anyway?
David: Baked beans. From a can.
Kim: Ew...well, this is different, you know? There's pink salt, cooking before eating...I'm sure it'll be fine.
David: I think if we can hang pancetta without rolling it, avoiding all that anerobic space that breeds botulism spores, and still get pancetta at the end without killing someone in the family, maybe we should do it...

Kim: I'm not going to kill anyone with my meat...
Lucy: (coming into the room with Edie) Did Mommy make something that will kill us?
David: Well, maybe...well, not really.
Kim: Daddy and I are discussing whether to roll the pork belly. It's been sitting in an herb cure. If we roll it and hang it in the cellar, we end up with pancetta.
Edie: Belly. Belly. Belly.
Lucy: But it could kill us? For real?
Edie: Belly rhymes with smelly, Mommy.
Kim: Yes, Edie, it does. Lucy, nothing bad will happen when we eat the pancetta. Daddy and Mommy are just talking about...
Lucy: Don't eat the pancetta, Edie. It might make you DIE!
Edie: Belly, smelly, belly, smelly...
David: Lucy really, Mommy isn't going to kill anyone with her charcute...
Kim: Honey, maybe we should just stop talking before we turn them off bacon altogether.
Lucy: Bacon kills people, too?
David and Kim: NO!
Edie: (laughing) Pancetta is yucky.
Lucy: (laughing) Yeah, pancetta is so gross.
Edie: And makes you die!
Lucy: Let's go, Edie. (They leave the kitchen) We don't want any pancetta, Mommy. We don't want to die.
Edie: Belly rhymes with smelly, Lucy.
Lucy: I know, Edie.
Kim: Nice one, honey.
David: Yep. Nice.

Want in on the next Charcutepalooza challenge? Cathy just announced the March challenge: brining. That means corned beef, people. Check out her post out here at Food52.

Also, congratulations to Basia, from The Blog That Ate New Jersey! You won the pigs kitchen tile from Renee at Kudos Kitchen. Enjoy!

xo YM

It All Started With That Damned Pig...

2011-02-08T09:02:00.013-05:00

This is the culprit - a pink pig key chain with eyes that light up while the pig oinks really loud.

When Cathy came to NYC she brought them for the girls, a fun little reminder of Charcutepalooza. The girls loved them. They walked around the city with us at night holding their little piggies in their hands, pushing the little button on and off, on and off, oink, oink, oink, oink, admiring the lights and how they bounced off stores and cars and innocent passerbys, on and off, on and off, oink, oink, oink, giggling every time the pig made that loud grunting oink sound. They wouldn't let the pigs out of their sight.

That night, after Lucy had fallen asleep, Edie groggy and eyes heavy, held out her piggie and said, "I love this piggie, Mommy. I'm so happy Mrs. Wheelbarrow gave it to me." On and off, on and off, oink, oink, oi...She fell asleep clutching the pig to her chest. When I woke her up the next morning, it hadn't moved from her fist.

I tweeted that, with all its sweetness, and Cathy got all verklempt about it back home in DC and everyone felt warm and cozy because the children got these great little pigs and life was good and everyone was happy.

We made the children happy. We were awesome. At least on the first night....

The next night, we were in the car on our way to our place in the country. It was late. The kids didn't want to go to sleep. On and off, on and off, oink, oink, on and off.

David and I believe the drive time to New Paltz is sacred. We leave late so the kids fall asleep in the car. We depend on that time. We debrief about the week, catch up on what's happening with our work, strategize about things we need to get done, chat about house renovations, make-fun of people we know (but only in a nice, karma-friendly kind of way, I swear).

I often use that time to get David's opinion about stuff I've been neurotically obsessing about and his ideas and calmness always make me feel better. That drive time is weirdly important to us. A lot of our stuff gets sorted there and we head into the weekend feeling connected to each other. It's nice.

But this time, the pigs were wrecking our good time. The kids were double-teaming us from the back seat. On and off, on and off, on and off, oink, oink, oink. We were patient for a long time. Then, we weren't. Edie, nearly always cooperative and more rational like David, gave hers up, settled into the car seat and nodded off.

But not Lucy.

Lucy's stubbornness is the Great Wall of China - long, high, seemly endless and immovable. She can wear you down with her feet ground into the earth. This is a good thing sometimes - she can focus on a problem or an activity and persist through it with unwavering attention. She doesn't give up. But when it is turned against you, she will not let you move her at any cost, even if means hurting herself, doing the thing that makes her situation worse.

She promised time after time to simply hold the pig and not oink it. She tried hiding it under her coat, oink, sitting on it, oink, putting it in her pocket, oink, but wherever she had it, it oinked and beams of light shot out of its eyes and through the car. After a dozen warnings - really, we gave her so many chances - I unfastened my seat belt, leaned over the front seat and took the pig.

She was furious with me. She cried and wailed and begged me to give it back. When that didn't work and our soft, gentle reassurances that she'd get it back tomorrow didn't please her, she started screaming and banging the back of my seat with her feet. I ignored her. She kept kicking. I asked her gently to stop. She kicked harder. I went back to ignoring her. She kicked and kicked and when that got old and she didn't get the reaction she wanted, she used her words.

She demanded that we give back the pig immediately and when we wouldn't she decided that we would no longer be invited to her birthday and that she and her friends would have the party in the conservatory gardens without us and we'd all be sorry because it was going to be the best party ever...That went on for a while.

Then, when we didn't respond she started yelling about how I was a bad mother and how she thought she might want a new one. She started blowing raspberries at me in between the times she told me what a bad mother I was. It went like this: You are a bad mother...Thwweeerrtt...I want a nice Mommy....Tthhhwwweeerrttt...You are so mean to me...Tttthhhwwwweeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrttttttt... I don't like you....Tttthhhwweeerrrttt...You can't come to my birthday...

At this point, I was seriously hating that pig.

Then there was silence for a little bit as Lucy planned her next move. When it came, it came big. She lurched up against the seat belts and screamed up from behind me, her voice hot and straining, her anger over-flowing and filling the car: "You, you, you...you are a BIG...FAT... FAT...MEATLOAF!

I don't think she knew what she was going to say until it came our of her mouth.

I started laughing so hard in the front seat I had to bury my face in my jacket so she didn't see. I don't know, something about your pissed off five year old, feeling helpless and over-powered, trying to find the absolute worst thing she could think of to hurt you, to make you feel the way she feels...and it was meat loaf.

I kept the pig key chain up front. But I unfastened my seat belt again and climbed over the front seat, sat in the little space in between the two car seats and put my arms around her. She didn't want me to at first. She was prickly, wanting me there and not wanting me there all at the same time. So I just let one of my hands lightly hold one of her hands. We didn't say anything.

Soon, she let her head tilt to the side of the car seat. She laced her fingers in between mine. She let out a yawn. Eventually she closed her eyes. Eventually she forgot about the pig. About her mother the meatloaf.

The next morning, the first thing I did was give her the pig. And she set it back down on the kitchen table and never, not once, picked it up again.

xo YM

The Charcutepalooza Monthly Round-Up & Give Away

2011-01-28T23:31:00.026-05:00

Just to up-date you: We've been focused on our pork belly around here. There's been lots of work with a pepper mill. It was not always easy. We had to use a little muscle.

And there was the copious use of herbs. Every herb I had in the fridge. Whether they went with pork or not. Because herbs are pretty. Like wild flowers.

And the bacon has been in the frying pan. And the pancetta is up and hanging.

We are on our way in the February challenge. But before we go there, what about the January challenge? What about the duck prosciutto?

It's my job to give you a round-up, some the best, most funny, thoughtful, provocative Charcutepalooza posts from the January challenge and offer you a monthly prize, a small token of our gratitude for playing along. I have to admit, this month I wasn't organized. There are nearly 300 of you now and it's taken me some time to read all the posts, make sure no one has been forgotten, and get a sense of who you are. It's been a pleasure, for sure. But a little bit of madness, too.

Here's what I know about the round-up: Whether or not, we pick you for a round-up has nothing to do with the grand prize. That is it's own thing. Being in the round-up seven times will not help you win the grand prize, and not ever getting mentioned here will not weigh against you. The grand prize has specific parameters - the winning post must have great writing, a terrific recipe using cured meat, lovely photos, the whole package. This monthly round-up is different.

What we're looking for is much more nebulous - Really, we're looking for a story. The thing that makes charcutepalooza different is the stories, the people, the community. It isn't really just about the meat, or the pink salt, or threats of botulism, or whether the belly should be rolled or hung flat. It's about how the process of curing impacts you, changes you, drives you batty, makes you do something crazy, brave, nutty, stretches you, helps you learn about yourself, causes an argument with your spouse, shines a new beam of light on something you didn't know about yourself.

This weekend in the New York Times, Neil Genzlinger wrote a controversial piece called "The problem with Memoirs". It touched people, rankled them. Ruhlman came out in support of memoir on twitter. God knows I love them - a well-crafted memoir is a beautiful thing. But the piece was a reminder not to simply write for the sake of writing. Let's face it, hanging your duck breast in the cellar and checking it obsessively isn't exactly riveting. Think of your blog post as your memoir. It takes some work to make that curing process interesting, to give us some perspective and history, to grab us with details and exploration.

At the end of the Times piece, I think Genzlinger nails it. He writes, "Maybe that’s a good rule of thumb: If you didn’t feel you were discovering something as you wrote your memoir, don’t publish it."

I have to agree.

If you are going to be doing a year of Charcutepalooza with us, and your blog is your memoir, you might as well be discovering something new, something bigger than how to make pancetta, something you can dig into, something that will change you, change us - your community - just by having read it.

So, when we look for great posts for the round-up each month, we're going to be searching for good photos and people who get white balance, of course, and we definitely want to feature some fabulous recipes, recipes that inspire us to take to the stove and re-create them. But mostly, we'll be looking for pieces of you. Insight and discovery.

Here are our picks this month in no particular order. Read them. Enjoy them. We can't wait to keep reading every single one of you this year. And next month, I'll be much more organized. Promise.

1. Charcutepalooza makes vegetarians start eating meat.
Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, Dogs, Cat

2. Prosciutto & a Tartine
Taste Food

3. Triple X Nibbles
Bona Fide Farm Food

4. Killer salad with duck prosciutto.
Healthy Green Kitchen

5. People turn their wine refrigerators into curing chambers.
Bite me new England

6. A cookbook author laments what to do about her small breasts.
Poor Girl Gourmet

7. Duck prosciutto pizza.
Oh Briggsy

8. Duck cracklins.
Foodie with Family

9. Duck Prosciutto, Chanterelles & Spicy Tomato sauce over Pasta. (and the cat likes the Duck Prosciutto)
Eat Live Travel Write

10. Duck Prosciutto Two Ways (and Ruhlman's favorite post of the month)
One Vanilla Bean

Now, for the giveaway. Our January prize is this beautiful tile, hand-painted by Renee at Kudos Kitchen. Go over to her site, visit her, give her some love. She is beyond talented and her tiles - I've seen a few now - are gorgeous.

This tile can easily be yours. All you have to do is be a part of Charcutepalooza and leave a comment here and tell us about your writing, your blog, what you want to get out of making all this meat this year. Lay it on us. We'll randomly pick a winner and let you know who that is on February 15th, when Cathy and I announce our March Challenge.

Love having you all with us. As Cathy says, "Go forth and cure..."

xo Kim
One of the Dames of Meat

Charcutepalooza loves our sponsors. D'Artagnan offers 25% off the meat-of-the-month. If you aren't receiving your email with the secret code for Charcutepalooza members, register here. And the trip to France - an awesome grand prize deliciously designed by Trufflepig and Kate Hill at Camont.

The Dames of Meat

2011-01-25T12:32:00.009-05:00

This is a picture of me (on the right, the one who needs to have her roots done) and Cathy from Mrs. Wheelbarrow's Kitchen (the sassy redhead, whose hands smell like pancetta) and we are deliriously happy to tell you that we are in The Washington Post Food section today. Check it out.

We are so blessed and completely blown away that Charcutepalooza has gotten so much attention from people wanting to participate and cure meats at home, sponsors willing to give away products and discounts and trips to France, and the press finding us interesting enough to write about.

A special thanks to Bonnie Benwick, deputy food editor at the Post, who totally looks like Sally Field and when I was terrified and mumbling incoherent responses to all her thoughtful questions, I pretended I was just hanging out with Sally around a kitchen table, eating pasta. I felt better.

Bonnie would probably never say this, but I completely butchered a phone interview with her prior to meeting her at Cathy's house in DC last week. She asked a perfectly insightful question about Twitter and what a powerful medium it was and I said something like, "Blogs posts tend to be very composed. You can hit the delete button, but people are who they are on Twitter. Some people have amazing blogs with great recipes, well-written stories, beautiful photos, but on twitter they grumble and complain and really expose their real selves."

I was just talking. Out of my ass.

Then Bonnie said, "Well, who? Can you give me some examples?"

That's when my tongue swelled up.

"You mean like on the record?. Like naming names?...Um, uh...um..."

It went on like this. Very sad. If this had been a live interview on Good Morning America, I would've been a YouTube sensation by lunch.

But really, Bonnie's article is fantastic because she said something about Charcutepalooza that neither Cathy nor I even considered - that this is "already a prime example of new culinary education where pros don't lead the pack, newbies aren't afraid to join in, and no classroom time is required."

She nailed it. Charcutepalooza is an intimate and immediate way to learn to cook something. Old school techniques in the most cutting edge of classrooms. It's about where we are going, not where we were. How amazing is that? I told you Bonnie is good.

For those of you still not convinced that you should join us, I urge you to learn about our end of the year grand prize, our monthly prizes, our incredible sponsors and the panel of esteemed judges If you want to join us for some titilating chat on Twitter, pull up the hashtag #Charcutepalooza. Something is always happening there.

And at the end of the day, it's not really about the prizes anyway. Whether or not you win the trip to Gascony, if you do the challenges, you'll have at least learned to do some incredible things by the end of the year. Things that will make you feel great, maybe even invincible, and it will not have happened in classroom, but in your own kitchen, with your own hands. That's pretty cool.

Thanks for being here.

xo YM

Why We Have to Be Cooking With Our Kids in The Classroom

2011-01-20T21:05:00.010-05:00

Marion Nestle recently posted a story on her blog about Walmart promising to support healthy food by doing things like marking the packaging with labels, and making healthier foods less expensive than junk foods. It's worth the read. And I think it's good that big business is involved in the discussion and possible solutions.

At the end of the piece she wrote: "I’ll say it again: a better-for-you processed food is not necessarily a good choice."

Which reminded me of something happening in Edie's school. New York State's Eat Well/Play Hard program comes to her class every few weeks to talk about eating better, learning about vegetables, and playing rather than watching TV. The program is about teaching parents, as well as, kids.

The program is designed for schools where 50% or more of the kids are eligible for free or reduced fee lunches. To give you an idea, our school in East Harlem doesn't even have reduced price lunches. Everyone is eligible, which goes to show you the level of social and economic diversity inside the building.

But the program has pissed me off right from the start.

It was the little things at first. They sent home recipes for people to try. To inspire them to cook at home. Simple home-cooking stuff, that doesn't have any salt in it. No salt. Their Lentil Spaghetti Sauce was nothing but lentils cooked in a jar of store-bought sauce. No herbs. Just blandness. The Quick and Tasty Onion Soup was seasoned with onion powder. There's a good chance if anyone cooked these recipes, and had to eat this for a meal, they might never try home-cooking again.

And the forms we had to fill out. One question said this: How confident are you that you can offer fat free or low fat milk to your child? They are very big on convincing parents that milk is the big offender in obesity. David scribbled into the margins this answer, "Fat free products are unhealthy and unnatural. We refuse to provide them to children whose brain growth requires saturated fats."

I was mortified, but okay. I wasn't going to argue with his logic. Overall, we felt the program was probably lacking funding, they were doing their best...what could it hurt? I mean, I'm doing real cooking with the kids. They know what it means to make food from scratch. It'll balance out. That's what I thought. Until last week...

That's when I saw a man setting up a snack table in the cafeteria for the kids at dismissal. A man from Eat Well/Play Hard. He was putting out little bowls. Another mom pulled me over to see what was going on. He told us that he was putting out snacks that would show kids that they can eat healthy. Great. Love that.

Know what he put into the bowls? Cheerios and Ritz crackers.

I have nothing against these two products and my kids have eaten both, obviously. But this is tax-supported state program trying to make a point about educating kids and adults about what's healthy, and what they are saying - the message they are sending - is that processed food is a healthy snack.

Kids and parents already get that message everyday, everywhere they turn, particularly poor families. That's why Walmart's decision to bring down the price of healthier food is a step in the right direction - a step - and confirmation that this is the real problem.

But here's what we can't have: the government pushing processed food as a healthy snack or meal for our kids. It isn't. It is cheaper. It is filling. But it is not healthy. And don't talk to me about budgets and constraints, because the state should be able to do what a single mother on welfare can do. They should be able to make something healthy and tasty even if it's all from commodity foods. That is what's facing real families with food scarcity issues. So, when the state cops out, when they tell you ritz crackers are a healthy snack, when they make it okay to run to the store and buy white, processed carbs and hand them to your kid and feel like you are doing a good thing, well, that is a misuse of tax dollars and of imagination.

It has to become cool, sexy, fun to cook from scratch. It has to become economically viable. It has to feel accessible, not something yuppies do in their McMansions. We have to push recipes that people can do and win at them, without a cupboard full of spices and condiments that cost $50 before you even start the meal.

We have to not make food a lesson, one that is painful and difficult, by making kids do plays about vegetables and memorize facts on zucchini. We have to not wait for the government to get it right. We have to be cooking for and with our kids. We have to be in the classroom, (and in our kitchens at home), with our pots and pans and our bouquet of herbs and all the cutting and the dangerous knives and the death-defying peanut oil bubbling in the wok. We have to use salt and butter and cream and lard and all kinds of cheese. We need to take measures into our own hands. We cannot wait for Chefs Move to Schools. We must be our own advocates.

It's not sexy setting up a cooking station for a bunch of four year olds, and watching them hurl flour at each other, nor is easy to tote all the ingredients to the school, pay for all the supplies, engage in multi-step cooking projects with kids who don't have the emotional maturity to sit still for longer than 10 seconds and believe me, no one is giving out awards or cooking show contracts or even respect for doing it.

But the benefits are huge. And they are about food, but mostly the bigger stuff, that creating food begets relationships, friendships - you can really bond with a kid when your latkes get burned to a crisp or your pork dumpling, your masterpiece, caves in on itself, and you have to bolster each other and try again. You learn patience waiting for that ever-loving water to boil. You learn that food doesn't have to be perfect or camera-ready to be meaningful. You learn that cooking is unexpected, anything can happen, so it appeals to kids seeking comfort and kids seeking danger. There are lots of lessons here, but the big message we should be sending is that cooking is cool and do-able and we have to do that by being there. Not just once, but over and over again.

In Lucy's class the kids are working through a Jim Lahey book. They make a bread or dough every day. Not just once or twice as a special project, but as a matter of practice. For Lucy, baking bread is a quotidian act, something as easy and as common place as toothbrushing. It is a part of her now. She likes it, but it's not special. It's her way. That is real change.

If we can do that, create that kind of change, we will not need Eat Well/Play Hard and it's Ritz crackers.

xo YM

Additional Note added 1/22/11: Today Edie came home and told me she cooked in her class (with the Eat Well/Play Hard people) and tried and ate peppers. Her friend said it was peppermint, but Edie assured me they were peppers. So, I think the program inside the class is working to get kids to try veg. This is good news. This doesn't completely negate the cheerios situation in the cafeteria, but it makes me feel better.

For Martin Luther King's Birthday

2011-01-17T08:30:00.016-05:00

I think this is what Dr. King was fighting for. That a little white girl and a little black girl could come together, and completely butcher the lyrics to "We Shall Over come". Without anyone on the bus even caring.

Actually, I think that's exactly what he had in mind. This is Lucy and her best friend in the whole world, Nakamae. I didn't set this up. It was all them.

xo YM

An Open Letter to the People of Charcutepalooza

2011-01-15T06:16:00.018-05:00

Dear Meat People,

You guys are nuts.

What started as Cathy and I making meat together, has become something else entirely - over a hundred of us and growing - making duck prosciutto. And I've figured something out. You're not just regular folks. No. You people love this stuff. You people are freaks.

You were tweeting about your duck breasts the minute you slipped them into your shopping basket. You were excited. You couldn't help yourself. You tweeted each other advice on salt and curing times. You sent each other pictures of your breasts. You ogled them in your basement every day, checked them like little children, and reported back their feel. How the fat was squishy and the meat was firm, but pliable. You stressed about the signs. Is it ready? Not ready? Will I die from botulism if I try a little piece?

You pined away the eight days of curing until you couldn't stand it anymore and weighed them obsessively to make sure they were doing okay. You consoled people who were freaking out because their breasts were curing too slowly. There was talk of humidity and basements and wine refrigerators. God, a bunch of you went out an bought wine refrigerators. That is dedication, my friends.

And then, there were the stories...

The ones you were telling on twitter and on your blogs. They were the best part. Really, better than any duck could be. Like Saint Tiger Lily who lives in a Manhattan apartment and didn't have anywhere to hang her duck so she kicked her kid out of his nursery, opened the window and hung her duck breasts to dry from his crib mobile. And that's just the beginning. That's just one great story. You all have them and you've made me want to know them all.

And I've found something else out about you....You guys are pervs. Big ones. You just couldn't help yourselves, could you? Oh, I heard it all. My breasts are hanging. Are my breasts supposed to feel squishy? You have gorgeous breasts. My breasts are nicer than your breasts. Should my husband have breasts? Your breasts are much larger than mine. Are you talking about the duck or Pamela Anderson? Can anyone come over and feel my breasts?

You get the picture. It was like this all month. And don't look at me, I didn't make one breast joke all month. I would never do that, of course. I'm very serious about the meat. Focused. On the meat.

I wouldn't, for example, be like some of you and decide to get a pig tattoo. That's right, you heard me. Pig tattoo. That is dedication to the movement. You people love your meat. You've been tweeting designs to each other and sharing them on Flicker. One guy said he'd get the tattoo if ten other people did. I think we are nearing ten interested people. I say I don't want to get a tattoo - I say it loud and strong - but I have a bad, bad feeling that I'll end this year with a pig on my butt. And if I do, I'm holding all of you lunatics responsible.

That said, I wanted to tell you that Cathy and I are throwing you a party, Sunday night, 9pm (EST) on Twitter. That's tomorrow night, January 16. For one whole hour, under the hashtag #Charcutepalooza, you guys can come together on Twitter around this months new challenge: The Salt Cure. And you know what that means...Bacon. (If you haven't seen Cathy's amazing, super-detailed post about this month's challenge, go here)

And a special guest will be there to answer all your questions about the salt cure - Bob del Grosso, Chef-Charcutiere at Hendricks Farms and Dairy in Telford, PA and former assistant professor at The Culinary Institute of America. For those of you who don't know who he is, let me just tell you that this is your chance to talk meat with the real deal. And he's all yours for an hour. Ask him anything. I know, I can tell from here that you guys are flipping out. Talking about meat gets you all riled up.

Before I end this, let me just say thank you. For everything, from Cathy and I. The jokes, the stories, the new friends, the camaraderie, the amazingly rich, supple fattiness of duck prosciutto, the idea that maybe I'm a little cooler, a little more competent in the kitchen because I'm hanging out with you, the constant, non-stop 24 hour a day conversations about breasts, and this month, belly (oh you people, will have a field day with that) Thanks for all of it.

We are having the time of our lives.

Kim
One of the Dames of Meat

PS: I want to thank PK from Six Course Dinner for not going ballistic when he finds out that I shamelessly lifted his prosciutto picture off the internet and used it for this post (see picture at the top). I ate all my duck breast before my camera came back from the shop. I should feel guilty about that. But I don't. The duck was awesome. Thanks PK!

PPS: If any of you want to join the chat and are having trouble figuring out Twitter, e-mail me KimATFosterEntertainment.net and I'll try to coach you through.

Casual, With A Touch of Lunatic

2011-01-10T21:55:00.019-05:00

I haven't kept you up to date on the book and I promised I would, so I thought I'd let you all know I'm hard at work writing another chapter.

That's not my cute, naked butt at the computer (this picture completely makes me smile) but I'm doing something like that, hunched over the key board, pounding out something I think might be brilliant, that I read later, and realize how terribly mediocre it all is, and have to start at it again.

My day goes something like this: I'm a genius. I'm an idiot. I'm a genius. I'm an idiot.

That's my day, except when it's punctuated by intense, seething writer's block, where I just stare morosely into the computer wondering why my shopping list is the only thing I can think about.

There are two agents, both lovely, and bright, and amazing at what they do, who have decided they like me and I like them. But none of us have made any firm decisions. Both thought I needed to write another chapter, both felt I had an even better way to tell this story in me, and both felt that I needed to make some changes. They both gave me great notes. I'll send them both the finished product and see, if at the end, they both like me, or one of them, or if I'm standing there alone, with my book proposal flapping in the wind, unable to get an agent after all.

We'll see. But I have a good feeling that won't happen. This has been a good year already.

If you've read my sample chapters here, know that they have undergone a face lift. More story, more details, more focus on characters. More funny. In fact, I didn't just write a new chapter, I've actually remodeled the whole book, making it more about the story of my year cooking with kids in a Harlem Public School, and those really compelling, wacky characters, and less about making it some kind of story/handbook. Everyone agrees this is the way to go.

Actually, it was David who said that first. Months ago. Bastard. Also, he and Matthew Amster-Burton both thought I lost some of the edge of my writing in the book and felt that I sounded to "author-y". I've corrected that. The tone of the chapters sound a lot like this blog...Casual, with a touch of lunatic. I think I should trademark that.

I think that getting this book published has been a real writer's journey for me. We hear about people throwing together a book proposal in a week, having it speed to auction, where it sells for a half a million dollar advance. These things fuel our dreams. And they happen. But I think, for most of us work-horse writers, the process is about the writing, the telling of the story in the best possible way - writing, writing, writing, putting something out there, getting feedback, notes, writing again, re-writing, re-writing, tussling and fighting with the sucker, re-writing, putting it out there, and doing it again, and again, until it is more finished than we ever possibly imagined, different totally than what we originally conceived, and full of other people, and their ideas. Writers think they work alone. That's how it feels. But I'm not convinced they do.

While I was visiting one of the agents in her office, she told me she saw my book as a movie. I'm sure she was shit-faced. She said it off-handedly, quickly, almost as an afterthought as I was leaving - and who knows the woman might love a good Lifetime Movie - but that little comment changed everything for this re-write because it helped me really zero in on characters and make them strong and relatable, as if they were standing right in front of me. Or on a movie screen. See, I pictured the whole book on screen while I wrote.

No one who isn't four believes this will be a movie, but it just goes to show you that words are powerful and one sentence - one off-handed, seemingly inconsequential sentence - put me on the right path, got me to see how this story needed to be told. It helped the writing. She helped the writing. That says a lot.

So, I'm hoping to have the re-writes done by the end of this week or early next. Then, David will read and comment. Then, hopefully I can send it out again. And see what people say. I won't go to the bother of posting the chapters here and bore everyone with yet another version of this story. You've been amazingly attentive readers and note-givers already. But if you want to see the new chapters, leave your e-mail in comments and I'll send them to you when they are finished.

Until then, know that I'll be hunkering down and writing. But as usual you can still find me here.

xo YM

Dashi

2011-01-06T22:17:00.057-05:00

There's something to be said about a restaurant where your kids run into the dining room and the owner scoops them up into her arms, and spends the next 30 seconds squatting down, talking to them, and only them, and then leads them over to a mat, filled with toys and things to play with. And let's them be themselves until the food comes.

It's also something when that restaurant is run by a chef who makes her own Dashi (what Japanese restaurant in the US does that?), never uses MSG, sources nearly everything she can locally, has an extensive vegan and gluten free menu, and thinks it might be important that your five year old taste the broth with her. Or that you should get an Umami lesson along with your Agedashi Dofu.

Theres is something about a place like that.

The following pictures were taken at Gomen Kudasai, New Paltz, New York. November 26th, 2010. The chef's name is Youko Yamamoto. She is making Dashi here, and telling me stories of food in Japan, and David and the girls are there, Lucy running in and out of the kitchen, all of us happy, relaxed, immersed and well-fed.

You're gonna love this.

xo YM

2011. Or Why My Parties Are Like Saint Bernards

2011-01-04T08:48:00.026-05:00

Our 2011 began in Rio de Janeiro. Well, not really.

Every year that we aren't in Culebra, Puerto Rico (OMG, the kids are so tiny in these pictures) we throw a New Years Eve party for the kids.

Rio goes to New Years at 9pm New York time,so we party from 6 to 9 and ring in the New Year at 9, with lots of hollering and yelling and counting down and making noise. Then, we wind down, get the kids into bed and lay around like lumps on the couch, with glasses of good champagne, waiting for the real midnight to happen. Then, we fall into bed like zombies. The Rio party has worked well for us - the girls and their friends are just too little to party until midnight and I'm too damned old to be picking confetti out of the rug at 1am.

This year, the first party guests pulled into the driveway at the country house at 5:30 am on New Years Eve day, classmates of Lucy and Edie and their folks. They drove all night from Ohio to get here. Then, Carol from NYCityMama and her amazing, wild, loveable brood came piling in, in the afternoon. At least three more local families RSVP'd the morning of the party. That brought us up to about 30-40 people expected to attend. And I hadn't gone shopping. For anything. And there wasn't much time to put everything together and make lunches and breakfasts for incoming guests. It was a zoo. An awesome zoo, where monkeys were hanging off the outside of their cages, but a zoo nonetheless.

Truth is, all my parties are like this. David on the phone in the other room, talking to someone saying, "Yeah, come on over!" and me scrambling to get everything together as people pour in the front door. There is very little meticulous table setting, or creating intricate party favors, or making fussy appetizers. I dream of that, but really, my parties are onslaughts - clumsy, big, loud, fun, imperfect, crazy. My parties - and maybe me,too - are like a Saint Bernard bounding through the house, and piling into your lap, drooling, panting, fur flying, yipping with happiness.

If you don't like Saint Bernards. I might not be your girl and my parties might not be for you.

Which might be why David created an awesome "Chill Room"...

...for people who like their parties a little more Basset Hound, than Bernard. The chill room was genius,a quiet space to sip your drink and be away from all the craziness and craft-making. Thanks to David, the Chill Room, will be a permanent party fixture for us.

So, I wanted to show you some bits of our party, our friends, our entre into the New Year, 2011 and all it's fun possibilities. Thanks Carol, for taking all the pictures, for sharing this with us, for cleaning my kitchen after the party (Aren't good friends wonderful?)and for your friendship. I love you.

We started with crafts. Decorated paper hats and made noise makers.

They were so chill while we made crafts. But that changed...

Then, we made pizza. Dreams of a clean kitchen were killed during the making of these photos.

The great thing about making your own pizzas is that you actually get to hang with the kids and be with them during the party. And you absolve yourself from having to "get dinner on". You make the guests happily do the work for you. Tricky, yes, but no one seems to complain.

The next day, New Years Day, we took to the snow, to shake off the party and feel the open air, the cold snow.

Even I got into the act. I think that tells you what kind of year this is going to be...

A good one. A really, really good one.

xo YM

PS: A special thanks to Stop & Shop of New Paltz, New York. You all know that they have generously supported the cooking I do with kids, but this time they did something even more important - they saved me from being an ass at my own party. I bought everything there last minute, food, arts and crafts supplies, New Years decorations, everything. Seriously, I love them. Now, if they only could sell booze...

My Husband Really Cares About My Breasts

2010-12-27T21:25:00.015-05:00

Duck breasts, people. Minds out of the gutter.

I'm finding it takes a village to make meat happen. It takes me hooking up with Cathy of Mrs. Wheelbarrow's Kitchen and having her be all "You can make your own knockwurst. You can. Shape up. What's wrong with you, woman? DIY is HOT!"

She talks like that when she isn't canning or smoking something.

And then, it takes my husband, David, who has become, overnight, the DIY king. Over Christmas he has been renovating our upstairs bathroom, without having any previous knowledge or training in bathroom renovation, and has been reading how to do it in "The Black and Decker Guide to Bathrooms", as he goes along. Seriously. He's done this with nothing but grit, a how-to-book and a hundred trips to Lowes.

And now, stoked by the flames of a nearly perfectly-tiled bathroom floor, and a nearly set-up, functioning vanity/sink, he has moved his vision to bigger things. If I do this "Year of Meat", and get into it and really love it, he will not simply help me create some bogus, half-assed, stove top smoker for my bacon. Oh no, he wants to build me a smoke HOUSE. In the backyard. An actual building dedicated exclusively to the production of smoked meats.

Which begs the question, do I really want to have smoking, curing and preserving meat to be my new food hobby? I mean, do I want a smoke house? Does the mere existence of the smoke house mean I'll have to smoke a lot of meat? What if smoking meat sucks? What if carcasses hanging in your cellar is just creepy? What if someone perishes from botulism? From the meat I made? Should I nominate an official taster so that people I like won't die? Will small animals, weary and food-deprived from winter, gather around our garage in hopes of gaining entry and ripping apart the carcasses like the starved little beasts they are?

And what about the kids? - you know my kids - they are going to play with the meat. This is a given. Lucy will want to ride a side of pork like a wild bronco. Edie will bring all her babies from indoors and make a doll house out of the smoke house. You can picture it, right? One kid swinging back and forth on a side of cow? Another dressing the pork belly in frilly pink dolly clothes?

Maybe a pool would be better?

I ponder these questions as my husband reads "The Popular Mechanics Guide to Building a Smoke House" and as Cathy e-mails me that our very own Charcutepalooza was mentioned in SF Weekly as a Food Trend for 2011, and as streams of people sign on to make their own meat with us, a community of people - a whole village - who want to do something different in their kitchens, and are, I'm sure, a little beautifully, off-balanced to begin with.

And I think, 1) Wow. This is cool. And 2) Was I drinking Manhattans when I said yes to this?

So far, I'm not hyper-ventilating, or thinking I'll give up writing for being an artisanal, heirloom, heritage, blah-blah sausage-maker. But David just went down to the cellar, to check my breasts (I know, many meanings here), and make sure mice hadn't started eating them, and the kids went with him, thumping, thumping down the stairs in socking feet, and they all gathered together under the slightly swinging carcasses, in the dimly lit, cold basement, to check for signs of mouse bites. And then, bolted back up the stairs, like little rockets, to share the good news.

No sign of interlopers.

The whole family rejoiced. Like the harvest was good. Like our winter meals depended on this preservation. Like we were pioneers. It felt pretty good.

We live to make meat another day.

xo Kim

Charcutepalooza 2011

2010-12-21T08:52:00.015-05:00

When I posted the picture of Lucy and the sausage awhile ago, one of my home-cooking heros, Warner from Art of the Pig, said he thought I was making my own sausage. I wasn't. But a part of me wished I had. Warner has a way of putting these crazy ideas in my head, merely by suggesting them, which is both befuddling and inspiring.

So, I thought it over, that sausage thing. It stayed with me for a bit, lolling around back there. And I got on Twitter this weekend and started asking Cathy from Mrs. Wheelbarrow's Kitchen, my other kitchen hero, about curing meats and making sausages and how I'd do that - wouldn't small animals try to eat my meat hanging in the garage, wouldn't maggots come live in my meat, surely I could kill someone with my rancid pork?

And that's when the idea was born - Charcutepalooza.

Oh, you read that right. It's officially pronounced Shar-coo-ta-palooza. A couple gals, one experienced and a little brilliant in the kitchen (Cathy), the other a little mad, and not so experienced in the kitchen (Moi), deciding to spend 2011 curing and preserving a meat a month. For the hell of it. That includes making bacon, prosciutto, sopressata, bresaola, merguez, kielbasa, knockwurst, boudin blanc, and maybe even a pate or two.

That was all well and good, but then, a bunch of other people on Twitter got in on the act and said they wanted to do Charcutepalooza, too. That's how a movement is born. In this case, a meat movement.

So, I'm inviting you to join us starting in the New Year. I mean, it's winter, what the hell else are you doing? Cathy is going to be posting the instructions monthly on her site (I'll link it for you) and charcuterie expert and cookbook author, Michael Ruhlman is, rumor has it, on board to mentor us along when we are up to our elbows in hog casings and pig entrails.

So, this is your chance to make meat. To stretch yourself. To spend the bleak, wintery months of January, February and March producing something of beauty, something that can be sustaining and special and inspiring. Something you've never done before, maybe never thought you'd do, and not had the occasion or reason to try. And we'll be doing it together - I won't leave you alone with those entrails, I promise - so you'll have meat and make new friends. How bad can that be?

We'll be curing a meat and posting it on the 15th of every month. You will be doing it with us, if you are that cool, that awesome, that brave, that crazy. The January project will be....Duck Prosciutto. Easy peasy, people. No entrails. No pigs hanging from hooks next to the mini-van. We start January 3.

Here's what you'll need, so you can get things in order now:

1. Buy Michael Ruhlman's book "Charcuterie". (It's $35 in the book store, but only $23 on Amazon. We will make everything from this book, so consider it your class fee)

2. If you are on Twitter, follow the hashtag #Charcutepalooza11. If you are not on Twitter, no worries. I've got you covered here.

3. Grocery list: Two duck breasts (good ones, all natural, not brined, Ruhlman suggests Magret, which are the breasts from ducks made for foie gras - they are very meaty - but I'm sure any good quality breast will work), salt, saran wrap, white pepper, cheese cloth, twine.

That's it. We start in the New Year. You follow the recipe in "Charcuterie", and if you want, you can post your gorgeous meat on January 15th on your blog, in Snapfish,Facebook, or somewhere else so we all can see it, and tell me about in it comments, what it was like, how it tasted. A lot of my readers don't have blogs, don't let that stop you, this isn't about creating a blog post, or taking cookbook-worthy pictures. It's about stretching yourself, doing something to change your cooking, raise the game, get a little spark going. I just want to hear about it. The storytelling is really the best part.

C'mon. You know you want to. And if you do this one thing, here's what you'll have at the end of it...

...which you can say you made with your own two hands.

That's pretty awesome.

xo YM

PS: The duck proscuitto picture above was taken by Donna Ruhlman. You can see more of her gorgeous food photos here.

Disclaimer: Ruhlman is not compensating us in any way for using his book. We just like it. In fact, Cathy totally roped him into participating in Charcutepalooza 2011. Pity him. The poor guy didn't have a chance.

Saturday Morning at Our House

2010-12-17T09:05:00.032-05:00

The Repertoire of 10

2010-12-13T08:12:00.015-05:00

A week or so ago I received an e-mail from a reader. Here it is:

Hi Kim,

I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy your blog. Your take on cooking with children is inspiring. I am trying to make better choices when cooking. I have never felt very comfortable when cooking and really want to overcome this. I buy cookbooks but get them home and find them lacking (or maybe it is me that is lacking). I was wondering if you have any cookbook recommendations?

Thanks
Toni

I loved this e-mail. Mostly, because I think LOTS of people think this way about cooking at home. Many people sit on the couch, watching Food Network, and want to cook something great. The TV chefs, and bloggers, and food writers are telling folks how easy it is roast a chicken. They keep telling us, "get in the kitchen", "just cook." And that all seems manageable, doable, reasonable.

In theory.

I mean, I've been there, pouring over the cookbook that looked so promising in the book store. The one with the glossy, perfectly-appointed photos of gorgeous, even precious food, and all the promises to change your life, reinvent your pantry, turn you in to a kitchen goddess, get you laid, help you meet chefs, own a restaurant, cook something so damned amazing even the pickiest 4 year old on the planet will gobble it up, ask for seconds and tell you, you are the best cook in the world.

God, it all seems so damned fantastic before you hit the check out.

But in order to do all those easy recipes, you have to buy $70 in weird herbs and spices you've barely heard of because you have no pantry to speak of. And what to do about not being able to find lemongrass in your tiny neighborhood grocery store in Tiny Town USA, where the stock boy crinkles his nose at you and says, "Lemondade?...Frozen or Refrigerated?" And if you don't cook, then you don't know how to make a substitution, how to wing it, how to bump up the flavor in another way. How to save the firm thing that just went mushy right before your very eyes, even though you followed the recipe EXACTLY.

And don't even get me started on all kinds of emotional barriers. "My mother was an amazing cook who never let me in the kitchen." "My mother was a horrible cook and we used the kitchen to set up our tanning bed and in-house nail salon." "My mother was a 60's radical feminist who didn't want to be tied to the kitchen and thought Chef Boyardee was a middle finger aimed straight at the patriarchal pigs who defined and exploited her." Whatever.

We all have our stories and these stories define us, and make us, and in this case, either drive us into the kitchen or make us run screaming for the take out menu drawer. These things are so complicated, it would take years of analysis to figure it all out. "Just cook" doesn't always cut it.

So, I wrote Toni back and asked her if I could write about her e-mail here. This is her response:

Wow, thanks for the email. Sure I'm game and I am not shy. I have accumulated a bunch of cookbooks and as much as I enjoy the photos of the foods, I find myself not using them. I sincerely want to learn to cook. Not the hamburger helper, open a box, but really cook with foods that are not processed or dehydrated. Crazy as this sounds, my mom was a fantastic cook, but she never passed that knowledge on to me. In her defense she did try and teach me a few things when I was a teenager but at that time I wasn't interested. Even when I was a newly married person I never asked her how foods went together. She passed away a little over a year ago and I have lost the chance to learn from her. I think that one of the reasons I enjoy your blog so much is that you empower your daughters by allowing them to do the hands on cooking.

Again, thanks for the response.

Toni

So, here's my suggestion to Toni. One that helped me a lot to make the transition from crap cook to decent cook:

Back 10 or so years ago, in a column in the New York Times (I looked all over for the original, but can't find it, nor do I remember who wrote it) but it became sort of urban myth among people who didn't cook, but wanted to. I have no idea what the column was called, but it became known in dinner party circles as "The Repertoire of 10". (If anyone remembers this or has a link, I'd love to hear from them.)

The writer suggested (or this is how I remember it) that you make it your goal to learn 10 standard recipes. A good carbonara recipe, a great chicken recipe, an easy pizza recipe, etc. The idea is to pick the 10 dishes you want to know how to make and then, work on them, go to food blogs and try different variations, and have that dish be something you can whip up for yourself or for company, because you know it, you know how that dish works, you know how to change up the flavors to keep it interesting, you know how to save it when it goes flat on you.

10 dishes. That's the goal.

This was my saving grace back when I was single and had an empty fridge (save for meat scraps from the butcher for the dog, and a half drunk bottle of Sauvignon Blanc). It made being in the kitchen and cooking manageable. I could actually learn to make 10 dishes. And if I did that and that's all I ever wanted to do in the kitchen, I could still pull out 10 winners for a dinner party, or a romantic dinner, or a pot luck, and be able to feel good about that. As it turns out, conquering the 10 made me want to do more. It was my leaping off point.

This is my first dish of 10. It's from an Australian chef named Bill Granger and this sausage dish is simple and easy to make for yourself or company. By the way, the ciabatta in this recipe totally makes the whole dish, don't skip it. Although you can use any kind of crusty bread. Use a 375 F oven (his directions are in Celsius)and use uncooked Italian sausage, cut into 1-2 inch nubs. It should cook about 35-40 minutes. This is what I learned from tinkering with the recipe over the years.

Another early dish on my 10, was Short Ribs Braised in Wine from Lydia Bastianich from one of her earlier books (Couldn't find a link, sorry). It's simple, and the results are rich and impressive, and it was the recipe that taught me how to braise. That inspired me to braise other meats and move on from there. The love affair with the braise has never ended.

I stayed with recipes from people I trusted. Everything Italian came from Bastianich, for example, and if I found a cookbook author who had great ideas, but uneven, unpredictable recipes (Hello, Nigella, I'm talking to you)I bagged them. Threw the cookbook away. I wanted security just starting out, not surprise.

I started easy at the beginning of the 10, but added harder dishes as I grew more confident. I wanted to make a paella for a New Year's Eve party and I learned over multiple incarnations, and the help of my fish monger, to make a rocking paella. But it took a bunch of trial and error and a few mediocre, sloppy paellas to get there. The road to dinner party success was paved with bad rice and limp fish. But eventually, I got it.

So, that's what I suggest Toni does. But I'd love for you to give her your suggestions. Particularly you food bloggers and home cooks, because Toni is your audience. She's that reader who wants to cook from scratch, but hasn't quite gotten there yet. And isn't that why you started blogging/writing about food in the first place, to get people into the kitchen?

So, please give her some advice. Also, if you have recipes you think would be great for her "Repertoire of 10" (if she wants to go that route) by all means post a link to your blog (or someone else's site) in comments, so Toni can go there scoping for recipes and inspiration.

Let's help a cook out.

xo YM

Edited Note: Thanks to Xoch in comments for letting me know the idea for "Repertoire of 10" came from Amanda Hesser. You can read it here. I suppose this should've been obvious to me, but back in my non-cooking days, I had no idea who she was. Not a clue. It was like Amanda Hesser and I lived in alternate universes. But thanks to her brilliant idea, that took on a life of its own, even back in the day when nothing went viral because viral had barely been invented yet, I am happy to have settled quite nicely into her universe.

The Christmas Tree: An Iphone Photo Retrospective

2010-12-06T09:03:00.033-05:00

Um, yeah, that's my five year old with a saw.

We went to the tree farm this weekend to pick out a tree for Christmas. Well, David and Edie went in search of the tree....

Lucy decided to spend all her time in the un-supervised, un-manned, completely free jumpy castle, where no one was making the children take turns. And she missed hunting for the tree.

And drinking hot chocolate.

And finally, after we pried her out of the jumpy castle with all kinds of seductions and threats, David and Edie showed her "the tree". The tree they picked out. While Lucy was otherwise busy.

And Lucy loved the tree. Until she realized it was Edie's favorite tree. And that Edie had chosen it. And then, all of a sudden she hated it. Hated the very sight of it.

There was an uncomfortable moment where it looked like we might not leave this farm with a tree at all.

Lucy hated Edie and David's tree.

An intense negotiation ensued.

Then, there was much wandering and hand-ringing and consternation as we made loops around the farm, inspecting each tree and trying to find one - freakin' one tree - that was not hideous and weirdly-formed, and fit the criteria for both children, who just wanted to hate each other's choices on principle. It was cold on the farm. That's all I'm sayin', cold.

Is that the one? Maybe? Yes? Yes?....No. Crap.

And then, by some miracle, some act of God, both children decided they liked a single tree. Aaaaahhhh! (That's the angels singing.) No matter the tree looked like it was a big green pear, with a huge bushy bottom and a scrawny, scraggily top. I like big green Christmas pears. I like scraggily.

Bring it! Before someone decides they hate it. Before my fingers turn black with frostbite like those poor slobs who climb Everest.

David started sawing. Feverishly.

And then, we realized this tree cutting was not child's play and David got serious.

Clothes were discarded.

The children gave David lots of important advice on how to use the saw, how to not injure the tree, how to make sure he got every single branch. Important stuff.

And the people were happy.

And the Fosters became proud owners of a Christmas tree.

And then, weirdly, the tree had legs.

And walked away.

And it got closer and closer to leaving the farm with us. And Christmas felt like it was getting closer and closer, too. Someone sang Jingle Bells. Snowflakes filled the air...okay, I'm lying. But it was all good. No one was fighting. Or had to take off seven layers of clothes to pee.

Then, at home, we decorated. Which was really just an excuse to climb up and down the ladder and give Mommy a freakin' heart attack.

The kids like to climb the ladder and pretend they are losing their grip and falling off, so they can watch me go all pale and ill and jittery. They did that about 20 times. Merry Freakin' Christmas to me.

And we added the names of our friends and family to tea-stained cards and hung them up on our new, pear-shaped, scraggily tree, which was looking less-scraggily and less-pear-shaped as the minutes wore on. (I was drinking Whiskey Sours so that might have had something to do with it.)

And we wrote the names of new friends, and added them to the limbs, so we could think of them, too. So they could be with us through Christmas. And we ate guacamole and chips, which I think is like a tree-trimming tradition somewhere in the world. Like maybe Mexico.

And then, we just took it all in and felt pretty damned good about ourselves.

But it's not over. We have only just started. This week is cookie week. Christmas is just getting revved up, baby. Bring it.

xo YM

How to Stop Drinking The Diet Pepsi

2010-11-29T08:32:00.012-05:00

When I met David, I started every morning with three cans of Diet Pepsi. It had to be the cans, because the bottles never had enough fizz for me. And it had to be Diet Pepsi, because although similar, I preferred the taste to Diet Coke. Coffee didn't do it for me. Hot tea didn't either. And the diet part of it made me feel happy that I wasn't taking in any extra calories. Diet Pepsi was my long and trusted friend.

But David started calling it "The Cancer Juice". It was annoying, really. He was bludgeoning my morning routine. I mean, there was nothing more hopeful, more expectant, more intense with possibility, than the moment I heard the crisp cracking open of the can, as I pulled back the tab, and the bubbles pinging my nose. That first burst of effervescence on my tongue, and later the hit and rush of caffeine. Seriously, I'm smiling just writing about it. It was my morning ritual for years.

David was not wrong, however. There is a strong link between brain tumors and aspartame, the sweetener in Diet Pepsi. As it turns out, I had a brain tumor in 2000. I'm not saying Diet Pepsi gave me a brain tumor. Seriously, I'm not. For all I know, the tumor was pre-coded into my DNA in the womb. But it is weird and kinda nutty that I had a brain tumor and all that aspartame in my system for all those years. I mean, it probably didn't help things.

I'm fine now. The tumor was benign. Nothing that couldn't be fixed by cracking open my skull and canoodling around in there for 10 hours, and ultimately developing a host of mildly-annoying neurological deficits that will stay with me the rest of my life. Not that knowing any of this would've deterred me from drinking Diet Pepsi. I was always of the "Something has to kill me, why not this?" school of existentialism.

And besides, that beverage was a fundamental part of who I was. I'd been drinking it since I was a teenager. Maybe even before, although I don't remember. It was what I did, and how I got my day started, and what I put in my body. I never questioned it. I just did it.

Until David. And then, I had to question it. Mostly because he was a nattering pain in my ass about it. And when we had kids, which was remarkably soon after we met, I really had to look at it. He forced me to. I had no choice. My choices would be Lucy's choices and now, I was choosing beverages for two.

That is, I think, how many people make food choices. They just do what they learned growing up. Or they make up their bad habits all by themselves in adulthood. They don't question or have inner debates about food choices. They're just trying to pay the rent, and keep their job, and hold their marriages together, and be happy.

Unless you are a food lover, food writer, or food advocate you probably aren't sitting at your desk day-dreaming happily about what you're going to make for dinner tonight. And if you grew up with Gortons' Fish Sticks as a typical meal, there's a good chance you're going to think that's a pretty easy, tasty, affordable meal that the kids will eat up. That might be a no-brainer after a crappy day at the mill.

It seems to me that people choose fast and pre-packaged food over whole, cooked foods because they don't even see it as a problem. It's not that they know better and choose to buy their kids Happy Meals for dinner anyway. It's more that they like the Diet Pepsi. They drink the Diet Pepsi. They don't even see that drinking the Diet Pepsi is a problem. And if you never end up falling in love with a man who starts maligning your beverage of choice every chance he gets and telling you everyday, "That shit's gonna kill you" well, then, maybe you drink the Diet Pepsi for the rest of your life and never ask the big questions.

So, that's why all this discourse around food - Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, people cooking with their kids, food bloggers showcasing easy recipes for home cooks, Rachel Ray, and even the much-maligned and beaten-up star of Semi-Homemade, Sandra Lee - it all matters. It all means that someone somewhere is maybe going to sit up and say, "I never thought about that. I can do better. Hey, let's make macaroni and cheese from scratch tonight." Or "Hey, Alton Brown's crab dip looks easy. I can do that."

That's why the discourse matters. That's why the kitchen disaster stories matter. That's why the food love matters. That's why messing up your kitchen with your kids and writing it down for people to read, matters. Because what will change things is the talk, the trickle down, the stories, the images, the work in the community, the idea that cooking is not just for extremist cooks who think the only way to eat food is if it has been doing time in a sous vide machine.

And so, I'm not for all the food nazi rules that make people feel like they are children - rules about what people can or cannot eat on food stamps, how many sweets a kid can have at a class birthday party, or whether a school can host a fundraiser with bake sales, or pie eating contests, or the towns that ban fast food, or people who want to zone fast food restaurants out of poor neighborhoods. This is stuff that the boring people can fight over. The uninspired. The bureaucrats. The talking heads. The non-artists.

These initiatives are well-intended, but obnoxious. They feel bad. They have the stink of stupidity and band-aid solutions on them. They are paternalistic and short-sighted and patronizing. And I think, people will squirm, and fight, and wriggle their way up from under their smothering tenants, and run to the baked goods section of their local supermarket and fill their carts up with Hostess Twinkies in protest. Or they should.

This is not the way to get people to LOVE food, or LOVE cooking or discover the simple joy of roasting a chicken for their family and reaping the untold countless rewards for that, or inspire them to see things differently about what they are putting on the table. This isn't about the love. And it should be. Because that's how you create a culture of food lovers. That's how you get people to stop drinking the Diet Pepsi.

xo YM