Making connections

I've been having some great conversations with strangers lately. I often make it a point to talk with people I don't know in the hopes of learning something new (which often happens) or just making a positive connection to brighten up the day (which it often does). I'm convinced that in direct contrast to our overly busy, self-centered, technology-driven lives, making even the smallest of personal connections can help bring about peace and harmony to the planet. And it's way more exciting than online gaming, if you ask me. :-)

The other day it was a precocious 12-year-old playing with his mother's iPhone. While I had my lunch break on the patio at work, he eagerly explained to me about what apps are and what kinds of things he does with his own iTouch when he's not in school or doing homework. He also shared with me at length what he knew about elementary and middle school sports for kids in our area, and which teachers were the best at one of the local schools. All of that information will surely come in handy one of these days, and when we parted ways it was with a big smile and wave.

This morning, as with many others, I ended up chatting for a bit with a passerby while I secured my kayak to the top of the car. This older lady turned out to be a Harvard medical researcher, recently out of work and enjoying her free time playing at the lake with her grand-dog (did not know there was such a thing but there you go). Our conversation explored city vs. rural life, preventive medicine, the importance of doing something you love every single day, and the virtues of pursuing your vocation, no matter how old you may be. The very topics that have been on my mind lately...I drove home feeling renewed inspiration for my path and the motivation to write this post.

So today I encourage you, take a risk and smile at a stranger today. Force yourself to ask them a question to get the conversation rolling. (Nothing too personal, please.) Be willing to answer their questions with more than a simple yes or no. And get ready for your day to become just a little brighter!



Props to my honey for this gorgeous picture of one of our favorite local ponds!



Gazpacho Soup, etc.

In truth - 'cause that's what it's all about, right? - it feels pretty hard to blog this week. Lately I find myself swinging between huge waves of gratitude for all that's well with life, to fairly major feelings of uncertainty and overwhelm. The effects are enervating. All I want to do when I get home in the evening is just lie on the rug with my eyes closed, preferably in silence. Which is pretty hard to come by at our house. And besides, somebody still needs to make dinner.

As for me, the appetite is gone for now, which takes all the fun out of cooking. So this week it's been what I call 'survival cooking' - meals that meet the basic requirements of nutrition and good taste, but nothing approaching the rarefied echelons of what my stepson calls 'a vacation for your mouth.' Oh, he is a funny guy.



So much to be grateful for...if only I can stay focused on it.

Well, perhaps there are some folks reading this who don't feel so much like cooking either. Maybe they would appreciate a few ideas for what to make in 15 minutes or less. After all, at this time of year it is usually well over 105 degrees where I come from and God knows that is no time to be slaving away in the kitchen! So here is a sample offering and then I'm going to force myself to get back on the bicycle. (I do mean that literally - even my triathalon training is taking a hit lately and I really need to get it together if I'm not going to embarrass myself next month!)

Tican platter (oh, to be back in Costa Rica living a carefree existence right now!) - brown rice, refried pinto beans, saute of summer squashes, garlic, onions. Garnished with diced tomato, avocado and lime.

Chips 'n dip (yes, I served my children tortilla chips for dinner) - 1/2 jar salsa, 1 drained can of mashed kidney beans, corn scraped from 1 cob, 1 diced avocado, lime juice, 1/2 cup shredded fresh spinach and some shredded sharp cheddar cheese stirred in.

Cucumber yogurt soup - In a food processor, puree 2 peeled, seeded, chopped cucumbers, 4 cups plain yogurt, 1 pressed garlic clove, a couple spoonfuls of olive oil and a handful of fresh dill and another of fresh mint. Divine. We ate it with a simple spinach salad and garlic toast.

Gazpacho - an approximate recipe is below, since I can't seem to find the basic one I usually start off with right now. I served it with grilled sandwiches stuffed with fresh basil, goat cheese, sauteed onions and zucchini. The kids barely managed choke this meal down but it could have been b/c we ate it at the lake and they were distracted by fun. Next time I'm going to sneak some cannelini beans into the soup and see if anyone notices...

Basic Gazpacho Soup (a traditional version, with bread)

• 1 slice stale artisan bread, soaked in water to cover
• 8 medium tomatoes, chopped
• 2 medium cucumbers, peeled, seeded, chopped
• 1 yellow onion
• 1 stalk celery, sliced
• 1 bell pepper, any color, seeded, chopped
• 2 small cloves garlic
• handful basil leaves
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 4 tbsp balsalmic vinegar
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• salt and pepper to taste

Dump all ingredients in a large food processor and puree for several minutes until relatively smooth.

Garnish with diced avocado, tiny croutons, fresh herbs, etc.



Celebrating Thumbelina's birthday - thank God for children and their natural joyfulness!



Tamales in the 'Shire

Ever feel like you're just hanging around, waiting to see what will happen next in your life? Things aren't necessarily bad, but the whole time you're walking around with this queasy feeling - you can almost sense that a big change is coming and you're not sure if it'll be for the good. Or maybe your life looks kind of like this:

Plenty of room for the wind to blow through, but at least the roof's still on!

And then one day you wake up to find that it now looks like this:



Buh-bye.


Well, maybe I'm over-dramatizing. At least, that's a picture of what life has felt like the past few days, whenever I allowed myself think about things. You know, it's true what they say: thinking is highly overrated.

As usual, I turned to food to take my mind off the harder stuff. Tamales, specifically. And hibiscus tea, but more on that later. Tamales always make me think of my hometown. I'm actually not sure why, since I don't think we really ate them very often growing up, and we definitely didn't make them. But plenty of people did, and sold them frozen by the bag. I bet they still do.

My tamales are always an improvisation. I basically follow the directions on the side of the Maseca bag, but I don't use lard, and I don't fill them with shredded pork. The filling just depends on what I've got lying around the house, and this time, I filled them with....drumroll please... collard greens! And sharp cheddar cheese and pickled jalapenos and carrots. And they were AMAZING!!!

I brought them to a meeting of Dining For Women and the ladies were very pleased. I also made some garlicky black beans in the pressure cooker to spoon over the tamales. Added some avocado, and I'm pretty sure we achieved Mexican food bliss.

Here's how I made them, along with some step-by-step photos since the side of the Maseca bag doesn't include pictures.

Tamales for about 8-10 people:

If you're going to make the same filling I made, the first thing to do is cook the collard greens. Wash them, cut into smallish pieces, then dump into a medium pot with about 2 inches of water in the bottom. Cover, bring to a boil and simmer about 45 minutes. This step is best done ahead of time and here is a warning: while they cook your house will smell a bit like wet dog.

Take a bag of dry corn husks (found in a Mexican grocery) and soak the husks in water in a large bowl. There are usually around 16 husks. While they soak, prepare the tamales.

Mix well:

• 4 cups Maseca or other brand of tamale flour (it's made from corn soaked in lime)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt

Pour in and mix with a spatula or your hands (traditional) to make a soft dough:

• 4 cups lukewarm vegetable broth

In a separate bowl, beat until creamy:

• 1 cup softened butter
• 1/3 cup canola oil

Add the butter mixture to the flour mixture and beat until it's fully incorporated. Set the bowl aside while you finish the filling. To make the filling, you will need the collard greens, plus:

• 2 garlic cloves, pressed
• 1 pound shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese
• 1 small can pickled jalapenos, drained

In a medium skillet, saute the garlic in a bit of olive or canola oil for a minute on medium-low heat:

Add the pre-cooked collard greens (drained well) and stir well with the garlic. Add about 1/4 tsp salt. Cook for about 5-10 minutes until it smells good. Set aside to cool briefly.

Shred the cheese. I like to do this with the food processor to speed things along. Actually, what I do is first puree the jalepenos in the processor, then I just add the cheese a few chunks at a time until it's all shredded.

Remove the cheese from the processor and mix it in a large bowl with the collard greens.

Take a corn husk and lay it down flat. Spoon out maybe 1/3 cup of tamale dough and press down into the center of the husk. Take a large spoonful of filling and flatten it out down the middle. Looks like this:

Take about 1/4 cup of tamale dough and press onto the top of the filling to cover it. Begin to fold the corn husk up on the sides to shape the dough so it will seal in the filling, like this:

Like putting on a baby's diaper. Minus the screaming.

Fold up the sides, then the top and bottom of the corn husk. It will not want to stay closed, so hold it all together with your fingers until you can lay it folded side down in the pot. The pot should be wide, have about an inch of water in the bottom, and have a stainless steel strainer or ideally, one of those collapsible steel vegetable steamers in the bottom so that the tamales won't fall into the water. If you don't have a lid, you will need to use aluminum foil to seal in the steam. Repeat the steps above to make each tamale and keep layering them in the pot (or use two pots if you run out of room) until all the dough and filling is gone.



To bed you go, my sweets!



Turn the heat to high so that the water comes to a boil, then turn down to low with the cover on. The tamales should steam for at least 1-1/2 hours, but I usually do 2 hours since it's a large batch.

Note: When you take them out, the tamales will be very hot. Also, if you try to eat them right away, they will want to fall apart. It's far more satisfying, if you can control yourself, to let them rest for about a half hour in the husks, and then when you open them up the little bundles will be nicely firm and are sure to impress those lucky enough to be dining with you!

And finally, the beverage - hibiscus tea. At least that's what I've always called it - though the label says "Flor de Jamaica" and the tea, which is tart and quite red, bears a very close resemblence to a sweetened drink I enjoyed while traveling in Francophone West Africa (Burkina, Cote d'Ivoire, etc.). That drink was called "bissap", apparently from the bissap flower, whatever that is. Another close cousin to this drink is one that is served hot and highly sweetened in Egypt, where it is actually called hibiscus tea.

Hey, wait! Stop the presses! I looked up bissap on wikipedia just now and would you believe it, it actually is all the same thing! How did I know this? It's astonishing how sometimes you can be talking out of your you-know-what, and you actually do get it right. Wow, I am shocked. Anyway, whatever you call it and however you found out about it, this tea is definitely a perfect drink to go along with your tamales. And I have to say, it's not too bad spiked with vodka or made into a white wine spritzer, either. Cheers!

Socca! + 2 Grain Salads

As someone who deeply appreciates the vast array of edible flavors and textures that abound on this planet, I've learned to pay attention when someone gets really excited about a particular food. Especially when it's vegan and gluten-free. So when I was innocently searching the 'net for a way to (finally) finish off my years-old bag of chickpea flour and ran across a highly enthusiastic blogpost about "socca" on http://chezpim.com/uncategorized/socca_nice, I immediately cleared off the counter and got down to making it.

Never mind that I had never even heard of socca before, despite having spent quality time in the area where it originates. How did I miss this on the streets of Nice, given that its scent while cooking is like melted butter wafting through the air. My oldest daughter described it as the smell of "that unhealthy popcorn that comes in a box at the movies and has fake orange stuff on it but tastes really really good!" - a major compliment. (Clearly, she has picked up my sometime ambivalence about eating healthy, natural food vs. food that has been engineered to appeal to our most basic tastebuds...if you don't believe me just put a peanut butter snickers in front of me and see how long it lasts.)

Our whole family loved socca from the start. We loved it hot and crispy out of the oven. We loved it soft and slightly chewy after it had cooled. We loved it the next day reheated in the toaster oven and even in the microwave. It was good dipped into garlicky yogurt (Greek tzatziki), it was great dipped into salsa, and it was an excellent wrapper for tabbouleh. The taste is like the most delicious buttered corn tortilla fresh off the griddle, but with more protein and no need to use a tortilla press.



Socca - doesn't look like much but is highly, highly yum.



Guess who got the last piece!

If you're still not motivated enough to try making it yourself, just consider how simple the ingredients are: chickpea flour, salt, water, olive oil. All you need is a whisk and a round cake pan. So go ahead, check out the website I mentioned above and give it a try (sorry for no direct link to the page, but I'm trying to clean up a spam issue on the blog - way too many visitors coming from an adult dating site in Russia!). Anyway, you can make a few socca, refrigerate the batter, and make some more another day. Or make a bunch at once and keep them in the fridge for later in the week. Oh, and if you're wondering where the heck to buy chickpea flour, Bob's Red Mill may have it alongside their other specialty flours at the grocery store. But chickpea flour is sure to be even cheaper at Indian food stores, where it's called besan. It stays fresh for a looooong time in the pantry, if my experience is anything to go on.

On the other hand, if you absolutely cannot force yourself to remain in the hot kitchen long enough to cook a batch of socca (and believe me, I understand), here are two lovely cold grain salads that might appeal. One is a tabbouleh recipe from Ina Garten (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/tabbouleh-recipe/index.html). It makes a lot so I usually cut it in half or plan to serve it to a crowd. Love that she includes mint and cucumber - they really brighten up what can otherwise be a dense salad.

Tzatziki, tabbouleh, socca - I think we pretty much covered the Mediterranean on this plate.

The other salad involves quinoa and edamame beans. Quinoa is that high-protein Aztec grain from Peru that became trendy a couple years ago. When cooked, white quinoa always reminds me of embryos but I try not to think about it too much. This salad is loosely based on a popular deli item we have at the store. It's interesting: our customers may be fairly well-heeled and I would presume, well-educated, but obviously no one has ever dared tell them how to say quinoa properly - (keen-wah). I do my best to clear up the matter without making anybody feel embarrassed. They seem to be grateful and order it by the pound.

The way I make this salad is to cook the quinoa early in the morning while I'm making breakfast, then it goes into the fridge until evening. Five minutes to steam the edamame, a quick whisk of the dressing, and a few downstrokes of the knife pulled over whatever greens, herbs and flowers I've harvested from the garden. Voila!



Quinoa and Edamame Salad with nasturtiums, chard, basil

  Quinoa and Edamame Salad

• 1 cup quinoa, well-rinsed in a sieve
• 2 cups water

Bring the water to a boil, add the quinoa and turn down to simmer with the lid on. Cook 13 minutes, then dump the cooked grains into a covered glass dish and refrigerate.

• 1cup frozen edamame (green soybeans)

Steam the edamame according to the package directions. Add to the cooked quinoa.

Optional add-ins, as you like:

• a few large chard or lacinato kale or spinach leaves
• a few green or purple basil leaves or watercress or cilantro
• nasturtium flowers

Sliver and toss with the rest of the salad.

Dressing:

• 1 lime, juiced
• however much lime juice you get, the equivalent amount of extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 tsp salt, more to taste
• fresh ground pepper, or red chili flakes

Whisk together and pour over salad, then toss well before serving cold or at room temperature.

Happy Eating! Socca! (I just love saying it. I think it's going to be my new "Cheers!" when we toast.)



Gratuitious picture of the big birthday girl! (yes, we had to use matches for candles this time - not recommended)



Choco Pudding + Muumuu Mishmash

Still not a whole lotta cooking going on in these parts... this happens to me every summer. It's ironic - all this fresh produce piling up in the fridge and I simply can't be bothered to spend much time in the kitchen. Instead we've been swimming in our local pond, attending the many free cultural events here in the Berkshires, reading long books and just generally hanging out. Oh yeah, plus there's that little triathalon thing I've been trying to get ready for. Thank goodness for the exta long days of summer!

View from the Kripalu footpath to the Stockbridge Bowl



Relaxing in front of Norman Rockwell's studio



With little cooking going on, it seems that one thing we've been eating fairly regularly is cold chocolate pudding. Which I don't feel toooo bad about, considering the only ingredients are tofu and chocolate chips. Yes, you read right: 2 ingredients. And it's so easy to make: first you dump one of those boxes of silken tofu (Mori-Nu is the brand I usually see at most grocery stores) into a food processor. Puree it until creamy, then add 3/4 cup melted chocolate chips and puree some more. Yum, yum - layered with whipped cream, or fresh berries, bananas, peanut butter, fresh mint, or in a pie crust... This recipe is not my invention and honestly, I don't even remember who first told me about it, but show up at any vegan potluck and I guarantee you there will be tofu chocolate pudding. It's just one of those axioms of life.



About 15 lbs of berries. Every year, we vow to pick even more - they are so good!



Well, as I said I haven't been in the kitchen much, but I have been spending plenty of time in the cool basement of our house since we don't have air conditioning. The basement has become our family's all-purpose creative space - it's where we've set up the workshop, craft table, painting easel, sewing machine, etc. So after a few days of staring at all the sewing projects I've had piled up since wintertime, I finally got up the courage to tackle The Muumuu.

Originally, I picked up this vintage dress because of its huge, Georgia O'Keefe-like flowers on a neon orange background. Wowie zowie!!! Also, it's 100% cotton, is from my favorite decade ('60s) and was made in Hawaii! But as much as I loved its potential, I'd been avoiding The Muumuu because I was afraid I'd make something dumb out of it and waste that lovely fabric.



The Muumuu:
Business in the front...



Party in the back.
Seriously, what's with the extra fabric layer??







It was at the point where I thought I would just to open it up and make big throw pillows, but thankfully at the last minute I had another inspiration instead. With just a little creativity, a lot of time spent communing with my seam ripper, and the patience to conquer two of my long-time sewing fears (installing garment zippers and gathering), I managed to transform one problematic dress into three cute ones! So the girls and I now have matching outfits. Cheesy, I know, but they are thrilled to be matchy matchy and I am (mostly) able to swallow my embarrassment at attracting extra attention in public.

Next time I promise to have more to offer in the way of summer recipes. Somebody's got to use up all these vegetables! Hope you're enjoying these hot days and taking advantage of all that summer has to offer.