butter-toasted oatmeal with sticky apple topping

My grandmother held to a few very strong superstitions. I'm not sure why- it didn't really make sense with her personality. But two of her superstitious maxims have clung to me, no matter how hard I try to shake them. The first is that you should never EVER sleep with your feet towards the door of a room. She would always say that that was the way you would leave the room on your last day, so you better not tempt it. I try to tell myself that I don't hold to this, but really, between you and me, I have been known to shift a bed to the diagonal in the middle of the night because her warnings are keeping me a little bit awake.
The second one is a bit lighter in nature. She would always say that if you could keep the peel whole as you skinned an entire apple, that was just about the luckiest thing that could happen to you in the kitchen.

This morning I dragged my still sick but getting better self out of bed to make something exciting for breakfast. Sadie's wheat free-ness always puts a challenge on the fancy Sunday breakfast choices, so when I saw this lovely oatmeal in the new Gourmet cookbook, I decided this would be just the thing.

Yes, we eat a fair amount of oatmeal around here, always steel cut oats, and always in the slow cooker. It works, and it keeps everyone going, but it's not exciting, and it's certainly not fancy Sunday material.
Oh, ho, except this one uses... ready for this?...just a tad short of an entire stick of butter for four servings. I actually threw in that last tablespoon of butter out of laziness, and I think we all were better for it. So a stick, a stick of butter! De-licious.
I knew that I was making the right recipe, because even though it was 7:30 on a Sunday morning and I hadn't had a sip of coffee yet, I got the entire peel of that first Mutsu apple off in one piece. Those Mutsus are big apples, and I figure this is extra lucky.
Before I give you the recipe, I must admit one more thing. The recipe calls for half-and-half, but I had none. What I did have, however, was some of Paul's raw cream from this week. I don't think this can even be classified as heavy cream. It goes into some other territory- let's just call it heaven.


But you go on ahead and use half-and half. This will still be the best damn oatmeal you've ever had.


Butter-Toasted Oatmeal with Sticky Apple Topping
from Gourmet Today
serves 4

For the oatmeal:
2 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup steel cut oats
4 1/2 cups boiling water
1/4 teaspoon salt

For the topping:
1/2 stick unsalted butter (or throw in that last chunk if you're lazy)
2 Gala or Fuji apples (I used Mutsu), peeled, cored, and cut lengthwise into 1/4 inch-thick slices
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup half and half (or heaven if you can get your hands on it)

Make the oatmeal:
Heat butter in a 3-quart heavy saucepan over moderate heat until foam subsides. Add oats and cook, stirring, until oats are pale golden and have a nutty fragrance, about 4 minutes. Carefully add boiling water and salt and boil, stirring occasionally, until oats swell and oatmeal thickens slightly, about 10 minutes. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until oatmeal is soft and thickened, about 20 to 30 minutes. Keep it low and check on it often- you don't want to burn the bottom.
Meanwhile, make the topping:
Melt butter in a heavy skillet over moderately high heat. Add apples and cook, stirring occasionally, until they begin to brown. Reduce heat to moderate, add brown sugar and salt, and cook, stirring gently, until sugar is melted. Simmer topping until apples are very tender and almost translucent, about 15 minutes. Stir in half-and half and simmer until thickened, about 5 minutes.
Serve the topping over the oatmeal.

unravelling

Wow. Some of the comments around here the last few days are just leaving me, well, speechless. I want to thank you with everything I have, and to offer you something, anything in return. But besides an open invitation to my table (you know you've got that, right?) I guess I'll have to stick to what I've got to work with (a wooden spoon and a camera), and I'll just say that this week I'm going to give you some really excellent recipes this week. I promise.

But not today.
Today I'm sick. No swine flu or anything like that, but just sick enough to keep my butt in bed while Joey takes the girls to dance class, takes the girls to birthday parties. Yes, I'm milking it a bit, but he lets me and I think that's very good of him.
But no cooking today. Dinner will probably be something involving cheese melted on something made of corn, and I don't even have a back stock of photographed recipes (except Onion soup, but I'm saving that for a day when I really need it).

I do have something I want to tell you about, though. You see, I haven't been entirely forthcoming. Yes, there have been all sorts of wonderful things going on involving life and careers and trying to be brave. But I have had a secret weapon in my back pocket that I haven't told you about. It's called Unravelling. Ways of Seeing My Self.

Susannah Conway leads these courses a few times a year, and through writing and photography exercises, she gives people a shot at trying to figure out what they might want to be working on, and how they might want to go about it.

She is a truly lovely woman. Just being able to interact with Susannah makes this course pretty wonderful, but one aspect of it that I am finding to be so powerful is the community that has grown from it. There are about 135 students from all over the world, all coming from different lives and situations.
I have, at many times in the course wished that I was participating more fully. Sometimes the writing assignments don't happen, or I feel resistant to a particular photo assignment. I hear all of the tales of other students "unravelling" and I chastise myself for never fully delving into anything.
But I'm over half way through, and when I look at what has happened in the last few weeks I have to laugh at my thoughts that I am not fully participating.
This class has been a major factor in my risk taking lately, and I have delved in so much that my life has actually shifted since the opening class- not only in my work, but my general outlook, and most of all, my courage. I have actually found a way to slow my pace enough to look around me, and I wasn't sure if that could ever be possible at the speed I was moving.


So that's it. That's the whole story. It's not a secret weapon anymore. In fact, if it draws you at all, I'd get yourself signed up for the next one.

lemon rice pudding

I'm always fascinated by the flavors that people are drawn to. I think that there must be a direct correlation between one's personality and their favorite tastes.

When I was three, my mother walked on on me finishing off an entire jar of pepperoncini peppers- I think she might of stopped me before I drank the juice. I'm not quite sure what that says about me, but I'm sure it says something. Or maybe it was just that I was so excited to find something to eat besides brown rice and adzuki beans. (Let's remember that I came from a house where we called the crispy part of the fried egg "bacon" and ate vitamin C's as candy).

I often know what I want to eat because I can already taste it in my mouth. Sometimes the quality and the sensation of that desired taste is so palpable that I am half mad until I actually eat it. Often the flavor has something to do that mystical citrus, the lemon.

I am a lemon lover. I know many are not, but I love lemons with every taste bud I have. I squeeze lemon into my chicken soup, I dress my salads with lemon, and I'll eat a whole pan of lemon squares if there is no one around to share them. But most of all I love lemon peel.

I love how the peel has so little to do with the lemon. It has no sourness, only a rich hint of bitter mixed with a whole lot of fancy. When I read Laurie Colwin's piece on lemon rice pudding, I became a bit monomaniacal. Her essays tend to do that to me these days.

This is the easiest rice pudding you will ever make. Our friends Jordan and Quinby were visiting from Virginia with their lovely blond children, and as I stirred the chicken soup before their arrival, the pudding cooked away in the oven.
It did not disappoint. The lemon rind infused the very grains of rice, and the creaminess was exactly right. It was perfect.

For me, that is.

Joey grimaced with his first bite- then slowly worked through his little bowl, delicately removing the little moons of half dissolved lemon peel. Sadie had one bite and demanded ice cream. Jordan asked if I wouldn't be offended if he added a bit of maple syrup.

And of course I wasn't. I was too busy being in heaven. Rosie closed her eyes with every bite, and cleaned her bowl. Quinby ate her's and her children's with a happy sigh. "Ah Lemon."

So be warned, this might not be a crowd pleaser. But if you are at all like me, this will please you, and that's good enough.

Lemon Rice Pudding
from Jane Grigson's Good Things, made irresistible by Laurie Colwin in More Home Cooking, and slightly adapted by me

serves 6-8

• 1/2 cup basmati rice
  
• 2 lemons
• 3 cups whole milk
• 1 cup half and half
• 3 Tablespoons sugar

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. Peel the lemons with a vegetable peeler, taking care not to include any of the white pith. When you have a nice pile of peel, take your knife to it and chop roughly. Set the naked lemons aside.
Wash the rice. Put the rice, chopped lemon peel, milk, cream and sugar into a large casserole. Bake for 2 1/2 hours, stirring every 45 minutes or so. When it is done, add the juice of the lemons. Serve warm, or chill, depending on your patience.

delicata

When I was eighteen, I dropped out of school and moved to San Francisco to be depressed. It's a good city for depression. I had family out there, and I lived in their basement, worked at a famous restaurant, and ate a lot of chocolate.
My cousin and I decided to take Italian lessons. We found a man who was willing to meet us once a week and speak slow Italian words through his large yellow teeth. His name was Gianluca, and he enjoyed our lessons quite a bit more than I did. My cousin was a painter, in her mid twenties, with long painterly hair and velvety pants. Gianluca would perk up when he saw her, and we would all sit in the park, conjugating verbs, the Italian man, the painter, and the depressed waitress.
I finally left San Francisco, and I never learned any Italian. I ended up in Venice a few months later and I had to win back my puking girlfriend's passport from the police with improvisational movement. It worked out okay. But I have never forgotten the sound of those lessons. Gianluca with his ANDIAMO! and Colette echoing andiamo! Magical language, and any word in Italian bears repeating over and over.

Delicata. Delicata. Delicata.
Probably my favorite of the winter squashes. Not so much of a winter squash really, but more of a fall squash. It wont last as long as your butternut and acorn, because, well, it's so...


delicata.
The delicata has edible skin. You can, of course, stuff it with lovely things, but I'm going to suggest that you just make delicata chips.


We eat these at least once a week through the fall. I've been wanting to tell you about them forever, but it's always dark when I go to take their beauty shot. But today, I made them in the afternoon, just for you.
delicata. delicata. delicata.



Delicata Chips
serves 4-6

3 or 4 medium delicata squash, washed, ends cut off, halved lengthwise, seeds dug out, cut into 1/4 to 1/2 inch slices
3 Tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss the delicata slices with olive oil, salt and pepper. Place in a single layer on an oiled tray and cook for 20-25 minutes, shuffling occasionally, until brown spots appear. Finish with fancy salt, if you've got it around.

risk

Some people wait to have children until everything is secure. They have their graduate degrees, their 401 K, their house and their habits. That's not how I did it, so I guess I can't step into those shoes, but I'd imagine that progression might feel safe in some way. With that schedule, there is time to read the parenting books before the egg is even fertilized, and of course you take infant CPR before the baby arrives.
But I'd go so far as to say that I've never met someone who was truly prepared to become a parent. No matter how complete your check list might be, I'd venture that you, like the rest of us, will have your ass kicked by your transition into parenthood. Deciding to bring a human into the world is one hell of a risk.

I'm a girl who really likes her safety. I don't let the credit card get out of control, and all of you who know me in the real world are aware of how hard it is to get me to drive on a snowy road.

But I've been thinking a lot about risk lately. I keep running into people who are doing the bravest things. I'm so impressed. It makes me feel a little bit more courageous.

It's hard to pull me out of my warm kitchen, and I get down on myself for it. I think, come on Alana, take a risk, for once.

And then I think about the early New Mexico night, a little over seven years ago, when I walked around the block from the Planned Parenthood, utterly stunned, with my boyfriend Joey. We were a month or two past our college graduation, and the world was as wide as the sky. It was summer, and at that moment we walked down Onate St., completely different people than we had been ten minutes ago.

"Okay. Let's do this then."

And that was it. We went to the mall and played video games for two hours before we called our parents. Somehow the only thing to do was to shoot aliens for a while. It made sense then, and it makes sense now, knowing what we were in for.

But although we weren't prepared, we made a choice, and I'd say that that was a risk if ever I saw one.

I'm starting to think that the heart of risk taking is vulnerability, and that the decision to become a parent might just be the clearest example of bringing that vulnerability on. But it doesn't stop there. Once Sadie, and then Rose came into my life, there was so much more to lose, and just walking down the street started to seem a little risky.

Over the last couple of months, I've been working on my risk taking skills. I speak up when I wouldn't normally. I let the kids go out in the cold morning without a hat, sometimes. Little risks, I know, but have patience with me.

Sadie started a lot of this, that night on Onate street. And I try to respect that- and to see that I better be someone who can show her that it's a good thing to take a chance. I know that safety has its place, but my life is not it. At least not right now.

So I'm thinking that my warm kitchen might actually be the riskiest place to be after all. I've given notice at my job, and I'm going to jump in to this thing that seems to make me so happy.

And to you, I confess that something has changed. It's taken me a few weeks to admit this, but if I can't tell you, who can I tell? Writing this is a bit terrifying, but in my own mind, without apologies or statements starting with "but", I'm calling myself a writer. A writer who writes about food.

Thank you. More food tomorrow, I promise.

italian meatballs

What is it about the meatball that makes everyone happy?
Or is it just my family?
Or, most of it, at least.

Just for the record, she came around on that one. It was the magical evening moment, the one where there is not enough noodles in the bowl, and then all of a sudden, "I didn't want sauce!"

Let's just get this out of the way. I really believe in family dinner time. It is a foundation of our little crew around here. Maybe it's a result of my non-traditional upbringing, but I've gone way over to the other side. We sit together, we eat, we talk about our day.

Oh, no, wait, actually, we sit together, we cry, we whine, we want milk instead of water, we lose our temper, we meow under the table.

Must....hold....on...to...family.....dinner.



I know, I know- I'm talking about meatballs. These meatballs are like little herb-y pillows of heaven. They go in the oven, they go on spaghetti. They go in the belly. Done.


And in case you were wondering, yes, we have a really good kind of gluten free spaghetti- so good in fact, that it's all that we eat around here.



The meatballs are not gluten free, but in addition wheat-y egg-y meatballs, I made ten little balls without the bread and egg, and they were lovely, and actually did make the big one happy. She requested that I show you how happy she really was. Until something or other happened.
Oh, dinner. Maybe we should stop eating after lunch.


Italian Meatballs
from Alice Waters, The Art of Simple Food
makes 4-6 servings

• 1 pound ground beef
• 3/4 pound ground pork shoulder (you can also use all beef if that is all that is available)
• 1 cup torn up pieces of day old bread, crusts removed
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 small yellow onion, grated on a box grater
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves, pressed
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano (or 1 teaspoon dried)
• 1 tablespoon chopped parsley
• a pinch of cayenne
• 1 egg lightly beaten
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan
• salt
• freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees
Season the meat with salt and pepper. Soak the bread in the milk and set aside.
Add the grated onion, olive oil, garlic, herbs, egg and Parmesan to the meat. When the bread is soft and saturated, drain the milk and add the bread to the meat. Mush the mixture with your hands, gently, gently.
Fry a little meatball in a small skillet and taste. Adjust seasonings if needed.
Shape the meatballs into small balls and place on a rimmed baking sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until cooked through. Eat on pasta, in a little sandwich, or right off the tray.

roasted cauliflower

Yes, I know, I know, more roasted vegetables?

But I didn't include this one last time, mostly because it is so special, you should eat it all by itself.
And it's all I've got.
Things have been a little crazy around here. And one of the byproducts of this craziness has been me, sitting with my head in my hands at the kitchen counter, muttering, "What the hell do I feed you guys?"
I have been known to cry over cookbooks. I am that dramatic when I lose my inspiration.
Joey jumps on it... "Let's go out for pizza!"
But no- our shelves are busting with bounty that I cannot combine, and what would Miss wheat-free eat at the pizza place?
These are the times when I spend too much at the store and come back home feeling like my bags are filled with nothing. I plan meals, I write shopping lists, but I still get stuck. Isn't there a pill for this?

But there are moments of clarity. I escaped the hurricane that was my house on Saturday (Sadie was the eiffel tower!) and went to the last farmer's market of the season. I only had eyes for the cauliflower. I went for the buttery white, but oh, the riches that poured out of the baskets. Did you know that a brassica could be this beautiful?


Almost indecent, don't you think?
Cauliflower gets a bad rap, but roasted, you could almost give it out to trick or treaters. It becomes sweet and tender, and buttery. It needs nothing but a little salt and pepper, but some are partial to cumin seed, which is also quite lovely.
Maybe you've roasted cauliflower, maybe you know. But if you haven't, it's easy. Preheat your oven to 400. Cut the cauliflower into florets by chopping the end of the stem off. Toss in a bowl with a touch of olive oil, a scatter of salt and pepper, and a bit of cumin seed if you wish. Spread on an oiled tray in the upper part of the oven. Roast for 20-30 minutes, shuffling the cauliflower around from time to time. The florets will become a bit caramelized, and the brown spots are the sweetest.