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We All Know the Muffin Lady

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I don’t feel like leaving the house today (I am between banks and also the victim of debit card fraud, so I have been unable to spend money or do errands for 2 weeks. This has given me permission to do nothing but putter at home, when not at work, since leaving the house = spending money.) I happen to have the ingredients for that “hippy breakfast cake” you mentioned in your post, so I decided to give it a try. Normally, I would be baking muffins today. I typically make 6-10

A Muffin Man, 1759

jumbo “health muffins” every weekend. I told Sam recently I was getting a bit weary of muffin making, so let’s buy some instead. He was indignant and said, “but I married the Muffin Lady!” (No, we didn’t get married, don’t worry. We just lack a vocabulary, it seems, for talking about partnerships that aren’t marriage. Like, “that’s why I’m dating the Muffin Lady” just doesn’t capture almost 11 years, three cats, mothers,

TV dinners, laundry, etc. I’m guessing you can relate!) But today I branched out to try the cake. I tackled the challenge of lack of rise (I tend to dislike very dense cakes and tortes) by adding 1/2 teaspoon baking soda and 2 teaspoons baking powder. It got enough rise, though is still far from fluffy. I also omitted the maple syrup, as you said, but I replaced it with a small container of applesauce and a splash of sweetened soy milk. Instead of pears I put 2 cups of whole frozen cherries (pears and cherries, IMO, play equally nicely with almond). The result tastes…healthy! My sweet tooth is at its most

demanding at breakfast, mostly because there is nothing I like more than coffee and pastry. (I have fantasies of traveling to Vienna just to sit around eating coffee and cake all day for a week. It is my understanding that that’s what the Viennese do with their time?) As you said, I swapped out 1 cup of the almond flour for 1/2 cup hemp seeds and 1/2 cup flax meal. I think I overbaked it a little, but the cake tastes a bit eggy to me. (I love eggs but hate egginess. I’m reminded of a Jim Gaffigan routine about hating fish. “What’s the best compliment you can give a fish? It’s to say that it’s not fishy.”) No matter, a nice pile of jam hides the eggy and it’s very satisfying and breakfasty. And good with coffee! Next time, I will add some sugar/agave/maple (whatever the hippies say, all sweeteners are just sugar to our pancreas).

The reason I constantly make muffins is because they are just so easy to freeze and reheat for weekday breakfasts. (I have a 1 hour commute, which means I’m up before the sun most days.) I just pop them out of my jumbo silicone muffin mold and pack them in freezer bags, to be retrieved and warmed as needed. The two I have on rotation right now are Modified Morning Glory and Banana Chocolate Chip. For the former, I swap out 60g of the flour for plant-based protein powder, omit the honey, decrease sugar to 1/4 cup, and add sunflower seeds. For the latter, I swap out 1/4 cup of flour for protein powder, decrease sugar to 1/4 cup, increase banana by 1/2 cup, double the baking powder, and add a generous pour of dark chocolate chips. (For my last batch I added chopped salted peanuts, too. Recommend!) I’m thinking of trying chocolate muffins next, which I’ve never attempted, and giving another go to savory muffins. (A summer favorite was cheddar, zucchini, scallion, and dill. I feel like winter squash and cheese might work?) The Muffin Lady never rests!

Brick House

mashastreLeave a comment

Dear C –

My mother is visiting and she mused, in the context of a cooking conversation, “I think I’ve been chopping things too finely.” For me, who ever toiled away under her constant exhortations to mince finer! finer! this was like the pope declaring that he might be too Catholic.

We have been eating out some – sharing the pleasures of a pot of tea or a cappuccino at the café nearby, its courtyard filled with Anna’s hummingbirds drinking from the many salvia and abutilon planted along its edges. It also features the pictured avocado tree, with the solitary pictured avocado, as yet unravaged by the many resident squirrels. And I introduced her to xiao long bao and momo. One can never have too many friends in the dumpling family.

If she gets around to it, she’ll make sambusa baraki with pumpkin/squash and pomegranate filling. We found the puff pastry dough she likes. I need to ask her why she likes this particular one, and to remind myself of the difference between puff pastry and phyllo dough.

Speaking of baking, I ask your advice: I like making a breakfast pastry that’s a hippie version of this cake. I skip the maple syrup and keep it unsweetened except for the fruit and maybe a tablespoon of jam if I have some lying around; and I replace a cup of the almond flour with a mix of hemp and chia seeds and some flax meal. I might throw in some yogurt of something of the sort to replace the syrup. Although it comes out fairly moist it is soooo dense. Any tips towards lightening it up?

I made a shakshuka this morning and with the rainy weather I’m thinking about a batch of this lentil soup that I love. What’s on your mind and your stove these days?

Much love and happy almost 2024.

Yours –

M.

P.S. I remembered what caused my mother to acknowledge that her motto of the finer the mince the closer to god might be flawed. We were invited to dinner at a friend’s home. My friend is an excellent and inventive cook (case in point: her secret ingredient in a delightfully velvety lentil soup? Pickle juice!). She’d made a salad of roasted beets with homemade ricotta and the beets were particularly lovely – they impressed even my mother, who, despite her E. European origins, or maybe because of them, has a wary relationship with that ruby-colored root. Our hostesses roasted beets were not too finely cut – maybe 2″x1″ and – here’s what I think was the kicker: she’d peeled and chopped them while raw, marinated them in some olive oil left over from a jar of oil-packed chevre, and then roasted them at, if I remember correctly, 400. They were divinely on the edge between earthy and caramelly.

slouching towards pescetarianism

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Dear M –

Sorry for the hideous lag in my response–having a new full-time job and no longer working from home…it’s like I’m relearning how to be an adult. It seems being an adult means commuting for many hours each day, running to Costco at odd hours, and spending weekends doing chores and buying cat food. You know…glamour. But your culinary letter brought me immense joy. One of my recent weekend chores was clearing out decades of accumulated papers…I found so many letters from the 1990s, including a treasure trove from you! I forgot what devoted letter writers we used to be, before internet killed the radio star. So, this letter of yours brought me immense joy. Speaking of glamour and adulting: toilets. That must have been immensely satisfying, to do some plumbing and have good results. I once tried to replace the plumbing under my mom’s sink…it ended in hilarious, soggy disaster and a plumber had to undo my work. So, applause to you my dear! Sometimes being an adult is fun.

It’s OK to eat fish, because they don’t have any feelings.
– Nirvana, “Something in the Way”

Your chipotle soup creation sounds delicious, and I just so happen to have all of the ingredients on hand right this very moment, except for corn and chickpeas. Some diced sweet potato could add some starch, and I’ll eat it with corn tortillas! I also don’t have garlic scapes (I think I’ve probably never bought a garlic scape?) but I have the decidedly less sexy flat-leaf parsley. I’m currently doing a mass of recipe testing for a cookbook judging thing I’m doing, and am about to cook about 15 vegan recipes…I’m actually eager to try that, as I’ve never even tried to cook vegan, so it feels like exploring a new land. I have gradually cut back my meat consumption, probably by about 70%, over the last 2 years, for purely emotional reasons. (Though I totally disagree with Kurt, as fish most certainly have feelings. They are just fishy feelings, and therefore harder to read.) I made the new years resolution in 2019 to be a pescetarian, and I lasted exactly 2 weeks. Since then, I would characterize my journey as “slouching towards pescetarianism”… Anyway, for my job I have to eat everything, so I can never be too concrete about it. However, the joy has been discovering new ways to eat and new conceptions of “main dish.” This has meant fun times with tofu and tempeh, and many, many beans. I discovered that I love dal and make it constantly. This Mitti Handi Dal is my current fav, though lentils never let me down either. Another nice beany discovery: pinto beans, sautéed Swiss chard, cheddar cheese, rice, in a burrito. I’ve made some big lima beans and mashed them with garlic oil and lemon, or baked them with a Greek tomato sauce with dill and feta like a lasagna. I’m currently experimenting with soy curls, a weird and confusing invention out of Oregon. (They have a decidedly chickeny vibe.) Anyway, here’s a pretty yummy bean burger I developed for a bean-recipe contest. Next time you have a neglected can of chipotles hanging out in your fridge!

  • Cooking spray
  • 1 15-ounce can aduki beans (or substitute red kidney beans), rinsed and well drained.
  • ½ cup finely chopped red bell pepper
  • ½ cup finely chopped onion
  • 1 garlic clove, pressed or minced
  • ¾ cup unseasoned breadcrumbs
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 1 ½ teaspoons ground cumin
  • 1 ½ teaspoons chipotle in adobo (or 1 tablespoon if you like very spicy burgers!)
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 4-6 ounces sliced smoked cheddar or mozzarella
  • 4-6 burger buns
  • 1 cup arugula, packed
  • ¾ cup crispy onions

    BBQ Burger Sauce:
  • 6 tablespoons mayonnaise (light or regular)
  • 3 tablespoons bottled or homemade BBQ sauce
  • 1 ½-2 teaspoons chipotle in adobo
  1. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Coat a baking sheet (1/2 sheet, 13”x18”) with cooking spray and set aside.
  2. Place the beans in a medium-sized mixing bowl and mash thoroughly with a fork. There should be no whole beans, but don’t overmash or it will be gluey.
  3. Stir in the bell pepper, onion, garlic, breadcrumbs, egg, cumin, chipotle, and salt. The mixture should be evenly mixed with no dry spots.
  4. Divide the mixture into 4 (or 6) equal sized balls. For small burger buns (2 ounces each), make 6 patties. For larger buns (3-4 ounces each), make 4 patties. Use your hands to mash and press the balls into smooth patties that stick together. (You may want to wet your hands if the mixture is sticking to them!)
  5. Place the patties on the baking sheet and spray the tops lightly with cooking spray.
  6. Bake until the burgers are firm to the touch but not dry, and have reached an internal temperature of 165°F, 12-18 minutes. In the last 3-5 minutes of baking, top the patties with the cheese slices and put the buns in the oven to toast.
  7. When ready to serve, spread sauce (about 2 tablespoons, or to taste) on the buns and top with a patty, fried onions, and arugula. Serve immediately.

BBQ Burger Sauce:

  1. In a small bowl, stir the sauce ingredients together until smooth. Sauce can be made up to 3 days in advance and stored in a jar in the refrigerator.

Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons

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My Dear C –

I think you would be better served having our former classmate Darrell as your epistolary blog mate. He keeps posting fascinating foodstuffs he is making that I have to look up. Just this week I think – soubise, tangzhong, and tepache.

Soubise is apparently a French sauce made of onions, butter, and cream – Darrell noted Caramelized onion soy “butter”! From Calvin Eng’s “Salt, Sugar, MSG” cookbook. Really more of a sobuise sauce…so good! He made a rye tangzhong. I had to look it up on Wikipedia and to be honest I still don’t quite get what it is. It’s a roux/gel that makes bread more tender? Tepache is a traditional Mexican fermented beverage, often pineapple-based. That I get.

On that note – my mother made beet-based kvass when I was visiting her. At a farmer’s market foray, she’d bought this quite pricy and delicious tonic and had the inspiration to make her own. She skipped the spices, for better or worse, but it’s still tasty although less concentrated for sure. She basically applied the pickling concept to create it. But I found this recipe that looked good to me, partly because it uses whey – which is great if you make your own farmer’s/cottage cheese, because you’ve got a built in use for that nutritious stuff. I will try my hand at it.

I discovered that all the pickles I’d made last year didn’t get eaten – they just got hoarded and languished in their own brine at the back of the fridge. Super sad. I bought some pickling cucumbers (dubiously fresh) at a Russian store over the weekend and shoved them into the old brine to try to redeem this. We shall see.

Did I tell you I found a Magic Bullet on the street? With 6 containers. I used it to make a pesto yesterday. It’s – excessively smooth. But I used the analogous thing – that my mother found on the street by her house – to make a nicoise dressing and it was quite lovely. I put in a ton of basil and parsley and garlic and spring onion and olive oil and it was delicious.

Trader Joe’s canned tuna in olive oil in full effect. And the first good tomatoes of the season. Plus green beans that I had already made into a salad with a fancy white wine vinegar and shallot dressing.

Back at home the tomatoes aren’t yet ready. But I did get some Japanese eggplant and sweet peppers and zucchini – and picked some makrut lime leaves off a tree nearby – and made a lovely curry. I marinated very firm tofu in red thai curry with a little aminos and soy and rice vinegar.

Sautéed onions in avocado oil – threw in the 4 lime leaves, added the sliced eggplant when the onions were translucent, then a few sliced cloves of garlic and the marinated tofu, followed by the sliced peppers and then the sliced zucchini when everything seemed near cooked. Finally a bit of coconut milk (I had half a can moldering in the fridge – once I took off the bad bits it was probably 1/3 cup or less). Truly one of my better efforts. Despite the overcooked basmati rice on the side. I still haven’t learned to cook rice.

I am feeling like a damaged lemon, hence the title (courtesy of Blonde Redhead).

Much love –

M.

The Asparagus Song

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6/22/25

My Dear C –

I am back in the place we met. I used to not like coming down here because life is organized entirely around eating and now I like coming down here because life is organized entirely around eating.

I drove down yesterday with my mum – well, she drove us down, going 90 on the 5 in her Prius. Good to see so many yuccas pointing their waxy fairy asparagus candelabra blooms up out of the hills of chaparral south of the Grapevine.

On the way we listened to Long Island Compromise – a novel I thoroughly enjoyed but my mother found lacking so far in humanity (the Beemer character maybe doesn’t speak to her). Todd Solondz’s Happiness is showing at the Aero this evening and we are not going to see it. Too much humanity?

As time came to consider dinner, my old post-road-trip standby of a steak and bottle of red wine came to mind. After getting dropped off home I’d make my way to the Safeway open late on Mission and get a steak and cook it — in my cast iron pan on that gorgeous gargantuan O’Keefe & Merritt stove with its built-in porcelain salt and pepper shakers that spelled PS — and enjoy it alone. A return deserves a reward.

Yesterday we pulled off into Whole Foods and I got a rib eye and some young potatoes. I don’t cook steak much and less on this electric cooktop, so it’s a challenge to get the sear right and also cook it through just enough but not too much. I damaged my mother’s Le Creuset cast iron pan in the past overheating it to get the sear. Turns out you don’t have to go so high heat to get a good sear. It’s more about patience, perhaps.

Added whole young garlic cloves- sautéing gently in the fat at the side of the pan. And the young potatoes I first boiled and then poured off the water to steam them and seal in the flavor – I don’t understand this but it makes potatoes taste like butter. I suppose they’re less watery. Made myself martinis and should have kept it singular.

Oh got some French asparagus and instead of snapping off the bottoms, shaved them and when the steak was done, sautéed some shallot in the fat and added the asparagus and later a bit of red wine for the spears to simmer in. Finished with lemon and salt. Turned out well. Deglazed the pan with more red wine for a bit of sauce. One of my favorite ways to cook asparagus. (Usually I do just snap off the very bottom stem and use it in a stock.)

Tried my hand at compound butter. A bit of marjoram in the fridge that needed using – I tried to massage it into some butter from the freezer. Eventually somewhat successful and excellent on the steak.

Today – the farmer’s market. Green beans, the first tomatoes, the last of the pickling cucumbers, green garlic (still, amazingly, available), strawberries, delphiniums & lilies, mint, basil, Italian olives. A loaf of Jyan Isaac seeded sourdough and a conversation about “crumb” at the dinner table.

I’d driven down some very neglected (moldy on the outside) artichokes and wilty spinach and got those into decent shape here. Steamed the artichokes with the stems (which I love but are too fibrous for my mother) and served with garlic butter.

The spinach I put into a polenta. I’m finally getting a handle on those Italian starches, now that I’ve got a good relationship with risotto and made this polenta, which was…. extraordinarily satisfying. I think I used this as a concept and used a random stock my mother sitting in the freezer as the base, which was maybe made from asparagus? It had a very deep, complex flavor that I couldn’t quite place. After it stopped needing constant attention, I started throwing things in – first, some of tomatoes (not quite sweet enough raw but excellent cooked), the remains of the compound butter, and at the end – spinach, basil. It was like summer and comfort food got married and I got to officiate.

Steak sliced next day, with asparagus, olives, the artichokes and garlic butter, the potatoes and the polenta and a green bean salad – more on that last next time.

Much Love –

M.

PS I couldn’t figure out how to link it in the title, so here’s a link to Yo La Tengo’s The Asparagus Song

They Say It’s Spring

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My Dear C –

I’m sitting in a tank top and looking at some lovely redi-ish tulips I bought at Trader Joe’s. Yesterday I heard the ethereal song of my first Swainson’s Thrush of the year – so it’s past spring here now. One of the cats is passed out next to the flowers, her paw hung over the edge of the table, lethargic from what we call heat around here.

Just a couple weeks ago, I happened to be passing through the Ferry Plaza in San Francisco – spilling over with pea blossoms and berries and asparagus and lilacs. The market here by me has been – underwhelmingly un-springy.

I wonder what your CSA has this time of year? Never mind – I can just look on their site! Mmm – fennel. That’s a vegetable I changed my mind about as an adult. I used to find it unbearably anise-y in flavor and – also – overused, I suppose. I think there was a period when it was in everything fancy. Not that I was eating fancy, was I? But now perhaps my taste buds have dulled and also it’s no longer the annoyingly ubiquitous darling it was in the early 90s (?). I want to say 80s, though.

Probably 80s. Not that my mother cooked with it, so where would I have been eating it? I wasn’t soire-ing at Star’s, though I can still picture their ad from the NYT of my childhood – I remember it featuring a sketch of an impossibly lanky woman with big hair swirling all around her, and the restaurant’s name in a sophisticated serif script above her head…. I wonder if that’s an accurate recollection. I was fascinated by it.

Once as a kid I was staying over with my mother’s friends in Noe Valley for a couple days, in their Victorian in what was a very different neighborhood than it is now– and they told me they were taking me to Star’s and I got so excited. It turned out they were referring to the bakery down the street famous for its Irish Soda Bread. Star Bakery opened in 1899 and closed in 1998. Jeremiah Towers’ Star’s closed in 1999.

In my short stint as a professional cook, I did learn to make and sort of enjoy fennel braised in orange juice. It was quite a popular appetizer. But then – bread pudding was a popular dessert. So that says a lot about the patrons’ tastes.

The thought of a fancy dinner out used to thrill me. I racked up a lot of debt satisfying that particular yen – eating at the counters of some of the best restaurants in town. A lot of sushi, which is good for loneliness. It’s the omegas I guess.

The yen for a fancy dinner out still kicks in when someone else is paying, or when I know I’m going to eat with someone who will really appreciate the whole to-do of it. The last meal I had like that checked both boxes: at Boulevard. They still got it, man. And they’re bringing the 80s back – or they never left the premises. I wish I could remember what I ate – but I remember my companion and the joy of it.

These days I eat at home, most of the time. And I’ve jumped on two bandwagons – fancy tinned fish and the Rancho Gordo Bean Club. These two things can go together well. Last week I was making variations on what I call “dirty rice” which is probably not what other people call dirty rice – mine is rice cooked with things thrown in – maybe canned tomatoes, spices, asparagus, sesame oil, greens at the end. What is to hand. Topped with whatever is to hand. Some beans (I made an entire pound bag of Christmas Lima beans and I’m still eating them 2 weeks later) and greens and / or exquisite tinned fish, and some chili crisp or the like.

There’s no turning back from the fancy tinned fish. I had smoked trout from Fishwife and mackerel from a Spanish brand. Maybe Matiz? But I feel like there was a tilde in there somewhere. I must’ve happened on a sale because normally these little cans’ prices are too rich for my blood. Today I opened a can of TJ’s ahi in olive oil and beyond being dry, it was actually gristly. Sheesh. This is what happens, Larry…

The Rancho Gordo Bean Club shipment is quarterly and hard to keep up with, especially for a hoarder. The pile of pound bags grows precarious. So far I think my favorite new bean is the buckeye. I just made a pot of flageolet beans – going to have them with some salmon and greens/asparagus and green garlic. And sometimes I just get a hankering for a gigante bean, because I want to make this, which satisfies at home and for parties.

But back to fennel and your CSA. I wonder if you’re a fan of The Vegetarian Epicure. Maybe we’ve talked about it. It – the original edition, also featuring a woman with big hair on the cover, though quite a different aesthetic than the ad for Star’s, was lying around when I was knocking about alone in a big house a friend let me stay in and cooking wasn’t yet a habit. I made the greens and garlic soup (with feta) and was blown away.

And more recently, with a more practiced cooking hand, I made the chard and fennel – and feta – pie, with a dough from my sourdough starter. (The starter is languishing, long-unfed, in the fridge.) These days I’m a lazier cook than that pie, or even the soup, allows for – got one eye on the clock and the other on the stove, testing to see how quickly I can throw together something satisfying.

Tonight it was a soup of leftover roast chicken I’d frozen, thawed in a pot with soy and coconut aminos, a leek thrown in and a big green garlic shoot, some ginger grated in (I don’t even bother to peel it anymore) and a couple pints of frozen scrap stock. Once that melted – tossed in cauliflower, bok choy, and some lovely Tokyo turnip greens about to be languishing, and the cauliflower leaves, some shirataki noodles and finally finished with a little rice vinegar. Plated and garnished with chopped spring onion and the green garlic top and a drizzle of sesame oil. I think it took me 15 minutes. Maybe 20.

Sending you love and vegetal inspiration –
M.

P.S. I’m googling “How to revive sourdough starter” so I can make that pie again. I bet it can come to life again. I shall report back.

P.P.S. I’m in love with cooking pasta in just enough water so I don’t have to drain it – I don’t care what anyone says.

Year of the Vegetable

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Dearest M —

I seem to open every missive with “I’m so sorry for how long it’s taken me to reply…” So here I am on the Ides of March replying to your letter from the Ides of December. I wonder how your pork and beans turned out?! I wonder if you had to freeze and are maybe still enjoying portions? I love discovering yummy things I made months ago and forgot about at the bottom of our chest freezer…I am pork free as well, though I don’t think that would survive a trip to Spain, if we ever go again. Anyway, I’m sure it was delicious!

In December 2024 I started getting a weekly CSA box. It’s something I’ve always wanted to try, and the pickup is minutes from my job. It’s from this nearby farm, and is $25 per box. (It is, I think, a great value for what you get. I only buy occasional fruit and herbs in addition to the box.) I’m getting it weekly, but I’m not lying when I say that staying on top of our vegetables has turned into my primary non-work activity. I have sacrificed cleaning, sewing, other hobbies…it’s kind of ridiculous. And I might reduce it to 2 boxes a month. BUT, the veggies are so good!

Sam started an accelerated nursing program around the New Year, and he is completely absentee. It’s very far away and has a ridiculous pace. So, I’ve had to “hold down the fort,” which has meant…mostly finding ways to cook these damned vegetables every week. (Mostly Sam eats chicken nuggets and mac n’ cheese, but he will eat some of my vegetable creations, sometimes…)

A very partial list of what I have made to stay on top of the farm box:

– An Italian pie with a very simple water crust stuffed with several pounds of cooked greens (collard, Red Russian kale, Swiss chard, beet tops)
– Spring rolls with collard leaves instead of rice paper
– Fennel front pesto (fronts, anchovy, lemon, parm, olive oil)
– Pickled watermelon radish, daikon, and Nantes carrots (used to make banh mi with turkey bacon using the farm box cilantro and also to put in the spring rolls, above)
– Kabocha squash stuffed with sausage and cornbread
– Pumpkin bread
– Blended cauliflower clam “chowder”
– Thai curry with winter squash and stewed beef and beef bones
– The Chez Panisse leek tart (really good w/fried eggs)
– Brown butter and acorn squash puree w/parm and pasta
– Beet and saurkraut soup w/dill (from the farm)
– Tiny tender broccoli steamed on rice. I then make a spicy General Tso sauce and toss my vegetarian nuggets. It satisfies my greasy Chinese cravings (which aren’t infrequent!)


– We got navel oranges every week for a while, so I candied the rinds and made a stollen (we had gotten some candied lemon peel for Christmas too)
– Lots and lots of roasted cauliflower…So. Much. Cauliflower

I found a recipe that I’m going to try tomorrow where you roast the cauliflower, chop it up, cook up some sort of olive oil, garlic, anchovy, parsley base, then eat it with pasta. (When in doubt: Just put it on pasta.) We have an enormous head of green cabbage, so I’m going to use up a bit of it tonight making katsu (chicken for Sam, tofu for me), with white rice and lots of shredded cabbage. We will probably be eating that cabbage for a month.

I’m fearful of spring and summer, because the produce is so delicate and perishable! All winter we’ve gotten hardy greens and squashes and did I mention cauliflower? And these things can wait patiently until I get to them. But spring/summer is going to be downright athletic to stay on top of. I welcome the challenge, but I am not confident that I will rise to it. As April nears…we will find out!

Pork and beans

mashastreLeave a comment

My dear C –

Grocery shopping while hormonal is similar to grocery shopping while drunk. I bought a pork shoulder this morning. Nearly 5 pounds. Or is it a pork butt? It is a bone-in pork shoulder that was sub-labeled as a pork butt. And indeed the internet tells me that pork butt comes from the pig’s shoulder. How confusing. Cuts of meat often are.

The other day I was at a butcher shop and a customer was asking if NY steak is tender and the guy behind the counter thought she was asking if it was tenderloin. I wanted to say it all depends on what you do with it…. but I refrained from ahem butting in.

I don’t know if/when I’ve cooked a pork shoulder before. I used to cook pork tenderloins with fennel braised in orange juice as a line cook but this is a different story and it’s been a couple decades. I did buy a fennel bulb at the market. Along with a $10 bag of mystery produce at my favorite (organic) stand that has yielded: A lovely bunch of Tokyo turnips with excellent tops, chard, several small & lovely lettuces, a tiny red cabbage, nice arugula, cilantro (which – not knowing, I bought another cilantro in my hurry), a sad bag of end of season (thank you, California) tomatoes, a celery, a a delightful broccolini, plus an excellent assortment of peppers. Nothing to sneeze at.

I don’t nearly ever cook pork anymore, living as I do with a no-pork-person. But I thought I might make myself a nice dinner and for some reason decided – a 5 lb cut of pork is the way to go for a simple solo meal. I’ve just frantically salted it and put it back in the fridge.

It’s 4 pm on a Sunday in the December of my late middle age and I have no idea what I’m doing with my groceries or my life. At least I’m contemplating that in peace. It’s so comparatively quiet after the stormy days. And I’m speaking literally here. San Francisco had a tornado warning. The first in its history? We also got a tsunami warning last week-ish.

I’ll let you know how it all goes.

Missing you

M.

PS here’s most of my haul from today

PPS I’m using this recipe because I love its tone and I’ve thrown in the sad tomatoes. And my beans are some delightful brown speckled variety that have been sitting in the pantry for a bit…

This is a 2 minute pre-soak…

Under construction…. The beans are in there…

And then I threw in some onions and peppers and there’s garlic in there, too. We shall see. Oh adding some bay leaves (collected from people’s ornamental bushes) and coriander seeds because I have too much.

Now we wait.

Hit or Miss

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Dear C –

It is not the best time for me. Unlike the tofu in this poem I am complaining. Maybe it’s pre-birthday blues, maybe it’s general dissatisfaction with the whole direction of life. Who knows? D. has gone to surf and I have stayed home this Friday night. I just can’t face a drive. It’s a lovely evening but I’ll be staying inside eating my feelings (Ethiopian take out likely) and listening to Paul McCartney. Who would no doubt applaud your tofu enthusiasm.

I didn’t grow up eating tofu and I was recently asking my friends about their childhood tofu experiences. I guess I didn’t ask you! My Ukrainian immigrant mother embraced a lot of California things of the early 80s, but carob and tofu weren’t in her mix that I recall. I can’t pinpoint my first tofu exposure nor my aha tofu moments.

I’m much more into tofu, tempeh, and beans as my carnivorous cravings decrease. Although not seitan. Never seitan. Change my mind.

I love tofu from this spot – since they stopped coming to my farmer’s market I’m not getting it much. That kind of high end tofu is delicious just seasoned / briefly marinated, sliced and served over a bed of greens. And then there’s all these fun tofu options – also local to me and also not cheap. I particularly love the yuba sheets which are basically tofu pasta one can cut to preference.

The real game changer for me with tofu – beyond learning to press and marinate – has been freezing. The resulting spongy version soaks up any sauce or marinade with alacrity and makes it a crowd pleaser – great grilled, great in stir fries. Even good in salads. I imagine you’ve tried it? I have some marinating in my fridge right now (for soooome time) but in this depressed state I can’t bring myself to do anything about it. I think this one is sitting in tamari, coconut aminos, garlic, maybe some rice vinegar….

In low times, it’s always long-form noodles that speak to me. I blitzed a very quick cheese-free pesto (1 bunch basil, half a handful of walnuts halves, 5 or so cloves garlic, salt, olive oil, lemon juice) yesterday in the Cuisinart and have been eating in on fancy fresh spinach fettucine for the past 2 days.

When I am this down my appetite is insatiable – in both senses. I can’t get enough to eat and nothing satisfies. I play my favorite game “If you could eat anything right now, what would you eat?” and I haven’t got an answer. I played a couple weeks ago with a friend on a hike and she wanted a hand pie from a spot in Richmond, Virginia, and I was just stymied. Normally I’ve got a complex combination of yearnings, kind of like in this book.… And usually just asking the question turns on a light for me – but not lately. Just a gnawing vacuous maw.

I can’t imagine making your commute day to day. I wish I had something useful to say beyond that. Sending you much love.

Much love —

M.

P.S. I love my Instant Pot and use it most to make scrap stock and it’s also great for chicken soup. More about all that next time. Miss you.

Dogged Days of Summer

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Dear M –

I’m ashamed at how long it has taken me to reply to your last post. These exchanges bring me SO much pleasure and happiness, and yet I neglect it. I add to the long list of things that are good for my soul that I’ve neglected or abandoned since starting my job: exercise, thrifting, road trips, walks, nature, escaping to the coast because it’s now permanently over 100 degrees, intimacy. When I had jury duty for two weeks this spring, I experienced what could be: I left at about 8 and was home by 5:30. (The courthouse is 15 minutes by car.) My neighbor, who works for the feds, has just such a schedule. Instead, I’m gone 11 hours per day, and then on the weekends go to the blessedly air conditioned super market, clean, make food for the week, pat the cats a bit. I would truly love to know how my coworkers have work-life balance but…it’s possible they don’t either. (Though most of them live within 20 minute of the site.)

Your description of Italy and dinner parties and such was like reading about the exotic adventures of bygone explorers….It sounds truly lovely…but also really tiring. I do cook though, out of necessity and also because I can turn off my brain, put on an audio book, not talk to anyone, stay in air conditioning, and the results make my week much more bearable. Aside from an almost weekly cake or muffin, I’m usually experimenting with tofu. My ongoing “Will It Tofu?” project. (Nod to the mysteriously popular book “Will It Waffle?” By the author of “Will It Skillet?“—I’m guessing he came up with the title first for that one. Earning one’s living by putting various foods in a waffle iron and seeing what happens seems much more conducive to work-life balance.)

This tantalizing image is from a nearly 3000-page-long book about tofu (“965 CE to 1984,” specifically). Honestly, it looks fascinating.

I nurtured a longstanding grudge against tofu due to my childhood experience of the following (on a regular basis): cubed tofu, doused in soy sauce, heated in a cast iron skillet with oil, brown rice, broccoli, and carrots. Nutritious but…blech. It took me decades to recover. Now I just try whatever with tofu, and sometimes it works great and sometimes it doesn’t. Some recent successes: tofu parmigiana, tofu katsu, tofu crumbles with pesto, tofu with various simmer sauces (nearly instant dinner), tofu banh mi, and “Thai Boxing Tofu”–which is tofu marinated in the “Thai Boxing Chicken” marinade from the Night and Market cookbook. This marinade is the definition of ambrosia. It makes everything divine and I have to restrain myself from drinking it. So far, I’ve soaked chicken, cod, shrimp, tofu, and beef in it and cooked them all under the broiler (since I lack a grill). There is no protein that this doesn’t make absolutely delicious, and I’m curious how it would do with vegetables–starting with kabocha. Maybe this winter.

My tofu failures so far (“No, It Won’t Tofu”) include tofu cake and tofu larb. The tofu cake was a viral social media thing where you beat a block of soft tofu with a little water or soy milk and then stir in cake mix and voila, perfect vegan cake. As with so much else on social media, this was a false promise. I tried it twice, first without fruit and then with nectarines and blackberries stirred in. The first one was, charitably, like wet mochi; the second, charitably, like a clafoutis or British style pudding. I mean, we ate it, but I won’t try a third time. (However, this experiment lead me to discover Bob’s Red Mill yellow cake mix–really tasty, and you can make summer fruit cake with slivered almonds in a matter of minutes. I also added spices and plums once. This winter I will try the chocolate mix, with some port-soaked prunes. Having cake on hand in minutes is very hard to resist.) I am going to try tempeh larb next–the tofu rendition was watery and bland and lacked umami–and also a recipe where you blend soft tofu with melted dark chocolate to make a mousse.

Your post reminded me that I am considering an Instant Pot. Your risotto is making me even more tempted. (Especially the newest one, which is a 13 in one! Air fryer, crock pot, pressure cooker, yogurt maker, bread proofer…I don’t know what the rest could be, but it does 8 more things.) Keeps the heat down too!

Love, C. xoxo

PS: Once I get around to signing up for a Spotify account, I can listen to your playlist. I miss our exchanges of mix tapes!

Risotto

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Dear C – I went to Palermo in May to visit S., my long-time friend. This isn’t how we met, but some of my initial recollections of S. are swimming in a pool with her. An open air pool ringed with caryatids.

Over many years, we go out – for a walk or a run or a hike or a swim – and we come back for a meal. I suppose it’s not exactly right to say we’ve cooked together for 20 years. We’ve cooked for each other or perhaps, more true, S. has cooked for me. Or I have eaten food she cooked for others.

I remember scones that she made for her boyfriend at the time and left with a sweet note in an arcane language before we went running up a long hill. And then I got to enjoy them after – the scones. I’m not sure how well I remember them, really, but I remember a clean crumble and a warmth and something like currants.

S’s talent – oh just one of many – is creating marvelous dishes out of no effort. Or apparently. A kind of hosting I can only dream to emulate. She favors canned beans, tinned fish, pancetta, good bread, olives, herbs, greens. Salt.

A hosting that is an antidote to the effortful and imposing version I was raised with. That’s another story.

I recently hosted a dinner party – the invitation to return the favor after being hosted so many times was so pointed. I can’t blame them. I’m still recovering, though.

I made whipped feta, and hummus inspired by this recipe. I do follow their tip to whip the tahini and lemon first but the skinning of the chickpeas – that’s a no. Although let’s be honest I did sit there and skin some of the chickpeas after I soaked and boiled them from scratch. A kind of procrastination. I made this – now that I think I may have found a responsible source of shrimp from Imperfect Foods. It is a fantastic recipe – simple and savory and crowd pleasing. And I made a mangled version of a Sicilian street skewer, mangia bevi. Bacon isn’t the same as pancetta – which is what the Sicilians use. But pancetta is wildly expensive here and isn’t easily found in these lovely long strips. I went for pancetta but wonder how bacon might do….

Anyway – after this dinner party many thing languished, cramped in the fridge. I felt like I was gagging from eating grilled vegetables. And then I left to house sit. And I’m keeping it simple.

I have a troubled relationship with risotto – I love it but as anxiously as I follow instructions on how to make it it never turns out toothsome and velvety as I expect. The texture of the rice is inevitably either under or over done. My best results have been from Instant Pot risotto. A comfort food game changer. But it does take the meditative process out of the equation.

One of Palermo’s street foods is a stuffed risotto ball – a kind of risotto dumpling. And also they are loud and proud there that “L’arancina e fimmina”. Since the word is from “arancia” so it makes sense, but the feminine “arancina” is unique to western Sicily. Notwithstanding my love of the femina, I wasn’t impressed by the arancina as foodstuff until I needed emergency hiking food, and then my respect for the arancina’s staying power was um – cemented.

Here in the treehouse I’m sitting in, I made two lovely risottos in a row. The first – I used leftover pancetta as the base fat and then I made a huge batch of pesto from very wilted whole plant spinach and big green garlic stalks that had been lying around for a while that I mixed in. I did have plenty of olive oil and grated parm so the risotto result was rich and restaurant style.

this is some trout my friend left in her fridge being poached in that pesto and I don’t know how to make this a caption

And I followed up with a caution to the wind “cucina povera” version where I washed out the pesto from the Cuisinart and some schmaltz from the bottom of a tupperware of penne in chicken broth, blitzed a big bunch of herbs about to end up in the compost (basil, mint, parsley) and a bean soup that I defrosted. I threw all these in – using the bean soup and the rinsed out schmaltz and pesto as broth. Oh yes – I started with a leek base, I had a bunch of chopped languishing leeks (overdo from the shrimp recipe). And I didn’t have parm / pecorino to grate into it but I did have a fat parmesan rind to cook it with. The rice came out the most perfect texture. And I’m snarfing the softened rind.

L’arancina e femina!

xoxo

With love – M.

PS Here’s a playlist you might enjoy. I wanted to share a different one but Spotify doesn’t have the iconic Pansy Division song Male Model so it was ruined RUINED. XOXO