In which Michael comes out of hibernation

I seem to have reached that threshold — about 2 weeks — at which readers begin dropping hints that it's been perhaps too long since I last posted.  I am not proud to have to admit that I am enjoying being begged to return to the spotlight.  (Well, "asked" is perhaps a more accurate word, and the only spotlight I've been in recently was at my gym, where the lighting has been designed for maximum drama.  My fellow gym members are so jaded by the over-the-top environment that I'm sure nobody even bothered to glance in my direction as I performed yesterday's perfectly lit set of single-leg squats in front of the huge mirror, while Gaga belted out how she was born this way in the background.  She may have been born that way, but I have to work hard to achieve glorious glutes.)

Seriously, it warms my heart to discover that certain of you miss my posts enough to write in when I'm silent for a time.  But one of you (Mae) has outdone herself, not only expressing her concern over my busy schedule, but also leaving a detailed comment (scroll down to her April 27 comment) about quick-and-easy cooking that practically qualifies her as a guest blogger AND giving me, as a not-so-subtle kick in the pants, a suggestion for my next post.  So, out of gratitude for Mae's information and inspiration, I am going to take her suggestion and blog about quickies.

Not that kind of quickies.  Boy, you people always seem to have sex on the mind.  I am referring to quick MEALS that can be prepared in minutes when your schedule is as crazy as mine has been lately.

For you crackpots who are here only for the titillation factor, this picture should get your juices flowing.  The rest of us will focus on the juices bubbling in our crockpots.

Back in the Kitchen with Michael: Capellini w/Salmon and Mushrooms (and a Salad!)

Has it really been 3 whole weeks since I've posted a cook-along recipe?  Boy, how time flies when one is attending Broadway openings with a renowned fashion model on one's arm, experimenting with French methods of home-scenting, and chasing towel-clad dancers around the locker room.  (Hi, George, if you're reading this — I'll be at the gym later this morning!)

[Note: do not read this caption unless you are George.]  Hi, George — remember me?  If this picture isn't ringing any bells, you could try imagining me in a towel.   (Oh dear, now I'm imagining you imagining me in a towel......)

Not to mention inaugurating a new teaching space, starting a program of working out under the guidance of a personal trainer, and walking the dogs for longer periods now that the weather is getting milder.  Whew!  It's actually a respite to enter the kitchen and spend some relaxing time cooking a meal.  The seed idea for today's project was the container of garlic scape pesto I'd discovered in the freezer yesterday.  What fun, to discover a few tablespoons of this heavenly stuff left over from almost a year ago — garlic scapes appear early on in the growing season, so we get them in one of our first CSA deliveries each year, in late May or early June, and I always make pesto out of them.

Reconnected, and it feels so good

Welcome back, readers!  I am thrilled to report that Verizon has finally resolved our landline/internet issues, and we are back in connection with the virtual world.  The restoration of our service surprised us by occurring a full day before the date Verizon had predicted, and has thus caught me unprepared for blogging.   It's not just that I have not been taking pictures of my meal preparations; I haven't really been preparing all that many meals.

How sad is that, when it doesn't seem worth the effort to cook when I can't blog about the food?  We actually have been eating reasonably well, what with all the leftovers I had stored in the freezer.  Including a batch of the oniony kidney beans I promised never to write about again.  But, given the dearth of new foods to describe, wouldn't you be happy to hear about how I served the last portion of these beans in a casserole cooked in my convection oven?  I mean, as opposed to not hearing about anything at all?

Lots of eating, little cooking

Sorry, folks, but I don't have much to report in the way of weekend cooking.   Perhaps you'll be able to make do with a little review of my ginger grater, which I ended up not using last week in my gadget analysis:

Do you have one of these little tools?  They use little ceramic nubs rather than metal blades to turn the fresh ginger root into pulp, which works because of the relatively soft texture of the root.  You don't even have to peel the ginger root first, although I usually do unless it's organic.  The downsides are 1) the fibers of the root tend to tangle up into a mess which has to be periodically cut off to expose a fresh surface, and 2) the palm-sized tool is a bit too small.  It tends to capsize while grating and doesn't hold much grated ginger before needing to be cleaned off.  If I ever have occasion to replace this one, I'll get a larger model.  By the way, this grater works really well for garlic cloves too, although your fingers will become permeated with the smell.

Weekend Bulletin: Local Man Thaws Leftover Beans

How's that for an attention-grabbing headline, folks?  I hadn't planned, actually, on mentioning the beans again, but on Friday, I used some of the ones I'd frozen to make something so delicious, and so EASY, that I felt compelled to share.

In British detective fiction I've read, certain characters — particularly when the authors are wishing to convey destitution or a slipping to a pathetic level of existence — often resort to quick meals of what the English call beans on toast.  In our country, there is not really a tradition of bean sandwiches at all, but I can imagine that noses would be upturned at the very mention of the idea.  (I believe my littlest sister was astonished when her elementary school classmates did not share her enthusiasm for the hot-dog-and-baked-bean sandwiches she begged my mom to pack her for lunch.  Perhaps she will chime in with the complete story in the comments.)

How did this noble combination of foods acquire such an ignominious reputation?  Well, probably because most people are thinking of this sort of abomination:

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Kale and Mushroom Soup with Pasta Elbows

Dear Readers, I gave you a little pinto-bean-free reprieve for the weekend (and holiday, for those of you who acknowledge such occasions) — can you therefore bear to hear about just one more bean w/ham hock reincarnation?  This one is good, I promise, and the most unlike the original dish so far.  And the best part is that it used up all the remaining beans, so you won't be having to hear any more about that enduring dish after this.

Please don't resent me for trotting out bean recipe after bean recipe.  After all, Picasso had his blue period.  Isn't it only fair for me to be allowed to go through a bean period?  (I am not meaning to imply that I am the Picasso of leftovers, but if you'd like to indulge that association, I will not thwart you.)

Maybe these people would cheer up if they ate some beans with ham hock.

What follows is a step-by-step guide to how I converted this

Yuck!

into this

Yum!

Stock, stock, and taking stock

1. Stock

I promise — this is going to be the very last mention of those eternal beans!  (For this week, anyhow.)  But there is one last project I am using them for, which will be one of my weekend activities.  I am going to make a soup out of the remaining bones with the few beans still clinging to them + the contents of my frozen stockpile.  Warning: the following picture may cause revulsion in the sensitive:

I assure you, pictures of the soup that I will convert this mess into will inspire drooling, not retching....tune in next week for the proof.

2. Stock

It's freakin' cold out there.  My oh-so-helpful weather app smugly informs me that the current temp is 22 degrees, but that it feels like 11.  Eleven!  I am miserable when the temperature dips below my age + my shoe size.  All this week, it's stayed WELL below that shrouded-in-mystery figure, so I had to do something to bring a little springtime cheer into the house.  I treated myself to a surprisingly inexpensive purchase of flowers from the florist department at WF.  We're currently greeting guests and cheering ourselves with this jolly spray of - - - stock:

I love that the delicate yellow color of the flowers so closely matches the color of our walls, although this picture doesn't really show the wall color accurately.  And something about how the flowers are proportionally too big for their bottle gives me a little frisson of happiness when I look at them.  I really can't explain this; it's a gentle sort of visual joke to me, I guess.

3. Taking stock.

Only one reader so far has raved about my burgeoning facial hair.  This situation must improve, so I am bringing an end to the subtlety.  (What, you didn't notice any subtlety on this blog?  It must be a problem with your browser.)

Here, in a naked bid for adulation (although, if it's warranted, I'm prepared to accept negative comments too — being rejected is less painful than being ignored, after all) is a picture of how my beard looks at its current state of growth (about 2 weeks of not shaving):

With the gelled-down hair and the glasses, I was going for the tortured intellectual look here.  Please let me know what you think of my hirsuteness.  If you need inspiration, please choose from the following comprehensive list of possible reactions:

• you so sexy 
• hotter than hell, mr. hanko
• gasp you leave me breathless with desire
• where did you get that pic of george clooney
• put down that spatula you need to become a professional model

Or you can come up with your own phrases to express your exceeding admiration for my facial hair.  Just remember, I am a very sensitive person.

Have a great weekend.  Cook something that makes you feel sexy.  Or just don't shave.

Beans for lunch again? Yay!

With a little ingenuity, even strongly assertive leftovers like pinto beans cooked with smoked ham hock can be coaxed into revealing different aspects of their personalities.  For three days in a row, we've been revisiting said beans, and have been delighted to experience them each time as though for the first time.  It hasn't seemed like eating leftovers at all — and so far, we haven't tired of the beans.

I hope you haven't tired of hearing about them.  Let me know if my blog is starting to feel like the summer rerun season on TV.

In actuality, this kind of intellectual problem — how can I reconcile the convenience of leftovers with the excitement of presenting a wide variety of flavors? — is what really stimulates me in the kitchen.  Yes, I'm that nerdy.  But, luckily, geekiness in the brain seems so far to have resulted in quite a lot of yumminess in the belly.  

Cold-weather heater-upper: Brrrr - itos

¡Olé!  I managed to create a dish using my leftover pinto beans that transformed them into something completely new and unrecognizable.  ¡Cool!

Actually, warm.  For dinner last night, at 7:30 following my last voice student of the day, we had pinto bean & ham burritos that were quick, easy, and delicious — and warming.  During a break earlier in the day, I started dinner preparations by grinding homegrown whole wheat into flour, then forming it into tortillas, which I cooked on a heated cast-iron griddle, singing traditional Mexican canzones de tortilla all the while.   Or maybe I just opened a package from Whole Foods — I really can't remember the details after such a busy day.

Help! What do I do with all these beans?

Oh dear, I'm feeling a little like Ann-Margret in the surreal champagne-and-baked-beans scene from the movie Tommy (particularly around the 4:05 minute mark):

Well, now.  That clip either amused and intrigued you. . .or left you needing a course of therapy.   I, on the other hand, after my latest baked-bean-without champagne scene, am left needing a little guidance — and so I am reaching out to my readers today.

Please give me your suggestions for creative ways to re-use the remaining 47 gallons of my pinto beans with ham hock.

The Joy of Coleslaw

Don't underrate coleslaw.  This unassuming side-dish, despite its mundane reputation, has a lot going for it:  

• Ease and speed of preparation
• Infinite variability
• Satisfying crunchiness
• Healthy benefits

I started making coleslaw about a year ago, when I needed a salad — something green and fresh! — to go with a meal that was a little heavy on the starch/protein components.  But I was out of lettuce.  And cucumber.  And tomatoes.  But I did find hidden in the veggie drawer of my fridge part of a head of cabbage leftover from who knows what.  So I sliced it into fine shreds, added some oil, some vinegar, and some seasonings, and, voilà!  My first homemade coleslaw.

Second Chances: Follow-up on Rajma & Stock Projects

Although modern people — and Americans in particular, it seems — seem to have forgotten this in their frenzy to amass the latest version of everything from shoes to software, there's a real satisfaction that comes from finding new ways to use things you already have lying around the house, especially when said things seem to have outlived their usefulness.  

Even if it's become a cliché, haven't you ever experienced a little thrill upon converting an empty wine bottle into a candle holder?

Around our home, we have taken this theme of recycling to a perhaps extreme level, giving new life to many seemingly unpromising objects:

My first batch of stock since 1991

In my Joy of Cooking phase — this was before I got interested in Indian and other Asian cuisines, and when I was young enough to not think twice before dousing at least one dish in every meal with a cup of heavy cream — I was in the habit of cooking up big batches of stock.  I was living in Germany then, a first lieutenant with quite a lot of disposable income and no family to spend it on, so I'm sure I was finishing off these batches of stock with wines that I couldn't even BEGIN to afford to drink now.  <sigh>  Oh, to be young and have more money than I know what to do with.

Actually, I was more or less miserable back then, having ROTC-ed myself into a 4-year stint in the Army — can you imagine any worse fit between person and career field?  The Army couldn't either.  In those pre-Don'-t-Ask-Don't-Tell days, I was asked.  Twice.  (Anticipating the coming policy, I chose NOT to tell.  I'm precocious that way.)  And was officially reprimanded once by my commander on the advice of HIS commander for. . .wait for it. . .wearing too much gel in my hair.  Bless their hearts; nothing in their military training had prepared them for dealing with an "alternative" soldier like me.

What I'm getting at is that I am at this current point in my life — middle 40's (OK, late middle) — happier than I've ever been.  Even if I have to shop from the wine remnants.  (Which is actually more fun, now that I think about it, with the added frisson of getting something luxurious for less than market price.)

One of the things making me happy today is this jar of homemade (wine-less) stock, made this morning mostly from items from my inaugural frozen stock-pile:

What will I become — soup? gravy? flavored rice?

Now I'm Cooking! — Quick Work-Day Fridge-Cleaner-Outer

I'm sure many of you are familiar with the panicky feeling that arises when you have to find time in your crazy schedule to make something to eat for you and your family.  You want to come up with something healthy and delicious, but there are only so many hours in the day, right?  It's so tempting to over-rely on prepared foods from the grocery store or take-out from a restaurant.  But after a few such meals, my palate begins to crave something cooked with love (as my Mom would say) -- or with safe levels of salt and saturated fats (as my doctor would say).  Besides, the Earth can accommodate only so many plastic food containers in her already-stuffed-to-the-gills landfills.  (My cupboards, too, have already accepted their share, which I use in place of Tupperwares.)

And what the hell am I going to do with these little bits of this and that before they turn into biochemical science projects in my fridge:

Will these become dinner. . .or mold gardens?

I had a two-hour block of free time between students yesterday afternoon, during which I challenged myself to come up with a meal for the evening that would nourish us well and use up some of the odds and ends cluttering up the refrigerator.  This is actually my favorite kind of culinary challenge, and it often results in my throwing together seemingly incompatible ingredients that I would never think of combining if I were setting out to create a recipe, but that turn out to work amazingly well together.

And, occasionally, it results in an unappealing concoction of ingredients that truly do not belong in the same bowl.  Which kind of result will I come up with today?  Read on to find out. . . .

Baked Bananas & Brooklyn Bagels

A look back at yesterday's meals


I habitually prefer to eat raw fruits at breakfast time, but occasionally, the mood strikes for something a little special.  Today was one of those times.  I felt as though a little extra richness in my morning meal would help me to knock this cold, so I opted for baked fruit.  Here's how I do it, in less than 5 minutes (not including the 30-min baking time).

First, assemble the fruits you want.  My favorites for this treatment are apples and, for a caramelized gooeyness that is a real treat, bananas.  You could also use pears, stone fruits, berries, whatever strikes your fancy and is in season.  I also toss in a handful of nuts and often some raisins.  Today's assortment included apples and bananas, diced into chunks, raw walnut halves, and hunza raisins:

A Look Back at Today's Meals

I'm feeling paradoxically better and worse today.  My energy level has improved and nothing hurts today, but my nose will not stop running.  (I am so blog-crazed that I actually just now contemplated including a photo of my tissue-filled trashcan.  You can breathe a sigh of relief that I decided you would probably be happier with a shot of Freddy and Willy.)

Better than a hot water bottle!

A Look Back at Today's Meals

Inconveniently timed meals and an afternoon bout of lassitude that quashed all desire to cook combined to make today's eating experience a little unsatisfying.

I puttered around too long this morning, postponing breakfast (yogurt w/fruits and nuts, of course, and tea) until later than usual, so I wasn't hungry enough for a real meal when my window of opportunity for lunch rolled around.  So, before heading uptown for my voice lesson, I grabbed a couple slices of sourdough, toasted them, and slathered them with PB and butter, respectively.

A Look Back at Today's Meals

Breakfast: My usual (for over a year now) bowl of chopped fresh fruit with raw nuts and raw-whole-milk yogurt.  This concoction is much more exciting during the summer months, when berries and stone fruits are in season.  In winter, I make do with the ubiquitous bananas, and whatever Urban Organic has brought us.  This morning, a particularly bland apple and pear needed help (and sweetness), so I threw in a handful of hunza raisins — left over from making my holiday chutney — along with the cashews.  Golden Darjeeling tea drunk plain.