sprinklefingers

lately i’ve been spending some time meeting with purveyors of delicious foods. part of the fun of creating a new menu for work is that i have been able to explore various tasty treats - with the hopes of using them to concoct new baked goods. one of my favorite test foods of late? smoked cheese. 

now, don’t get me wrong, we eat a lot of smoked cheese at home - i love it with grits and a poached egg - but there’s something different about someone just showing up at your workplace with an enormous slab of mozzarella that they have custom-smoked for you. i honestly never knew that working with someone who owns a smokehouse could be so delicious. 

now, more details on my smokehouse relationship are coming soon (and really, the question is at this point: what CAN’T go in the smokehouse?) - but for the moment, i have a recipe to share:

whole wheat noodles with roasted vegetable sauce and smoked mozzarella

you can get your own smoked mozzarella at any good specialty foods store. can’t find it? mozzarella that hasn’t been smoked will make a fine substitute. 

you need:

• 4 medium squash - perhaps 2 zucchini and 2 yellow squash, cut into chunky half moons
• 2 pints of cherry (or other small variety) tomatoes, left whole
• 2 large cloves garlic, smashed and peeled
• salt 
• pepper
• italian seasoning or other dried herbs
• olive oil
• balsamic vinegar
• 12 oz whole wheat spaghetti noodles
• reserved pasta cooking water
• 8 oz smoked mozzarella, grated or shaved
• good handful parmesean-reggiano cheese, freshly grated

make the sauce:

1. preheat the oven to 425.
2. combine the squash, tomatoes, garlic, a hefty pinch of salt & pepper, a dash or two of dried herbs and a few good glugs of olive oil in a bowl. swish around to completely coat the vegetables in the olive oil. 
3. turn the vegetables out onto a sheet tray and slide into the oven. roast for 20-25 minutes or until the tomatoes have burst, everything is soft and the liquids from the vegetables are starting to make their own ‘sauce.’
4. meanwhile, cook the noodles in salted water. follow the package instructions, but before draining the noodles, reserve about 1 cup of the water. 
5. add the drained noodles back to the pot you cooked them in. to the noodles add the roasted vegetables and whatever ‘sauce’ they’ve created, a glug or two more of olive oil, and a few splashes of balsamic vinegar. stir
6. next, add the cheeses to the pot with the noodles and vegetables. splash in about 1/4 cup of the pasta water and stir. if the cheeses and vegetables still look a bit thick, stir in a bit more of the pasta water until it is a bit thinner.
7. taste your pasta - add salt & pepper or a bit more vinegar if you wish.
8. to serve: place a mound of noodles in a dish and top with the roasted vegetables that you fish out of the mixture. the noodles will be coated with the ‘sauce’ you’ve created out of the roasted vegetables and the melty cheeses combined with the pasta water. top each mound of pasta with shaved parm or shaved smoked mozzarella. i also like mine with another good splash of balsamic, but that’s just me. 

here’s to people who do awesome things with food!

i’m not going to complain about how busy i am. i’m not. i’m just not. but i will tell you this: i miss my kid. i’m eating too much. i haven’t worked out in for-ev-ah. the laundry is piling up. i keep crying for no reason. i feel totally scattered. and (did i mention this yet?) i miss my kid.

our new bakery opens in less than two weeks and busy doesn’t really begin to describe my life right now.

still, i can’t complain because i have help. a lot of it. most of our employees are amazing and are working just as hard as i am to get the new store open. this is a huge change for me -  when we opened our first bakery we did it with three people: i baked everything and my husband and best friend handled the cash register. crazy days indeed. thank goodness for great employees!

here’s a delicious meal, perfect for busy people like you. and me. the whole thing comes together in the time it takes to boil pasta. and, it’s delicious. did i mention that already?

bacon & asparagus pasta
serves 2 with leftovers for one

you need:

• 1/2 lb bacon, preferably smoked and hopefully nueske’s or beeler’s, chopped into 1/2” pieces
• 1 bundle asparagus, washed with ends trimmed then cut into 1” pieces
• 2 cloves garlic, smashed then diced super fine
• a few pinches of dried herbs (i use an italian mix)
• a few dashes of freshly grated nutmeg
• a pinch of red pepper flakes
• salt
• pepper

• half & half
• freshly grated parmesan cheese

• 10 oz pasta - some kind of noodle that holds sauce well - penne or farfalle

make the pasta:

1. set a large pot of water to boil.
2. while the water is coming up to a boil, cook the bacon over medium heat until starting to turn golden. add the asparagus and let cook for a few minutes.
3. check your pasta water. boiling? good. add the noodles with a pinch or two of salt.
4. back to the bacon/asparagus: by now your asparagus is bright green and the bacon is cooking along. if your bacon is golden and looking good, go ahead and add the garlic, herbs, nutmeg, red pepper flakes and the tiniest bit of salt and a good grind of pepper. stir very well until fragrant and then add a small (small!) ladle-full of pasta water. the water will allow you to scrape the browned bits up off the bottom of the pan - which you should do.
5. once you’ve scraped up the browned bits, add about 3/4 cup of half & half to the pan along with a good, big handful of the grated cheese. stir until the cheese melts then reduce the heat to low and let the ‘sauce’ cook until it thickens a bit.
6. TASTE IT. if it needs more seasoning, add it. but before you add salt, make sure you have a bite with a piece of bacon in it - the last thing you want to do is over-salt your dish. or something like that.
7. the noodles are cooked! drain them, then add them to the pot with the sauce and give everything a big stir to coat the noodles and distribute the asparagus and bacon.
8. portion and top each dish with some additional cheese.
9. dinner!

notes:

this dish would be equally as delicious with the following substitutes for the asparagus:

• zucchini (or another summer squash,) cut into half moons
• 1 bundle of kale, stems removed and cut into manageable pieces

• it would also be a very delicious idea to add 3-4 green onions to the dish: wash the onions then cut the white parts and an inch or so of the green parts into 1/4” pieces - add them after the bacon begins to render its fat - before you add the asparagus (or zucchini or kale.)

• and, if you wanted to get really crazy and raise the deliciousness level of this dish even more, add a fried egg with a runny yolk to the top! but don’t eat the egg on its own. serve the individuals dishes of pasta with a fried egg on top of each, then mix the egg into the pasta - the runny yolk will add to the sauce and the white will taste delicious with the bacon.

it seems like time is just slipping through my fingertips these days. i get to work and it’s already time to leave. i spend precious minutes commuting. i get home with 30 minutes to get dinner on the table. it’s like a game that’s not very fun and is neverending. sigh.

because of my lack of time i’ve been trying to figure out ways to cook meals faster with less dishes to wash (because if there are fewer dishes i can get to the laundry faster. and if i get to the laundry faster i can get to my bed faster.)

so far, this is my favorite:

tofu & vegetables with noodles and peanut sauce
serves 4

you need:

• 15 oz firm tofu
• seasonings for tofu: salt, pepper, curry powder - anything you like
• canola oil for drizzling
• fresh green beans, enough for 4 people, trimmed
• 2 zucchini - cut into half moons
• 1 bunch green onions - white parts and 1” green parts thinly sliced
• 2 carrots

• 1 lb whole wheat spaghetti

• peanut sauce
• lime

make dinner:

1. preheat oven to 425.
2. on one large sheet tray place the trimmed green beans, the zucchini half moons and the sliced green onions. sprinkle with salt and pepper and drizzle with canola oil. give them a quick mix with your hands and then scoot them to one side of the sheet tray.
3. on the other side of the sheet tray place a small cooling rack.
4. next, cut the tofu into manageable cubes then place the cubes in a bowl. season how you’d like then drizzle with oil. mix with your hands then place the cubes of seasoned tofu on the cooling rack you’ve placed on the sheet tray.
5. slide the entire tray into the oven and let roast 18 minutes or so - stirring the bean mixture often and watching so that nothing is burning.
6. while the beans & tofu are cooking, shred your carrots: using a vegetable peeler, start at the top of the carrot and pull the peeler all the way down - creating a carrot ribbon. set your carrot ribbons aside.
7. prepare your peanut sauce. i always advocate homemade peanut sauce over bottled - it’s going to be way more delicious - but i understand if you just had to grab a bottle to make things easier on yourself. (although if you make the sauce ahead and store it in your fridge you’ll always have delicious peanut sauce on hand!)
8. boil your spaghetti noodles to your desired doneness. when they’ve finished cooking, reserve a few tablespoons of cooking water and then drain the noodles. mix the drained noodles with the pasta water and a bit of peanut sauce. set aside.
9. when the vegetables and tofu have finished cooking (the tofu will be slightly dry and the vegetables will have some browning in places,) remove the veggies from the sheet tray and put them in a mixing bowl. add the carrots and stir gently. leave the tofu where it is until you’re assembling your dishes.
10. to serve: mound some noodles in a bowl, top with the vegetable mixture and a few pieces of tofu. drizzle peanut sauce all over the top and squeeze on a bit of lime juice.

my kid and my husband ate this. without me forcing them. honest.

baby carrots branded as junk food.
it sounds crazy.
it is crazy.
read the article.

the bit i’d like to point out:

…what would happen if he peeled the skin off the gnarly carrots, cut them into pieces, and sold them in bags. He made up a few test batches to show his buyers. One batch, cut into 1-inch bites and peeled round, he called “bunny balls.” Another batch, peeled and cut 2 inches long, looked like little baby carrots.

Bunny balls never made it. But baby carrots were a hit. They transformed the whole industry. Soon, the big growers in Bakersfield were planting fields with baby carrots in mind, sowing three times more seeds per acre, so the carrots, packed densely together, would grow long and skinny, for the maximum number of 2-inch cuts. Yields and profits climbed. The really big deal, the thing nobody expected, was that baby carrots seemed to make Americans eat more carrots. In the decade after they were introduced, carrot consumption in the United States doubled.

Then a couple of years ago, after a decade of steady growth, Bolthouse’s carrot sales went flat. Sales of baby carrots, the company’s cash carrot, actually fell, sharply, and stayed down. Nobody knew why. This was a big problem.

(Bolthouse) put together a series of focus groups and surveys and discovered something interesting. People said they were eating as many carrots as they always had. But the numbers clearly showed they were buying fewer. What people meant, it turned out, was they were as likely as ever to keep carrots in the fridge. When the recession hit, though, they became more likely to buy regular carrots, instead of baby carrots, to save money. But people used to eating baby carrots weren’t taking the time to wash and cut the regular ones. And unlike baby carrots, which dry out pretty quickly once a bag is opened, regular carrots keep a long time. So people were buying regular carrots and then not eating them, and not buying more until the carrots they had were finally gone or spoiled.

(emphasis mine.)

there’s a common theme throughout the article that suggests regular carrots (that have to be peeled and cut) are too much work. so much so that consumers who were cash-strapped in the first place were buying normal carrots and STILL not taking the 30 seconds to peel and cut them - instead letting the carrots (and their hard earned dollars) go to waste. so, marketers started recommending to baby carrot manufacturers to turn baby carrots into a non-vegetable…leaving behind the trappings of any prep work. it was even suggested that baby carrots not be kept in the produce bin of household refrigerators…to, you know, set them apart from actual vegetables (that require such ‘work’) and to further set baby carrots up as a non-vegetable.

and from a marketing standpoint i do see that this is quite smart. but from the point of view of a mother who busts her ass works really hard to get good food in front of my family, it kind of pisses me off upsets me.

and i know i don’t have to tell you why.

and don’t even get me started on the portion of the story where it’s actually discussed that a 2# bag of baby carrots isn’t sellable because the consumer has to actually “unzip the bag and grab a few baby carrots…and rezip it.”

i just don’t see how it’s possible that even carrots now are too much work to eat in their ‘natural’ state. just peel the damn carrot, will ya?

i’ll be the first to admit i’m taking great liberties with the word ‘salad’ lately.
it all started around easter when i decided we’d eat nothing but salad for dinner and call it a diet. of course, the majority of our salads have contained salami or bacon. hell, i even managed to work pâté into a ‘salad’ one night. i apparently have a very wide grey area when it comes to salad. and i have to say, that’s probably a good thing or my husband wouldn’t still be agreeing to sit down to a bowl of lettuce and vegetables each night.

he’s from bend. bend, oregon. it’s an interesting place. one that i have a love-hate relationship with. (i mean, seriously, no matter how many times you tell me that the smell permeating the air is in fact juniper or sage or whatever, i’m STILL gonna think a cat pissed all over my jacket.) but he loves bend, and his entire family still lives there, so we go to bend. (but, to be honest, it’s kind of hard to enjoy myself while i’m there because i’m concentrating so hard on not breathing in through my nose.)

but enough about me.
he was raised by two lovely people. he grew up on a lot of land with a pony and with tons of encouragement to be whatever he wanted to be. while his father owned a paving company that literally paved more than half of bend back in the day, my husband decided to study musical theater. at college. and while he has always been in a band, has always been in the theater and loves really whiney songwriters, he also does stuff like go hunting, bomb down rivers in a kayak and bike 40 miles in one day. for fun. (i should explain now that i learned the word ‘bomb’ from him and would never really talk like that unless making specific fun of his hobbies.)

feeding a man who is equally comfortable attending the symphony as he is drinking whiskey and shooting guns* can sometimes be tricky. while i tend to shy away from serious meat at meal times, i know his gun shooting side definitely craves the stuff. so when i declared that we’d be eating nothing but salad for dinner for the foreseeable future, it’s only understandable that he looked somewhat disappointed.

and then a giant box of meat arrived from nueske’s. granted, the box really only contained pork products, but it was enough meat for my hybrid mountain man/renaissance man to accept his future of salads for dinner. here’s one of his favorites:

nueske’s bacon-wrapped asparagus salad
serves 3-4 as a dinner salad, more as a side salad

you need:

• 1 bundle (not thin but not thick) asparagus, washed and trimmed
• 1 lb bacon, best you can buy
• mixed greens for all - i usually measure out 3-4 large handfuls of lettuce per dinner salad
• 1 carrot, shaved into ribbons with a vegetable peeler
• 1 avocado, cut into small chunks
• 1 small chunk blue cheese, preferably this one
• delicious salad dressing - preferably something mustardy, like this one

make the salad:

1. preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. set a metal cooling rack inside a rimmed sheet tray.
3. slice the pound of bacon in half so that you now have twice as many slices as you started with.
4. working one spear at a time, wrap the bacon around the asparagus and place it on the cooling rack in the sheet tray, loose ends down. no need to worry about pinning the bacon down with a toothpick or anything - as the bacon shrinks it will stick with the asparagus.
5. roast the bacon-wrapped asparagus for 20 minutes or until the bacon reaches your desired level of doneness.
6. meanwhile, layer the lettuces, carrot ribbons, avocado and blue cheese in a large salad bowl. drizzle dressing over top.
7. when the bacon and asparagus are finished, remove them from the sheet tray to a cutting board. slice the spears into manageable pieces and add them to the salad. don’t worry if some asparagus slips out of the bacon. once you toss the salad they’ll do that anyway.
8. top the salad off with a bit more dressing, toss and serve with salt & pepper.

* he promises me he does not do these two things simultaneously.

The received wisdom is that the middle classes eat well and can cook. Poorer people are more likely to be overweight and live on ready meals. But is it really true?

a fascinating look from the guardian at how four families living in the same neighborhood shop for and prepare (or not) food.

Food for children – young children at least – is generally uncorrupted by notions of class. They do not look at a friend’s lunchbox and see that the chocolate bar and salty crisps could mean more than the food itself. They just think their friend is lucky to be given such treats. Food to a child is simple and if you’re lucky, it turns into a simple – and healthy – pleasure. When I think about the four families, there is one trait which is the same in each. In every family, there was at least one child who wanted to be allowed to cook regularly. For Ralf and Jessamy, it was 10-year-old Jonah. For Nichola, it was Lenise, 11. For Spenta, her son Yazard, 11, and for Reggie and Andrew, 11-year-old Megan. In every case, the parents were willing in spirit, but all expressed the sensation of a sinking heart at the idea of a chaotic kitchen that needed to be cleared up afterwards. Can it be a coincidence that all these children are around the same age? Could it be true, as Sheila Dillon told me, that our national wellbeing ultimately lies in educating and encouraging the children, rather than berating their parents? Hold on to that thought as your child spreads flour over your kitchen floor. I know I am going to.