This Is Good

Edamame Hummus

3 cups frozen edamame, thawed and drained
2 garlic cloves, peeled
3-4 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup tahini, stirred well before measuring
2-4 tbsp water, to thin as needed
1/2-1 tsp sea salt, to taste
1/4 tsp coriander
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper

1. Set aside a handful of edamame for garnishing.
2. With motor running on food processor drop in garlic cloves to mince. Add edamame and process until somewhat smooth, scraping down sides of the bowl as needed.
3. Add lemon juice, tahini and water and process until very smooth-this may take a few minutes.          
 (Important!)
4. Add salt, cayenne and coriander and process until combined.
5. Garnish with reserved edamame, smoked paprika, freshly ground black pepper and a generous drizzle of olive oil. Serve with crostini, crackers, pita chips and/or crudites.

I served this at a dinner party on Sunday evening-a delicious change from my usual goat cheese and olives.  And in the interest of full disclosure it is not from Joy of Cooking, but it is from my binder!

Cooking Simplified, I Hope

True confession…I have 40 cookbooks, give or take a few.  And this is after purging many over the past couple of years.  Until now I thought I just couldn’t help it... I LOVE buying cookbooks, both new and used, and have received many as gifts and even inherited a few.  But I am going to try to stop, or at least slow down.

Although we do have a lot of dinner parties, most of my cooking is just for two.  My favorite suppers are a bowl of homemade soup or a piece of fish with vegetables and salad.  After a day at work I don’t open a book and make a complicated recipe.  Yet that is what is in my library- a plethora of books with recipes that call for lots of ingredients and chopping.  Even the simple, Quick Weeknight Dinners-type takes at least an hour for me to throw together.  And then there is the planning of the week’s meals, my invariably forgetting a few things at the supermarket, and trying to figure out when I’ll have the time to make something and should I double it for leftovers?  It just seems like too much trouble.

So I’m going to experiment for the month of February and see if I can simplify by using just one cookbook. After the holidays I brought back my aunt’s copy of the 1997 edition of Joy of Cooking.  It is virtually untouched and she has no need for it anymore. Yes, I do have a Joy of Cooking, 1975 edition, but I’m giving it to the library book sale.  It has some notes in it, such as made this for playgroup 1988 (Butterscotch Brownies) but all the same I’m not keeping it. The later edition is truly updated, with more uses for tofu and the like, and it has plenty of ideas for soups and fish.

In addition to the above mentioned cookbooks I also have a large three-ring binder stuffed with tried and true recipes that I’ve cut out from magazines and newspapers or received from friends.  I also have a folder overflowing with more clippings of things I want to try.  Too much!  Perhaps I might cheat a little and use my binder, but that’s it, I promise.

Check back in a month to see how the one cookbook experiment worked.  And for those of you who can just open the fridge and throw something together, I’m jealous.

Welcome, Prudence!

China Road

When I first married in 1975 most couples registered at a department store for formal china, silver and crystal.  The simple look of a silver band around a cream background of Lenox’s Solitaire appealed to me then and still does.  Since I was preparing to be a “preacher’s wife” my mother insisted that I needed 12 place settings and by golly that’s what I got. Fancy dinners with church members and deacons were in my future.

The Solitaire lasted longer than the marriage and I carted it around with me for over 30 years.  Even when I was single I’d unpack it in every apartment and use it for dinner parties.  All twelve place settings.  And it became the china that Bill and I used for Christmas, Thanksgiving and the like.  I just loved it.

Shortly before Emily and Jeff were married I used the china for a meal when they were visiting.  In the back of my mind I’d been thinking of giving it to them, but truthfully I was having a very hard time letting it go.  But I mustered the courage to ask if they might like it and the answer was an unequivocal Yes! I packed it up and the day after their wedding they loaded it into their car and took it to DC.

Bill and I had Thanksgiving dinner with them this year and there was my china, looking ever-so-beautiful in its new home.  I sort of like the idea that it started out Baptist and converted to Judaism.

Of course I still have the Waterford crystal and Gorham sterling…

Aunt Dot

She is like a horse grazing

a hill pasture that someone makes

smaller by coming every night

to pull the fences in and in.

She has stopped running wide loops,

stopped even the tight circles.

She drops her head to feed; grass

is dust, and the creekbed’s dry.

Master, come with your light

halter.  Come and bring her in.

            In the Nursing Home by Jane Kenyon

My dear Aunt Dot is having a rough time of it.  Almost 90 and never married, she recently had to move to a nursing home in the Dallas area.  She is not just an ordinary aunt, but someone who has had a profound and lasting influence on my life.  While visiting her last week I reminded her of all that we have in common, which includes a love of reading, travel, movies and opera, devotion to the Episcopal Church, and a taste for wine.  But what I meant to say to her was Thank you, Dot, for opening my eyes to a big beautiful world and for taking me along on your journey.

What To Do?

The tragedy in Newtown last week left a heavy burden on my heart.  So many questions, not the least of which is What can I do?  Anyone speaking from a pulpit last Sunday had to address this as well and fortunately the Gospel for the day had something to say.  John the Baptist is addressing a restless, clamoring crowd who after being baptized asks him What should we do? And his unequivocal answer is to give away your extra coat and food.

So for once I took the Bible literally and did just that.  I marched up to the attic where two perfectly good coats were in storage just in case.  This morning I dropped them off at the Emmaus homeless shelter in Ellsworth and hope they will wrap someone in warmth over the next few weeks.

And the crowds asked him “What then should we do?” In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise."  

Luke 3:10-11

Carrot Crop

Yesterday we harvested our late-fall carrot crop and I spent most of the morning today making a big batch of carrot soup.  Growing a late crop was new to us this year-we planted the seeds in August when the harvesting of the garlic made some space in the garden.  We’ve had temps in the teens which didn’t seem to harm the carrots, but we had to wait for a warm day for the soil to be loose enough to dig them.  Here’s the recipe for the soup, adapted from Moosewood Cookbook.

Herbed Carrot Soup

2 lbs. carrots

1 medium white potato

4 cups water

1 cup chopped onion

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 ½ tsp. salt

1 T olive oil

1 tsp. dried basil

½ tsp. dried marjoram

½ tsp. dried thyme

1-2 T lemon juice, according to taste

Yogurt, for garnish,

Fresh parsley, for garnish

Clean and peel carrots and potato. (Boy, did this take a long time! A word to those who don’t grow carrots-the ones from your garden are not nice and uniform like the ones in the supermarket-they are of varying sizes and shapes, from long and skinny to short and stumpy, with many strange deformities.) Cut into pieces, put in a soup pot and add the water.  Bring to a boil, lower to simmer, cover and cook until tender, about 20-25 minutes.

Meanwhile, sauté onion and salt in oil over medium heat until onion is soft.  Add garlic and herbs and cook about 5 minutes more. Add lemon juice.

When carrots are tender combine them with the onion mixture and purée in batches in a food processor. (This is when I wish I had an immersion blender!) Return to soup pot and simmer for about 10 minutes.  Serve with a dollop of yogurt and chopped parsley on top.

So that’s our carrot crop for the year-soup for three meals.  Sort of seems like a lot of trouble and a small pay-off, but it tasted great and as Garrison Keillor admonishes on the Writer’s Almanac, I did good work.