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The Kids Were All Right

July 15th, 2010

by Lisa

The table on the Lanai

For some reason, things are easier on Kauai. Take dinner for instance:  grilled fresh fish, rice, local vegetables or salad.  Fast, easy, delicious.  Both Ella and Finn insisted on maybe our second night that things tasted better in Hawaii. They had a point. It might have been the weather. It might have been the lanai. It might have been the ease of it all, or having all of us together, or the pre-dinner watercolor painting in the secret spot. Regardless–family dinners are  a highpoint of vacation partly for the new food (ono, fiddlehead ferns, local pork and beef from just a few miles up the road) but mostly because we all gathered happily together on our garden lanai.

And more to the point:  every night we ate at home,  the kids happily and eagerly set the table. Can I repeat? They set. the. table. With alacrity. Without complaining. With lovely care to attention and detail.  They worked peacefully together. They cooperated. They set the table at home, too, with some regularity, but not nearly with such good cheer and eagerness.  At home, this is a chore that interrupts the very ebb and flow of their life. But on the Island? It’s a Fun Thing To Do.   Go figure.  Personally, I think we need more orchids on the table.  Perhaps that would do it.

Ice=Nice

July 13th, 2010

By Lisa

We were on Kauai for two glorious weeks and before we went, the kids told me that one of the reasons they love vacation there is because I’m “super-nice” the whole time. Apparently this has a lot to do with the fact that I let them eat shave ice almost every day. This is easily the Hawaiian equivalent of gelato, with a lot less fat.

Jo Jo’s Blue Raspberry

Their flavor picks evolved with the trip, for example:

Day 1= lime and cherry (Ella); mango and guava (Finn)
Day 2=guava & li hing mui/root beer & cotton candy
Day 3=vanilla & coconut / peach & pineapple

After that,  I lost track, but Ella was often seen eating coconut and vanilla to match her toweling shirt.

Finn was the wild card. One day it would be tropical, another day candy-sweet. They liked things that turned their tongue unnatural colors.

Sometimes, we had ice cream on the bottom–vanilla or macadamia nut, which is a real treat.  I dusted mine with li hing mui powder, or tried the haupia (coconut) cream topping.

With Li Hing Mui (salty preserved plum powder)

Not all shave ice is created equal.  There was a decent roadside stand on the way to Koloa, and Jo Jo’s, a shack in Waimea, has terrific syrups (60 in all), and Shave Ice Paradise in Hanalei is open long hours and is good, too.  But the Wishing Well in Hanalei still takes the prize.

Wishing Well’s Local Girl:  Li Hing Mui + Coconut

Grape + Vanilla

Lime + Coconut + Whipped Cream (for Ella’s local girlfriend)

Vanilla + Coconut

Pineapple + Coconut + Guava

It’s in a truck, and it’s almost never open as far as we can tell. Her posted hours are flagrantly wrong (in our limited experience) and she runs out of ice regularly. The owner is ageless, tall and thin and tanned and usually clad in draping island wear.  She is secretive and dictatorial–you have to order in a prescribed way and you can NOT substitute anything in the specials. She will not let you hold the kids up to the tiny screened window so they can see how she works.  But she is amazing and her shave ice is glorious. It’s light and delicate and melts in your mouth. But it does not melt quickly in the cup like some other shave ice does.  I don’t understand how she does it, and when I asked if she had a different machine and she answered cryptically, “No, I just take my time.” She claims her syrups are the same as everyone else’s, save for 4, but I’m not sure I believe her.  There is something mysterious about this truck and magical about just how good the shave ice is.  So if it’s open when you drive by, stop immediately.  While pretty much any shave ice will hit the spot, this is what ice was made to do best.

At Jo Jo’s

Salads, fast

June 16th, 2010

by Lisa

Summer makes it easy to feed your family fast, fresh, healthy food that also should be really good-tasting.  It makes it easy to offer your kids a pre-dinner snack or an appetizer masquerading as a snack.  It’s become nearly ritual here, as I finish the “main” part of dinner, for the kids to sit at the bar, where we often eat, and tuck into the salads, which I prepare beforehand (sometimes at lunch, or right after school, or any fifteen minutes I have to wash and chop and toss the produce with some kind of dressing….) and set out in mini-bowls.

In summer, we like a lot of variety. Small dishes, lots of variety. This makes our market haul last longer, gives the kids a sense of choice and power and just looks prettier on the table. Last Sunday, I set out three side salads, which took maybe ten minutes to prepare, total:

White bean with olive oil, salt, fresh garlic, fresh sage

Cucumber with olive oil, salt, white balsamic, sugar, fresh dill

“Caprese” with baby tomatoes, fresh basil, mozzarella, olive oil, salt, balsamic

We had a large green salad, dressed with my go-to mix of olive oil and white balsamic and lemon pepper, to which I’ve been obsessively adding basil and cilantro. I think cilantro is the new tarragon.

These were to go with a few links of grilled wild boar sausage (Thank you, thank you Holding Ranch! ) and grilled italian bread grilled with olive oil and salt.

All you need to keep on hand to make a range of salads are some

• good olive oil
• different salts (herbed, hawaiian, kosher, sea, black, etc.)
• a range of vinegars (red wine, white balsamic, balsamic, rice wine, anything fancier that you like)
• mustards (yellow, dijon, country..)
• lemons and meyer lemon
• fresh herbs
• fresh garlic

Keep a light hand with salt, don’t pepper everything, mix acids to oil in about a  1 to 2 ratio (as in 1 part vinegar to 2 parts olive oil) and experiment.

Lemony Zucchini Muffins

June 15th, 2010

by Caroline

I’ve written here before about the food my family takes to travel, the food we’ve eaten on journeys, even the food that has greeted us on our return, but not yet about this particular food/travel issue: cleaning out the fridge before leaving on the trip.

Tonight, on the eve of our 2+-week vacation, and with friends coming to stay in our house ten days from now (and so a week before we get home), I had to think carefully about what we should use up and what could stay put. When the eggs ran out late last week, I didn’t replace them; that half loaf of sandwich bread goes in the freezer, as does that end of baguette, sliced into cubes for croutons and tossed into a bag. We’ll use up the milk in the morning, but the last stick of butter will be fine. It’s the produce that’s trickier, of course. Tonight I found myself adding lots of vegetable sides to our pasta dinner: green salad with shredded carrots; roasted zucchini; roasted potatoes; fresh snap peas. The meal looked a bit like this, the kids ate a ton, and the crisper was nearly empty.

Nearly! I still had a bunch of beets to deal with, so quickly pickled them using the recipe recommended by a reader (my sister!); the recipe was fast, and the pickles will keep until our friends arrive.

Last up: zucchini, which our CSA has been providing at a rate faster than we can handle. I’ve made them into pancakes, fritters, and soup; shredded them into salads or tossed them, roasted, onto pasta with walnuts. Tonight, running out of steam, I grated four cups and stuck it into the freezer for a future soup. Then finally, because I always have time to make muffins, made these lemony zucchini muffins from the fabulous King Arthur Cookbook:

2 c flour (I use a mix of all-purpose and whole wheat flours)
1/2 c granulated sugar
1 scant T baking powder
1 t salt
grated peel of 2-3 lemons (the recipe calls for the peel of just one lemon, which just isn’t enough for me)
1/2 c chopped, toasted walnuts (optional)
1/2 c raisins (optional)
2 large eggs (I’d run out of eggs, but luckily still had egg replacer from when my vegan niece lived with us last year!)
1/2 c milk
1/2 c vegetable oil
1 c shredded, unpeeled zucchini

Preheat the oven to 400.

Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and lemon peel in a large bowl. Stir in the walnuts and raisins.

In a 2-cup liquid measure, combine the milk, oil, and eggs. Pour into the dry ingredients and stir until just barely combined. Fold in the zucchini.

Spoon batter into a 12-cup muffin tin and bake for 20-25 minutes, until a tester comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then turn out of the pan to finish cooling.

Some of the muffins will come to the airport with us tomorrow, and the rest will wait in the freezer for our friends, because if we can’t greet them ourselves, at least we can greet them, in absentia, with muffins.

Salmon Backs, Redux

June 14th, 2010

by Lisa

I’ve written about salmon backs before, twice, actually, but they’re so good, and fast and economical they deserve more notice. If you can get salmon backs from your fishermonger, or counter, or farmer’s market, BUY THEM. Don’t be afraid, even though they’re weird looking and long and bony and flat and will appear to be the opposite of what you want in a good piece of fish.  But they are full of flavor, and easy to fix.  They will likely not be on display. ASK if you can get them.

Then, you can add this to your ways of preparing them:

• sprinkle with salt
• drizzle with white wine
• Rub with a grainy, country dijon
• fold over lots of leafy ferns of fresh dill

Refrigerate, covered, or in a bag for as long as you have.  Grill or bake at high heat (425 degrees) for 5 minutes.  Let cool slightly, and with a fork, flake the meat off the bones. This is easy.  Serve immediately, or later at room temperature.

This is what they look like before cooking:

Salmon backs go beautifully with grilled bread, a side pasta dish, crackers of all sorts, eggs and bagels for a fancy brunch. They also make a really mean fish taco.  Last night, Finn ate three.

First Communion Feast

June 11th, 2010

By Lisa

This was a big year for Ella, and one of the bigger events was her First Communion. Many families have very, very large celebrations. We were brief guests at one than included, among many other offerings, a taquero equipped to make several hundred tacos–in addition to fantastic chicken mole, rice, drinks, fruit, vegetables, salads….

Our family is small, and so we had a very small celebration, but it was still one of the more lovely afternoons we’ve had in this house.  Being my child, Ella made it clear that she wanted to choose the menu.  I made several suggestions: pork tenderloin? steak? grilled halibut or salmon?   Totally unacceptable.

I wanted something easy and fast, something make-ahead.

She wanted fresh pasta.

I said no way.

She said, “Mom.  Did Grandma Pat get to choose YOUR First Communion party food?”

“Um, yes. She did.”

Her jaw dropped.

“I was 8 years old. So are you.”

“But mom! It’s my day. I should get to choose my food.”

And since the day was, in fact, all about her, and, unlike a birthday, only happens once in a lifetime, and is, in fact, a profound initiation into another mystery of faith, I relented, and spent most of the week cooking and running errands for a party of 8. I figured the least I could do was honor that first feast with one as a good as I could make.

It went something like this:

Mini-Mario was enlisted…

to mix the pasta…

roll, and carry the pasta…

and hang 3 lbs of pasta around the kitchen. We cut and froze it.

He also shelled 3 lbs. of fava beans.

I spent a lot of money on pink and white flowers…

but they were so pretty care I didn’t care.

The pink and white theme carried out in the Fra Mani meats…

and the fava beans found their way into our family’s favorite spring spread:

raw favas pureed with olive oil, lemon, parmesan, mint, garlic

Prosecco with lemonade and mint for the grown-ups, bubbly lemonade with mint for the kids

An al fresco table, where we ate the  fresh fettucine alfredo, with grilled asparagus,

sauteed spinach with meyer lemon, baby tomato salad…

a Pink Lady cake, colored with strawberry puree, decorated by Ella…

and served with homemade vanilla ice cream.

Our very happy, very beautiful girl.

Moon Pies for Rocket Boys

June 10th, 2010

by Caroline

It’s all about rockets in our house lately. The boys are reading about Apollo 11 and the other moon missions, drawing rocket pictures, building cardboard and foil rockets, and making plans for their future lives as rocket scientists.

I play along as much as I can, but my kids understand two fundamental things about me: I prefer stories to lists of facts (I refuse to read aloud from the encyclopedia at bedtime); and I’m always happier if there’s food involved. So, during this rocket time, we’re all happy reading Tony Di Terlizzi’s fun picture book, Jimmy Zangow’s Out-of-This-World Moon-Pie Adventure, about a boy who flies into outer space and gathers a year’s supply of moon pies.

And then, in one of those fabulous coincidences that occasionally strike, I realized the boys had never had a moon pie, and a magazine arrived with a recipe for them. It was fate. It was a sign. And it was also an excellent way to spend the first full day of summer vacation.

The resulting moon pies really can’t be beat, but I did, at Tony’s suggestion, make one big change from the original recipe: slice through the marshmallows in half, horizontally, and you get 18 manageable moon pies instead of 9 that are so tall they won’t fit in anyone’s mouth. Make sure to keep a big bowl of cold water handy, both while you’re pouring the boiling sugar mixture into the gelatin (in case of accidental burns) and while you’re spreading and later slicing the marshmallow: if you dip your spatula and knife blade in the cold water, it won’t stick. And then, invite some friends over to share the snacks.

From Blossoms

June 8th, 2010

Review: In the Kitchen, by Dona Schwartz

May 27th, 2010

by Caroline

Lisa lives in a modernist Eichler house, with glass doors opening from its bright, efficient kitchen to a sunny back yard with citrus trees and a generous picnic bench. I live in a renovated San Francisco Edwardian, with a cork-floored kitchen, a maple island and deep red tile fired in a local pottery studio. My kitchen, with its adjoining family room, is the heart of my home, the center of all our many gatherings, and I expect Lisa feels the same way about hers. So when the opportunity arose to review the new photography collection by Dona Schwartz, In the Kitchen, I jumped at the chance. After all, cookbooks overflow my kitchen bookshelves and spill into the living room; why not add a kitchen coffee table book to the mix?

But In the Kitchen, while gorgeous, doesn’t quite fit with the glossy art books. Turning the pages of its color portraits, interspersed with poems by Marion Winik, is like stepping into a documentary film; these are not posed family pictures, nor do they focus exclusively on significant moments in the life of her blended family of eight, which includes her partner, Ken, and their respective three children, ranging in age here from 10 to 21. Instead, Schwartz learned “to create photographs with one hand while wielding a spatula with the other,” and the result is a beautifully intimate portrayal of family life.

The project began on Schwartz’ birthday in 2002, when, with the kids giving her the night off to make a celebration dinner and cake, she found herself at loose ends; her normal role in the kitchen having been happily supplanted by her kids, she decided to get the camera out so that she could still be a part of the action. Schwartz’ professional role as a photographic artist was already firmly established; her earlier books, Waucoma Twilight: Generations of the Farm (Smithsonian Institution Press,1992) and Contesting the Superbowl (Routledge, 1997) are fascinating photographic ethnographies. But turning the camera onto her own family that evening piqued her interest and although, as she says in her introduction, “doing mom work and photographic work at the same time made my life in the kitchen more harried,” she discovers an interesting story unfolding before her eyes: her widowed mother moves close by and becomes a regular fixture in the kitchen (and a reluctant subject in the photos); Schwartz and her boyfriend Ken move in together and blend their families, a move that suspends the photography project for months. “When I next looked through the viewfinder, I confronted a new family,” writes Schwartz, and so “changing my lens to allow for a wider angle of view, the project came to encompass the process of becoming a family, or, more accurately, blending two to become…to become what? (One big happy family? Ken and I were hopeful.)”

She and Ken devise a “blueprint” for their approach to parenting this new family, and family dinner is a key part of bringing the disparate personalities together; they vow to eat dinner together every night, at least during the school week, and then face a new challenge:

“One was a vegetarian, while one cared little for food in general. All took turns as contrarians. One week some of them like red meat, the next week it was anathema to a new subset. Let’s all make pizza! Everyone likes pizza, right? We’d try again. Tastes changed week by week, and forgetting who like what could be unforgivable: ‘You don’t even know what your own kid likes?!’ Trying to find something that everyone would eat was nearly impossible, and even finding a customizable menu was a challenge.”

But they eat. They cook! This book is gorgeous evidence of their cooking. What’s depicted in these pages is not necessarily fancy: eggs are fried, onions sautéed, cookie dough dropped onto sheets. It’s family cooking. One of my favorite pictures shows two brothers, side by side at the stove, holding upended containers — one tin of olive oil, one a bottle of ketchup – over their respective frying pans. On the facing page, the youngest child, Lara, arranges a bright yellow plate with a simple sliced tomato and mozzarella salad while her step-sister, Chelsea, leans against the counter eating a green bean. Another wonderful picture shows two at the stove with spatulas in hand, one sautéing green beans, the other with a tomatoe-y pan of onions, with Eric standing in the background, munching cereal from a box. The image is framed to concentrate our attention entirely on the active elbows and wrists as they stir and snack, the satisfying parallel composition of forearms, skillet handles and spatulas offering a coherent respite in the midst of chaotic family life.

Blending a family can’t be easy — Schwartz admits, “Try as [the kids] might to remove dinner from the list of obligatory rites, Ken and I held fast, and medicated the indigestion our decision often produced”– but there’s a lovely unity in these photographs, a comfortable feeling of togetherness.

Sometimes I wish I could be a fly on the wall and watch my family when I’m not around. I know my presence – even when I’m not directly involved in their activities – affects them, and I’d love that impossible glimpse of them on their own. Looking at Dona Schwartz’ family photos makes me think anew of this problem; she’s not in the images, and so it might be easy to think of the pictures simply as the result of her camera, but they are equally the result of a mother’s sensitive observation. As Alison Nordstrom writes in her preface to the book, “This family is what it is because she is part of it; it may even be what it is because she has photographed it.”

The family — like all families, always in a bit of flux — changed again while the pictures were being taken. Her mother suddenly died (a gathering after her funeral is depicted in these pages, though the only sign of the event is the family’s uncharacteristically dark and formal clothes; captions at the back of book make the occasions clear), and two more kids moved out, joining the two already off at college as occasional visitors home. After two years of pictures, Schwartz writes, “When I looked through the viewfinder there were fewer teenagers and I saw them less often.. . . I came to realize our kitchen moment was passing.”

In the Kitchen offers such a beautiful look at her family’s “kitchen moment,” it makes me grateful that I can expect many more years of my family home and gathered in the kitchen, but also optimistic that even after this intense period of our own kitchen moment has passed, it will occasionally, if temporarily, recur again. As for Schwartz, she writes, “I no longer actively scrutinize or assess, no longer search for clues to emergent identity. I rarely experience the pleasure of framing a telling kitchen-moment I have discovered and rendered visible in a photograph. I now seek these picture pleasures elsewhere. Instead I can often kick back, go with the flow, and watch our family cook.”

all images copyright Dona Schwartz

A Celebration

May 25th, 2010

by Caroline

My father-in-law, James Grant, would have been 86 today. He was a husband and father, an engineer and artist, a backyard wine maker and meat smoker. He is remembered, by his friends and family, for his generosity, his straight talk, his gorgeous paintings and sculpture, and his great cooking. I regret that I never knew him, but we remember to mark his birthday each year with his pasta puttanesca, a good salad and garlic bread, and a bottle of his wine — this year, a 1982 Amador Valley Cabernet. Cheers!

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