Eli eagerly anticipating his pancake

Ben practicing his cutlery skills on actual food

These pancakes are about the lightest, fluffiest pancakes you’ll ever make (these pictures really don’t do them justice at all), so make them silver dollar size so they bake all the way through.

cooking pumpkin pancakes

They taste great served with applesauce, yogurt, ricotta cheese, or of course maple syrup.

1 c flour
3 T sugar
1 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/4 t salt
1 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg

1 egg
1 c plain yogurt
1/4 c pumpkin puree (canned or fresh)
2 T butter, melted and cooled

In a large bowl, beat the egg and then stir in remaining wet ingredients. Blend well. Whisk the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl, then stir into the egg mixture until just combined.

Heat a skillet and add a dab of butter. When the skillet’s hot, pour about 1/8 c batter per pancake. Flip when the tops bubble and the edges seem dry. Cook until the other side is golden brown, 2-3 minutes per side.

We’re almost past the time, here in California, when we can stock up on extra produce at the farmer’s market to store away for the winter. There are some tomatoes coming still, but I’ve got about as many as I can handle, cooked into sauce and tucked into the freezer, next to a few dozen pesto cupcakes, some apricots and some berries. I don’t have a huge freezer, so I don’t put up a lot, but if I’m careful we’ll still have something that we can pull out of the freezer for a shot of summer on a dark February day.

But happily there are some foods that taste brightly of summer to me but are easy to make out of ingredients that are available year round. Salsa Verde is one of those things. If you’re lucky enough to have an abundant lemon tree, like Lisa, and a pot of parsley on your window sill or in your garden, so much the better, but otherwise pick those up fresh at the market; all the other ingredients are pantry staples, which means this is something you can assemble in five minutes and then have ready for chips, or carrot and cucumber sticks, roasted potatoes, a piece of fish, or simply to eat by the spoonful.

Toss everything into a blender, blend, then taste and adjust seasonings.

2/3 c parsley leaves
2 1/2 T drained capers
6 anchovy fillets (optional)
1-2 cloves of garlic (to taste; the garlic mellows after a few hours)
1/2 t good mustard
1/2 t red vinegar or the juice of one lemon
1/2 c olive oil
salt to taste

It was a hot day. We’d been exploring the Storm King Art Center by foot and by tram; we had picnicked and sculpted and now it was time to refill our water bottles and drive home. We could see, near the water dispenser, a vending machine with ice creams. OK, we told the boys, you can each choose an ice cream.

Tragedy. The vending machine was broken.

Plan B: We’ll stop for ice cream on the way home, we promised. The boys were skeptical, hungry and tired. I wracked my brain, thinking of all the fast food joints we’d passed on the way, but couldn’t remember seeing a single decent ice cream place. We needed the Red Rooster. We got in the car and drove, fingers crossed.

And then I saw the sign: Rita’s Ice Custard Happiness. Perfect!

I have to admit, it wasn’t immediately happiness. This:

grand as it is, was a little overwhelming at first, and there were tears from one boy before there was happiness. But I made the supreme maternal sacrifice and ordered one of the two things he wanted (the lemonade ice custard, which I have to say was excellent, with chewy bits of lemon zest), and then we all felt like this:

The Red Rooster is a small white place with a red and white striped façade, its steep roof topped by a giant sculpture of a soft serve vanilla ice cream cone. These days it has acquired some retro appeal; Jane and Michael Stern have reviewed it, and hip New Yorkers make pilgrimages for the Rooster’s fresh burgers and real milk shakes. But when I was a kid, before Route 22 was dotted with MacDonalds and Burger Kings, the Rooster was just a typical burger shack, the only place to stop for miles. There are two or three small tables inside, but they’re always taken up with people perched waiting for their orders; everyone eats at the picnic tables outside, or, in rougher weather, their cars. Friday afternoons would find my dad (my mom would join us later, after work) driving my brother Larry and me from our house in Westchester to my grandparents for the weekend. The Rooster was the halfway point, so we would stop to stretch our legs, use the bathroom and then, if the timing was right, buy hamburgers and root beer floats.

Now, the Rooster marks the halfway point between JFK Airport and the house my parents built for their retirement, a little north of where my grandparents lived. And so just as when I was little, a trip to Grandma and Granddad’s house involves, for my kids, a stop for ice cream. We have to leave home early to make our flight, so Tony and I scoop the kids up out of bed while they’re sleeping, and somehow the chance to eat ice cream in pj’s after 11 hours of travel makes it all the sweeter. They should be eating a proper meal, but sometimes nostalgia and sentiment are stronger than nutritional values.

Eating with kids is often all about expediency, and so although it was difficult, in Oxford, to set aside my romantic, Evelyn Waugh-inspired visions of country picnics, I have been at this long enough to know that when the kids are hungry, they need to eat. Now.

So we make or purchase nice sandwiches, collect cold drinks, perhaps add a bag of crisps and some carrots or an apple. Sometimes, I pack the picnic while they are eating breakfast, and they start asking for it shortly after we leave the house. (I have learned to pack enough food for six.) Or we collect the provisions on the road, in which case the kids see no reason not to sit right down and eat it. They plop down in a grubby doorway, hardly waiting for me to kick the cigarette butts out of the way; they enjoy a pretty view, but they don’t need it. So while I keep expecting to picnic in a place like this:

Inevitably, we wind up in a place like this:

And I’ll keep reminding myself that while a nice setting might improve the meal, it’s the food and the company who make the meal.

I love sandwiches. Although I will eat a nice salad for lunch, or keep you company with Thai noodles or a rice bowl, just as breakfast is cereal for me, all I ever really want for lunch is a sandwich.  In Paris, the sandwich is all about the baguette–as it should be, of course; the baguettes are wonderful–spread thinly with butter and layered with meat or cheese (not, I think, both).  I watched French school kids tear into their lunches and remembered my  husband’s childhood year of the same daily lunch: baguette with butter and salami. But for me, the sandwich on baguette is, as Eli began to complain, a little big in the mouth.

In England, the bread isn’t the star player, but nor is it an afterthought; whether white or whole grain, dense and malty or tangy with buttermilk, it plays its supporting role well. As for the fillings,  we won’t talk about the betrayal that is the peanut butter and butter sandwich (I’m not sure Ben will ever recover from that), nor the extravagant use of the shudder-inducing salad crème.  No, I glory in egg and cress, ploughman’s, brie-walnut-cranberry jam, cheddar and chutney, carrot and wembley (that’s a cheese), red cheddar and tomato– and those are just the vegetarian options! Every train station, every Sainsbury’s, Tesco, and Marks & Spencer has their own array of sandwiches, made fresh at least once a day and sometimes more often than that. I could happily eat a different one every day for a month.

As Lisa made clear with her post last week, the rules are different on vacation. We stay up later, sleep in (or so we hope), and we indulge in sweet treats and extra snacks — and so it is for the kids, too.

Now I’ve always been a milk shake and ice cream girl, but it turns out my son Ben is more of a fruit ice guy. At home we make tiny popsicles with toothpick holders in ice cube trays, sometimes dropping fresh berries inside them. On our recent trip to England, he discovered ice lollies and at Legoland (where I thought I might truly pass out from heat stroke), when Ben asked for a “star slush” for lunch, I asked only, “what flavour?”

by Lisa

One of the iconic things about any childhood is ice cream, and we had a local shop in my home town that had no rivals, but when we went down the shore we always flocked to Kohr’s Frozen Custard stand on the boardwalk. In 1919 the Kohr’s brothers pioneered soft serve style ice cream, but the product is richer, creamier and more flavorful than the standard fare, and it contains eggs. It’s simple–vanilla, chocolate, orange, raspberry, usually eaten in twists–but (for me) highly addictive.

One of the more epic food memories of my childhood is of my best friend’s father, who used to make the hour+ drive to the Jersey Shore whenever he had a hankering for Kohr’s.

So of course we took the kids there. Of course they ate their cones before I could think to put my own down and snap a picture.

But the custard really does exist, and it really is that good, so if you find yourself in Point Pleasant, get one for yourself and see if you can hold off long enough to get a picture.

In 1854 Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Our life is frittered away by detail” and called for “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a milion count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. ”

It’s good advice for a busy parent, and it’s excellent advice for recessionary times.  While not so many of us can uproot ourselves as radically Thoreau did, there is a lot to learn from his advice about self-sufficiency, living close to the land, and keeping scrupulous track of your accounts.  Thoreau  is, in fact, in some ways, the spiritual grandfather of the urban farming movement, which has a lot of lessons to teach us, even if you’re not ready to raise chickens in your backyard.

For my part, it’s spring in Northern California–or at least the vegetables think so.  This means the markets are filled with seasonal things  we can eat raw, and which go right to the table with a quick rinse:  snap peas, baby carrots, English shelling peas, radishes, tender baby fennel, baby gem lettuces. Even young fava beans can be shelled and peeled and eaten raw, dipping as you go in olive oil in salt.   We have cucumbers for slicing and a few early tomatoes, too.  Artichokes get done with a simple steaming, as does the Bloomsdale spinach, which has a really meaty leaf and it is the only kind Ella and Finn will eat.  And then there are the eggs: fresh, gorgeous, eggs, with bright yellow-orange yolks, which my kids will eat in any form they can get their hands on.  I actually have to ration them, but that’s another story.

While I have to confess to liking labor-intensive things, like frying zucchini blossoms as often as I can, most school nights I want to live like Thoreau, which means dinner consists these days, as often as I can get away with it, with whole, raw, simple food.  The good things about eating this way are legion:  It’s fast, healthy, and economical.  You can offer your kids a choice of 2 out of 3 things, and let them begin to self-monitor and make good choices about what they eat.  Small individual pots or larger bowls of different colored and shaped vegetables looks really pretty on the table and satisfies a simple aesthetic urge in me.  But eating this way also teaches children to eat real food that looks like real food.  In this way, they learn to appreciate color, texture, shape, and the basic flavor of the food in front of them.  They learn that fruits and vegetables have seasons, and that they taste best when eaten in that season. (Even Finn, who is only four, asked me last night “When it going to be pomegranite season again? I love pomegranites.”  Next winter, I answered, and he was fine with that, as he knew there were strawberries waiting for him, and peaches and plums to come….).

Ella and Finn have lately developed an obsession with soft-cooked eggs, which they love to eat in the old-fashioned way: out of egg cups. (I told you, kids like mini-meals, things that are their size.)   Three minutes in the boiling water, a cold rinse, and you have an elegant source of locally, humanely sourced protein accompanied by whatever I dig out of the vegetable bin.

The one thing I do to make it a little fancy, is provide a salt sampler. I have a salt problem, as in I collect salt the way my kids collect Japanese eraser buddies.  (We all continue to have really low blood pressure, so health isn’t an issue.) In the center of the table, I placed about 5 or 6 of my salts, and let the kids pinch or sprinkle very small amounts onto their eggs as they ate them. We had Provence Salt, Black Cyprus Flakes,  Red Hawaiian Salt, the gorgeous salmon-colored Murray salt,  Sel Gris, even a smoked sea salt (in the middle) which Ella bravely sampled.  The jars were a lovely present from a good friend, and the rest were purchased at Farmers Markets & Whole Foods.

From my kids point of view, there’s not a meal more satisfying.  Certainly, the time will come when things get more complicated.  So for now, this is another way to continue following Thoreau’s advice. Life really can begin at the table.

“Simplify, simplify.  Instead of three meals a day, if it be necesary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion.”

My friend Alicia and her husband like to eat.  They also have 4 children, ranging in age and appetite from preschool to high school.

They are also renovating their kitchen, which, like most major renovations, is taking longer than anticipated.   So, when I ran into her this weekend, Alicia said, only half-joking, “You should blog about how to cook without a stove.”  I stared at her for a minute, blankly, as in, “Are you kidding me?” But her husband concurred that they were in kitchen/family eating hell, and then, because I like a challenge, we brainstormed.  I promised them a blog.

They’ve been without a working kitchen for a while, which I know from our small, quick renovation three years ago, is a miserable situation.  Even if you have a grill and a microwave and a convection oven (which they do), the general disarray, the lack of countertops, working dishwasher, and in my case even running water, made prepping and cleaning up virtually impossible.  Eating out or take-out is an occasional option, of course, but hardly ideal on school nights–especially when you have mulitiple children’s homework to supervise and shuttle to activities.

So here, for Alicia and Michael, and whoever else wants easy, quick, nearly prep- and clean-up free family dinners, are a few ideas to get you through the last phase of a remodel or whatever other misery is confronting you in the kitchen today.

And please, after reading, share your own ideas for cooking without a kitchen.

1.  Buy the best rice cooker you can afford.  Not only will it cook you a fast, healthy side dish (brown & white rice, couscous, farro…) but you can use it to steam any vegetable you like–even frozen ones, which–since they’re often prechopped and cleaned–are a great option if you have no place to rinse and chop fresh ones.  You can steam frozen pot stickers and pre-cooked shrimp in it, too.  Also, it’s a one pot clean up.

2. Use your grill.  Buy easy cuts of meat, like chops or chicken breasts, pre-made burgers, pork tenderloin.  A lot of fish can be easy too: halibut or salmon steaks right on the grill, or fillets wrapped in foil, drizzled with olive oil, a handful of herbs, salt and pepper. You can throw sliced leeks in, too.)   Vegetables can be cooked easily on the grill in a foil pack (sometimes called a hobo pack).  Just toss the cut vegetables in a little olive oil and salt, crimp the foil all around, and grill until tender over medium-high heat.  We like potatoes, onions, carrots, zucchini, & yellow squash this way, but as long as you watch the cooking time, pretty much anything can be cooked this way.   I’d probably look for things that were already prepped in the store, or which required very minimal cutting.) Once, I met a man who put his wok right on his grill, but if you’re truly without a kitchen, even this much prep/clean-up is hard.

3. A really good convection oven can roast a small chicken and all manner of fish.  They’re not cheap, but mine is a workhorse, and very, very often replaces my oven.  They can also bake potatoes, roast squashes or eggplant, and handle a small casserole or pizza.  Pre-cooked sausage heats up quickly this way. Trader Joes has great crab cakes, too, which in a pinch can be cooked in the convection oven instead of pan fried.

4.  Fish tacos.  A quick fillet of red snapper in the convection oven + tortillas + premade salsa, guacamole, etc.  Around here, you can even buy pre-shredded cabbage to combat the inability to chop/rinse.  Even simpler than using fresh fish, cook frozen breaded tilipia filets (always available at Trader Joes) in the convection oven, and use these for your tacos. Defrost some precooked shrimp for shrimp tacos.  This same shrimp can be steamed in the rice cooker (see #1) while the rice cooks, and you can add soy sauce or any other dipping sauce your family likes.

5. Vegetables may pose the biggest problem.  We’re lucky that it’s spring here, or at least the vegetables think so. This means that there’s a lot at the Farmers Markets that doesn’t actually need to be cooked. Many things go from refrigerator to table these days, including:  snap peas, english shelling peas, carrots, celery, radishes.   All of these are fun to eat if you plop a bowl down in front of the kids, especially since they need no prep/cutting.  The kids have decided they like ranch to dip these days (we had 2 big tubs left over from potluck parties), but we also use olive oil and vinegar and homemade thousand island dressing.  (Of course, you can’t make Thousand Island w/o a kitchen, but in a pinch, a bottle will do.) We also have a small pile on our counter of the earliest tomatoes which can be quickly sliced or coarsely chopped.   If you can prep a little, shaved or thinly sliced fennel (think fancy celery) works, too. Again, as I wrote in Surviving First Grade, just look for things in season (it will be fresher and taste better) that you think your kids will eat.   In a pinch, spinach can be steamed in a microwave with a small amount of water, and dressed with a good olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice.