Lots of people make some version of a sweet or spicy roasted nut during the holidays; this is what Tony makes every year. We give bags to all our teachers and then snack on them all season long.

1 pound nuts
¼ cup maple syrup
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil

Preheat the oven to 350.

In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients except for the nuts. Add the nuts and toss until well coated. Pour into a large roasting pan and spread into a single layer. Bake for 8-12 minutes, stirring occasionally, until they are golden and filling the kitchen with a delicious maple scent. Let cool in the pan, so that the glaze hardens into a crispy shell on the nuts, before serving or storing.

Where was I during the Great Roasted Chickpea Craze of 2010? Google the phrase and you’ll find that apparently everyone was making them, or eating them, except me. But though I’m late to the party, I am happy to be here, because this is a delicious and easy snack.

There seem to be two schools of thought about roasting chickpeas: you can dry roast them and then toss them with an herb or spice-infused oil, or you can roast them in a drizzle of oil with your flavorings. I looked through lots of recipes online and then came back to my bookshelf and used Mark Bittman’s recipe from How To Cook Everything Vegetarian, which I have (of course) adapted a bit myself.

3 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil
2 cups cooked or canned chickpeas, drained until as dry as possible
1 tablespoon minced garlic
salt and pepper
zest of one lemon
1/2 teaspoon of smoked paprika

Preheat the oven to 400.

Put the oil in an ovenproof skillet big enough to hold all the chickpeas in a single layer, and heat over medium heat. When hot, add the chickpeas and garlic and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Shake the pan to coat the chickpeas well.

Transfer the skillet to the oven and roast, shaking the pan periodically, until the chickpeas begin to brown (15-20 minutes). Take out of the oven and sprinkle with the lemon zest and smoked paprika. Cool slightly and serve.

One of the contributors to our book, which is just a few weeks away from being sent to the publisher (!), is Jeff Gordinier. He’s written for a lot of places, but these days he makes his home at the Dining Section of the New York Times. He recently sent me a link about harvesting walnuts in France.

It’s a beautiful post, and as I read it, it made me happy to know that we, too, so far from France and big, sustainable gardens, also had a big bowl of walnuts, a bowl for shells, and a cracker out on our counter.  Of course, we don’t harvest the nuts ourselves, but we do get them fresh from an orchard that’s about an hour away from where we live, and every year we say the same thing: We can’t believe how good they are. Fresh, flavorful, tender, sweet.  Our whole family eats them all day long.  A nut here, a nut there, they’re like little nuggets of fall. Ella will crack a few while she’s waiting for breakfast. Finn will ask if he can some after lunch.  (I always say yes.) I’ll have some before dinner.  The shells are thin and easy to crack. The nuts are so solid and compact, and they make little musical clicks as we sort them.  Really, everything about them sings.  They’re a fast, healthy snack that you have work a little for, which isn’t a bad thing. And for me, because we only have them this time of year, they’re just one more thing that reminds us of the present moment. That, and the nefarious way a certain medley of carols keeps being sung over, and over, and over….

This past year, my 6 year-old got out of school an hour earlier than my 9 year-old, and we spent that hour in the school library or, on sunny days, in the park across the street. Once spring came, an ice cream truck parked at the entrance and as we crossed the street into the park every day, Eli would ask, automatically, “Can I have an ice cream?” And I’d say, just as automatically, “Nope,” and list the snacks I’d brought in my purse. It was a routine that caused no particular stress or bother; we didn’t need any legislation to ban the ice cream trucks, we just went on our way.

I don’t have a single good reason for my school year, week day ice cream ban (which is really too strong a word for this routine), and probably if Eli had lobbied harder I would have caved. But he didn’t, so I didn’t. We would play in the park for an hour, he would munch on an apple and a muffin and maybe some peanut butter crackers or a MoJo bar, and then we would pick up Ben and snack some more. I don’t think either of them feels at all deprived of sweets, and if you have read this blog any length of time, you also know they are not — it’s just that most of the time, I like to make them at home.

But when summer vacation comes, I feel like celebrating. Even though the weather in San Francisco isn’t so summery, I embrace the season with sandals and bright pink nail polish and home made ice cream and field trips with the kids to the latest ice cream and donut shops:

the menu at Dynamo Donuts

My friends tease me about my summer food enthusiasms, but my family is certainly not complaining. And when we travel, as we have been this last week (and as Lisa has written along the same lines) I am just a little sweeter, and even more inclined to say yes to treats. They are morale and energy boosters, they are a way to sample the local food culture, they are a break in a busy day of walking from one science museum to the next. On the ferry to San Juan Island last week, which seemed in some ways so foreign, the boys were delighted to find their favorite ballpark treat:

And after a surprisingly good lunch from the snack bar at one of Vancouver’s amazing public pools today, Eli chose from the standard ice cream menu:

While Ben bypassed that for a less typical post-swim snack:

This afternoon, flagging after a long walk from the planetarium to the Granville Public Market, we stopped for donuts, and we’re already looking forward to fudge tomorrow at the Capilano Suspension bridge, because apparently fudge is one of the things one buys to survive a walk across a sky-high suspension bridge, and because we are on vacation, and because it is fun to say yes.

Really, this is Tony’s post, as he is the only one in our family who will enjoy something in a restaurant and then try to recreate it at home. He’s done it with Eos’ shitake mushroom dumplings, Jackson Filmore’s gnocchi with chard in lemon broth, and now taqueria Papalote’s delicious salsa. His is a simplified version of this recipe, and it was such a hit at our recent dinner party that I don’t have a picture!

Tony writes, “I use canned, fire-roasted tomatoes, because it’s so much faster and the difference is hard to notice. It also means I can make the salsa year-round. I also forgo the dried chiles, and just use two different kinds of chile powder. Simpler and faster. You could certainly substitute different kinds of chile powder to good effect. I also added the onion and garlic to give it a little more sweetness and overall richness. I’m definitely not trying to copy Papalote at this point… I’d just call it an homage!”

1 15 oz. can fire roasted tomatoes (Muir Glen and Trader Joes both make them)
[Or you can simply halve some roma tomatoes and put them
under the broiler for 7-8 minutes until slightly blackened.]
1 small onion
4-5 cloves garlic
1 tsp dried ancho chile powder
1 tsp dried pasilla chile powder
4 tbsp toasted pumpkin seeds
1 tsp brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup cilantro
2 tbsp white vinegar
1/4 cup water

Coarsely chop the onion into big chunks. Leave the garlic cloves unpeeled. Pan roast the onions and garlic with no oil for 7-8 minutes until they are slightly blackened. (You could also do this under a broiler or on the grill) … you’re just trying to get a little color and roasted/charred flavor.

Peel the garlic and transfer onions and garlic to a saucepan with the tomatoes, dried chile powders, sugar, salt, and water. Simmer for 15-20 minutes. If it feels too thick feel free to add a little more water.

Add the vinegar and cook for one minute more.

Let cool a bit. (Or not, if you’re impatient like me!)

Transfer tomato mixture to a blender. Add the pumpkin seeds and cilantro. Blend until smooth.

(click on the image to enlarge)

Yes, it’s true: the vegetarian food blogger is offering you a recipe for bison jerky, courtesy of her even-more-stringently vegetarian nine year-old son.

I am trapped in a head cold that makes me uninterested in much besides tea and toast.

My son, however, is embarked on a multi-week westward migration game in his third grade classroom. The kids have divided into families, been assigned jobs, built covered wagons, bought supplies, and, just this week, started heading to California from Missouri. This week’s homework has involved some research projects: cholera; snake bite remedies; and, tonight, jerky. My husband tried to suggest that Ben, who has frustrated his classroom family a little bit by refusing to imaginary-hunt or eat meat on the journey, come up with a recipe for tofu jerky, but he demurred. He was interested to hear that his late grandfather had once built a backyard smoker, and of course a herd of bison grazes in Golden Gate Park, just a few blocks from our house, but thankfully those bison and that smoker have never met. He wasn’t interested in the recipe I found in my copy of Sarah Hale’s The Good Housekeeper (first published in 1841). She doesn’t offer jerky, exactly, but has a variety of recipes for smoked, pickled, and salted meats, and even one for a meat preserved in snow: “the meat remains as fresh and juicy when it is taken out to be cooked, as when it was first killed.” Mmm. Instead, he adapted a recipe from our current bedtime book, Little House in the Big Woods. Let me know if you try it!

I am a big fan of letting the kids experiment in the kitchen to discover what tastes good to them. Ben, for example, went through a period of snacking on sun-dried tomatoes and graham crackers — a snack I never would have thought to offer the child but kept him happy for countless afternoons. At home, my boys have a pretty well-stocked pantry to explore, with a nice variety of nuts and dried fruit, as well as a good supply of fresh fruit, yogurt, and other snacking ingredients, and it’s always interesting for me to see what they come up with.

When we are traveling, though, our supplies are necessarily more limited. So it was the other afternoon in Lake Tahoe, where we spent some of the boys’ winter break. Eli was snacky and also, after a full morning in a ski lesson, a little tired. He needed something mellow and fun to do as much as he needed something to eat. So, I looked out on the balcony at the quickly-accumulating snow and asked him if he wanted to eat some of that. “Really, Mama? I can eat the snow?” “Sure,” I reminded him; “We can make sugar on snow like we do at Granddad’s, we just don’t have syrup.”

So, I thought about Lisa’s Hawaiian shave ice treats and we improvised with the ingredients at hand.

First, snow sprinkled with cocoa mix:

Surprisingly, not a huge hit.

Then we tried snow with raspberry jam heated into a syrup:

I liked it, but Eli didn’t.

Finally, the winner: snow drizzled with honey!

It’s not, of course, the most power-packed nutritional snack; ultimately the activity was more important here than the appetite. It was fun and easy and the boy was in charge: a winner in my book.

There is something so 1950s about this recipe that I almost feel like I should wait until Mad Men starts airing again before posting it. But this time of year, with winter dragging on and spring not quite here, I need something new and fun (and yes, always quick) to get out of these cold weather doldrums. So I present to you:

Here’s what I love about puffs:
they’re versatile: the puffs can be round or oblong, big or small, sweet or savory
they’re easy to make ahead and keep until you want them
they’re fun to make
they require no special ingredients

Technically, these are pâte à choux, or choux pastry, but don’t let the French put you off. If you can boil water, you can make these.

Once they are baked and cooled, you can fill them with sweetened ricotta cheese, whipped cream, or jam; you can slice them in half and make ice cream sandwiches; you can dip them in chocolate syrup; spread them with Nutella; or sprinkle them with chopped, toasted nuts.

You can also make them a savory snack or appetizer by adding half a cup of grated cheese (Gruyere is traditional) to the batter, and/or a bit of lemon zest or chopped fresh herbs. Brush the unbaked puffs with egg wash and sprinkle them with sesame seeds, poppy seeds, grated Parmesan and/or ground pepper. Fill the baked, cooled puffs with herbed cream or goat cheese, or slice and spread them with a bit of cheese, a dab of roasted red pepper, smoked salmon… the possibilities are really endless.
Obviously the guests at your next cocktail party would be delighted to see these, but (and let’s be honest about where the bulk of our cooking energy is directed) so would your kids when they get home from school. Puffs can be fancy or familiar, depending simply on your imagination and presentation.

The recipe couldn’t be simpler:

½ cup butter
1 cup water
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 eggs

Preheat the oven to 400 and line a couple baking sheets with parchment.

In a medium saucepan, melt the butter in the water. Add salt and flour, and stir until the batter starts to pull away from the sides of the pan. Remove from the heat and beat in the eggs, one at a time, until the batter is smooth.

Pour the batter into a piping bag fitted with a large tip, or into a large ziploc from which you then snip open one corner. Pipe the pastry onto the baking sheets into whatever shape you like: small puffs, big puffs, or oblongs. If you like, smooth the tops with a fingertip dipped in cold water. Bake for 20-25 minutes (smaller puffs will bake more quickly), until golden brown, crisp and dry. Let cool before filling.

To fill, slice in half and spread with filling, or put the filling into a pastry bag fitted with a large tip (or a ziploc bag with its corner cut), poke a small hole into the bottom of the puff, and simply squirt in the filling.

If you want to keep some for later, let cool and then freeze (unfilled) in a ziploc bag; they’ll thaw and reheat quickly in a hot oven.

One of the great things about eating locally and seasonally is that every few months or so, a “new” food comes into rotation, giving everyone, but especially the kids, a much needed change. When a food comes into season–like cherries or pomegranates or persimmons–it’s almost like a holiday. The kids reminisce about their favorite foods in off-season and look forward to what’s coming next.

One doesn’t often think of nuts as a seasonal product, but they are, and we are lucky enough to have a farmer at our market who brings fresh nuts year round to market.  He brings, from Winters, CA, amazing value-added products like tamari or wasabi or cinnamon, or orange honey almonds; barbecue, lemon-chili, garlic and italian herb pistachios; some nuts are shelled, some unshelled, some are raw, some are roasted, some are salted, some are not.  We’ve yet to meet a nut we don’t like around here, and very often the kids take them for snack to school.

But one of the very best things at this stand are the fresh, unshelled walnuts.  They are markedly different-fresher, more flavorful–than store bought, pre-shelled walnuts. When the new crop comes in, in late winter, I can buy a very large bag of thin-shelled walnuts for just a few dollars. At home, I pour the bag into the bowl that in other seasons holds cherries or plums–and leave out the nutcracker and an empty bowl for shells and let the kids snack on them whenever they want. Ella, especially, cannot get enough. She eats them for snack, for appetizer, for dessert.   And I don’t mind one bit.

The cooking division of labor in our household, as I have mentioned before, is basically Tony: stove; Caroline: oven. Or to put it another way, Tony: dinner; Caroline: dessert. It’s never more obvious than at our New Year’s Day party, for which I produce a line-up of cookies, muffins, coffee cakes and the like:

While this year, for example, Tony made a massaman curry, several batches of veggie spring rolls, a green papaya salad, plus a variety of fabulous chutneys and dipping sauces. He did suggest one thing for me to make, though: home made pop tarts. And I couldn’t resist. I found a recipe from Bon Appetit and it’s a great party snack since you prep them in advance and stick them into the freezer until you want them. Eli helped me with the assembly (and took to heart my caution to keep his warm hands off the pastry!):

They were gone so fast I couldn’t take a picture, but you know what a pop tart looks like. These are too good not to make again.

Here’s the recipe, with my notes in brackets:

* 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all purpose flour plus additional for shaping and rolling
* 1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
* 1 teaspoon sugar
* 1 cup (2 sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
* 4 tablespoons ice water
* 12 tablespoons strawberry preserves

* Powdered sugar and fresh strawberries, for garnish [I skipped this step, given the dearth of fresh berries in January]

Preparation

Whisk 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons flour, coarse salt, and sugar in large bowl. Add butter. Using fingertips or back of fork, blend in butter until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add ice water by tablespoonfuls, tossing until moist clumps form. [You can do all this in the food processor: whisk together the dry ingredients, then add the chunks of butter and pulse until the mixture is coarse and grainy. Then add the water by spoonfuls and pulse until the dough starts to form clumps.] Gather dough into ball. Divide in half; shape each half into disk [or, shape into a rectangle to make your life easier when you roll it out]. Wrap in plastic. Chill at least 1 hour.

Line 2 large rimmed baking sheets with parchment. Working with 1 disk at a time, roll out dough on floured surface to about 13×11 inches. Trim to 12×10-inch rectangle, then cut into eight 5×3-inch rectangles.

Arrange 4 rectangles, spaced apart, on each sheet. Spoon 1 1/2 tablespoons preserves in row down center of each rectangle. Top preserves with second dough rectangle. Using fingertips, gently press all edges of each tart to seal; press all edges with tines of fork to double-seal. Using toothpick, poke a few holes in center of top dough rectangle. Cover; freeze tarts on sheets at least 2 hours and up to 1 week.

Position 1 rack in top third and 1 rack in bottom third of oven and preheat to 375°F. Bake frozen tarts uncovered until golden, reversing sheets after 15 minutes, 25 to 30 minutes total (some preserves may leak out). Immediately transfer tarts to rack. Sift powdered sugar lightly over. Serve warm or at room temperature [if they last that long] with fresh berries [in season].