Getting my kitchen mojo back

 

Crab cakes from Eatzi's

When Mary V. is coming for supper, she always emails to ask what she can bring, and I reply nothing, that I will cook for her. Over the years this back-and-forth has developed into a ritual. I like to feed Mary because she enjoys many of the things my family doesn’t—think smoked salmon and sardines.

 Last week, when I was still getting over my unexplained sinking spell, Mary was coming for supper, and I planned to make an asparagus/goat cheese/tarragon tart, something I’d never tried before. Truth is, I was more than a bit daunted by the prospect of fixing it. So when Mary emailed to suggest she bring something either from Charleston’s or Eatzi’s, I pulled up menus and began to think about what might sound good. And when she pushed the idea of crab cakes from Eatzi’s, I folded. She arrived with three crab cakes and eight stalks of asparagus. Jordan made us a big salad with her special blue cheese dressing, and we feasted. And I thought it was good not to cook. I did draw the line at letting Mary do the dishes—there weren’t many anyway.

But later I began to worry. “What,” I asked Jordan, “if I’m losing my ability to cook?” I think in my mind was a worry that I would no longer find joy in one of my main activities. Jordan tried to reassure me. Meantime, life went on with no real opportunity to cook—the pending celebration of Sandra Burton’s life cancelled all regular schedules, and everyone ate on the fly. And from my fridge, that fresh asparagus, goat cheese, and crème fraiche mocked me, along with a few fresh sprigs of tarragon.

So last night the kids said they would be home by seven, and I committed to fixing dinner. The asparagus tart was not as challenging as I expected, though it did not come out picture-perfect, a consequence of fitting the dough to the pan that will fit in my toaster oven. (Packages of puff pastry warn against using in a toaster oven, but I have no choice—it comes out fine though it might be “puffier” in a standard oven.)

Asparagus tart
not too shabby for a first try

I accompanied the tart with roast chicken breast and carrots, mostly because I had both the chicken and the carrots. I love roast carrots though I made the case for balance—a green vegetable and an orange one. There’s not a way to pound boneless, skin-on chicken breasts so I thought the meat was dry but the carrots delicious. Christian loved the meat, avoided the carrots, fearing they would be soggy. I told him they weren’t. That divergence of taste is pretty common around here. And the dry chicken made a good chicken salad for lunch today.

No more cooking for a few days. The kids came home from the Burton’s house in Coppell with all kinds of leftovers from the reception, plus we had some from the Friday night gathering. So it’s leftovers for us for a few nights. But now I know I’m back in the kitchen, I have a list of meals. Marinated chicken drumettes in lemon sauce, anyone?

Saturday night supper

Lazy Saturday and another cooking experiment

 

My slightly burned tuna puff

Today was just what Saturdays should be—lazy. Sophie and I slept late, had a good afternoon nap, although I dreamt so heavily that something in my dream scared me, and I woke myself up shouting, which alarmed Sophie. She barked and barked, and I had to sit on the bed petting her and telling her it was all right for a long time. Then I turned over and slept for another hour! Sophie’s night hours sometimes leave me really exhausted.

I told myself I should compile the recipe section for Irene Deep in Texas Trouble, but I didn’t do that. I read emails, read the news, and spent a long time reading the novel I’d barely started. I told myself I either had to pay attention to that novel—a romance/mystery so far—or give it up. And of course when I spent some concentrated time reading, I was hooked.

I was also hooked on news about the Chinese surveillance balloon. I had read someone’s prediction that we would be at war with China within a few years, and I fervently hope this didn’t accelerate that. But I am appalled at people like MTG who encouraged ordinary Joe to go out with his rifle and shoot it down. At eleven miles away when the farthest shot on record, by a trained distance shooter, is 4.4 miles—and that’s pretty remarkable. Besides what a lot of these gun-happy folks don’t think about as they shoot into the air, what goes up must come down. So all those bullets that couldn’t possibly hit the balloon would come back to earth and quite possibly kill someone.

MTG wasn’t the only one calling for stupid action. Trump Jr. blasted Biden for not bringing it down. Apparently he didn’t think far enough to think about three busloads of debris landing on communities in America. I truly shudder to think if these people ever again get power to dictate policy. And that goes for Kevin what’s-his-name.

But news and books aside, Saturday was as usual a day to experiment in the kitchen—only I didn’t mean to experiment. I have a recipe for tuna pasties that I’ve liked a lot. It calls for refrigerator biscuits, but sometimes the dough overwhelms the tuna, and I got the bright idea that puff pastry would be better. So I put puff pastry sheets on the grocery list—and didn’t realize until tonight that I had puff pastry shells, not sheets.

Dilemma: the shells are meant to be cooked and then filled. If I had sheets, the filling would bake (and the cheese melt) while the pastry cooked. I sort of fudged—cooked the shells part way, took them out and stuffed them, lowered the oven temperature a lot, and baked them a bit more. Actually I thought they were quite good. My oven runs hot, and even though I never heated it to the 475 recommended on the pastry package, they were a bit too brown, shading over to burnt. I think if I fiddled more with baking temperatures, I may have invented something. I’ll call them tuna puffs.

Meantime I have a whole lot of the tuna filling left!

Gardening and cooking

 

    

Picking seed pods off the
hyacinth bean vine.
Wish the blooms showed better.
Note the newly planted herb garden.

Used to be, when I was a kid, that gardening and cooking were womanly chores (except that my dad was a fantastic hobby gardener). In general, though, those were things that kept the little woman busy. Today, that attitude has done a complete turnabout, and women, lots of them, write and blog and talk about the sense of renewal they get from gardening and cooking. I’m probably guilty on the cooking part of that equation. But the gardening? Not so much.

As I hinted above, I grew up with a lush, beautiful garden. My dad bought the empty lot next to our Chicago house (a small feat in itself) and turned it into a garden. Every weekend found him, a college president and a physician, in the rattiest clothes you can imagine, on his hands and knees digging in the dirt. He wore those embarrassingly ugly knee pads that hitched his pants up to an unbecoming angle. Mom was always embarrassed if students came by and saw him that way, but it didn’t bother him. I thought every family had a dad that created a beautiful garden.

Grown and married, I found that wasn’t true. I also found that I love looking at the finished product, but I don’t get that spiritual energy, that sense of renewal, that whatever from gardening. I want someone else to do it, and I’ll enjoy it. But today I did the one bit of gardening I enjoy—planting herbs. My herb garden had cratered during the summer heat, except for a few stubborn onions. When I tried to pull them today, the bulbs refused to come out of the dirt, so I expect they’ll sprout again and eventually have to be dug out. But I planted the herbs Mary and I bought Saturday. If they only last a month or so until a frost wipes them out, that’s okay. I was really tired of looking at that bare earth in the wooden garden container. And just for good measure, Jordan and I picked a lot of seed pods off the driveway side of the hyacinth bean vine. It has been blooming profusely, but now its leaves are turning yellow. Tis the season, I guess.

The cooking part does renew me, as you well know if you read this blog often. Tonight I did pork chops and zucchini/feta salad, a recipe I found I don’t know where but thought sounded good. Christian does not eat zucchini or any squash, but I cooked this in chunks, not slices, until just lightly browned and crisp-tender. When he walked in, Jordan asked if he wanted zucchini, and he said “No, thank you.” I considered kicking her. I didn’t mean for her to ask but simply to serve it to him. I asked him to taste, and he said it was not one of his favorites, but this was the best he’d had. Of course it was—seasoned with oregano, lemon, garlic, shallot, salt and pepper. What could go wrong? The pork chops I ordered turned out to be thin cutlets, but I seasoned them with salt and pepper and lemon zest and quick-seared them. They were tasty and, best of all, not tough as pork chops can be. For an experiment, I thought it was a good meal. Didn’t ask Jacob, but we did discuss tonight what meals he likes, and I have a list.

Spent too much time with corporate America today, this time ADT protection systems. Since I haven’t found my keys (and yes, I called the two places we went one more time today), I’ve lost my key fob that operates the house locks, and I need a new one. Did the “chat” function, but when I keyed in my address, the gentleman told me it was not in their system. Neither was the account number. He kept asking for “the correct address” as though I was deliberately giving him a fake, which makes no sense. I was beginning to lose my cool—all this took half an hour, and it was lunchtime, and I was hungry. Finally he asked if I am a Protection One customer, and I said yes (ADT bought up Protection One several years ago, and when you google Protection One you get ADT). Then he told me they have a separate service number. That should have been the first question he asked me. I was too worn out with it then to call the new number, so it’s on my list for tomorrow.

So is my covid booster shot.

And we’re off into a new week. I hope it’s a good one for everyone.