A simple ritual

This is Wine Night. When the weather is benevolent, it looks like this: upstairs porch, feet on the railing, twilight. After it gets dark, we turn on the twinkle lights (which you can't see in the picture) for some glowy ambiance. In colder months, we camp ourselves in front of the (electric) fireplace, dim the lights, and generally savor the roof over our heads and the four sturdy walls of our house.

Regardless of the season, no matter what life hands us, we almost always manage to find one evening a week for this: a bottle of wine evenly divided between two glasses, and some quiet couple time.

The wine loosens our minds a little, makes us able to say things to each other we wouldn't ordinarily say. Good things. Things that are important for us to say, and to hear. Sometimes we talk about money, or food, or an interesting story on NPR. More often than not, though, we talk about our dreams. We sit together, sip our wine, and look into our future.

It's just a simple little ritual. But it gives us something to look forward to in the week: a little calm and clarity, time together that's sweet and meaningful. As busy as our lives may get, I'd like there to always be time for this.

What are your household rituals?

The perfect alibi

My attempt to hop back on the blogging bandwagon last week was stymied by the whirlwind arrival of a late-summer cold. And, as much as colds are icky and annoying, isn't there also something sort of nice about having an excuse to indulge yourself? Anything you'd normally push yourself to do becomes something you can rationalize out of, because the universe has blessed you with a cold, the perfect all-encompassing no-questions-asked alibi.

Sure I can wear this ratty t-shirt to the grocery store, because I'm sick and who cares? Macaroni and cheese and mashed potatoes for dinner? I'm sick, I deserve it. In bed at 9pm? I should really take it easy, because I'm sick. Does anyone else feel this way?

So, I've been laying low. Getting back to my autumn ritual of tea-drinking, for one. Enforcing lots of quiet contemplative time for hand-stitching.*

Occasionally emerging from the bedroom to bake plum cakes and bring them to neighborhood block parties.
Settling into the swing of aforementioned second job, and cheerfully confronting questions I never thought I'd ask. (Where did all this cash in my wallet** come from, and what do I do with it?)

And getting right back to bed, knees folded, needle in one hand, tea cup in the other.

* The quilt is a spin-off on this one. It's for my cousin, for Christmas. Yes, I know it's September.

** When I say "all this cash," I mean like fourteen dollars, okay? Maybe enough for some fancy-pants hand lotion, or half a new pair of earrings. Hey, it's the little things.

Zucchini-be-gone

Gone is my love for zucchini. This happens every year: in May, I yearn for those first supple little slices, meltingly tasty and bright green. In July, I celebrate the first garden zucchini almost as enthusiastically as I celebrate the first tomato. In August, I fill our meal plans with them. I roast them, bake them, grill them and saute them.

And then September rolls around and I start to pray for a killing frost. A frost, a flood, even a blizzard, something to dull the vigor of the vines. By now, it's begun to seem almost menacing, the way they persist in filling my kitchen countertops with corpulent squashes. Don't they know they're no longer needed? Or even wanted? In a capitalist culture, there's something unsettling about beings that continue producing long after demand is met. Zucchini are a economic enigma. Adam Smith's worst nightmare.

I'm still using them, of course. But by now I'm going for covert employments of zucchini, as opposed to making them center stage. I shred them mercilessly, running the long green spindles one by one through my food processor as if it were a wood chipper. This is a recipe we adapted from an old Moosewood cookbook (circa 1973, I believe). It's ridded our kitchen of a scourge of zucchini many a time.

Zucchini-crusted "Pizza"

Crust:
3 1/2 cups coarsely shredded zucchini
salt
3 eggs
1 cup cheese of your choice: mozzarella, parmesan, cheddar, swiss, monterey jack, gouda or a combination
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
Seasonings that coordinate with your topping choices (optional)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

To make the crust, toss the grated zucchini together with a little salt, and leave it to sit in a colander for half an hour. This will sweat out the squashy juices, and make it crispen in the crust. Squeeze out the zucchini, and combine it in a bowl with the remaining crust ingredients. Oil a 9 x 13 baking dish, and spread the crust mixture thinly and evenly. Bake it on the top shelf of your oven (as close to the element as you can get it) for 25 minutes. Flick on your broiler, and let it go for another five minutes, just long enough to get a lovely golden-brown top. Pull it out of the oven, and pile on toppings.

Toppings:
A few combinations to try--

Tomato sauce, parmesan, mozzarella, and pepperoni or sausage
Mushrooms, olives, and mozzarella
Mushrooms and swiss or gouda
Black beans, salsa, and monterey jack or pepperjack cheese
White beans, broccoli, sliced fresh tomato, and mozzarella

No instructions needed: pile on your toppings, turn your oven down to 350, and slide it back in for another 20 minutes, until the cheese looks like it does in the picture.

Enjoy!

Summer on its way

Fall seems to have settled in early this year. As unannounced as a crazy uncle moving into your spare bedroom, suddenly there's touches of bronze on the leaves, the mornings are foggy, the berries are blushing. I always get just a little bit mushy when fall arrives, I'm not sure why, but be prepared.

That's where I've been this past week. Canning. Buying end-of-season bargain table perennials and sticking them in the ground. Mourning the end of sandal weather, and shopping for new cold-weather shoes. Contemplating the changes this season is bringing me, and, as always, trying in vain to prepare for them before they come.

It never works. Changes, no matter how far in advance you see them approaching, are always a little different than you expected.

But, darnit, I still try.

This season, it's the transitions in my social circle I'm contemplating. With the departure of my neighbors, I've sat and thought a lot about the importance of friends. Since moving to Binghamton (and into Patrick's house) two and a half years ago, I've thrown body and soul into my lovely kitchen, and this glorious old house of ours, and spent precious little time on friends.

Just now I'm waking up to realize, I'm 26 and living like an old lady! (An old married lady?) What do I do for fun? Can tomatoes? Scrub dirty pots? Before there's baby bottles in my dishwasher, it's time to make some connections.

(Disclaimer: I do love canning, I really do. But last week after work, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I stood in my kitchen and stirred bubbling pots, bleary-eyed, until my jars had processed and it was time for bed. Lunacy!)

Enter the second job.

Yes, second job. I am immensely trepidatious about whether I'll still have the time to cook lavish, blog-worthy food. Or whether my head will be able to spend adequate time on its pillow. But, I am certain this change will bring one thing: time out of the house having fun and meeting people. Music to my ears.

So. You may see some recipes here in which I've used beans that came from a can, beans I did not soak myself. You may see canned tomatoes, and store-bought bread. You may even see cheese I didn't make myself. I just wanted to be up front about things, because I'm going to start cheating. Taking shortcuts. Ordering pizza? (Maybe not that far.)

The changes are coming. I'm ready.

Stuffed eggplant with butter-toasted breadcrumbs

We saw Julie & Julia this weekend. It was fantastic. I found myself relating to the Julie character on so many levels-- being young and married and completely without direction, loving food and cooking with an intensity that not many people understand, watching friends move onward and upward in their careers while you dog behind... savoring life more, I tell myself. But really? I'm just happy I get to spend more time in my kitchen. I'd take my kitchen over a career any day of the week.

Anyway, where am I going? Oh right, the food. That delicious though collapsed-looking stuffed eggplant above. As I spooned the butter-and-garlic-toasted-breadcrumbs over the eggplants before sliding them into the oven, I thought of the scene in the movie (and apologies, because I know I'm botching this): "Whenever something tastes incredibly delicious, the secret is always butter."

That is the wisest line of the whole movie.

And here's the recipe.

Imam Bayildi (literally, "The Emperor Fainted," how cool is that?)

2 medium eggplants, halved

3 cups chopped onions
3 tbsp olive oil
4 or 5 ripe tomatoes, chopped
1 cup chopped fresh parsley
1 cup chopped fresh basil

2 cups fresh breadcrumbs
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter

First, halve both eggplants lengthwise. Score the flesh in a crosswise pattern, sprinkle with salt, and let them rest facedown in a colander for half an hour. This lets the bitter eggplant juices drain out.

Meanwhile, you can start on the filling. Warm the oil in a large frying pan. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is soft and melty-looking. Add the tomatoes and herbs, cook five minutes longer, and remove from the heat.

Now take your salted eggplants and squeeze them out. Rinse them once, and squeeze again. Pull all the "guts" out of the eggplants, leaving a 1/2" wall around the perimeter. Add the guts to the filling mixture.

Preheat your oven to 350, and oil a 9 x 13 baking dish. Set the eggplants, cavity-side up in the pan. Add about 1/2 a cup of water to the bottom.

Toast your breadcrumbs: warm the oil and butter in a small frying pan. Add the garlic and crumbs and cook, stirring and mashing with a spoon, until the mixture is evenly blended and the crumbs are golden brown. They will also, incidentally, smell incredible.

Take a couple healthy scoops of filling mixture and stuff it into the first unsuspecting eggplant half. Repeat for the following eggplants. Heap the filling up a little-- you might end up with some leftover filling. Don't worry, you'll find something to do with it. Top the eggplants with breadcrumbs. Cover the pan tightly with aluminum foil, and slide it into the oven for an hour. Remove the foil, and let it bake an additional 20 minutes.

Serve, with a side of bulghur, quinoa, or brown rice.

Telltale signs

Big pots on the stove. Sharp knives abundant on flat surfaces. Red ooze on the countertop (and the floor, and the cabinets, and the walls...). It's tomato season. When I spied those first ranks of tomato-boxes at Frog Pond on Tuesday, I knew it had come. I spent Wednesday night flinging seedy pulp into my biggest of big pots, making a colassal batch of tomato soup (which disappointingly tasted like Spaghetti O's). Last night was a girls-night canning soiree with Colleen, in which we canned rather a lot of pizza sauce.

Yes. Tomato season. We have waited so long. You are messy, and fleetingly brief, but joyous. We're glad you're here.

Summer pizza

Unlike some places, Binghamton, NY is not a town known for its pizza. Spiedies, yes. Pierogies, yes. Those are much-celebrated regional specialties. There are festivals in their honor, okay? Big deal. But pizza, not so much.

There's two ways to react to this truth. One: mourn. Kvetch, gripe, complain, pull your hair and gnash your teeth and order Pizza Hut for your monthly fix.

Two: learn how to make your own damn pizza.

As someone mildly obsessed with self-sufficiency, I chose the latter. Over the course of two years, pizza has become a regular, twice-monthly event in our house. We've picked up a few tricks. The pizza is good. Not pizzeria-good, but still. Good. Here's our tricks.

1. If you're making dough, why not make dough enough for an army? If you're getting your mixing bowl all sticky with flour (or firing up your bread machine), make a double or even quadruple batch. Divide the finished dough into pie-sized pieces, form each piece into a ball, bag each one separately, and freeze. On the morning of pizza night, move one dough-ball from the freezer to the fridge. By dinner time it will be thawed and ready to rise.

2. After ten minutes in the oven, slide the pizza off its pan and directly onto the oven rack. This is critical. This makes the crust crunchy and delicious.

3. Tomato sauce and mozzarella is but the tip of the iceberg. Sometimes, we put arugala on our pizza. Sometimes, figs. Feta made an appearance last night, and pepper jack has been known to do the job as well. Almost anything tastes better atop a pizza crust.

The Recipe (makes enough for two generously-sized pies)

1 1/2 cups warm water
3 tsp yeast
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups bread flour
2 cups whole wheat flour

Mix the yeast and water together in a large bowl. Add the salt and oil and mix well. Combine the flours in a separate bowl, and add to the liquid ingredients. Stir and knead until the ingredients are well combined and can comfortably be called dough. Brush the top of the dough with oil (a Misto works well), and cover with a damp towel. Leave to rise in a warm place for 45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees.

Divide the dough in half. Each half makes a pie. Form each piece into a pizza shape by gentle stretching, using a rolling pin, or throwing it over your head and singing Amore. Generously oil a cookie sheet or pizza pan, and sprinkle with cornmeal. Lay the dough onto the pan, and pile on toppings. Last night, we paved our pizza with sliced fresh tomatoes, sprinkled it with crumbled feta, salt and pepper, and topped it with a lightly dressed arugala salad after it came out of the oven.

Adjust one of your oven racks to the lowest height, so it's as close to the bottom as possible. Slide in your pizza. Let it cook 10 minutes, until the dough starts to look like crust, but before it gets brown around the edges. Using a large spatula, slide in under the pie and lift it very carefully. Slide the cookie sheet out, and place the pie right on the oven rack. Note: If the pizza refuses to lift off in one solid disk, don't push it! Let it cook another five minutes and try again.

Once you've transferred the pizza to the rack, cook it a scant five minutes, (or until it looks done-- everyone knows what a done pizza looks like) slide it out of the oven, slice, and enjoy.