Animal, Vegetable, Mystical

People love to debate whether a tomato is a vegetable or a fruit. Botanically it is a fruit, but government labeling allows us to call it a vegetable because, presumably, it goes into soup — and people don't eat fruit soups. Of course, the government would be wrong. I made a blueberry soup with buttermilk a couple of years ago that my dad thought was terrific.
And you certainly can't argue that tomatoes aren't sweet. The Sungolds I grew the year before last were like little candy balls.
So I don't insist on calling them vegetables.
But I'm not arguing that tomatoes are fruit.
See all that fur?
They are beasts.

Not a Pretty Picture

Not good looking, but tasty.
It's whole-wheat penne rigate with chopped-up kalamata olives, a can of very decent European tuna, some chopped walnuts and a little chopped parsley.
The flavors were good, but oy — the textures were like eating a winter coat: all wooly.
I find some whole-wheat pastas grainy in texture, while some are smooth. Some time ago my local newspaper ran a story comparing the various brands of whole-wheat pasta, and the conclusion was that different pasta shapes are more or less palatable depending on which brand you buy. In other words, a Barilla something-or-other might be good, but a Barilla something-or-other-else might not be. I wish I'd saved the article.
This dish was made with De Cecco pasta. We bought it on an impulse, because we'd been hankering for a tuna-walnut pasta meal.
Dang. I should have waited until I had loaded all my shiny new Elfa shelves, since I just discovered we've already got an unopened bag of whole-wheat penne, different brand. I didn't know that before, because my previous kitchen was a lot harder to deal with than I realized at the time.
How hard? When I was loading pasta into the shelves this time, I discovered I have three packages of whole-wheat spaghetti. Three. I don't know what's wrong with me, but I hope to get a handle on it.

Not a Cheese Sandwich Post

We have just slid into what Cranky calls "mayonnaise season."
There will be potato salads, cole slaws, dips for artichokes, and the ever-captivating BLT.
I know of no other sandwich from my childhood that still rivets me like a good bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. I outgrew PB&J decades ago. I think I detest tuna sandwiches now, after having taken so many to school in my lunchbox. Grilled panini sandwiches (made on our mini George Foreman grill) can be fascinating, allowing so many combinations of flavors, proteins, vegetables... yeah, I like those. (But I never ate them in my childhood.)
The BLT is my John Wayne, my Little Joe Cartwright, my President Kennedy. It's a criterial, macho, simple confection. Highly emblematic (the beginning of tomato season, the manliness of the bacon), it's also subtle, with gentle feminine traces (toasted bread, soft lettuce, that mayo).
And now, in adulthood, I'm finally finding out that it can be more than a ritual. It can be unbelievably tasty, made with artisanal bread, good bacon, awesome lettuce and serious tomatoes.
I'm still using Best Foods mayonnaise, though.

Buttered Asparagus

*Sigh.*
Spring is lurching toward an early demise. It's been hot, and already we're seeing stone fruit in the market. Tomatoes can't be far behind.
Sadly, the asparagus season is almost over. Chris Zuckerman says next week will probably be the last.
And, too late, I just learned the best way to eat asparagus: Sautéed in butter. No steaming, no waterlogging. You want those crisp, brown blisters and insane, dark-sweet flavors.
I've always called the flavor of asparagus "danky." Today I called it "candy." (Which is "danky" inside-out. If you're into phonology, and someday I'll explain...)
I've been reading Barbara Kingsolver's new book, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle," about her family's one-year effort to eat locally. I resisted getting the book because I'm afraid Kingsolver and I are pretty much the same nut case.
But Cranky gave me the book for a late birthday present (we've been too preoccupied with other business for that kind of levity), and I'm crazy about it so far.
She decided, after much agonizing, to "begin" their year during asparagus season. Hell, it was going to encompass 12 full months anyway; why not begin on an ethereal (and tenuous) note?
And this is where I learned the best method for cooking asparagus: No water. Just roll the spears around in a skillet of hot butter. Why didn't I know this before?
See ya next year, asparagus.
*Sigh.*
Fun footnote: I'm using a horribly generic title for this post. I keep hearing that in order to get traffic to your site, you need to use boring, Google-friendly titles. Well, guess what. I don't care about traffic, but if you're here because you're looking for a good way to eat buttered asparagus, you win!
Me, I'll probably lapse back into my lame pun titles from now on.

Tradition! (tradition!)

Not Fatted Calf. No, this is the real, historical inspiration for contemporary charcutiers like Fatted Calf, Incanto, Perbacco, Fra' Mani, and the like.
This is basic Polish meat doin's.
It's a place called Seakor, out in San Francisco's Richmond district. Out where the Russian bakeries nestle side-by-side with Thai restaurants. Indian steam-table lunch joints rub elbows with Irish pubs. A very, very, veritable melting pot. Chinese dim sum. Korean hot pots. Even an anachronistic Mexican place with killer margaritas.
Dang, I oughta wander around there more often.
Fortunately, Cranky had business in the neighborhood, and he had previously spotted this Polish place. This time he went in and bought a couple of double-smoked kielbasas and a huge, quivering tube of head cheese.
No, I don't know where they get the meat from. I'm guessing just industrial farm butchery. We winced, and gave it a try.
So, let me say the kielbasa is very nice. Smoky, but not overly so. A nice, tight texture from the extra drying. Chewy.
And the head cheese. My first taste of this ancient preparation that uses every available part of the pig. I have no idea what those bits are that look like sliced giblets. They tasted fine; a little bland but mustard to the rescue. The gelatin is very thick and — well, kinda fun to eat.
Oh, but the look of the thing. A little round aquarium of densely packed pork shrimp.
Swim! Swim for your lives, little creatures!
Too late.

Reacquainting Myself with the Earth

Wow, real dirt to plant in. It intimidates me, having grown plants in pots for the past (mumble, mumble) years.
A couple of addresses ago, we had what might gallantly be called "acreage," but it was more a wild tangle of vertical dirt — a hillside with poison oak and plenty of oak trees (I counted 50)... and deer. I couldn't put anything in the ground that deer might like. So I grew my meager garden in pots on the deck (and one time I rolled a couple of tomato plants, in my efforts to follow the sun's arc, too near the low gate of the deck, and the plants got seriously munched by some graceful, long-necked, dratted deer).
At our most recent address our outdoors was a fenced, paved patio. More pot planting. Lots of it, in fact. I grew six tomato plants on wheels a couple of summers ago. All of my herbs were in pots there, and they still are.
So. At the new address, we lugged over all our potted herbs, but [holds breath, fans self faintingly] — we put new tomato plants into real earth. And it's working! Oh golly, they're growing! Visibly. I bet I could drag a chair out there and watch them inch up by the moment. New blossoms, new leaves. Already.
However, we kept our herbs in their pots, and the pots are in a decorative row. Heh. (Lazy bastids; too feeble to replant them.) But I figure that should work fine, right?
Until yesterday, when blogpal Tea came by for a visit and a meal, and she delivered three very fine-looking basil plants of differing varieties as a housewarming gift. I thought, "Sure, we've got spare pots. I'll go find some."
Tea informed us that basil is a desirable species to co-plant with tomatoes. Something about pest deterrence. Yeah, yeah. OK.
Oh, and I also warned Tea that I would probably murder the basil, because I never have any luck with basil.
But I looked at the tomatoes today, and they are so healthy and robust. Why wouldn't the basil do as well? And then I remembered. The only basil I've ever attempted to grow was in pots. Maybe it needs good, rich, chicken-poop-enriched earth.
I got a note later from Kudzu saying that chives are dandy mingled with tomatoes, too. Wouldn't you know? My potted chives are miserable. They probably want to go into real, healthy earth.
This is going to be so much fun. Dirty fingernails, ahoy!

Mr. Elfa to the Rescue

This is a blatant love letter to Elfa shelving. No, they're not paying me.
At my last house, there was a tall, skinny broom closet next to the refrigerator. A total waste of space, because who needs a whole closet for a broom?
Mr. Elfa, bless his heart, has apparently been crawling through all our old American suburban homes with a tape measure. What a clever devil.
From among the many configurations of shelving with slide-out basket drawers offered by this company, we managed to construct a tall, skinny shelf unit that fit perfectly inside that dumb closet. As if he had designed it that way (and I suspect he did).
Voilà, it became our pantry. Drawers for dried pasta, dried beans, a whole bunch of other this and that.
I loved that shelf unit. I wanted to take it with me when we moved. (I technically could have; it was free-standing furniture and it was mine. But I left it for the lucky new owners.)
So, we moved into a place with a totally different kitchen layout. Worst of all was the anachronistic "deskette" at the outer edge of the cabinetry, where presumably Mrs. Homeowner 1963 would write her thank-you notes and pay her bills.
Horrors. Underneath that one-drawer desk is so much wasted space. You know? Because I'm not parking a chair there, just to push some furniture into the gap. No, I want to use that space.
Mr. Elfa to the rescue.
Now, this time it wasn't easy. Most of the kitchen shelving from Elfa is either too short or too tall for utilizing that odd space. But fortunately, now the company is offering a rolling file cart which is exactly the right height. (Hm! Office furniture for the kitchen "office." Heh.) And! It comes in two widths. I needed one of each width, a 14" and an 18". And they just fit, side by side. Ohmygod.
The shelves are "assembly required," but they are so sturdy and intuitive, everything simply came together. So to speak.
Today I loaded the drawers with beans, rice, pasta, and my ridiculously large collection of salts. (I will never have to buy salt again, as long as I live.)
I'm feeling rather elfin.

Slammin' Salmon

Fresh, local salmon. All girly pink, just begging for a gentle, tender treatment of lemon or dill or mayonnaise. So ladylike and demure.
But I say No.
C'mon, it's wild salmon! Butch, athletic, manly salmon (even if it was a female, in which case it would be tomboyly salmon).
We decided to treat this hunk of fish with some respect.
Also, we had shad roe on our minds.
See, shad roe has been in season, and we like to go to Hayes Street Grill this time of year for some. The restaurant serves the shad roe sautéed robustly, and adorned with bacon and potatoes. The ultimate Hemingway camp-out food. Macho, he-man sacs of little fish eggs, smothered in hard, masculine flavors. Hooyah!
But we are just too frazzled from moving (and it's going slowly — fine — many boxes left to unpack and thank goodness I know where at least one pair of shoes is). We had a lunch reservation at Hayes Street Grill last week but ended up not going.
I don't know if the shad roe season is still on (it could be; it was very late this year), but we came up with a stellar alternative for the frazzled home diner.
Treat that wild salmon like a man! Steal the kick-ass flavors right off the back of that sissy shad roe. Bacon, roasted potatoes. Hell, throw in some onions! Yeearrgghhh!
I guess I should admit that the salmon was marinated in a mixture of maple syrup and champagne, with a splash of soy sauce.
That doesn't ruin the fantasy, does it?

Kitchen Bitchin'

I didn't even think to remove those dumb old cup hooks from the cupboard shelf before I uploaded the vinegars and oils. Dude, I'm never hanging cups from hooks! So maybe I'll remove them later, but then I'd have to take out all those bottles.
Oh.
Life is hard.
Anyway. You are looking at all of my vinegars, on the right side. The oils are on the left side of the gap. There's still some room to shove more stuff on that shelf.
But my organizational plans! Should the Chinese black vinegar go into the vinegar shelf, or should it go with the Asian foods in a different cabinet? Wahh!
Life is hard.
However. (I hope the USPS doesn't come and drag me to jail for this.) Do you see the lining of the shelf? It's overnight envelopes, the odd plasticky things with sticky sealing flaps. You can go right into the post office and lift a few. They fit perfectly into cabinets, and they will stick right into place if you like. Let my oil bottles drip all they want; the government is helping me keep my kitchen neat.
Oh. And. Have I told you my trick of tying a little strip of paper towel around the neck of oil bottles? Like a dandy white bow tie?
Moving in.

Visible Pantry Line

One really good thing about moving in, as opposed to moving out, is that you can decide once and for all what's going on the shelves and into the cupboards.
Moving out is usually so hectic and frantic that — in my experience — everything just gets swept into boxes and trotted over to the new place so that you can run back and fill more boxes and...
We did a little organizing this time, I've got to say. For the most part there were no loads of Band-Aids, winter gloves and hot sauce, all in the same box. (That has happened.) I managed to group like items with like items, so today, for instance, I was able to bring in a box filled entirely with dried spices and herbs from the garage. Then Cranky kindly pointed out that there was another box of dried spices and herbs. Uh-oh. Storage issues. Initial pantry plan scuttled; must find more room.
OR. I could finally go through those dumb little jars and throw out the old, expired ones and seriously tighten up my collection. (I know it can be done!)
All right. In the photo, a dish of whole-wheat linguine dressed with diced bacon, diced onion cooked with the bacon, and chopped walnuts (also cooked with the bacon). A handful of chopped parsley and a sprinkling of chopped cheese (haven't come across the cheese grater yet). The point? I have been eating strictly fresh, local food for so long that I've neglected some of my favorite meals, especially pasta.
So, as the dried pasta starts finding its way into my pantry, I'm going to eat it up. I might even spice it up.

Patriotism and Pasilla Peppers

In a positive sign that Cranky and I are gradually taking hold of our new home, today we had a meal that was not entirely bought off-premises.
Not everything has been takeout. I made some dandy bacon and eggs the other day, and there was a terrific dinner of whole-wheat pasta I'll be blogging about shortly.
But, you can imagine, what with packing up all our stuff and moving, it's just easier not to get all creative in the kitchen, and go out for something most times.
Cranky came up with an idea to combine takeout leftovers with homemade food.
Wow. What a clever boy.
We had a container of leftover nachos (basic bar food: tortilla chips, beans, cheese, chicken, some salsa). So he bought four pasilla peppers and a little extra cheese; a jalapeño pepper and an avocado. The man can cook!
What he did was to take the (now mushy) nachos and stir them with a little added refried beans. Chopped up some dry jack cheese (still can't find the grater). Piled this delicious mess inside cut-open, deseeded peppers, and baked them in the oven in a covered dish with a little splash of water. Once they were tender, he covered them with a guacamole of avocado, minced onion, minced jalapeño, chopped cilantro, and a squeeze of lemon (that we swiped from the tree of a house we were looking at to buy, but didn't).
Look at this lunch! Tasty with the corn flavor of the tortillas; sumptuous with the guac. Tender with the molten crisp of fresh peppers.
Also. Look. The one on the left looks like Sam the Eagle from the Muppets. OK, maybe not so very much.
But — the one on the right looks like a howling George Bush. I bit his head off.

Dirty Fingernails

We've been in the new house for almost a week and a half, and I haven't put a single dish, a single bottle of vinegar, a single pot into the kitchen shelves. We still haven't decided what should go where, so we just spend a lot of time sitting on the patio in a dreamy state.
Of course, in that dreamy state, I've developed strong ideas about where the tomato plants should go. Well, I will confess that in that dreamy state, I'm sitting out there, watching the pattern of the sun as it crosses the yard. So, it's part dreamy, part science.
Also part emergency. Sourdough Monkey Wrangler dropped by our old place on the day movers were there, taking out the big stuff. We hardly had time to visit. But this thoughtful lad had brought us a pair of housewarming presents: Two tomato plants raised from seed by his father-in-law. And they needed to get planted pronto.
Well, pronto took a week and a half, but this morning I directed Cranky as he went into peon mode and scraped a goodly square of grass off the "lawn." (Quotation marks, because it's dinky, although Bean Sprout can't complain.) He labored with a pick axe, and then we dumped soil amendment all over the dirt and stirred it in.
Quick aside: When we bought the soil amendment, I asked the nursery man for a sack of steer manure. Cranky blurted, "Cookiecrumb! I thought you were going to ask him for a bag of bullshit!" The nurseryman, unfazed, said, "Chickenshit is better."
Anyway, the furniture may not be properly arranged and the sheets and towels are not yet in the linen closet.
But the tomatoes are in the ground.

The Tong-Is-Wrong Dynasty

I have to confess I've never been much of a tongs user in my cooking, though I understand they were fashionable in kitchens during the last decade or so.
Yeah, I even bought a couple of pairs of tongs; one for the backyard grill and one for the kitchen utensil drawer.
Still, didn't use them much.
When my mom and dad decided to drastically pare down most of their cooking tools, I helped myself to not one, but two or possibly three pairs of tongs. That's one of them in the photo. I thought they might kick-start me into the tong-using cognoscenti, but I failed to arrive.
I know that most trendy tong-using means those crab-claw type looking things, not the gentle one in the picture. The crab thing, that's the kind I bought, the bite-grip. Two pairs. Not sharp teeth, but kind of scalloped.
I understand their value. You get a little better hold on your food than you would with a mere pancake flipper. And if you're not a complete doofus, you probably will gouge neither your skillet nor your food.
Still.
Guess what.
Tongs, they are so yesterday.
In fact, just yesterday I was reading how tongs were actually so day-before-yesterday. Whoever it was I was reading (and if any astute visitors here can help me out — help me out) made the point that you don't want to use tongs on your food (I think it was fish) because, well, hey, you wouldn't want to have tongs used on you, would you? (But if I were dead and sizzling in oil, I really don't think I'd care one way or the other.)
The actual point being that you ought not to shred the food you're sauteeing by puncturing it with stainless-steel pincers, and dude, if that's the way you flip fish, keep away from my fluke.
So today my issue of Food & Wine arrives, with an article by Daniel Patterson (with whom I have issues, not necessarily issues of Food & Wine) on cooking with your hands. I couldn't agree more, except in the case of extreme heat or cold. I know, "cold" isn't "cooking," but relieving a refrigerated chicken of its biological integuments — i.e., finding the joints with your fingers so you can hack it into parts — is icy prep work, especially when you have skinny little fingers like mine.
Don't use tongs, Patterson advises. You get a closer connection to your food and damage it less. Your hands will tell you when it's done to your liking.
He tells a story of his wife (ex?) cutting into meat in the pan, once, twice, letting valuable juices run out and spatter, and carving unforgivable scars in the food — god, no wonder they're divorced. His point is you should pinch the meat to judge from its density how done it is.
For some reason, the story ends with a recipe for lemon-ricotta pudding. But thank god, no tongs were used.
OK. Flip forward several pages. Same issue. Ten tips on summer grilling. Tip number 8: "Use a pair of tongs... to turn meat or move it around on the grill. ... If you must cut and peek to check doneness, make a small slit with a knife."
Eek! Who wrote that? Mrs. Ex-Patterson?
No, it was Steven Raichlen, the television barbecue master and inventor of beer-can chicken.
Wow. I think I'm going to let my subscription to F&W run out.
I'll keep the tongs, though. They're good for fishing pickles out of jars.

I'm This Many (holds up two fingers) Today

Who ever would have thought, two years ago when I wrote my first blog post, that I'd stick with it this long? Not me.
There was so much I didn't know then.
I had a hell of a time uploading photos in those early days. Didn't know how to make a link. That was all learnable stuff, though, and I learned.
What I never expected was that I would make actual friends through blogging, some of whom I've hung out with several times, and some of whom I haven't met — yet.
Wait. Isn't that like Internet dating? And isn't that supposed to be depraved?
No, and no. It's just a whole new social paradigm.
In fact, the first time I read in a local blog about fellow bloggers meeting up at the farmers market, I was simultaneously horrified (your anonymity is blown!) and jealous (I want to be there, too!).
But now? Been there, done that.
The first time a fellow blogger e-mailed me privately, I felt simultaneously invaded (oh, wait, never mind; I published my addie for exactly that reason) and conspiratorial (ooh, now I know your real name!).
The community is full of warmth and advice, generosity and wisdom.
I'm pleased to be here.
I just want to give a special shout-out to Sam. Shortly after I began my blog, I decided it was time to "come out" and use my blog link on comments. Sam picked up on it right away, and squirreled backward through cyberspace to come over here and see who this nutty Cookiecrumb was, who had been making snarky remarks on her blog.
She must not have hated my blog too much, because she did me the grand honor of announcing me as a Bay Area Blogger of the Week. And that brought me some traffic.
Without it, I might have quit.
But I'm still here, bothering people.
It makes me happy. I mean mad.
No. Happy.

Seasonal, Peasonal

Before I truly understood eating seasonally, I'd get a notion in my head for some dish, and foolishly try to find ingredients that made no sense for the time of year.
I remember once being really surprised, and really annoyed, that I couldn't find fresh tomatoes. In February.
Another time I was crafting a New Year's Eve menu and dreamed up the dish pictured here. (Hm. Last day of December. No fresh peas; guess I'll go try the freezer section. And smoked salmon — doesn't that just come in plastic packages all year-round?) I got it made (linguini with crème fraîche, cooked peas, bits of smoked salmon, and black pepper), and it tasted nice enough to create again, all these years later. But this time I waited until spring, when the English peas are in the market and the gently smoked wild salmon is — well, yes, in a plastic package.

Spring in my Step, Spring in my Bowl

I was so flattered to see Catherine's homage to my peas-and-eggs lunch from almost two years ago. At the time I wrote it up, I was a beginning blogger and even though I really enjoyed my meal then, I thought it was naive and humble.
Well. Naive and humble has become my menu, especially since I've discovered the importance of eating locally and seasonally.
Last week I cooked up my peas-and-eggs lunch again. Humble and naive, with a load of butter.

Refrigeratorzilla

Sigh. My kitchen is only two days old, and already the refrigerator is a hodgepodge.
There's nothing fresh in it except for some milk and a package of flour tortillas. Oh, and a half of a cantaloupe and a little bit of roasted chicken down there in the bag on the bottom shelf. And I am proud to say that's a new jar of pickled eggs over on the other side of it.
Everything else is jarred, canned or plastic-tubbed, and it all arrived recently from my other refrigerator a couple of miles away.
Sam dared us to show images of our unedited refrigerators. Hers is dashingly furnished with loads of Champagne. I've got one bottle of prosecco and a single can of Bud.
So here you go.
At least the shelves are clean.
One other good thing is that by dragging out all these jars from the old place, I got to look at them again. They'd gotten rather deeply buried. I have some pretty good flavors in there: curries, pickled ginger, lime chutney, preserved lemon. Mm! Gonna do some lazy-ass un-fresh cooking.
I could talk about all the un-fresh foods that came out of my cupboards and pantry, too, but I'm saving that for another post. My Week of Eating Pantrily.

Radio Silence

I'm going to be absent for a few days, just to let you know.
Unplugging the iMac and toting it across town to new digs.
Boy, will Bean Sprout be surprised. He doesn't have any idea.
See you soon.

Stuffed Suit

Four years after the Decider decided the mission was accomp- lished, jack diddly is accomp- lished.
It's even worse now than then.
I think I know what his strategy is for the intractable war in Iraq: Get unelected. Let somebody else have it. War is hard. Being president is hard. Hard, hard, hard.
Oh, put a sock in it, George.
Wait...
He did!