Food quality's been on a roller coaster lately: today there was delicious, lovingly prepared couscous and kale and yesterday there was a bag of Pirate's Booty, Peanut M&M's, and some Vitamin Water. In fact, that's sort of what life's been like lately, and while it's true that life's full of these ups and downs this time it's a little more severe. All my projects were on track, they were big, they were exciting, they were real - not like those projects I just said I was going to finish. I was proud and motivated. Then my dad was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma. The doctor is optimistic, dad is optimistic, I'm optimistic, but optimism doesn't magically lessen his pain or magically transport me home.

So I sulk, I thrash around the house, I putter, I watch a lot of movies and TV on Netflix. This entry of Multiple Myeloma into my life feels like it's a secret, like one of those things that isn't real unless I talk about it. Today I've got a little recap of foods I've made since last we spoke and my favorite cookie recipe to share.

Samosas!

Homemade curry powder made after a trip to Dunkin Donuts!

This is where the curry powder ended up: dal! This must be almost a gallon of lentils, we ate about three quarts before we just couldn't eat any more.

Our prettiest loaf of No-Knead bread yet!

Cookies were an integral part of my youth. My mom's Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies are well known around my old elementary school. Friends used to come over just for the cookies. I've developed my own standard version of the Chocolate Chip Cookie, it's adapted from The Moosewood Restaurant's New Classics and from my friend Cynthia's method. (I say "method" as opposed to "recipe" because she's an eye-baller, you know, "Meeeeh, abooooout this much.")

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Coconut Cookies

3/4 c. butter

1 c. dark brown sugar, packed

2 eggs

1 1/2 c. unbleached white flour

3/4 c. whole wheat pastry flour

1/2-3/4 c. rolled oats

1/4-1/2 c. flaked coconut

1 t. baking soda

1/2 t. cinnamon

1 t. salt

2 t. vanilla extract

2 c. chocolate chips

2 T. water

Preheat oven to 375.

Cream the butter and sugar together until smooth, then beat in the eggs until blended. Add flours, baking soda, salt and cinnamon and mix well. Add oats, coconut, chocolate chips, and vanilla, mix well. If the dough feels too dry or doesn't want to hold together mix in the water.

Scoop the dough into 2-3" balls and place on cookie sheet, bake for up to 10 minutes, checking after 8. The edges should be light brown and the tops golden.

For some variation: use light brown sugar and dried cranberries instead of chocolate chips. They're also delicious with extra coconut.

Despite my best efforts, positive thinking, and water drinking it happened: I got sick. It was a quick little 48-hour head cold - the kind where you think your eyes are going to explode. (Fortunately, my eyes did not explode.)

- Walnut Flax No-Knead Bread

- Roasted Beet Risotto

- Poached Catfish

I think the longest paper I ever wrote in college was a 15-pager about the artist Yves Klein. He's the guy in that photo who looks like he's swan-diving from the ledge of the building, you know, this one. He hosted those evenings where women would paint their bodies blue and press themselves against canvas. (He called these anthropometries.) He also did fire paintings. He patented his own color: International Klein Blue, IKB for short. He painted large canvases with this color and only this color. He believed the color blue had no dimensions, it was...beyond.

I like color and I like believing it's "beyond". I like going to hardware stores and collecting stacks of paint samples - and I mean stacks. My preferred designer to collect is Martha Stewart (available at Lowe's,) a close second is Mythic Paint. Not only are their paints non-toxic, but their samples come in sheets. Sheets! Color is calming for me, it's lets me breathe, it's like an inhaler.

Did you know that when added to bread walnuts turn the dough sort of purple-ish? It's true. See:

We can't get enough of this No-Knead Bread, we go through a loaf of two a week. I look forward to eating oven-fresh bread slathered in butter, it's one of the greatest experiences - ever. George made this loaf on Saturday and it set the tone for Sunday. I almost remade the strudel from last time, but the walnuts made me think of beets. (Duh.) So bright, so pretty, so unreal. The color of beets tells me everything's going to be okay. The only acceptable option was going to be either a giant bowl of beets or beets added to something that would become bright pink - a.k.a rice.

With little trouble, a Risotto with Beet Greens and Roasted Beets recipe was located on the NY Times website and we were off and running. The other think I love about beets is that you can eat the whole thing! Roots! Greens! It's all delicious. Bonus: the greens look great in a sea of beet risotto.

Second bonus: living where we do we can get some great catfish locally. Triple bonus: I found an awesome incredibly easy recipe for poached fish. It takes 15 minutes, tops. I've used this recipe for sole, catfish, and tilapia.

Poached Catfish

from Real Simple

1 lb. catfish fillets

3/4 c. dry white wine (water is also acceptable)

2 T. capers

2 T. olive oil

2 T. chopped chives

salt & pepper to taste

Cut each fillet in half, you know, "spatula size". Heat wine in a large skillet, then add fish, drizzle with olive oil and capers. Cover and cook over medium-low heat for 4 minutes, they'll become opaque and will flake easily. Sprinkle with chives.

Last week was lazy. I only amounted to making shortbread, half of which George ate in two days and the other half was given away. It was the sort of shortbread that I took a bite of, put my piece down - saving it for later, but when I went back it was gone. This week's a little more productive, there's actual food and more cookies.

- Kale & Red Pepper Strudel

- Pesto

- Bagels

- Rugelach

My heart was initially only in it for the cookies, but after having to scrounge and scramble for lunches last week I could commit to making something real this time around. Spending these Sundays making things to take for lunch, eat for snack, and sometimes even again for dinner is truly a life-saver. Without it I eat toast three times a day and call them meals, I end up snacking on more and more cake at work, I rely on milk and coffee to propel me through the day, and pasta – lots of pasta for dinner, and sometimes there's sauce.

I've never used phyllo (filo, fillo) dough for anything. It's flaky, it's used for strudels, baklava, Spanikopita. That's about the extent of what I know about it. This Kale & Red Pepper Strudel is like Spanikopita but with a different set of vegetables and cheeses. Here's what I've learned about phyllo dough: it's really thin and delicate. It's so delicate that when I unrolled the package I thought the dough was actually parchment around the dough. I can't imagine making this stuff from scratch. I've also learned that it's a bit of a pain in the ass. It's so thin it's like it almost doesn't exist. How is this not going to completely fall apart? I layed out the dough as directed: on a 10” x 14” sheet pan, and oiled between every two layers. Then I put the filling in the middle and supposedly could fold up the edges of the dough to hold in the filling and then place the rest of the dough on top like a little dough hat. This wasn't exactly the case and wasn't going to go well – I could feel it.

I finished assembling and then I made a bold move: I trusted my instincts. When I make a recipe for the first time I'm sort of stick in the mud and I like to follow the recipe – blindly trusting that whoever wrote it in the first place isn't leading me down a path of frustration to disappointment. I like to think that following the written recipe will give me a basic understanding of what's supposed to happen and how things are supposed to go, and then, armed with that knowledge I can make whatever it is better. (Yes, I believe I can make it better. Every. Single. Time.) Today, though, I deviated. The dough was only 9” x 13”, it wasn't folding up over the filling well, it was absolutely going to spill out all over the pan and burn and be ugly. It wasn't going to happen on my watch, not today. I buttered my 9” x 13” Pyrex, I place it over the assembled strudel and flipped it all over. That's right, I put it into a smaller pan with taller edges than the recipe told me to.

This is the larger lesson I've been working on lately: to trust myself. It's like baking cake (everything is like baking cake for me, these days,) regardless of how long that carrot cake's been in the oven if the knife comes out with a few crumbs and it doesn't spring back when I gently press on the top – it's not done. If I can't remember whether the vegan pumpkin cupcakes should get a little more than one scoop or not but am pretty they should because the vegan chocolate cupcakes do – they probably do. If the cassaroley thing looks like it's going to turn into a huge cheesey mess if left on the baking sheet that the recipe told me to use – it's probably going to turn into a huge cheesey mess. After cooking for myself for 10 years, I'm proud to say that I've learned a few things, things I trust and know to be true from experience.

Maybe it was the pesto making that set me up for the crazy move to use a different pan than specified. The temperatures in Asheville are reaching down in the 30s at night and while we've been neglecting the garden for a least a month, George was good enough to harvest the rest of basil before it was too late. We had about 10 cups of basil and no recollection of which pesto recipe we used last time, I just knew it was really good and it wasn't from The Moosewood or Joy. We then assumed it was from Best Recipes in the World, but pesto wasn't even in the index. I told George he was in charge of the pesto and to make it however he liked. I was nervous, trying to be helpful without being a squasher*. It was difficult. In the end, I'm happy to say that the pesto turned out deliciously.

Pesto

10 c. fresh basil leaves

2/3 c. pine nuts

1/3 c. walnuts

1 c. grated Parmesan

1 c. olive oil

salt to taste

Put everything except the oil into a food processor, pulse a few times to start combining the ingredients. Turn the processor on and add the oil through the feed tube stopping to scrape down the sides if necessary.

So the rugelach. It's a Jewish cookie which is more like a pastry. Butter and cream cheese are cut into the flour and there's a little wet (I used half & half) to hold it together. It's rolled out and chilled in the freezer for half an hour - a crucial part, I assure you. After it's good and cold, cinnamon and sugar are sprinkled on, followed by chopped walnuts, sometimes raisins, sometimes chocolate, I used almonds. Next you roll the dough up into a swirly, cinnamony log and cut each cookie about an inch wide and chill them in the freezer for another 15 minutes - a crucial part, I assure you. It's like making the pie dough flaky - the cold butter serves as a place holder for the air space between the layers of flour. If the butter is allowed to melt into the flour prematurely the cookies will come out flatter and sadder, but just as tasty.

(I was going to take a picture showing the difference between cookies chilled long and enough and not long enough, but we ate all the sad ones first.)

* squasher: one who prevents fun

As promised, we whipped up some stock a couple weeks ago. Big surprise, in order to make chicken stock one actually needs a whole chicken. My PSA for the week: read the entire recipe before you start. We'd already eaten the chicken; we opted for vegetable stock.

More and more we're finding uses for stock, like: soups, couscous (pearled, aka Israeli, couscous is currently my favorite), rice...okay so it's mostly just grains at this point, but you get the idea. I'm not opposed to those incredibly handy tetra packs of stock, but making it yourself requires just a little chopping and a bunch of waiting. This is the sort of thing I'd like to make at least a gallon of it to have on hand, and we aimed for a gallon, but in fact ended up with about half as much.

The idea of stock is pretty basic - boil vegetables and/or meats to extract flavor and nutrients, then use it to flavor other things. We began by roasting the vegetables, which is optional, but I figure if I'm going to bother making it, why not. So, roast up the veggies and garlic, transfer them to a large stock pot and add water, meat, bones, and herbs. Then cover, simmer, and wait. Some recipes call for a few hours, some call for half a day. Lastly, what's left of the vegetables and meats are strained out.

I'd intended to make soup from the stock, but by the end of the five or six hour simmering session I needed something more exciting to cook. George is in charge of cooking certain things around here: eggs, meats and risotto. These are things that require patience and dedication, these things some more naturally to him than to me. Asparagus Salmon Risotto is was, and it was delicious.

Mostly Vegetable Stock

adapted from Mark Bittman's Vegetable Stock, and Joy of Cooking's Chicken Stock

1/3 - 1/2 c. olive oil

3 large onions, quartered

5 carrots, quartered

4 celery stalks, halved

4 small-medium sized potatoes, washed, quartered

1 head garlic, peeled

bones & leftover meat from 1, 4lb. chicken

4 sprigs fresh thyme

12 sprigs fresh parsley

small handful fresh basil

2 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar

some peppercorns

1/2 c. dry white wine

7 c. water

salt

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Put onions, carrots, celery, potatoes, and garlic in a large roasting pan, toss with olive oil and place in the oven. Let veggies roast about 45 minutes, turning vegetables over a couple times until everything is browned.

After roasting is finished scoop veggies into a large stock pot, add remaining ingredients, 4 cups water and place over high heat.

Place the roasting pan over a burner, add about 4 c. water (depending on height of pan), and turn heat to high. Bring to a boil, scraping all the bits stuck to the pan. Add this to the stock pot and being to a boil.

Cover and barely simmer for 5 - 6 hours.

Strain, pressing veggies to extract as much liquid as possible. Add salt, if necessary. Stock is now ready to be used, refrigerated (keeps for up to 4 or 5 days), or frozen.

It's official: summer's over. We close the windows at night, we brush leaves off the windshield, I've lured my sweaters out of hiding, and finished knitting my first scarf of the season. Fall is wafting in and with it notions of soups, breads, and pies.

This week a surprisingly all-American menu:

- No-Knead Bread

- Roasted Chicken

- Apple Pie

The No-Knead bread recipe comes from Jim Lahey at Sullivan Street Bakery, via the New York Times and it's truly fantastic. (It's especially fantastic for someone with hand and/or wrist problems.) Mark Bittman sums it, "The loaf is incredible, a fine-bakery quality, European-style boule that is produced more easily than by any other technique I've used, and will blow your mind." (Read the full article here.) The majority of work in the recipe is done by time -- the long fermentation and wetness of the dough take the place of kneading. George bulked up this loaf by adding flax meal and sunflower seeds, but didn't add any extra liquid. So instead of being a sticky, soupy mess, it was a dry, clumpy pile. The finished bread was...rustic but tasty. The recipe makes it simple to add nuts or seeds or to substitute different flours, but if you add much more dry than 3 cups, add a little extra water.

After a season of mediocre soups last fall I refuse to do it again. We'll begin at the beginning this time: with stock. In preparation for chicken stock next week we decided to roast a whole chicken this week*. News flash: roasting a whole chicken is incredibly easy. For a 4 1/2 lb bird we put a large cast iron skillet in the oven, then preheated it to 450, slathered the chicken with butter, sprinkled on some salt and pepper then put the buttered bird in the hot skillet and roasted it, uncovered, for about 40 minutes. Now we have plenty of meat for sandwiches and plenty of bones for stock next week.

Like I said, it's pie time. Pie crust is something that's given me trouble in the past. You know the trouble I mean: tearing when rolled out, too thin, too sticky, burning, flavorless, or not even faking flakiness. This time I showed that crust who's in charge. Answer: me. I cut the fat in with a food processor and only until there were pea-sized pieces of fat. I think I'd been over-incorporating it, not realizing that little chunks of butter are absolutely necessary for flakiness. The other necessity for optimal flakiness: cold fat. (I say "fat" and not "butter" because you could use vegetable shortening or lard - which is apparently coming back into fashion.) When the cold chunks of fat melt away in the oven it creates the delicate layers of baked dough. I started with cold, cold butter, put the discs of dough back in the fridge for a hour before rolling them out, and even put the completely assembled pie in the freezer for 10 minutes before putting it in the oven. Was it all worth it? Absolutely. While the crust could use a little more salt or sugar (I haven't decided which yet) it turned out to be, hands down, the best pie crust I've ever made. I used some Granny Smith and some Honeycrisp apples which made for fine flavor - not overly sweet, or overly tart, but I could have gone for more flavor. Luckily we're in somewhat of an apple capital so I've got many many more varieties of apples to experiment with.

No-Knead Bread

Adapted from Jim Lahey & The New York Times

2 c. whole wheat flour

1 c. white flour

1/2 c. flax meal

1/4 c. sunflower seeds

1 5/8 c. water

1/4 t. instant yeast

2 t. salt

Combine flour, yeast and salt in a large bowl. Add water and stir until blended - dough will be kind of shaggy. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest in a warm place 12 to 18 hours.

Lightly flour a work surface, place dough on it, sprinkle with a little more flour and fold dough over onto itself a couple times. Cover with plastic wrap, let rest for 15 minutes.

Use just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to you or the work surface, shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel with flour (cornmeal or wheat bran work also) and put loaf seam side down on it, then dust with a little more flour. Cover with a clean towel and let rise for 2 hours. (The dough will have doubled in size and when poked won't really spring back.)

1/2 hour before baking preheat oven to 450 degrees and place at 6 to 8 quart dutch oven in to heat as well. When the dough's risen, carefully take the pot out from the oven. Turn dough over and place in pot seam side up. Cover with lid** and bake 30 minutes, remove lid and bake another 15-30 minutes, until crust is nice and browned.

*The chicken we purchased came with the most ridiculous sticker: one advertising a free music download.

**If you're using something like an enamel coated Le Creuset pot, you may want to unscrew the knob from the lid, some of them aren't prepared for higher oven temperatures.

We're back! Here are some food related highlight pictures:

Blackberry Thyme Margarita at Claire's in Hardwick.

Red Onion sandwich at Red Onion Restaurant in Burlington.

Maple creamee with chocolate sprinkles and maple sugar at Morse Farm in Montpelier.

Popovers with sautéed plums and butter at Cynthia and Leland's house in Cambridge.

Cynthia makin' slaw.

Some weeks just get away from me. In fact, most weeks that include anything in addition to going to work, coming home, and going to my weekly scheduled chiropractor appointment can be characterized as "getting away from me." These weeks aren't necessarily grueling, they're just full of things and I get tired easily. The days all sort of blur together and I can't really tell when anything ends - it certainly doesn't help that the clock on my computer has been drastically incorrect for at least two weeks.

There were at least two lunches last week that consisted of Goldfish pretzels and Ritter Sport bars. Dinners have consisted mainly of those boxes of couscous and maybe some tofu. Oh! There were lentils! Lots of lentils. It's in these times of great confusion that I can really count on George to pull through with something sensible - like lentils. I can't even tell you how he made them so delicious, probably with garlic.

Part of the reason things seem so crazy is that we're leaving town this weekend! This means there won't be a regular post next Tuesday. I will, however, bring back pictures and tales of food to share with you. There will be cake and maybe some pizza.

I did make one single dish this time:

- Chickpea and Brocolli Casserole (from Vegan with a Vengance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz)

It was easy, pretty cheap, and bland (i.e. perfect.) Something you should know is that I really, truly, and thoroughly enjoy foods without spices. I'm one of those people who don't really eat spicy foods. I want food to make me cry because it's so incredibly tasty and such a wonderful expereience, not because I can't stop my eyes from watering. It just simply tastes like it's ingredients and that's awesome. What're the ingredients? Chickpeas, carrots, an onion, bread crumbs, vegetable stock, salt, olive oil. The chickpeas get mashed, the carrots shredded, the onion thinly sliced and it all gets mixed together and put into a 9"x13" glass dish and baked at 350 for 45 minutes covered with foil and 15 minutes without the foil.

(I've got some pictures, but as of posting time Blogger is being too testy to let me upload them.)