What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger or At Least Makes Good Blog Fodder, Part 1

1. We had an uncarved pumpkin left over from Halloween and an unused pie crust left over from Christmas in the freezer. I will make a pie, I thought; I am an empty-the-pantry genius. Waste not, want not!

2. What kind of pumpkin do we have, besides a long-lasting-at-room-temperature one? Well. A "small pumpkin" according to the label on the squash. Very helpful. I remember that I got it from one of the big bins outside and not from the small stand of pie pumpkins in the produce section; but that shouldn't matter, right? Not really? A pumpkin is a pumpkin, after all.

3. Slice open the pumpkin: clean and fresh inside. Scoop out seeds; bake. (Face down in a tray of water for an hour and fifteen minutes at 350 degrees, for those of you following along at home, which [foreshadowing] I do not recommend.)

4. Scrape out the baked flesh. It sure peels off the skin in long easy strips. Maybe a little too easy. Also a little too strippy. Like spaghetti squash. Hmm. Blend; put in double boiler and add 3 beaten eggs, 3/4 cup of sugar, salt and cinnamon-ginger-cloves. Oh, and 3/4 cup cream. Only I don't have cream, so I put in half and half. Bake pie shell.

5. Hmm. It sure looks kind of...separate. Like I'm mixing chocolate milk with squash chunks.

6. Now it looks more like crumbled brown sugar mixed with squash chunks, with water poured over.

7. Pour off water. Blend the remains. Still oddly separate. Hmm. Sometimes homemade is a little less than picture-perfect, right? It's part of the charm. Pour/ scrape slightly sticky pumpkin custard (somehow custard is not the first thing that comes to mind, here) into baked pie crust. Hmm. Put in still-warm oven for fifteen minutes just...because. Because an additional step seems called for. Because right now the pie looks like I soaked cat kibble in milk overnight and poured it into a pie crust.

8. Well, it will still taste good, right?

9. Verdict: no.

10. If you must know, it tastes like I tried to make a pie with the slimy goop that the seeds come in. Blech.

11. Am still empty-the-pantry genius, only in the directly-to-trash, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars sense.

Friday Favorites

1. Favorite time of day. Morning, obviously. Always. But this time of year I like it especially: I get up when it's still dark and write, and then either go for a run or drive to work as the sun is rising, so I'm glutted with sunrises these days. I love it. It's so much better than my habits from the past few years, where I was running in the dark half the year and in the shower, I think, for the sunrise.

2. Favorite read of the week: I'm working my way slowly through The Hemingses of Monticello, which is about the family of slaves who were both Thomas Jefferson's unacknowledged inlaws and his companion and children. This is pretty much the perfect book for me right now: I spent the first half of the year immersing myself in the life and world of Thomas Jefferson, and dreaming of how to create my own private Monticello (which I'm still ambivalent about. I think people who create utopias tend to use the people in their lives as building blocks, and men who create utopias are especially dangerous this way). Now I'm reading about the invisible secret of Monticello, made visible. Much of the book is obviously speculative, but it's such smart and carefully researched speculation that it hardly matters.

3. Favorite meal of the week: chicken soup (made with leftover roast chicken) with basil pesto and rolls made with leftover mashed sweet yams. We've also had a lot of dessert: both Helen and Silas dedicated themselves to dessert projects this week. Si made a recipe he'd found on the internet, cupcakes with tombstones on them (well, two of the cupcakes had tombstones. Then he decided that was way too much work and the rest just have frosting.), and Helen made a recipe she'd found in a craft book, sugar cookies with food color paintings on them. She also made a T shirt with a pink zebra painted on it in fabric paints. They're both so crafty, those kids, although Si is still a follow-the-instructions-to-the-letter kind of guy, while Helen feels free to improvise.

Other than that it's been kind of a hard week, for no especial reason, except that I've had five bad hair days in a row and the kidnapping in Arvada has been bringing me down and I'm in kind of a personality head butting with someone at work (who is not in my department, so it's not really a crisis or a constant problem, just a disappointment to realize, again, that I am not liked by all people all of the time even though I SHOULD BE BECAUSE I AM A TENDER PRECIOUS SNOWFLAKE AND ALSO BRILLIANT.)

Anyway. The yard is adrift is golden glowing yellow, so there's that.

Friday Favorites

So far, I've made three of the Halloween recipes posted by Sundry on Milk and Cookies and mm-mm, are they good (note: I did *not* make the hand), although I'll come right out and say that so far none of them quite delivered on my expectations. I.e., they didn't taste quite as good as they looked in the pictures. I wasn't organized enough to get a photo of my creations before I left the house, but I will try to post one later, because also? my creations don't look as good as they looked in the pictures on Milk and Cookies.

Anyhow, what I wanted to post today is my favorite things about cooking:

1. I can explore without leaving my kitchen.
2. It's crafty, yet doesn't lead to crap accumulation, unlike actual craftiness.
3. It offers immediate gratification (or, occasionally, immediate feedback on The Wrongitude).
4. It allows me to incorporate my love of lists and projects with my love of eating.
5. It involves FOOD. Mmmmm.

Breaking News Update on the Purple Cauliflower

Big news, folks: I used the purple cauliflower. In an actual meal. And the kids ate it and asked for more. It helps that they are cruciferous-loving weirdos, of course (broccoli? bring it on!).

Here's the scoop:
1/4 head purple cauliflower (YES that means I still have 3/4 left), chopped
1 zucchini, sliced
1 lb cut-up pork
splash rice vinegar
splash (BIG splash) chicken broth
2 tblsp chopped cilantro
1/2 lb chunky pasta (my kids like campanelle, which is shaped like miniature ice-cream cones)
1/4 cup ricotta cheese

Drop the cauliflower and zucchini into water and bring to a boil while you brown the pork. Splash in your chicken broth. Drain veggies and add to meat; start pasta. Stir until broth is gone; splash in rice vinegar. Add ricotta to drained pasta. Add cilantro to meat and veggies just before serving. Takes about 30 minutes and is surprisingly yummy. And even though the kids declared "Ew! What is this? I'm not going to eat it!" when I dished it out, they BOTH did. Every single bite.

In other news, I've been obsessed with design, on scales both large (landscape) and small (my yard, which has been putting me into a total funk lately). I don't think this is going to become any sort of DESIGN blog or anything, but stay tuned for my attempts to figure this stuff out. Hopefully with photos.

My Cooking Personality: Apparently Also My Real Personality

Did you guys see this quiz in the New York Times a few weeks back? I'm a sucker for quizzes (don't tell me you're not!), so of course I took it. It turns out I'm an innovative cook, which sounds cool, does it not? Until you actually sit down to one of my dinners and realize that means I just figured out how to use the dusty can of garbanzo beans in the cupboard. And the leftover ricotta cheese. In one dish. ("MOOOOOOM! Do I HAVE to eat this?!")

Plus I waffled, so on two answers I'm a c/e.

Okay, let me just give you my answers. I believe there is some plagiarism involved in this exercise, so if you see me sweating, that's why. Also, I'm not going to replicate the entire quiz; I'm just going to give essay answers to multiple choice questions (which is something I ALWAYS want to do).

Question one: when I prepare a meal, I typically:

Start with five cookbooks, a very tiny budget, a conflicting welter of input ("I want mac and cheese from the box!" "I want something spicy!" "I want soup!" "I want something satisfying, yummy, cheap, and healthy!"). Sometimes I go for the tried and true staples--something I've made in the past that the kids will generally eat and which satisfies my criteria for a healthy meal: i.e., at least two colors of vegetable, some protein, and lowish in salt and fat. Sometimes I shape my meal around an ingredient (such as that impulse-purchased purple cauliflower sitting accusingly on the top shelf. Ugh.)

This process worked out to "c" in the quiz.

Question two: some of my favorite ingredients are:

Spinach, shrimp, cheese, zucchini, basil, fresh tomatoes (in season), yams, corn, leek, chicken, lovage, broccoli. I'm also an impulse buyer of weird fruits and vegetables, some of which actually get eaten. Some don't. See above: purple cauliflower.

Best fit: "e". Or maybe "c," if you exclude fish, since the only fish we can afford to eat on a regular basis is catfish. And just because we can AFFORD it doesn't mean we WANT it.

Question three: in my free time, I like to:

Blog, write, plan my garden, read, run, hike.

Best fit: "e." ("take part in creative or artistic pursuits"--sounds classy, no?)

Question four: my favorite things to cook are:

Bread, stir-fry, cool new recipes. Sometimes.

Best fit: "e" or "c". I like fresh ingredients and herbs ("c") just fine, but I like them better when they're from my own garden, which means I can cook this way for approximately one month out of the year. The rest of the year: "e" ("Ethnic foods and wok dishes"). Only having kids to feed is gradually kicking my desire for "ethnic foods and wok dishes" out of me.

Question five: other people describe me as:

Ha ha ha HA. Depends on the person (Guess who said this? "You're the meanest mom in the WHOLE WORLD!"). My MIL, who thinks sugar is the base of the food pyramid, would probably describe me as "health conscious." Somebody who was actually health-conscious probably wouldn't ( I eat hot dogs! And ice cream! And see my inappropriate love of cereal.) I guess I'd like people to describe me as "curious" (e), but that might be wishful thinking. "Health-conscious" (c) sounds boring, so it's probably the most accurate.

So I guess that really my cooking personality is "healthy" (optimistic, book-loving, nature enthusiast--sounds pretty accurate, if a little, er, sweat stained [also accurate]). I'm definitely not a "giving" personality, either in the kitchen or out of it. I often start my days methodical, but by the time I've drunk my coffee I've usually begun to fudge the details. I'm not competitive, either (GOD. As if.) So: healthy, unless the kids are out, and then I can revert to my "creative and trend-setting" self. Ha ha.