Caroline is the editor-in-chief of Literary Mama, the associate director of The Sustainable Arts Foundation, and co-editor of The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage as well as Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life (Rutgers University Press, 2008).
I’ve been feeling a little badly about disparaging quesadillas the other day. I would not have survived my first year of motherhood without them, but that’s also what I was remembering when I called them an “uninspired” choice for lunch: those weary, can’t-make-it-out-of-the-bathrobe days of new motherhood, when a good lunch was anything I could make and eat one-handed while my fussy child nursed in the sling. I’d often prep one early in the morning, before Tony had left for work, grating the cheese into a tortilla and then setting it into the frying pan to cook at lunchtime.
Today’s quesadilla was much better than that. I felt like a new mom only in that I was starving, so I made the extra-protein brunch treat — good for a quick kid supper, too — that we call an eggadilla: after the quesadilla is out of the frying pan, you scramble a couple of eggs quickly in the hot pan, and then tuck them into the tortilla. Since I didn’t have a baby hanging from me, I took the time to cut up some tomatoes on the side, and drizzled them with an impromptu cilantro vinaigrette (cilantro, lime juice, and olive oil, whirred in the food processor). If I knew of any new mom in the neighborhood, I’d have invited her over to share, but instead I ate it all myself, sitting down at the table with a knife and fork, reminiscing about how much has changed.
If you’ve followed this blog any length of time you know that I am no purist. I don’t make particularly complicated food, but I combine multiple recipes, I tinker, I replace fat (and sometimes eggs) with ground flaxseed meal. I experiment, but not in a scientific, note-taking, Cooks Illustrated kind of way, refining a recipe until I come to the Ideal Version. I like to start with recipes (unlike my children) and then, usually after I’ve baked it as written once or twice, I start making adjustments.
Banana bread is one of those evolving recipes for me, granola is another (these days I’m leaving out the cinnamon and tossing in some shredded coconut right at the end; I suppose it’s time to post an update!). And now pizza crust is another. Usually I make this crust that I first read about in Catherine Newman’s Wondertime column; Lisa’s family makes pizza regularly too (and, like me, is not above using store-bought pizza crust since so many good ones are available). But when I saw this recipe it looked worth a try, even though I know, deep in my heart, that a good pizza crust requires nothing but flour, water, yeast, olive oil and salt. And heat. Lots of really fierce heat.
So we made the pizza, exactly as the recipe is written. And it’s pretty good, though that could be as much the result of the second rise as the beer (I’m not sure how best to work out the timing so that the crust gets warm beer and the cook gets a cold one without any beer going flat or wasted.) Really, I think the main lesson here is to turn your oven (or grill) on both earlier and hotter than you really believe is necessary, because the main thing your pizza needs is heat.
One of my favorite things, among the many small things that I love about my kids being in school until 2 PM, is that I have time now to make and eat lunch at home.
Last year, when my youngest was in preschool, I left the house at 11:30 AM to pick him up. It was too early to eat before leaving the house, and usually by the time we got home, I was too hungry to do more than warm up some leftovers or make a quesadilla or something else not particularly inspired. A snack might have been a good idea, but then I wouldn’t have been hungry for lunch until 2 PM, which doesn’t work well when you’re living with small people who need dinner at 5:30.
You see the little problem.
Now, I don’t have to leave the house until 1:30. And that gives me the necessary time to work all morning, and then rummage around inside the fridge and pantry and come up with a salad like this. I realize we’ve been posting a lot about salads lately; Lisa’s herby green salad is a staple in our house, too, and garbage salad is a regular in my lunch routine. Earlier in the summer, when I was I reminiscing about our glorious French vacation I posted three new recipes. Because salad can be a great meal for lunch. It doesn’t have to be complicated; it doesn’t need to take any longer to make than to heat up leftovers. But sometimes, the right combination of ingredients doesn’t present itself to you unless you can give it a couple moments of thought. And then maybe the combination, once you see it, seems so obvious it’s hardly worth remarking upon. But if the ingredients are fresh and you have thirty minutes to eat in peace, perhaps with a book by your side, the meal feels like a remarkable gift indeed.
It’s been a heady time for the youngest member of our family. In the months since he turned five, late last spring, he has learned to swim, learned to ride a bike without training wheels, graduated from preschool, started kindergarten, joined a soccer team — and scored two goals in his first game. (Not that anyone’s keeping score.) He has also done something that, as he has said, proudly and repeatedly, “the forty-three year old in the family [that would be me] has never done:” invented a cake recipe.
. But Eli was two when that happened; he has no recollection of it. Apparently, for some kids, hanging out with their mom making weekly batches of cookies and muffins translates into the desire to abandon the cookbook and strike out independently. It makes sense, even though it didn’t happen to me; I helped my mom bake bread every week when I was small, and was sous chef to thousands of batches of cookies before I mostly took over family cookie production when I was eleven or twelve. But although I may combine three or four recipes, although I am casual with my measurements and I tinker, it has never once even occurred to me to just get out the flour and bake without a map. I always start with a recipe.
When asked what had inspired him, Eli said simply, “I was in the mood for cake.” I didn’t coach him on ingredients or method at all, I just wrote out exactly what he dictated (though some of the numbers, and the method, he wrote out himself):
When we had it all written out, it was time to get out the ingredients and start baking; I’ve been through this before, after all, when Ben invented a bread recipe (one that looked likelier to turn out well than that cake), and knew there was no question of trying it out. Besides, it seemed like it might taste pretty good.
We did endure one conflict, over the sugar. Eli, quite reasonably, listed it with the “dry stuff” and wanted to mix it in with the flour, baking soda and salt. I reminded him that usually the butter and the sugar are creamed together. He nodded and agreed — yes, he remembered that — and insisted on doing it his way. I really wanted his cake to turn out well, and so I pushed back. He stuck to his guns. And I, despite the little voice in my head telling me to just let the boy make his cake already (because when have I ever invented a cake? Right. Never.) started to insist a little more strongly. Eli started to cry. And then, thank goodness, I shut up and hugged him and let him make his cake the way he wanted: “Pour wet stuff in. Mix 10 sec. Pour dry stuff in. Mix 10 sec.” At the end of which process it looked like this:
You might want to mix your batter a little longer — I won’t tell — but maybe not. Because despite how lumpy and weird our batter looked, the finished cake looked like this:
We’ve made it twice now to prove it’s no fluke, and I have to say, the cake rocks — it’s moist and a little chewy from the honey, and it’s not too sweet nor too salty (amazing how the sugar and salt kind of cancel each other out). We bake it in a standard glass lasagna pan, and the only deviation we’ve made from the recipe is to bake it for 24 minutes rather than the prescribed 12, but we do set the oven to 360. I recommend you do, too.
A lifetime ago, pre-husband and pre-kids, I lived in the not-yet-gentrified Hayes Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. My top floor apartment looked out over a vacant lot which had once been shadowed by the 101 freeway off-ramp, but after the Loma Prieta earthquake damaged the road, the ramp was torn down and the lot — in all its weedy, broken-asphalt ugliness — was exposed to new light. The weeds started growing denser and scrubby trees started to sprout; the lot was surrounded by chain link fence, but that didn’t stop people from camping in it. I used to sit in my window looking out over the space, wondering if the city would ever pay attention to the lot and make better use of the area.
The rest of the neighborhood started improving; hip shops and cafes moved in, and although I moved away, I’d drive past frequently on my drive to graduate school in Berkeley. Eventually a sign went up on the chain link fence, announcing a condo development, but nothing happened. Then last winter, a new sign went up, and then lots of new signs:
I discovered that when the condo development plans fell victim to the recession, the city opened the site up for “temporary green space use” and the community has taken it from there. On our visit, one group of folks sorted through packets of donated lettuce seed to plant out in flats:
We planted some of it in flats ourselves:
And we admired the healthy salad bar that’s growing from seeds planted earlier in the season:
We saw another group sorting and stacking cardboard, some of the over 80,000 pounds the farmers have used already to create the farm’s “soil” out of layered cardboard, wood chips, and horse manure:
The ingredients for soil (like the seeds) are donated; the community farmers collect the cardboard, wood chips and manure free and with the city’s thanks, from the local waste stream.
These folks are serious about their farming. They are developing dwarf fruit trees that thrive in pots, so that apartment dwellers can harvest their own apples and pears:
They are refining potato columns, which grow in simple, portable chicken wire towers and yield lovely potatoes that my kids couldn’t resist harvesting:
“It’s really not scary to grow food,” commented our tour guide; indeed, for all their innovations here, they are also doing some things in ancient ways, studying the terraced farms of the Incas because San Francisco’s climate mirrors that of the Andes mountains.
The farmers are making it fun, too, hosting volunteer work parties followed by free yoga sessions, movie nights and picnics, plus classes on topics ranging from medicinal plants to soil health to permaculture to emergency preparedness. “The main thing we’re growing is a community,” our guide commented, and it’s growing beautifully. It’s like turning swords into plowshares: the Hayes Valley volunteers are farming the freeway:
