Lisa is the author of the award-winning memoir, A Double Life: Discovering Motherhood, which was an National Book Critics Circle Top-10 Independent Press Pick for 2011. With Caroline, she's the co-founder of Learning to Eat and co-editor of The Cassoulet Saved our Marriage: True Tales of Food, Family, and How We Learn to Eat. She holds an MA in creative writing, a PhD in English and has taught literature and creative writing widely, most recently in the MFA Program at the University of San Francisco.
“Back home, Kory turned on the TV, but I could no longer watch. For the rest of the afternoon I stood at the kitchen table mixing eggs and flour in a rhythmic circle, gathering the dough into small round balls, In the background the new was insistent. Arms dusted in flour, I kneaded and rolled and cut. I fed the smooth elastic dough through the steel machine. Over and over, through the rollers like a mantra, the pasta stretched and lengthened into cool, yellow sheets. It grew strong and supple. I covered the table with those sheets and cut capellini, linguini, pappardelle. Some I dried, some I froze, some we would eat fresh for dinner. Even as I let the work soothe the edges of my grief, I felt guilty, knowing there were many who would be too grieved to eat tonight, or tomorrow, or for many days to come.” from A Double Life, Discovering Motherhood
Basic Fresh Pasta, after Marcella Hazan
for each person
1 egg
3/4 cup flour
Dump flour on a smooth, clean, dry work surface. Make a well in the center. Break eggs into well.
With a fork, beat eggs until blended . Then, with fork, slowly incorporate flour bit by bit until the egg is no longer runny.
Using your fingers and hands, continue to incorporate flour until eggs and flour are well-combined.
Clean your hands and knead the dough until it smooth, compact, and elastic.
Using a pasta rolling machine, feed dough in pieces through rollers until desired thinness is achieved. Cut pasta into desired shapes.
Last summer, I never pulled up our tomato plants. We had 3 or 4 plants in the ground–Sweet 100s, SunGolds–delicious little bites of summer, that bore fruit until October. (It’s like that here, please don’t hate us.) And then we got busy, and it started to rain, and we spent most weekends at one soccer game or another, and I just let those plants go. And guess what?
This spring, up popped a tomato seedling. Then two, then three, then six. I didn’t think they would survive, so ignored them. But they kept growing, and I still didn’t really believe what was happening, and so I neglected to thin out the plants. And then, all of sudden, we were back from a month of vacation, the plants were nearly taking over yard, and now we have pints and pints of the best little cherry tomatoes you could ever hope for.
They are perfectly ripe and sweet, and we can barely keep up. They plants are a glorious mess, but I don’t care. They just keep producing and producing and all we can do is pick as fast as we can.
We give pints away and I am still wrist deep in tomatoes every night. We eat them whole, straight off the plant. I make fresh salsas, with a touch of red onion and cilantro. I make caprese on a stick , or bruschetta, or a modified tomato surprise. I make gazpacho several times a week, which is a dish both kids slurp like addicts. And I’ve made a couple of version of BLT pasta, because we have also been on something of a bacon kick.
The pasta works two ways, with cooked or uncooked tomatoes, but it’s fast and easy and you can use a range of simple ingredients;
3/4 lb oriechetta
1 pint Sungold or Sweet 100 tomatoes
4 slices bacon
1-2 handfuls fresh spinach or baby arugula
freshly shaved parmesan OR baby mozzarella
It works like this:
Cook the pasta in well-salted water. While the pasta is cooking:
Cook 4 slices bacon in a pan to desired crispness, remove and drain on paper towels. Chop into 1 inch pieces.
If cooking the tomatoes, pour off all but 2-3 tablespoons of bacon grease. Then toss the tomatoes into the pan and cook just until they’re wilted and beginning to burst. Alternatively, slice the tomatoes in half and toss with salt and extra virgin olive oil. Let these sit for about 10-15 minutes while you cook the bacon.
When the pasta is done add it to the pan with cooked tomatoes, two big handfuls of spinach or arugula. Toss gently until the greens just begin to wilt.
And the bacon and toss.
OR, toss the cooked pasta with spinach or arugula until greens are just wilted. Then add the fresh tomatoes and their juices, then the bacon.
Serve immediately with shavings of parmesan cheese or the fresh mozzarella.
Last night, as we were eating our 15th tomato sandwich since returning home, this time in the form of a BLT, I asked Ella and Finn about the best part of vacation food.
“Oh. No.” They both shook their heads. Aside from a nice meal at Ariel’s Grotto (which is in CA Adventure anyway), the food at Disney was memorable only for its awfulness.
The short of list of things Ella liked about vacation food:
Choice. Getting to chose what you want every night.
Kids’ menus: which she says (mostly accurately) include: chicken fingers, burgers, sushi, macaroni and cheese, pizza.
Her affection for kids menus is interesting because I think it has less to do with the offerings and more to do with the fact that they offer a manageable list of food specifically to the child. I do like the portion size and pricing on kids menus. When you’re eating out every meal, economy of all sorts is important. But I do hate the tyranny of those same five dishes. It’s definitely true that not all burgers (or even mac ‘n cheese) are created equal, and side dishes vary, but like so many other parents, I wish restaurants would think a little more creatively about what to feed to kids.
Another highpoint: the dining room at Hearst Castle, also the inspiration for their beloved Hogwarts.
Finn’s response was more measured. He says he didn’t much like the menus which had “good things, but not always things you feel like eating.” He is a creature of habit. Also the one picking cucumbers out of water by the end of the trip. He likes restaurant booths, because they’re cozy. And I can add that they both love the menus they can color on and take with them. We have several now glued into scrapbooks.
The lesson here is that choice is important, and so is control. Kids like to be spoken to directly. They like to be offered things that are their size and fitted to their taste. A smaller list of choices, so as not to overwhelm, is a great idea for school age kid who wants to master her own menu. But maybe it’s not such a great idea to have the same choice at every single restaurant. Because really, fries with a quesadilla are kind of ridiculous.
They did resoundingly agree on one thing: San Diego food. So stay tuned because tomorrow, straight from our favorite place in San Diego: the only new recipe you need for the summer.
It’s no secret that food at theme parks, generally speaking, sucks, is lousy. The food lowpoint of our vacation was not, however, what any of us ate or didn’t eat, but the moment when we were standing in the brunch line at our hotel, which was full of great, fresh food, and my husband saw a young boy waiting for his turn at the colorful tray of melons only to have his father push him along, saying, “What are you doing? You don’t need any fruit. Come down here.” And they made there way down to the bacon and sausage and biscuits and gravy–all of which are fine things to eat, but I wish that boy had gotten to choose.
We were all starved for fresh, whole fruits and vegetables. And while the food in Disneyland is pretty awful, they do have carts filled with fresh fruit, including watermelon, wedges of pineapple, and containers of cut mangos. We ate a lot of mango while we inside the Magic Kingdom. But we also quickly discovered that (sit-down restaurants aside) the grab-and-go/cafeteria style food is much, much better at California Adventure, so we tried to eat there as much as we could. Plus, they serve wine and beer, which is always a good addition to a meal when you need a little extra downtime. Or a boost of courage for, say, Tower of Terror. There’s a new set of restaurants way out on Paradise Pier that serves really good flatbread pizza, fresh salads, and a whole range of grilled mediterranean skewers. There’s also a lot more ethnic food (Mexican & asian inspired rice bowls) all around the park, and an infusion of California wine country sensibility–which also leans toward fresher, leaner, more seasonal meals.
We made it through all the parks (Legoland, Seaworld) by eating less meat, seeking out cold fruit instead of ice cream, finding simple salads(lots and lots of Caesar’s), avoiding sweetened drinks, and substituting fruit for fries. Because we were on the road so much, and the choices were generally less fresh than we’re used to, even the kids didn’t complain. Of course we got ice cream & fries and candy and treats, too. It was vacation, after all. We just didn’t make these choices every day at every meal.
The best surprise of all was a lovely al fresco dinner at Ariel’s Grotto in California Adventure (I know. I know.) It wasn’t a character dinner, and the kids have long since traded princessphilia for the adrenaline of the fastest rides they can find, but they dinner came with preferred seating for the night show, which we wanted to see. The service was excellent, the margaritas sweetened with agave, and the food was really good. Our appetizer was served family style: a tower of salumes, salads, and olives which the kids also dug into. My main course ravioli was the best thing I’d eaten in 3 days. Kory’s meal was equally satisfying. And the kids had “meatball lollipops”: lovely little meatballs on skewers atop a plate of spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce.
Dinner. Before the kids attacked the fruit.
What I loved most was the kids’ appetizer, which was ingeneous and a standard part of their meal. I loved the assumption that the kids could have a first course. It acknowledged the parents’ right to relax over a meal and assumed kids are capable of dining right along with them. I especially loved the cute little green apple jelly.
Watermelon, cheese, and a green apple gelatin
What the kids loved most was probably the family style dessert, which wasn’t great, but was really fun to look at. Especially the white chocolate film strip.
Happy kids. Happy meal. And for this night, certainly, one of the happier places on earth.
