by Caroline
Four Things We Learned About Food in Istanbul
My Favorite Food in Paris
by Caroline
As I wrote earlier this week, eating in Paris is not, for my family, a happy feast of escargot and steak frites. But it’s not all vegetable sushi and Italian take-out, oh no.
When I think of eating in Paris, I don’t dream (as my children do) of nutella crepes and ice cream from Amorino. My mouth waters for a more savory, spicy, vinegary meal. I wait in line for it. I submit to the typical Parisien bureaucracy and love of paperwork by ordering inside, obtaining a precious ticket, and collecting the food outside. I brace myself and summon my best, most curt French to respond to the surly busy Parisien staff.
I consent to eating it standing up, outside, with oil dripping down my hands. And then I tuck in to this:
Falafel. Falafel with broiled eggplant, pickled cabbage, sour pickles, hot peppers, hummus, and yogurt, stuffed into a pita. It’s my favorite food in all of Paris.
That Meal That Shall Not Be Named
with apologies to the non-breeders, and the breeders who’ve already run this particular gauntlet…
Because I know the world doesn’t really need another school lunch post…
But: if we’re going to talk learning to eat, I can’t avoid the fact that I have to re-learn the school lunch thing every. single. year.
Because every single year the situation changes. In the beginning there were bentos, with baby vegetables, and dipping sauces, and Japanese stickers. Then there were bentos with sandwiches in cute shapes, and hard boiled eggs molded like kittens or fish, and rice pressed into hearts and stars. And notes. I kid you not. But back then, in the beginning, there was only one meal to pack every morning, and only one child to feed before 7:30 am, and actually, back then I wasn’t the one making breakfast, which was a very nice situation. But that situation changed.
Then there were two, and one of them was older, and she only wanted to eat what her friends were eating. There were a lot of things that were Not Allowed in The Lunch. There were a lot of sandwiches for a long time. Routine, repetition, predictability, comfort–these were paramount. In lots of ways, they still are.
Then there was the year my book was published, which included a lot of joy but also relentless fatigue. This year happened to coincide with a whole lot of growing and eating. Both kids seemed bottomless pits of insatiable hunger. Thankfully, this year also coincided with a new school lunch program, and slowly, those after school blood sugar crashes subsided. Mostly.
But this year is different. I’m taking a sabbatical from teaching, which means I can’t quite bring myself to shell out $4.50 meal x 2 every day for that hot lunch. I did, however, shell out the money for two good thermoses. And they have changed my life. For one thing, they work. Unlike the old ones we had, in which mac & cheese congealed into a clotted mess of cold pasta by lunch, these actually keep things hot. They also keep things cold. It’s not rocket science, I know. Now the options seem manifold: think anything with rice, anything canned, frozen, stewed. The frozen food aisle at Trader Joes is my new favorite place. Also, I’m finding it easier to prep these things in the morning. Fewer steps. Less mess. No crumbs.
A short list of Things They Will Now Eat For Lunch:
- Turkey Chili + corn bread
- Mac & Cheese
- Swedish Meatballs
- Orange Chicken + rice
- Strawberry smoothie + Nutella sandwich
- Pasta with tomatoes, eggplant, + mozzarella
- Pasta with pesto
- Mini hot dogs
- Pot stickers + rice
Making lunch is not really my favorite part of the morning. But it’s not too terrible, either.
Mac & cheese, apples, wasabi peas, mini chocolate chip cookies
Family Food in Paris
by Caroline
My children have been to Paris four times.
I have to pause after writing that sentence. My children have been to Paris four times? How did that happen? How did they get so lucky?
Well, first there was the wonderful boat trip, a week exploring rivers and canals in southwestern France, that my parents took us all on to celebrate their 50th anniversary. Tony and I considered the consequences of jetlagged children in a confined space and (twist our arms) decided to stop in Paris first. Subsequent summers brought my sister teaching in Oxford, a friend living temporarily in Portugal, other friends on sabbatical in Paris and– through it all — a convenient nonstop flight from San Francisco to Paris bringing us closer to people we love. So now here I am, the mother of two children who have a fair amount of experience in the City of Light.
“The City of Cheese,” Ben might say, with a grimace. “The City of Sauces,” Eli might add, shuddering.
It seems churlish to complain, but the world’s food capital doesn’t do very well by my vegetarian family. And honestly, that’s ok with me; we eat what we eat and don’t expect people — or countries — to accomodate our habits. But it has made staying in beautiful Paris a little more difficult than it might be for families whose kids will happily tuck into steak frites or a cheese crepe. We find ourselves challenged in a city where restaurants don’t want to make adjustments to the dishes on the menu (just try ordering plain pasta!) and don’t like to accomodate a child who can’t make it through a full three-course meal. In one of my favorite small guides to the city, Karen Uhlmann’s Paris for Kids, she writes, “I use my museum method for taking children to dinner in Paris (one museum, then one park): One pasta night for you; one bistro night for me.” She then goes on to describe her children eagerly trying duck for the first time (and loving it) or a place that offers an oyster ice cream that her children are still talking about (I bet they are!) I aspire to her experience, and keep her recommendations on the shelf for a time when my kids have expanded their palates.
For now, since Parisiens don’t expect (and don’t really want) children at restaurants, we make like Parisien families and try to stay out of them. In the past, we’ve rented apartments and cooked for ourselves, using the glorious produce available in the various markets. But this year, we weren’t staying in Paris long enough to justify an apartment. We didn’t pack food; we stayed in a hotel. It offered a spectacular breakfast buffet that kept us going for hours; we ate salads from the wonderful Monoprix for lunch; and then we collapsed in the hotel while Tony fetched us take-out for dinner. We wound up eating a lot of Italian and (perhaps weirdly) sushi in Paris, and it worked out just fine.
Our hotel picnic dinners gave us some nice downtime together before we headed back out into the beautiful night.
Transitions
We must have eaten this summer, and I must have cooked, but I can’t remember doing either. What I remember is a dark smudge of days, in which I often seemed engaged in a protracted struggle to not cry. Somewhere in there, we had meals, but I did not make ice cream, or roast peppers, or pack my freezer with pesto or roasted Early Girls. There were very few early evening cocktails.
It’s only in the past month, with the kids settled in school, the carpools worked out, the games firmly anchored in our weekends, that things have begun to feel normal again. The return to health–physical, psychic, emotional–was stealthy. But it must have been steady, too, because last week, as I stood over the kitchen counter eating ice cream straight from the freezer bowl I felt a twinge of joy: I had made something new. Things must be better. That the thing was ice cream, in September, and not in June, July, or August, slayed me a bit, reminding me of just how much summer we’d missed, and how much of that sweet, bright period was stolen from our family. But life is like this sometimes. Families, sons, daughters, parents, spouses…we take the bitter right along with the sweet. And we are lucky. We’ve healed. We’ve moved on.
So the ice cream was also providential, a kind of transition, a sweet thing welcoming our family back to itself. And I realized I’d been cooking other transitional things, too, meals to usher us from sickness to health, from instability to stability, from summer into fall. I cooked the bright Brandywines and Pineapples and Purple Cherokees that we always eat raw into a light but comforting heirloom tomato sauce. I barbecued tofu instead of sauteeing it. I turned the salmon backs into cakes. And I made this pizza, loaded with the last of summer’s fresh pesto, the final crop of sweet 100s, and the bitter bite of grilled raddichio. A little sweet, a little bitter, completely ravishing.
Pesto pizza with fresh mozzarella, grilled radicchio, and sweet 100s
Grilled Pesto Pizza with Radicchio and Sweet 100s
- 1 recipe pizza dough
- grated,fresh mozzarella
- 1 small head radicchio
- 1 cup small cherry tomatoes (sliced if you’re not lazy like me)
- pesto
- olive oil
- balsamic vinegar
- salt
- Quarter the radicchio and coat with salt, olive oil, and a sprinkle of balsamic vinegar. Grill until tender, or alternately, roast in a 350 degree oven for 20-30 minutes. Let cool and coarsely chop. Set aside.
- Roll out a piece of homemade or store bought pizza dough.
- Turn on your grill to HIGH and close the lid to preheat.
- When the grill is hot, brush the grates with olive oil and immediately lay the pizza dough across the grill.
- Cook 2-3 minutes, or until the dough begins to bubble and dry out. Using tongs, flip the dough immediately and cook until the dough puffs, another minute or 2.
- Remove dough from grill and onto cutting board. Close grill and lower the heat to MEDIUM.
- Quickly spread a layer of homemade or store-bought pesto over half-grilled dough.
- Top pesto with fresh grated mozzarella, the radicchio, and a sprinkle of sweet 100s. Be judicious with the cheese and don’t overload your pie.
- Return the pizza to grill and lower the lid. Cook until cheese is melted and bubbly. Check heat occasionally to make sure the crust isn’t burning on the bottom.