by Caroline
I’ve been making granola for years. I first wrote about granola for this blog nearly four years ago, and I wrote when I started following a new recipe and then again last year when the boys got in on the granola-baking act. It has been one of the very few constants in my kitchen — and in my breakfast bowl — over the last several years.
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I have this fantasy: Someday I will give them something so good they will be happy forever. Once and for all, they will love me without complaining. They will stop fighting. They will remember gratitude. They will be transported, their minds and mouths silenced by perfect joy. This joy will last, and last, and last.
Magical thinking, I know. But it’s the kind of magical thinking that turns a warm day daydream…nutella…vanilla ice cream…hazelnuts...into a batch of cold, sweet bliss. Some mothers might think the magical thing is a hug, or a kind word, or a pony. For me, on this day, it was ice cream.
It didn’t silence them. It did fill them with joy. It didn’t stop the complaining. It did conjure gratitude. It didn’t last. But I can make it again. And again. And again.
Nutella Swirl Ice Cream with Hazelnut Crunch
by Caroline
A staple cookbook of my childhood was Peg Bracken’s I Hate to Cook Book. My mom does not at all hate to cook, and I learned how to cook by sous cheffing contentedly at her elbow. But Peg Bracken’s dry wit and realistic take on domestic life — her insistence that a woman (still always a woman) didn’t have to spend her days stuck in the kitchen cooking for her husband and kids — must have been, for women coming of age in the 50s and 60s, like a swipe of vinegar across a cloudy window. Refreshing, sharp, and clarifying.
We learned Crazy Cake from Peg Bracken, we learned Elevator Lady Spice Cookies (which Cassoulet contributor — and my sister — Libby Gruner has written about), and we learned Aunt Bebe’s Bean Bowl, an open-the-cans-and-dump salad with a sweet dressing that was a staple of our church potlucks and picnics. “Don’t be afraid of that three-quarters of a cup of sugar, incidentally, as I was,” Bracken writes. “I thought, ‘This will never work out!’ and I thought, further, “Who is that fond of beans?’ But it did and I was.”
I loved that bean salad, but I cannot bring myself to buy canned green or wax beans these days, and making it without canned beans just seems to defeat the purpose. So here’s my mom to the rescue, with her updated bean salad for today’s kitchens, a whole lot fresher and greener but still just as easy. Don’t be afraid of those raisins, incidentally, as I was; I thought, this will never work out! And, I thought further, who is that fond of beans? But it did, and I am.
Black Bean & Chick Pea Salad
1 cup raisins
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
1 cup fresh cilantro or chopped Italian parsley
4 scallions, thinly sliced
1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
Kosher salt and black pepper
15 ounces chick peas
15 ounces black beans
In a small saucepan, combine the raisins, vinegar, oil and sugar and bring to a simmer. Remove from the heat and let cool.
In a large bowl, toss chickpeas and black beans, cilantro (or parsley), scallions & raisin mixture with cumin, plus salt and pepper to taste.
Serves lots!
Proof that dinner hour is more charming when you’re French.
Rhapsodie pour un Pot-au-feu from Rhapsodie TEAM on Vimeo.
by Caroline
Aside from our one disappointing long weekend of notcamping, my family’s enjoyed a fortunate summer. Unlike poor Lisa’s family, who struggled through a difficult summer of illness and hard work and not a lot of fun, relying — as I would — on the comforts of familiar foods — we were able to explore. We tried new things in the kitchen (zucchini blossoms; homemade nutella; mint stracciatella) and we traveled new places (which I will be writing about in the coming weeks).
But I think my favorite part of this sweet summer was one of our most familiar stops, my parents’ home in Connecticut. Summer is my favorite time to visit because my dad’s garden is always so plentiful. We can never predict whether it’s going to be a good year for apples or peaches, potatoes or green peas, corn or beans, but there’s always something.
This year the harvest looked like this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
Summer is winding down now. School has started, work is amping up, and some worries loom. A new season is beginning. But as I head into the fall and the memory of summer’s bounty starts to fade, I will continue to remember this:
