It felt appropriate to spend last week’s Cesar Chavez Day of Service on a farm. The first graders know Chavez’ story as well as they do the life of MLK, Jr., and on the drive out to Marin, my car full talked about how our experience on a small organic farm would differ from the experience of migrant farm workers in the 70s. “We won’t get sprayed!” they cheered. And although I know the farm industry still has a long way to go, for this day, we focused on celebrating Chavez and the healthy farm we visited.
The kids helped plant seeds:
They wheel barrowed weeds to the compost pile:
They learned about bees and other beneficial insects:
After which they took some time to draw the bugs they observed on the farm:
Eli’s drawings:
We took a lunch break, and some of us added calendula flowers to our meals:
And at the end of the day, the patient farmers sent us each home with a seedling, which one young gardener has established in our own city garden:
Let’s just say there was a storm. It might have been a terrible rain storm, with high winds, and dark skies, and cold slashing rain that I watched, miserably, through the kitchen’s glass wall. It might have been a squall between the kids, a tornadic escalation of he said/she said spinning destruction through the house. It might have been a tempest between me and my son, or me and my daughter over what’s (not) for dinner, or homework, or cleaning a room, or doing a chore, or feeding the cat. It was all of that, or some of that, and more. It was a soul-killing storm.
I struggled to bale myself out of the misery and cook dinner. Inspired by Joan, Pietro’s wife, and the chicken Milanese we love, I dredged fresh fish in flour, then beaten egg, then fresh bread crumbs. I fried it in a pool of limpid oil. It turned golden brown, exactly, miraculously, as it was supposed to. The skies hadn’t cleared, but dinner was done.
And then, we entered the eye of the storm. Hungry and exhausted the kids came to the counter. We ate. It was delicious: fragrant, moist, crackling pieces of fish. Sweet cornbread. Tender, lemony greens. More fresh, hot fish.
And then, too soon, we were spun out of that silent, still place, back into the terrible squall.
Dinner did not save us. But it gave me a pale ray of hope. Which is, I suppose, the thing our soul most needs. That, and sometimes, a good new recipe.
Fresh Fried Red Snapper
1 lb fresh Red Snapper filet (not previously frozen)
2-3 eggs, beaten
flour for dredging
2-3 slices whole wheat bread, processed into fine crumbs
pinch salt
canola oil for frying
Carefully check the fish filets for bones, and with a pair of tweezers, remove each bone completely.
Cut the fish into nugget-sized pieces. Where possible, cut along the natural lines of the filet.
Set out 3 bowls, large enough to accommodate the fish. Fill one with flour, one with the beaten eggs, and one with fresh bread crumbs.
Add up to a teaspoon of salt to the flour.
Pour the oil about 3/4 inch deep in a frying pan and turn on heat to medium high.
When the oil is hot, dredge each piece of fish in flour, then coat completely in egg, then cover in bread crumbs.
Fry the fish until one side is golden brown, about 3 minutes. Then turn and fry on second side. Be careful not to crowd the pan.
Drain briefly on a paper towel covered plate.
Serve immediately, with lemon wedges, aioli, sauteed greens, cornbread.
Although Lisa’s and my focus here is primarily on the food we cook and eat with our families, every once in a while I, at least, cook something I know no one else will like. Sometimes, I don’t even much care. A recipe strikes me because it has one of those appealing words (mmm, caramelized) or usefully uses up lots of produce, or just has a pretty picture accompanying it.
Sometimes, I simply need to be in the kitchen cooking, and the result is really far less important than the process. So it was Saturday morning. A writing project was preoccupying me, but I wasn’t ready to sit at the computer yet and tackle it. I needed to busy myself with something slow and methodical, something that would give me some time to think. It was too rainy to go out for a run — my usual habit when I’m mulling over an essay — and I could have baked bread or chopped vegetables to start a pot of soup (like I did just this time last year) but this recipe for grapefruit ginger curd had just arrived in my inbox. And so, perhaps weirdly, I made curd. I even did the tedious step of grating a knob of ginger and pressing the grated pulp through a strainer to produce fresh ginger juice — that’s the kind of distraction I needed. It’s worth it, really. It’s delicious. And the ten minutes at the stove stirring it were just enough to get me back to my writing, now with a piece of fresh toast spread with this sunny, citrusy curd on top.
There are times in the family when I feel like the caterer. Then there are the times when I really am the caterer. Like last weekend, when most of our family living space was taken over by leprechaun-trap builders. This the fifth year of trap building and it’s, well, escalated over the years. This year, the kids begain to plan in Februry, and the real construction madness took place over the final weekend on our kitchen table, picnic table, kitchen floor, breakfast counter, car port. Activities included, but were not limited to: foam board cutting; non-stop hot glue-ing; measuring & planning on the kitchen table; painting on the kitchen floor; dremmeling in the car port; tinker-toy pulley making; Lego stair building; trap-door cutting; paper-mache-ing.
Which meant dinner was impossible when things looked like this.
The only choice I had was to clear a small section of counter for a baked ziti, which the kids call “pizza pasta”, some spinach, flat bread, and a bottle of wine. They ate when and where they liked. Ella called it the “on and off dinner” and has been begging for it ever since. I have not obliged.
Eventually A few days later, things were cleaned up.
Baked Ziti
1 lb ziti
1 container ricotta cheese (15 oz)
1 large egg, beaten
8 oz grated fresh mozzarella cheese, plus more for slicing
Cook ziti in boiling water about 1 minute less than recommended cooking time, so it is al dente.
While ziti is cooking, mix ricotta, egg, mozzarella in a large bowl, season with salt and pepper, & oregano and nutmeg if using.
Drain ziti and mix thougoughly with cheeses.
Mix about 2 cups of sauce with cheese and ziti. Add more to taste or if pasta seems dry.
Cover casserole with a few slices of mozzarella and the parmensan.
Bake in oven until cheese is bubbling and casserole is warmed through. The time (15-30 minutes) will depend on the temperature of casserole. If it’s at room temperature, it will take longer.
Every year on Cesar Chavez Day (March 31st for those of you not living in California, Texas, or Colorado, where the labor leader’s birthday is a state holiday), my sons’ school celebrates a school-wide day of service. The kids, faculty, and staff fan out around the city and the larger bay area, contributing their enthusiastic labor to various organizations needing help. I’ve driven groups to a small farm in San Anselmo where the kids learned about bee keeping and planted lettuces; a preschool in the Castro where they cleaned furniture and painted a mural; or stayed back at school with the kindergartners, painting welcome back posters and baking cookies for the older volunteers’ return.
This year, the school is organizing more frequent service days, and we recently spent a couple hours at the San Francisco Food Bank, bagging one-pound portions of rice, beans, and granola for the food bank’s recipients. I was on rice detail, and six of us donned gloves and hair nets to stand around a table measuring portions, filling bags, sealing them shut, labeling and packing them into cardboard boxes, assembly-line style.
The group of us bagged 570 pounds of rice before our shift was done. I kept looking at those bags of rice, thinking how casually I measure out a couple cups of rice for our dinners. Our work helped feed a lot of people, for which I’m grateful, but it also — as volunteer work usually does — fed us quite satisfyingly as well. I’m looking forward to our next shift.
