Quick Yeast Bread

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by Caroline

We love bread. And while it is very easy, living in San Francisco, to buy a different kind of delicious bread every day, we love to make it, too. I learned by watching my mom make bread every week, and my kids are learning the same way. In fact, if I can send my children out into the world with one lesson learned in my kitchen, I’d like them to feel that producing homemade bread is not a tricky thing.

I think we’re off to a good start. Ben invented his own bread recipe (which is really not half bad) when he was five, and now we’ve added another easy bread recipe to the repertoire. “Quick” and “yeast” rarely come together in bread recipes, but they do in this new one from Heidi Swanson (which she adapted from another source; I do love how recipes travel).

The next time you’ve got a hankering for fresh bread, give this a try; it’s barely an hour from the idea till you’ve got a piece of warm bread in your hands.

1 1/4 cups warm water (105-115F; if it feels neutral — not too hot nor cold — on your wrist, it’s the right temp)
2 teaspoons active dry yeast (one packet)
1 tablespoon honey or maple syrup
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup old fashioned rolled oats
1 1/2 teaspoons fine grain sea salt
1 tablespoons butter, to grease the pan

In a medium bowl, sprinkle the yeast onto the warm water and stir until the yeast dissolves. Stir in the honey and set aside for a few minutes, until the yeast blooms and swells a bit – 5 – 10 minutes.

In the meantime, mix the flours, oats, and salt in a large bowl. Add the wet mixture to the dry and stir very well.

Grease an 8-cup loaf pan with butter. Turn the dough into the pan, cover with a clean, slightly damp cloth, and set in a warm place for 30 minutes, to rise.

Preheat the oven to 350F, with a rack in the middle. When the oven’s hot, bake the bread for 35-40 minutes, until golden and pulling away from the sides of the pan.

Remove from oven, and turn the bread out of the pan quickly. Let it cool on a rack so it doesn’t steam in the pan. Serve warm, slathered with butter.

Makes 1 loaf.

Adapted from Gran’s Kitchen: Recipes from the Notebooks of Dulcie May Booker.

Goodbye to all that

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By Lisa

not much more al fresco dining

Even though the temperatures here are still summerlike, and our markets are still full of piles of plums, rainbow swaths of  tomatoes, giant bouquets of cilantro and basil, I am facing the end of summer and all that comes with it. This weekend, I will slow roast dozens of pounds of early girls, zip their jammy goodness into bags, and freeze them for the winter rains.  I’ll continue to make double batches of pesto as long as I can, freezing half and hoping the stash will last until March. Other than that, our summer food will be gone.

Cling peaches; waiting to be drenched in cream and  brown sugar for the kids; in Prosecco for the adults

This is the way it should be.

Eating seasonally has become the paramount virtue at our table.  It’s more important than organic.  It’s more important than family dinner. It’s more important than getting my kids in the kitchen or dragging them to the farmers’ market.  We’ve done all that, and we still do all that. Sometimes. Now that Ella and Finn are older, they have their own ideas about things, and they just don’t always want to be in the kitchen. Most of the time, they’d rather climb the orange tree than juice its fruit.  They’d rather kick the soccer ball into the fence than harvest the tomatoes growing along it. And they’re a lot more interested in the chocolate croissants than another peach sample on Saturday mornings. Can you blame them? Ella has been to over 400 farmers markets in her life. She’s 9.   She gets it.

summer corn with butter and basil

Most weekend mornings, she’d rather stay home and finish building that new metropolis she and Finn started.  They have an open invitation to the kitchen. They can mix up smoothies or kidtinis when  the (nonalcoholic) spirit moves them.  But bedtime is more important than eating with dad. So we will have family dinner on the weekends.  They won’t leave the house without knowing how to chop an onion or read a recipe or buy their own food.

Still, there is one, unwavering constant: here, in this very lucky climate, we eat what grows in season.   If it’s not in the farmers market, we don’t buy it. What we eat is tied to the cycle of the year, and reminds us of a specific time and place. It’s the one, true constant of our food life.

the end of the heirlooms

The kids mourn the loss of stone fruit, but they can’t wait for apples. They gobble up the blueberries, but are enchanted by the first knobby, ruby red, pomegranates.   Sharing these things, like the fleeting perfume of pineapple guavas or winters’ crunchy Hachiya persimmons, brings us together. We have shared desires. We know it’s the dead of winter when our oranges are ready to eat. We know spring has come when I bring home the first favas. In fall, shelling a new crop of walnuts is like digging for gold.  These things are our common memory. These things bring us to the table. We don’t have a large family. We don’t have an elaborate kitchen. We don’t cook together all the time. We don’t have a whole lot of traditions or generations-old family recipes, or a rich cultural legacy.  What we do have: things to remember and things to look forward to and things to eat right now.  We make the most of what is in front of us, in the pantry, or the refrigerator, or on the counter.  We “watch what it is, though it fades away” and it’s a lesson in food, and family, and, yes, life.   Persimmons come, peaches go. Padrons give way to pomegranates.   These are the things I think they’ll remember about growing up in California.  That, and maybe cooking with sticks.



The Quarter-Acre Farm: book giveaway!

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by Caroline

I grew up in a beautiful, green town where families maintained very careful lawns and flower gardens and tidy backyard patches of vegetables. When we moved in, my parents considered the yards (front and back), their size, their access to sun, and ultimately put in two vegetable gardens: one outside the kitchen door, along the driveway, and one long, wide strip right in the front yard. They screened it from the street with a lush hedge of beach roses, but still, I think the neighbors were probably a bit appalled. I know I was embarrassed, even though in retrospect I’m proud of their resistance to suburban mores, and I’m certainly grateful that I grew up with so many home grown vegetables.

Spring Warren’s story is a kind of 21st century version of my family’s. In The Quarter-Acre Farm: How I Kept the Patio, Lost the Lawn, and Fed My Family For a Year, she writes about how she turned her big yard into a more productive space, despite the reservations of her family. Unlike Barbara Kingsolver, whose wonderful Animal, Vegetable, Miracle tells a somewhat similar story of a family trying to live off their own produce for a year, Warren operates on a smaller scale. Her goal is to produce 75% of the food she eats, and she doesn’t require her husband and son to make the same pledge. The book is honest and funny and includes recipes, which makes it a winner to me. I have a copy to give away to one randomly-drawn reader who leaves a comment by the end of the week.

Learning to Eat Ceviche

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By Lisa

On Friday evening, we were on our way for tacos, when all hell broke loose in the car. It was 5:30 pm. My 7-year-old son had just finished an intense 90-minute soccer practice. During this time his sister had been kicking the ball around with a few teammates. It was the end of another 90 degree day. Both kids were hot, sweaty, and my son’s knees were black from turf dirt.  They were hungry.  They were tired.   It was no surprise what happened next: yelling, fighting, tears, complete and utter irrationality.

Normally, this is not the state in which I take kids out to eat. In fact, taking tired, hungry, cranky kids out goes against everything I’ve ever written here about kids and restaurants, summed up here.

But let me back up. The kids are growing like weeds. These days Finn reminds me of a baby giraffe. He’s all lanky arms and spiking legs and careens around on his bike, or skates, or on the field in a headlong way, as if shot from a catapult, always on the verge of falling.  Ella is an athlete.  She spends long, intense hours at the soccer field and in the pool.  To see her in her soccer gear or swimsuit is to see a girl totally at home in her body and its strength. It’s awesome, and we tell her this every day.   It’s become clear to her father and me that her body craves this kind of  physical outlet just as much as her mind craves the novels she schemes to stay up too late reading. Even Finn, whose sports are less serious will gear up  for roller hockey and skate in the car port on days we’re at home.  All this means one thing:  they need more food.  A lot more food.  A few weeks ago we made the direct link between between the kids’ moods and their blood sugar levels.

There are distinct danger times: right after school, right before lunch, right before dinner.   Snacks have become urgent, no-compromise affairs.  I’ve been tempted to show up at school with those little glucose packs cyclists carry.  Instead, I’ve become an efficiency expert, whipping up smoothies with milk and fresh fruit or peanut butter, slicing cheese, cutting fruit, freezing yogurt, rolling salami, pouring milk, handing over crackers, defrosting edamame, portioning nuts. Protein has become essential for both of  them, pre- and post- practice, and calcium is especially important for Ella in these pre-adolescent years–as it is for all girl athletes.

So that night on the way to tacos (or not) I had two choices: take them home and find something to cook, or soldier on and hope for the best.  The first option was not so appealing to any of us. My kitchen was clean.  I had nothing prepped. We love tacos. What they needed was food. Fast. So against my better instincts, I drove straight past our house and up the hill to the taqueria, all the while scheming about what healthy, sustaining thing I could get into them fast.  Because it was hot, and perhaps because the taste of fresh lime and seafood is still lingering from our San Diego extravaganza, my food brain conjured one word :  ceviche.

Before we entered, tears were dry, kids were calm, and they had been read the riot act in my scariest mom voice.

Inside, they commandeered the table where they could watch the MLS game (another benefit of taco night out). I stood in line. ordered for all of us, and asked for the ceviche to be brought right away.  I had no reason to think they would love it.  But I also had no reason to think they wouldn’t.  It was cool and fresh and full of  citrus and tender white fish.  I knew it wouldn’t completely stuff them before their dinners, and I knew it would complement whatever they ended up ordering.   I also told them they had no choice in the matter, and so two minutes later, while we waited for carne asada, and tacos al pastor, and a quesadilla, the kids confronted a gorgeous pile of white fish ceviche with fresh avocado and a mountain of fresh chips.  Finn dug in first, and then there was no turning back. Not for him, not for Ella, and not for the mood of the night.   As quick as they could load a chip, the mood of the night turned.  They polished off the ceviche until only scraps of fish were left.  Dinner came and they didn’t stop eating.  We went home happy and ate ice cream.

The lesson here?  Food is fuel.    If you’re lucky, sometimes it’s more.


Post-ceviche bliss

Warm Escarole Salad with Apples and Nuts (Success!)

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by Caroline

As Tolstoy didn’t write, easygoing eaters are all the same; every picky eater is picky in his or her own way.

So I was reminded the other night when I unpacked our CSA share and pulled out a bunch of escarole bigger than my head:

“Yum!” said Ben. “What’s that?”

Can we just pause a moment to unpack those two short sentences? To marvel at the uncharacteristic enthusiasm — “Yum!” — which precedes the question? Because this cheerful reaction came from a child who generally approaches the world with a healthy dose of skepticism, and examines each bite he takes as carefully as the local health inspector. He will not tolerate butter or cheese (especially–shudder– if they are melted); frets if I put any kind of cooked dried bean (black, white, navy, garbanzo) on his plate; and rejects tomatoes in all their glorious forms (fresh, sauced, dried). On the other hand, he will eat whole wedges of lemon (rind and all), loves pickled burdock root, any manner of candied peel, and all cooked greens. The more sour and bitter, the better.

So I thought I had a good shot at getting him to eat escarole, especially when the sheet of recipes from our CSA included one for a warm salad of escarole, apples, raisins and toasted nuts. The original has cheese, which sounds delicious to me, but I didn’t have any, and Ben wouldn’t have eaten it that way, anyway. As it turned out, Ben liked it (though he found the escarole a bit chewy; I’ll tear the leaves up smaller next time), and even Eli, who of course is his own brand of picky (he doesn’t like any cooked vegetables), gave it long consideration rather than reject it automatically. So I’m calling this one a success.


Warm Escarole, Apple and Walnut Salad (adapted from a recipe by Jonathan Miller):

1/4 c raisins
1 apple, peeled and cut into wedges
1 head of escarole (my bunch was so big, I used less than half, which turned out to be one pound)
1 lemon
1/4 c chopped walnuts or pecans
2 oz gruyere
butter or olive oil

Cover the raisins with boiling water and let sit while you prepare the rest of the dish.
Zest the lemon and then squeeze out the juice. Keep them separate.
Wash the escarole and tear the leaves into bite-sized pieces.

Heat a large skillet with a couple tablespoons of butter or olive oil. Add the apples and a pinch of salt and cook, stirring occasionally, over medium-low heat until the apples have softened. Put in a large serving bowl with a splash of the lemon juice.

In the same skillet, toast the nuts until they’re dark brown and fragrant. Remove from the pan and set aside (don’t put them in with the apples just yet, or they’ll get soggy).

Now add a bit more olive oil or butter to the pan, the lemon zest, the remaining lemon juice, the escarole and a splash of water; cover the pan and let the escarole cook. As soon as the water begins to steam, uncover the pan and continue to cook, stirring, until the escarole is just wilted. Transfer to the serving bowl with the apples. Drain the raisins and sprinkle both those and the toasted nuts on top. Use a vegetable peeler to shave the gruyere on top and serve.

Click here for other escarole recipes.

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