Korean-style Tuna

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by Lisa

This should really go under the heading of really fast and easy, or things you can make with vertigo–which hit me yesterday for the 2nd time, and which I’m pretty sure is migraine-related. But this dish is so fast and easy, that you can make it if you can stand up for 15 minutes, which was about all I could manage last night. It is, however, a pretty regular dish around here, and the kids love it. Also, we can get albacore often from our fisherman, so we know it’s sustainable.

First: set the rice cooker on the timer at lunch so rice is done at dinner time.

Second: sautee 1 bunch roughly chopped Swiss Chard with 1 minced garlic clove in 1 tsp. sesame oil, a little olive oil, and few tablespoons chicken broth.

Third: pan-sear (or cook to your liking) fresh albacore tuna steaks. Remove from pan and set aside.

Fourth: in the same pan, in 1 tsp. sesame oil, sautee 3 cloves minced garlic for one minute. Add a mixture of 3 T soy sauce, 1/2 cup chicken broth, 1 tsp sugar, dash red chili flakes,  a couple of finely chopped scallions, green and white bits included.  Simmer until reduced by half. Serve alongside tuna as a dipping sauce.

The other thing you can make with vertigo:

What’s On Your Plate?

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by Caroline


As I mentioned last week, I watched a terrific new documentary recently that addresses school lunch and other food issues in such an accessible, engaging, and kid-friendly way that I’m urging all my friends — including you — to watch it. Here’s an excerpt from my column on the movie, What’s On Your Plate?:

My boys, as I tell them regularly, are incredibly lucky with their school lunch program. It wasn’t always this way. My husband went to the same school, in a time when on hot dog day one lucky kid was served a rubber hot dog, which meant free seconds and a bag of chips. I always wonder how many kids bit into that rubber hot dog (and how many of them took two bites before realizing their mistake). The school, like most schools, used to house vending machines full of sodas and candy. But then gradually — and not without difficulty or complaint — things changed.

Please read the rest of the piece over at Literary Mama.

Dad’s in Charge

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by Caroline

By the time anybody reads this post, I’ll be comfortably settled into VirginAmerica’s seat 11E on the morning flight from SFO to Dulles. I’ll have my tea, more books and magazines than I can read in 5 hours, and my airplane snacks. I’ll be looking forward to four days at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference, four days of inspiring panels and overwhelming bookfair and meals and drinks with a number of writers and editors that I usually only get to “see” online.

I will not be at all worried about my family at home.

I don’t go away too often, and although I love it when I do, I believe perhaps my husband enjoys it even more. Partly he loves to see me get a break, and he urges me to indulge in the opportunity to sleep in, order room service, and eat out (he is making fun of me for packing airplane snacks at all). But also, I think, he loves just being on his own with our boys. It’s not like he’s not here all the time — and I do mean all the time: he works from home, he drives the kids to school twice a week, even his weekly basketball game is late enough in the evening that he sits — if not eats — during dinner with us. And of course he cooks dinner most nights so that’s nothing new.

But my being away makes things a bit different and it shows in my preparations for this trip: I updated my website, finished a couple essays, and researched DC restaurants, but I did not stock up at the farmer’s market over the weekend. In fact, Tony asked me to skip the CSA delivery this week; he’d rather go to the store with the boys and let inspiration hit. I didn’t make any meals and stick them in the fridge or freezer. In my absence, there will be less meal planning, more “cooking show” meals at the kitchen bar — with the boys watching Tony cook — than at the dining room table, more puttanesca, less (homemade) dessert. And they will be fine.

Obviously, it doesn’t go this way in every house, but if you are the one responsible for all the marketing and cooking in your family, maybe this is the week to consider encouraging some of your family members to take a bigger role. Maybe older kids can put together the grocery list for a change, or a different adult can go to the market. It’d be interesting to see what new foods come home in the grocery bags! Maybe instead of urging your young kids to stir up the pancake batter, you encourage your partner to do it. They might not do things the way you would; they might make messes and burn things. But they might also find they love it, and if you back off and let the other members of your family find their way to — and around — the kitchen, you might just find they stay.

Shrimp Tacos

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by Lisa

This was another night that got sort of busy, so I forgot to take a picture of dinner, or prep, but the dish was so good I’m going to share anyway and next time I make these, I’ll make sure to document.

We had a birthday to celebrate, and we went the taco bar route with fish tacos and shrimp tacos. The fish tacos are a staple here, but the shrimp were new. I was inspired by the ones we eat at our favorite local joint, and they were incredibly simple and fast and delicious: tender shrimp  marinated in citrus and cumin, then sauteed with onion and green pepper, loaded into a flour tortilla with your choice of salsa, baja cream, and shredded cabbage. It’s going to be a new staple around here.

If you make fish or shrimp tacos, we’d love to hear your variations!

Shrimp Tacos

  • 1 lb shrimp, peeled, tails removed, deveined
  • 1 cup fresh orange juice (or from a carton)
  • juice from 1 lime
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp cumin
  • 1 green pepper, chopped into 1-inch squares
  • 1 medium onion, sliced in half, then sliced thinly cross-wise
  1. Marinate shrimp at least 30 minutes in orange and lime juices, salt, and cumin
  2. Sautee onion and green pepper until tender crisp
  3. Add shrimp and cook until pink.
  4. Serve warm on flour tortillas, with shredded cabbage and cream sauce (1/2 mayo, 1/2 sour cream or plain yogurt, lime juice, and cumin or cayenne if desired)

Feeding the Really Sick

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by Caroline

I am a little bit obsessed with school lunch. My essay for this book is on the subject, my next column for Literary Mama is on a school lunch documentary; I volunteer in the cafeteria as often as I can because I feel so strongly that it’s a place that can be as educational as any other room at school, and I want to see what the kids are learning there about food and community. But mostly, I just want every kid to eat a good school lunch, and I know that many, for many complicated reasons, just don’t.

But this week I got a little distracted from school lunch and started to think about hospital lunch. Luckily it was nothing personal; we did spend some time in the hospital when Ben was a baby, but he was too young to eat solids and my family brought enough food that, as far as I recall, Tony and I never had to eat the hospital food (I tell some of the story here). First, Lisa mentioned Cristina Nehring‘s lovely piece about mothering her daughter through a long hospitalization for leukemia treatment, and then I read this piece in the Times about Pnina Peled, a chef in New York City who is trying to improve hospital food for the very youngest patients.

You think your kids are picky? Now think about how fussy they get about food when they are sick. Now, multiply that by a factor of appetite-suppressing and taste-altering medicines, IVs, shunts, and probes, plus medically-required low-sodium, low-sugar, and/or low-microbial diets for kids who are missing home and home cooking. Read Marie Lawson Fiala’s Letters from a Distant Shore and Vicki Forman’s This Lovely Life, two gorgeous, fierce memoirs about too much time in the hospital with their sons. This all might give you some sense of the challenges Ms Peled faces — and by all accounts meets — every day, by producing buffalo wings and vegetable skewers, pressed turkey and cheese sandwiches like the ones at Dunkin’ Donuts, shrimp scampi made with Promise instead of butter, eggplant Parmesan made with egg whites, whole-wheat bread crumbs and soy cheese, and pumpkin spice cake made with egg whites and applesauce. It might not all sound so good to us, but we’re not the ones she’s cooking for.

Luckily we’re not eating hospital lunch right now, but if we ever are, I hope we’re lucky enough to be fed by someone like Ms Peled. “Food is about bringing people together and making them happy,” she says — whether you’re at home or hospital.

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