With apologies to the people of Bologna, and everyone who takes their meat sauces seriously: here’s a variation for those of us who don’t eat meat. It’s quicker (great for a weeknight) but every bit as hearty and warming as a traditional bolognese.More
Over winter break, we rented a sweet little ski cabin. On top of the ski pants and snow boats and snow coats and groceries, I stacked my slow cooker. This was completely against my best-practice packing instincts, but I had a feeling it would make my after-slope life much easier. Truly, I had no idea.
That first snowy evening, I put on a pot to boil water for pasta, the light went on, the water started to steam, I heaped a salad into a bowl, and ten minutes later, the coils were ice cold.
Lisa’s post recently about calzone pizza tacos got me thinking about tacos, of course, but also about how even though our kids are growing older and somewhat less picky, the slightest change can sometimes mean the difference between a happy meal and a table fraught with conflict.
Her kids ate the calzones, though not without a lot of discussion. I had a different experience recently when I laid out a dinner with crispy taco shells instead of our regular tortillas. I didn’t think much of it, really. Same ingredients, same shape, different texture. If I had stopped to think about it, I probably would have braced myself because most of the time around here change is Not Good.
But I got lucky. My kids were thrilled. They were in raptures. I was the Best. Mom. Ever. (Even though Tony did the cooking; sorry, Tony). And Eli ate four of them, stuffed with brown rice, pinto beans, guacamole and shredded jack cheese — the same ingredients with which he fills his quesadillas — suddenly transformed by their crispy new jacket. For one night, change was good, and I relished the feeling.
Two days ago, my fifth grader left for school declaring, “Time to face global climate change!” It’s been 85, 90 degrees here. In October. By 4 pm, our house, with it’s western facing wall of windows, is a hot box. We’re steamed out of the kitchen. I’m certainly not cooking, and we’re certainly not eating in there. Also, there have been the debates. And baseball. Which = a lot of TV dinners.More
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