Required Reading

For some reason my mind was wandering today to some of the books I loved as a child. I thought it might be nice to come up with a list of the books that stand out in my mind as having shaped my personality, or whose characters became my imaginary friends, or that spoke to my child-self without condensation. I realized that I was thinking of the books I know I will be sharing with my children, when and if I have them.

• Everything by Maurice Sendak, but especially Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or, There Must Be More to Life, The Nutshell Library, Mickey in the Night Kitchen and Where the Wild Things Are
  
• Harriet the Spy
• A Wrinkle in Time
• The Old Mother West Wind books by Thornton Burgess
• The Snowy Day
• Laura Ingalls Wilder's books
• My Antonia
• Charlotte's Web
• Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Let the Circle Be Unbroken

Obviously, this is an incomplete list, but it's a start. What books from your childhood did/would you share with your children?

Two tomatoes

Can you guess which one I grew and which I bought at whole foods?



My sad little tomato is like a fire hydrant in a dogs' world. Poor guy was tasty, though.

Let me see your lobster roll

Montreal is a city completely devoid of street food. No hot trucks, no Mr. Softie, no one hawking little plastic baggies of nuts and candy on the corner. Street food is strictly forbidden. Except for this little boite, fashioned from a repurposed shipping container, kitted out with a solar power system, a big gas pizza oven and serving the most delicious lobster rolls I've ever tasted. They can be purchased individually or in combination with a bag of chips, a boisson gazeuse and a cup of thick, smoky, bacony chowder.


This one was mine.




And this was Tyler's. Doesn't it look like he got more lobster salad than I did?

83% chance of fail

I meant to post more frequently. I really did. But, as you can see, I failed. Oh well. I'm here now, so let's just move on shall we?

As long as we're talking about failure, I would like to mention last night's failed dinner. I intended to make tilapia with an herb caper sauce and a salad of mache, basil, heirloom tomatoes and feta. The salad was fine. Better than fine, actually. The salad was fabulous. The basil and tomatoes were fresh from our garden. We had the same salad the night before, but it was good enough to eat two nights in a row, which is not something I do often. But, seeing as I was, apparently, fully committed to failure, I didn't get a picture.

The first fail happened with the herb caper sauce, which was originally meant to be a dill and caper yogurt sauce, with a grating of lemon zest. The dill, however, smelled like a homeless person, so I switched to tarragon from the garden. When I reached into the fridge for a lemon, the entire bowl of (seven? eight?) lemons had gone bad. Soft, spotty, mushy nastiness. I made do with what I did have, and the sauce was still pretty tasty. Or would have been if we had actually remembered to put it on the fish, which we didn't. We completely forgot about it. A fact that only came to my attention this morning, when I found it sitting on the cutting board. Exactly where I had left it about twelve hours earlier.

I did get a picture of the fiasco I made of the fish, which stuck to the pan horribly, despite a generous coating of olive oil, in a supposedly non-stick pan. The fish was bland but palatable. Finnegan ate more of it than I did, so at least someone was happy with his dinner.

A taste of home

I'm not sure if this is a Central New York thing, or if it happens elsewhere in rural America, but where I grew up there is a tradition of chicken barbecues to raise funds for local volunteer fire departments. The firemen set up a massive grill, generally in the driveway of the fire house, and the most delicious smoke billows down the road attracting locals and anyone passing by. The typical chicken dinner consists of a half chicken marinated and slathered in a vinegar-y salty herbal sauce, baked beans (presumably from a giant can, but I don't really know for sure), salt potatoes swimming in melted butter, and a soft, fluffy roll. Are salt potatoes a Central New York thing? I have never seen anyone eat them any place else. They are small white potatoes boiled in heavily salted water. In fact, the bag of potatoes comes with a little plastic baggie of salt. In my house the extra salt this little baggie would be saved, out of, um, let's say 'economy' and used when the regular salt ran out. Or, more often, until it's contents were accidentally spilled after months of sitting at the bottom of the refrigerator (Mami's) or the back of the cupboard (Papi's). Anyway, the potatoes are boiled in very salty water until soft, at which point they are permeated with saltiness and the skins, where exposed to air, get a slight salty crust. Then, to ensure arterial damage, they are drenched in butter. I never really ate them, because I am not crazy about potatoes. I never ate the baked beans, either. Syrupy and bland with cloying artificial smoke flavor and boring mushy texture? Not thank you.

But the chicken is a different story. Oooh the chicken was fabulous! Crisp skin, juicy, tender meat, and the salty, slightly acidic, smokey flavor. Heavenly. But, not living in Central New York, or really every wanting to have to visit, I miss out on the firemen's barbecues. Until now, it has always been a price I was willing to pay. But now Wegman's carries the sauce that all of the fire companies use, and I have a way to recreate the delicious chicken of my youth without the trip. It is so good we had it twice in the past week, once with fresh grilled sweet corn, and once with a caprese-ish salad of spring mix, tomatoes and basil from the garden, and fresh mozzarella drizzled with a little bit of olive oil and balsamic.

Pesto

Last night's dinner was simple, very quick to prepare and clean up, and quite tasty. This weekend I gathered up some big handfuls of basil from the garden and blended up a quick pesto. Last night I stirred it into a pot of linguine, and that was dinner. But it wasn't much to look at, and besides, it was eaten up so quickly that I didn't get a chance to take a picture before it was all gone.

Ribs!

Last night Tyler made his first foray into barbequing ribs. They cooked away, low and slow, for over 3 hours, and they were worth every second. They were smoky, spicy, salty and just slightly sweet from their rub, and moist, tender and falling-off-bone delicious from the long, indirect grilling.

Recipe:

2 tablespoons packed dark brown sugar

1 tablespoon mustard powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons paprika
1 1/2 cayane pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon Chinese 5 spice powder
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

enough mustard to barely coat the ribs
1 rack of baby back ribs

1/2 - 1 cup apple juice

Rinse and pat the ribs dry. Wisk together the dry spices. Spread a very thin layer of mustard over the ribs, then rub in your spices. Wrap in foil and allow to marrinate, refrigerated, for about 2 hours.

Once the meat has had adequate time to marrinate, arrange coals on one side of a charcoal grill. While the grill gets ready, remove the ribs from the refrigerator. When the grill is ready, place the ribs on the opposite side of the grill, not directly over the heat, bone side down. Allow to cook slowly, rotating occasionally, until the internal temperature reaches 170. You will need to add fuel to keep the coals going, and keep and eye on the heat (you don't want it getting too hot or going out). Once the ribs are finished cooking cut them into individual rib sections and you can either add sauce or eat them as is, as they will have a lot of flavor from the rub.

To accompany the ribs we had tomatoes stuffed with bread crumbs, aged cheddar and basil (from the garden), and a mixed salad with the leftover marinated artichoke hearts and croutons made from the end of Saturday's baguette.

(Photos by Tyler)