two fifteen-minute meals

Well, sort of. You have to prep a little, for the salad. What I try to do is gather up the vegetables I want to roast, and roast them all at once on Sunday. This week I roasted beets, carrots, shallots, and a butternut squash not knowing what I was going to do with any of them. But they came in handy tonight when I got home from work at 8:30 and was starving. By 8:45 I was eating like a Parisian (salad look familiar, Gyps?) I made a quick dressing of raw shallots, minced and macerated in white wine vinegar. I let that sit while I sliced two fingerling "banana" potatoes and cooked them in duck fat until they were crisp (peanut or other vegetable oil will work too) and sprinkled them with lots of salt. Then I fried an egg in the hot pan. I added dijon mustard, tarragon, olive oil, salt, and pepper to the shallot/vinegar mixture, tossed some mix greens in that and then added goat cheese. I threw beats, carrots, the potatoes and egg on top and, voilà!, a meal.



For the pasta, put a big pot of water on to boil. Then cut up a slice of bacon or pancetta and cook it. While it's cooking, cut a shallot. Remove the bacon pieces and cook the shallots in the grease, adding a bit of olive oil, if needed. Meanwhile, slice up some brussel sprouts (shredding them like cabbage) and add them to the sallots. Add salt and pepper and the pasta, when it is done. Mix in the bacon and grate some parmesan on the top. Yum. This pasta shape is called trofie, by the way.

Easter Brunch by Molly

Now, on Easter Sunday I went to yoga, worked on my taxes, and made pizza. But when Molly sent me the menu she made for Easter brunch, I regretted not celebrating. It's truly inspiring.

Muffins with Coconut and Berries

Fresh Sugar Snap Peas with Mint

Grilled Asparagus with Olive Oil

Orange and Roasted Walnuts

Fritatta with Goat Cheese and Rosemary Potatoes

Fresh Orange and Grapefruit Slices

Fresh Bakery Bread, Butter

Molly says "....and if I would have had enough time, I would have made mint rosemary lemonade. I love Easter."

Next year, I'm going to Molly's.

Simple but good

BEFORE you dismiss this recipe, try it. The combination is somehow more than the sum of it's parts. And it can be made any time of year, unlike most of these recipes since EVERYTHING (except the salad, of course) comes in a tin or a box.

Heat a large pot of boiling water for your pasta. Pasta 101: you need a large amount of water to pasta because otherwise the pasta cools down the water too much and cooks it slowly all the way through (not what you want). You want it to cook faster on the outside so that it is still chewy in the center. Add about a tablespoon of kosher salt (or a teaspoon of table salt) to your water. Have the sauce ready before the pasta is done cooking. The pasta is best if it is put into the sauce still dripping wet with hot starchy water. This way it also doesn't have time to get mushy or stick together. Never rinse your pasta or toss it in oil or butter if you are adding a sauce. The sauce will slide right off instead of sticking to the noodles.

Sauce: Heat a skillet and then add about half a cup of olive oil. Add 3 large cloves garlic sliced paper thin. Add a hot red chili (or some red pepper flakes) and one can of tuna (preferably, good tuna, packed in olive oil). Crush the tuna with a fork until it has completely fallen apart and almost looks saucy rather than chunky. Add some canned (or fresh, if it's the season) tomatoes and simmer for a few minutes. Add salt to taste. When pasta is done, add it immediately to the sauce. Eat! This is really good, by the way, with a whole head of green garlic, which should be out in the markets soon.

The salad was just a reminder to me of how good something so simple can be. I bought a small head of really fresh lettuce from the market and drizzled it with good olive oil and balsamic vinegar and sprinkled it with salt.

Cabbage and Mushrooms

This is the real deal. All farmer's market except the goat cheese. Cook time, three minutes!

I sliced the red cabbage thinly and cooked it in a skillet over high heat with a little olive oil, then I cut the brown mushrooms in half and threw them in. I squeezed lemon juice over the top (an easy trick I learned from one of the boys at work...you never know where you're going to pick up ideas). Now, this would have been a full and satisfying meal for the OLD Hillary.




But the NEW Hillary knows that this does NOT qualify as a meal, but only as a "snack". SO, I managed to eat an omelet (see egg rant from a few days ago) with goat cheese, thyme, and tarragon on the side. Which does not exactly qualify it as a meal, but with protein, I considered it much closer. Curse that darn starch.

Today at the library...

Ricardo and his mother came up to the reference desk.

"Hi, Miss Hillary!" Ricardo, 5 , with the brightest smile and biggest dimples is still small enough to actually look up at me while I am sitting down. His mother explained apologetically that they had been there just to drop some books in the book drop and he insisted they come in to see if I was there. It made my day.

Later on Luis ran up. "Miss Hillary, Miss Hillary!" he ran right up behind the reference desk with big round eyes soo excited he didn't notice at first he was on the wrong side of the desk.

I decided to put my spring story time craft together out in the children's section so I could hopefully meet some more kids. Hope, 2 years old, put every single yellow pom pom (which would become little chicks) in a separate bag and wanted to do more after we finished (she did 25!) I gave her a chick to take home, but she played with it so much the googly eyes fell off. I was kneeling on the floor while attaching some double sided tape to get them to stick again, when Hope came up next to me, laid one hand gently on my wrist and put the other arm across my shoulders.

These are the days that make the OTHER days when you have to tell smelly people to leave worth it.

Keep your fingers crossed that I'll be able to keep my job. Today I learned that I am the most recently hired librarian at LAPL and they are starting layoffs. By hire date. I'm hoping for some sort of miraculous recovery of funds for the city, but it sounds like the library will be hit soon.

Yellowtail with Mango Avocado Salsa

Okay, I cheated on this one. The mango was not from the farmer's market, but from the Korea Galleria next door. So was the Yellowtail. I figured out how to get the world's best fish for the world's best price: When they make sushi, they don't use certain parts of the fish. Maybe because of the shape or color or, in todays case, it looked a bit hacked up. However, the fish is still great tasting, and this I bought for $5. Confession #2: I did not invent this recipe. My mom used to make it. But it is still just as good as it was growing up. It's best to use just under-ripe mangoes and avocados. Cut them up and mix them with cilantro and lime juice (red or white onion would be good too). I cooked the fish for about a minute on each side. Perfect. Eat this with rice for a real meal. I'm still working on the real meal thing. It's so hard to get the starch in!

Today at the library...

Sniff, sniff. Hmm...smells like something's cooking. Rosemary bread? No, not quite. Microwave dinner with fake rosemary mashed potatoes? More likely. Old man on the computer? Eww. Yes. This guy must be made of rosemary bread dough. He is the color of bread dough. His back, being higher than his head makes him almost looks like bread dough drooping down as you hold it a bit off center. But the smell is overwhelming. I mean, every day we smell b.o. We smell urine. We smell smelly feet and dirty hair. And sometimes, when we feel it's a health hazard, we ask people to leave when they smell too bad. We always give them the address for the church down the street that gives free showers. We always apologize profusely. Most aren't offended. Most have been told before in much less nice way. But what to do when Mr. Bread Dough fills the library with his sickening sweet herbal smell? Is he taking some weird medication? Does he just have a natural body oder of rosemary bread? Does he eat a rosemary bush before he comes in? All I can say is, it will be a long, long, time before you see a rosemary bread recipe on this blog.

So, I better take a food photography class at some point if I'm to continue this blog. Arg. It is so frustrating that white food doesn't show up on a white plate unless you turn the flash off in which case, nothing else shows up. Christoph, any tips?

Anyway, this was a satisfying meal (and yes, meal, with all of the correct components), if not the most delicious or beautiful. I cooked farro (boil in water, or broth for 20-30 minutes) and mixed it with spinach, shallots, shittake mushrooms, cumin, coriander, and tarragon. Then I topped the whole thing with an egg. The eggs I get from this one farmer are amazing; really creamy and mild. I can hardly keep myself from eating one on everything I make. Last week (when I missed the market) I bought eggs (good, free-range organic eggs) from Ralphs. They're still in my fridge. The gelatinous rubbery goop is hard to go back to once you get a taste for the fresh ones.




For dessert I had Torrone (the invisible white chunks on the white plate) and chamomile tea with my previously written about white honey.




This morning, I woke up to a lovely flowery scent...coming from the guavas I bought yesterday. Definitely, these are in the same family as the "trees" we had on the back porch growing up. Except, these are huge and green, and much more appetizing than when they are dark purple and squished between your toes on the concrete patio. I had them with greek yogurt for my first "snack" of the day (yogurt is the invisible white part of the picture).

A true meal!

So, I've been reading the Cortisol Connection Diet which is basically a common sense sort of non-diet for people with wacky blood sugar (or cortisol levels, but I guess they're related). I figured I was already doing everything (eating 10 times a day or so, lots of protein and fat and vegetables, etc) BUT it turns out, I was never ever eating a MEAL, which by the book's definition consists of a vegetable, starch, fat, and protein. Well, I know we've all been learning this since second grade, but somehow, it just didn't sink in. I was thinking as long as I had all of those things within a day that it wouldn't matter if I ate them all separately. Not so, according to this method. Better to have it together and eat SNACKS in between. A "snack" is defined as a fruit or vegetable and fat. The idea is to eat three whole meals a day, plus three snacks , which allows you to eat every two to three hours. Being someone who cooks a lot, you'd think coming up with a meal with all of these components wouldn't be that difficult. But, when I said I was posting my dinners on my blog, I meant I was posting my dinners. Not a part of my dinner. Not the main component of my dinner. But the entire dinner. And I did. So you can see that I haven't been doing a very good job. However, I conquered tonight and it was delicious to boot!




Halibut cooked in a cast iron skillet with olive oil, butter, garlic and lemon.
Some sort of turnip or radish with it's greens (the sign was in Korean)
Quinoa (cooked the same way as rice)

Whole Wheat Banana Pancakes

I accidentally made the best pancakes this morning:

Makes 8 medium pancakes (sorry, forgot to take a picture)

1 handful AP flour
2 handfuls whole wheat flour
1 T sugar
1 t salt
1 egg
1 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
enough buttermilk to make a thick but pour-able batter

Mix it all together and cook in a cast-iron skillet with a slice of butter. Slice a banana onto the pancakes as they cook, covering with a bit of batter, then flip and eat. Mmm. I had them with molasses since I was out of syrup. Not bad.

Pizza today

I ate lunch with a couple of librarians at Wolfgang Puck yesterday and realized today that I had everything I needed to rip off the pizza we had: caramelized onions with butternut squash and goat cheese. The whole time I was eating the pizza at the restaurant, I could smell garlic being cooked in oil wafting in from the kitchen. I could almost TASTE it on my pizza, but then, when I bit down, no garlicky oil. SO, I fixed that on my version.

This is just a basic wet pizza dough. I baked the crust brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt until it was about 3/4 of the way cooked. Then I added the béchamel (flavored with rosemary and a bay leaf that I strained out), goat cheese, caramelized onions, pan cooked butternut squash chunks, and roasted butternut squash seeds. I put the whole thing back in the oven to cook the rest of the way. Meanwhile, I sliced a clove of garlic into paper-thin slices and cooked them in a few tablespoons of olive oil and some salt, just until soft. As soon as I took the pizza out, I poured the garlic oil over everything.

The greens are just Trader Joe's micro greens with olive oil, salt, and lemon juice.

Spring Cleaning

Well, well...a few days ago I was looking at the pictures on my blog. I clicked to take a close up look at that spinach salad again. And, uh, instead of noticing the spinach, I saw icky brown mildewy stuff in the cracks between the tiles. "Eeeww, gross picture," I thought. And then a moment later: "Aaack! Gross counter." I got down to a little spring cleaning this weekend. And am happy to report that my grout is now scraped clean and much more sanitary. In fact, I scrubbed the entire apartment. Since it will probably never be this clean again, I took a picture:



Now, even someone as in love with food as me has a bad day every once in a while. I don't know if it was the time change, the art show I went to last night (I stayed up until midnight! Big news for this librarian), or the entire bottle of sparkling water I drank at the bar, but I was feeling a bit hung over this morning. And missed the market. I time all of my eating perfectly so that I eat up every last vegetable on Saturday. And then I buy more on Sunday. So, I have not a single vegetable in my home. Sigh. I had to resort to eating deviled eggs for spring cleaning sustenance. I had forgotten how tasty they are. This is nothing inventive, just the usual mustard, mayo, salt, and paprika.



Spring cleaning is always emotional. At some point in the day you are bound to run into an old box of photos, a journal, letters... I managed pretty well considering I found my engagement party album and a bunch of bad poetry I wrote "before the fall." I know, I know, but really, that's how it seems in my head. Anyway, out of many many awful poems, there was one I liked:

Mid December. You and I,
stand wrapped in coats
waiting for a cab in New York City.
You stare into the icy day.
A butterfly sweeps by.
He has no clue it isn't spring.
Your eyes follow
and you give him that
"I know better than you" look
you so often save for me.
I whisper in your ear
"Let's catch him,"
and your look becomes severe.
"Let's catch him and take him
back to LA where it is always spring."
Without a word,
you reach into your purse
and pull out a butterfly net.
Then, clomping down the icy street
in your heavy boots,
you chase the butterfly.

Good Night, Margaret Wise Brown

By Charlotte Pomerantz from Thunderbloom!

In the great green room
There was a cellular phone
And a Mylar balloon
And a picture of
A Mars probe hurtling past the moon
And three endangered bears
On inflatable chairs
And Internet-bought socks
And digital clocks
And a virtual dollhouse
And an ergonomic mouse
And a bowl full of high-fiber low-carb mush
And a baby monitor murmuring "hush."
Good night, room
Good night, moon
Good night, Mars probe hurtling past the moon
Good night, stars
Good night, air
And random acoustics everywhere
Good night, city
Good night, town
Good night,
Margaret
Wise
Brown.

Fennel and Blood orange salad

Sorry for the repetition, but I am addicted to blood oranges these days. This is just a bed of thinly sliced fennel with sliced oranges on top, olive oil, and salt.



And these are perhaps the best oatmeal chocolate chip cookies I ever made...only, I didn't measure (darn, darn, darn!) So, there will be no replicating them. Aren't they beauties though?

Dinner, again.

Well, I should change the name of my blog now that I'm going recipe centric. My dinner tonight was nothing fancy, but so tasty that I ate it all up without remembering to take a picture. SO, thought I better share:

Since my spinach (see spinach advice from the other day) was now a few days old, I decided to cook it. I heated up cast iron skillet hot, hot, hot...threw in a tablespoon or so of grape seed oil (vegetable oil would be fine, but don't use olive oil on a pan this hot--it will just smoke) and immediately (don't let the oil get too hot) threw in the spinach. I cooked it for about 30 seconds, threw in some salt (kosher, please) and pepper (if there is one thing that will immediately improve everything you put in your mouth it is to never never never never never use that horrid pre-ground pepper in the red and white tin that serves no other purpose than to make you sneeze) and ate it on top of a bowl of cottage cheese (store bought, but we can't be Martha every day.)

My apologies for all of the parenthesis (but that's out the thoughts come out in my head.)

Jasmine rice with peas and lemon

This is perhaps not the most beautiful dish, but it is quite tasty for those of you who still eat white rice. I put a slice of peeled, fresh ginger in the water when I cooked my rice, then added a leek (cooked until clear), some sugar snap peas, lemon zest (I used a meyer lemon, but it's good with either), a little lemon juice, salt, pepper and some olive oil.

Yay!!!!

It worked! Thank you Molly for your comments. It is soooooo fun to check my blog and find someone has been reading it :).

Kyle, though I appreciate your encouragement, don't we have something more pressing to discuss? LIKE THE FACT THAT YOU GOT MARRIED AND NEVER TOLD ME????? Kilano has his own blog now...see his beautiful wedding photo here. (Scroll down)

Molly, it is hard to stay inspired to cook without the farmers market. But I am thinking of just posting my meals every day in case I ever want to write a cookbook...that way, it'll be already done.

SO, tonight, I had Spinach salad. FYI about spinach: baby spinach should be banned from this earth. Hairy, felt-like spinach should never again be eaten. REAL spinach is shiny and bumpy and has an excellent chewy texture without any mush to it whether raw or cooked. Unfortunately, I only know one farmer who grows it. He says it's just heirloom spinach.

I cooked a wee bit of diced pancetta until it was crisp and then removed it from the pan. Then I cooked finely diced red onion in the fat (would have used shallots, but didn't have any). I added apple cider vinegar (from The Apple Farm), reduced it, and added some olive oil. I got the oil really hot and poured it over the spinach. Then I topped it off with pancetta bits and slices of blood orange. I had some TJ's goat cheese "brie" on the side. Mmmm.

Thanks to Ali, who discovered my camera was not broken at all, but that my memory card was damaged...and gave me a new one, you now have real photos again instead of the cell phone photos you've been seeing lately. Double click for a close-up.




For dessert I boiled fresh ginger, cardamom seeds, and black pepper in water. I steeped black tea in that water and added honey and hot milk. Then I strained it and drank it. Homemade chai tea!