Butternut disaster

Last night was the second time Brad and I and our friends Joel and Bekka met for dinner party club (man, we really need to think more about what to call this - really, "dinner party club"? Ew). Since Bekka and I cooked last time Brad and Joel were up yesterday. When I came home in the afternoon I peeked in Brad's grocery bag and was a little bit shocked to see not pizza dough or hamburger buns or taco shells, but butternut squash, red onion, and artisan bread. I had been wondering how things would turn out, because we have two guys who eat meat and don't do much cooking, and two girls who don't and love to cook, but the groceries showed a lot of potential for vegetarian delights.

When Bekka and Joel got here the ladies sat at the table eating an appetizer of bread and several bread dipping options served in ramekins (Brad: "Joel, we're going to put this stuff in ramekins." Joel: "A ramekin? What's a ramekin?" Bekka: "Joel, you know, like the big white one I have." Joel: "A ramekin? What's that?" Repeat.) I had just decided to get out the camera and take a picture of the boys in the kitchen when, while attempting to peel the squash, Brad sliced his whole finger off.

It wasn't really his whole finger, but a pretty serious, very gushy cut in his left middle finger. Squash fell on the ground, Bekka and I ran around looking for bandages and tape, and Joel examined the wound. It bled a lot for a while, and then they ended up wrapping it tightly in gauze and securing it with duct tape.

Of course this would be the one month of our entire lives when Brad doesn't have health insurance. That's right: this is the one time EVER that Brad hasn't had medical insurance. He's in an off month between being covered through his old job and the new one, and when he went to apply for temporary coverage to get him through October, he was already past the deadline, so here we are, just waiting for November 1. Joel thought he might possibly "need a stitch." Would we have seriously considered the possibility of stitches if he were covered this month? I think so. It was bleeding a lot. But knowing it's 8 pm on a Friday night and the only thing open is probably the super expensive emergency room limits what you're willing to seriously consider.

Very professional bandaging

For the time being dinner preparations just went on. I jumped in and did some quick peeling of the squash while all of the chaos was going on, and then got out of the kitchen so the guys could finish up. They made Warm Butternut Squash and Chickpea Salad (as seen on Smitten Kitchen, who got it from Orangette, who got it from somewhere else), and it was DELICIOUS. The tahini dessing is fantastic. Everything about it is fantastic. Except that there aren't any leftovers for me to eat today.

Ramekins!

This salad might cost you a finger, but it's worth it

For dessert we ate brownies and ice cream, and then Bekka and I went to the store and bought some New-Skin, and when we woke up this morning Brad's finger was still attached - so far, so good. Because if he loses a digit over peeling squash for dinner party club, it could really cast a pall over the whole operation.

Avant garde marketing

Today I received an issue of Gourmet (a magazine I've never subscribed to) in the mail. Every so often I receive just such an unsolicited magazine. I'm assuming that's because I'm part of X magazine's target audience and they want to lure me into becoming a subscriber to X by flaunting all of its goodness in my face. But that's not really an option with Gourmet, since they're on their way out - the November issue, which I received today, is their last. And here's the kicker: the magazine was wrapped in plastic, and inside the plastic was a piece of paper that says this:

"Give the gift of Gourmet - only $4....Use the Card [yes, they capitalized Card, but I won't dwell on that] below to send a holiday gift to your favorite epicurean!" The detachable card shows all of the rates and options (12 issues, 24 issues) and even has a "Bill me after Jan. 1" option.

What is this all about?! Were these all bundled up and ready to go before Conde Nast announced the closing of the magazine and they just decided, "Who cares that we're promoting lies? We're sending them!"? Because a lot of people might take this offer and send in their little Cards. And then Conde Nast or whoever deals with these things is really going to have a mess on their hands. I think current subscribers are being bumped to Bon Appetit, or something like that. They'd have to do some serious bait and switch with any newbies.

The sad thing is, I really like what I see in the magazine. If they weren't already out of here, they might have won me over. Bad timing, I guess.

Rings like trees

Well world, I am way into my second produce variety box, and you know what that means: I just ate my first beet ever. I roasted beets in the oven today, how crazy is that? My only real beet knowledge comes from seeing them dying in their own sick bloody juice in salad bars. They have always looked way too disgusting to consider eating. But I decided that I'll try everything that comes in my variety box, so today, it's beets.

The one I just ate was golden yellow inside, and a little bit sweet, with texture kind of like a cooked carrot. It was very pretty and I sliced it into little circles. Also, apparently beets have rings, like trees. Mine was six years old.

(Note: I didn't put my beets in the refrigerator for a few days after I received them, because I thought they should be stored in a cool dark cupboard like potatoes are, but I was so very wrong about that; they're supposed to be refrigerated. So there is a chance that my mis-storage altered the way they turned out. Who can say for sure?! Produce is so exciting!)

I am doing other things besides dedicating my life to local abundance (which is an experiment that may die off at some point, although I hope not). School has started again (and I am taking an EEK SCARY POETRY WORKSHOP, among other things), and this is a really busy time at work, so I won't be blogging nearly as often for a while, although hopefully more than once a week. We'll see.

Muffin man

Last night I spent a few hours as the muffin man, baking about six dozen. Some for my mother-in-law, some for a staff meeting, and a few little baby leftovers for me and Brad. I made some pumpkin ones which were decent, not great, but the others are what I need to share with the world. These strawberry cinnamon muffins are soooooo so so good. Normally, I believe that any food thing with some semi-liquidy food thing lurking in the middle is at best questionable (Cadbury Creme Eggs) and at worst DISGUSTING (Gushers). But these have jam in the middle, and that very jam is a pure delight. I'd also like to note that these are low fat, if you care about that sort of thing. Please, treasure them.

Note: a good blogger would post a picture to really sell you on these muffins. I am not that blogger.

Dinner party

Tonight my friend Bekka and I (hi Bekka!), along with Bekka's boyfriend Joel and of course Brad, had our first of many dinner club parties together (I don't know what we're really going to call this, but that name was super awkward). Bekka and I cooked this time, while Brad and Joel immersed themselves in the world of Whale Wars in the living room, because we are domestic goddesses, and they are big nerds. We made the Anasazi Bean Burgers, as seen at such places as The Elk, Moon Time, etc. (except we made them with black beans instead of the elusive Anasazi), roasted red potatoes, and a really good quinoa salad/pilaf type thing, with red bell peppers and tomatoes and zucchini in it. I wish I could tell you more about the quinoa, but Bekka was the mastermind for that part of the evening and I really don't know what all went on. However, the bean burgers are REALLY GOOD and REALLY EASY (although they took about 473892 years tonight since I never read recipes well enough beforehand to really know what's going on), and the roasted potatoes were perfect.

And then we played Settlers of Catan, which is a nerdy-sounding game, and it IS nerdy. But playing it is less nerdy than when, after Joel finally won (after about, oh, two hours), he and Brad started chanting "King! Of! Catan!" and doing their Harry Caray impressions. Dinner party club is going to be great.

Magically modified spicy soba noodles

It's that magical time again: BEST FOOD EVER!

So, on Tuesday I made something that was so very delicious that I had to write down notes immediately, lest I forget my night of total kitchen deftness and not be able to re-create this ever again. I started with a recipe from Smitten Kitchen for spicy soba noodles. But, I made some modifications here and there, because of my deftness, and because Albertsons does not have green onions! Who is manning the store over there? Seriously.

Sarah's Magically Modified Spicy Soba Noodles
(although this spontaneous title might imply otherwise, this meal is not drug induced)

Sauce

• 1/3 C water
• 1/3 C soy sauce
• a few squeezes worth of Sriracha (I'd recommend doing this to taste, for those spice babies out there)
• 1 T packed brown sugar

Everything Else

• 1/4 C (or so) unsalted peanuts, shelled
  
• 2 T minced giner
• 1 T minced garlic (2-3 cloves)
• 4-5 largeish mushrooms, sliced
  
• some red onion, chopped or minced (I used about 1/4 of a large onion)
  
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 bag of prepackaged slaw mix (or just use a regular old head of cabbage - I had leftovers from yesterday, but I liked the mix because it had some carrot and radicchio in it)
• 1 package soba noodles (mine were from the refrigerated section of the grocery store)

So, here's what you do. First, make the sauce. Combine the sauce ingredients in a small sauce pan over medium, until the sugar is dissolved; remove from heat and set aside.

In a skillet of sorts, heat the peanuts for a few minutes until they're golden brown. (You could also stick them in the oven for a few minutes.) Set aside. Put a little bit of oil in the pan, and add the ginger and garlic. Saute for a minute or so. Add the mushrooms and the red onions and cook for about 5-6 minutes.

Then, scoot everything over to the side of the pan so you have a little room to work with. In the cleared space, scramble the two eggs. Then mix the egg in with everything else. Add the cabbage mix and cook for 5 or so more minutes. Heat the noodles as the package says (mine just said to microwave them for 1 minute to loosen them up), then toss them into the pan. Pour the sauce and peanuts on top, and ta-da! It's spicy and so good.

I also sauted some blanched green beans with chopped red onion, salt, and pepper to have on the side. AND - Brad ate ten of them! Ten green beans! The only thing he picked out of this entire vegetable-laden meal was the mushrooms. That is big news.

Best Food Ever

So, this blog kind of cracks me up because it is so all over the place. Which really just means that I am all over the place. But, if I haven't made it clear before now, I love food, and I want my blog to be at least partly about food. So, I had the idea tonight that I could capture my love of food - things I eat out, things I make, etc. - in a delightful regular post called The Best Thing I Ate All Week. Or The Best Food Ever. I'm not sure which one yet.

So, for this week, we (apparently, I have introduced the royal "we" to this blog, hello!) have a couple of contenders. First, did you know that at Ben and Jerry's, you can get two different flavors on a "small" (small is definitely a relative term) scoop? It's true! Last night, pre-500 Days of Summer, I indulged in just such a double-faceted scoop. For my first flavor I chose Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch, which is good but, if we (hello again) are being blunt, just average. For my SECOND flavor though, I chose the amazingly extraordinary, exceptionally delicious, forever endeared to my heart Oatmeal Cookie Chunk.

Oatmeal Cookie Chunk is the kind of flavor that I really don't think I should like that much. I am not the hugest of lovers of oatmeal cookies, and I am kind of neutral in how much I like cinnamon, but this flavor brings together a bunch of things I only sort of appreciate to form The Ice Cream of My Life: sweet cream cinnamon ice cream with chunks of oatmeal cookie and fudge. And also chunks of plain old chocolate. It is the best. You must try it.

And the other Best Food Ever would have to go to the smashed chickpea salad I made tonight, which I put on top of some of that arugula I guilt tripped myself into buying the other day, and some of the tahini sauce my best friend Deb recommended, all on some toasted pieces of this very mysterious sourdough bread I guilt tripped myself into buying at a different farmers' market today. It was all so very tasty. And when I looked at my plate, which also featured some baby carrots, I felt like the vegetarian of the year. I mean, seriously. What a plate of produce and local baked goods and health, health, health. It was really, really good, but still, when I spied all of that over-the-top good-for-me-ness all together, it actually did make me laugh. In high school I was fine with going to Denny's at 11 pm and ordering a side of fries and a milkshake. Who have I become?!


PS: I know that Ben and Jerry's does not scream health, health, health! and that I therefore am horribly contradictory and/or hypocritical and/or completely out of touch with reality. But I am going to just allow that character complexity to add to what I referred to earlier: being all over the place. Both things are true. Most of my diet screams health, health, health! And the rest screams, ice cream!

Aches and pains

I just went to the farmers' market (for the first time all year - I'm sorry! Albertsons is practically next store, and even though I hate it there it's just so freaking convenient) and bought corn on the cob and some arugula, and I am pretty excited to eat them for dinner. No, Brad will not like the arugula, thanks for wondering. But I bought it anyway, even after a lady there gave me some to sample and I remembered just how spicy and non-lettucey arugula can taste. It will freak him out. Actually, I probably wouldn't have bought any EXCEPT that the booth lady offered me a sample. After I'd tasted it, even though it was making my eyes kind of water and all I'd really wanted was plain old regular romaine or something, I felt a little guilty and therefore ready to buy. She'd just done me a favor! Free samples are probably a well worth the sales person's efforts when dealing with eager-t0-pleasers like me.

Which is why, when I saw a little old man with a little old stool and a box full of something labeled "That Stuff," I tried to pass by unnoticed, so that I wouldn't have to engage and, shortly thereafter, feel the unignorable obligation to buy something I didn't want. But he stopped me.

"Excuse me, miss, do you have any aches or pains?"

The truth is that I do have aches AND pains, and most of them are concentrated on the outside of my right knee, and all over my right shoulder. But I knew he was selling something and I didn't want to be pitched to, so I just stayed awkwardly silent for a minute. He was undeterred.

"Injuries? Illnesses? Migraine headaches? Any discomfort at all? If you do, That Stuff" (he picked up one of the bottles of clear liquid that was next to the stool) "will cure it in just 30 seconds!"

I didn't want to try That Stuff, because I didn't want to feel any pressure to buy That Stuff. So I straight up lied. "Actually, I'm feeling pretty good right now."

"What about your parents? Your grandparents? Do THEY have any aches or pains?"

Hmm, how to address this? Yes, I do indeed have parents, who I'm sure have more than enough aches and pains. No, I don't like lying to little old men. Yes, it is ridiculous that I internally agonize over moments like this.

"Well, they don't live in the area."

"Oh. Well, where do they live?"

"Seattle."

"OK, well, do they ever come visit? If they do, bring them by. I'm here every Thursday."


It was the saddest and most earnest of pitches. If you have any aches or pains, please see the extremely eager little old salesman at the Perry Street Farmers' Market. He's there every Thursday from 3 to 7. Tell your grandma!

Question of the summer

So the funny thing is that since I went to my high school reunion last weekend I expected that the number one question I'd be answering this summer would be something like, "So what are you up to?" Or, "What do you do?" Or, "Are you married?" or "Do you have kids?" or "Have you made anything of yourself OR WHAT?"

And I did get asked some version of those things a number of times. However, with the pre-reunion Westport trip, and a little grandpa's surprise 90th birthday party thrown in between, I ended up being around all sorts of people I don't see very often or know very well over the past week, and the question I found myself answering again and again was, "Why are you a vegetarian?"

And the thing is that I don't really have a great answer ready to go for that one. I have a little story I often tell, about how I never liked meat all that much, and how when I ate meat, I wasn't doing anything to make sure it was not all hopped up on steroids and creepiness or that it was generally healthy and happy prior to meat-making; I thought it might be healthier not to eat meat since I wasn't eating high-quality meat anyway. I usually say something about how I'd wanted to be a vegetarian for a long time and one day I realized I should really try it instead of just thinking about it, so I had a meat-free May and really liked it and just continued on, forever and ever, amen.

And people usually seem pretty satisfied with that. They want to know things like how long ago that all happened (2 years and a few months), how I get my protein (it's insanely easy), and what Brad and I do since he's not a vegetarian (he basically doesn't eat much meat anymore either, because I don't usually make him any, whoops!). But there are some other factors that go into the vegetarianism that I feel like are a little less easy to explain and that I therefore usually avoid mentioning.

For example: Sarah's Philosophy of Eating Things that Once Lived. I'm not really anti meat-eating. I'm anti cruelty and anti sad mass mega unhealthy farming practices where the animals are treated horribly. But I feel like people have been eating animals and animal products for a long, long, long time and that's kind of how the food chain is built (I probably sound like an idiot right now because I'm not, oh, let's just say educated about this stuff). But here's where Sarah's Philosophy kicks in. I know that I could never, under normal life circumstances (who knows what might happen if I were on Flight 815 or something and while I was stranded on my mystery island the only thing I had to eat, pre-Dharma food drop, was fish and fruit), kill an animal. I just couldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. And something feels bad to me about eating something that someone else killed when I know that I couldn't kill that food myself. It's like having someone else do my dirty work.

Then there's the What I Don't Know Probably Would Hurt Me But I'd Rather Not Do the Research and Deal with the Icky Sadness factor. Meaning that if I knew more about what actually goes on in some of these places where animals are raised and slaughtered and all that jazz, I'm pretty sure I would be majorly grossed out and extremely sad about commercialism and cruelty and how messed up the whole food system is, etc. But I kind of don't want to deal with it and any emotional repercussions, so I just assume that I would hate what I'd discover and continue on in blissful ignorance, but still meat-free and therefore guilt-free.

And there are other factors, like what our current system of meat-raising is doing to the environment, and the fact that not eating meat makes it easier to avoid bad fats, and the fact that there are so many vegetarians in the world now that becoming one two years ago seemed really doable. Someday maybe I'll find a way to boil my response down a little, to make it into a little wieldy kernel of wisdom for all of my admirers. In the meantime, I'll keep on responding as I have been for the past two years: with a long, awkward, "Weeelllllllllllllllllllll," many seconds of hesitation, and a quick mental Rolodex-type flip through all my cards of reasons why not to eat meat before I choose the answer of the moment.

The real thing

What I don't understand is, why, in my Breyer's (allegedly) All Natural Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream, is there a deliciously authentic vanilla flavor, and yet there is no vanilla on the ingredient list? The only thing I saw that might be vanilla is "natural flavors," but what are those, really? I'm confused.

And I'm starting to wonder if maybe I just shouldn't eat ice cream as often as I would like to. All of the "light" flavors I like are from Dreyer's and I have recently learned that they all have creepy partially hydrogenated things in them, and this Breyer's thing seems sort of suspicious. Plus, I think I eat too much sugar. There, I said it. I didn't want to have to admit it, but it's true. I'm a health fiend but also a dessert fiend and the more I look at ice cream labels, the more I'm wondering if I've been treating myself to too much of a not-so-good thing.

It probably makes sense that dessert should be more of a real celebration than an every day non-event. I'd probably enjoy it even more if I only had ice cream once a week or something devastating like that. Especially if the ice cream I ate was really, really bad for me and good, like the ice cream from my favorite place, The Scoop. The idea of holding out for the good, real thing, and settling for less of the crap, is one of those little nuggets of smartness that extends way beyond snacks. You can start out thinking about something harmless like ice cream, and then the next thing you know you've entered a vortex and your mind is on your old job and all of life's little papercutting compromises again.

Good things take time, and effort, and they usually aren't ready the second you want them, which is also a good thing. Almost every need or want can be met almost within minutes, at least in my little corner of the world, and I think it conditions us to think that we shouldn't have to work hard for anything. Thus, helicopter moms, canned beans, and Netflix. Not bad things necessarily - canned beans and Netflix are my daily bread. But in addition to all of the other bad things it leads to, choosing stuff just because it's convenient means settling when it comes to quality and, ultimately, real satisfaction.

Maybe tomorrow I won't have any ice cream at all. But it's just as likely that I'll give in to a sudden urge for a McDonald's sundae.