Today's Haul...

Despite the very cold (well, very cold for Georgia) temps, I bundled up the kids into the minivan and we headed out for our "farmer food" run--in other words, our CSA delivery.

I am still amazed at the amount of beautiful, local produce available year-round. This week, my delivery included a dozen eggs, spinach, chard, sweet potatoes, apples, 2 different kinds of lettuce, a half-dozen homemade muffins, a gorgeous-smelling bar of lavender goats-milk soap, baby radishes, a big pile of unshelled pecans, an herbal sachet, and Asian baby turnips.

My last pickup a couple weeks ago (during the winter the CSA is on an every-other-week schedule) didn't include any lettuce, because the unseasonably cold weather and heavy rains we had at the last minute washed out the crops that might otherwise have been available. I have grown addicted to the sweet, tender lettuces I've gotten in my CSA deliveries, so it's a welcome sight to have them back in my box of goodies this week.

I never thought I would rave over something as simple as lettuce, but I can't help it--the taste comparison between the local lettuces--especially the Bibb--and the bagged greens I used to grab at Kroger aren't even close to being in the same league. The bagged lettuces taste like styrofoam to me now, and I find I'd rather wait until my CSA greens are available to have my salads and eat them, too.

Another nice thing about local winter greens is that the cold brings out a delicate sweetness in the greens that makes them quite different than their late summer-early fall counterparts.

There were only a few radishes, not enough to try the cream of radish soup I was thinking of trying, so this batch will get sliced thin and used in the above-mentioned salads--although I tasted some amazing pickled radish last year--I think it was at Canoe--and I would love to replicate it, but so far haven't managed that yet. Tried a recipe last year, but the result was too, well, pickled---it didn't have that sweetness of the ones I'd previously had, or the subtle crunch and fresh taste. Any recipes out there would be GREATLY appreciated.


The muffins are half-gone already--Sam, my 2 year old, started stealing them off the counter before I had finished taking the photos for this blog. I joined in quickly thereafter. The boy has good taste--they were quite yummy.


The chard is a gimme--I always do the same thing with it, which is follow Alice Waters' simple but ridiculously good recipe for Chard with Parmesan from her must-have cookbook, the Art of Simple Food:

Pull the leaves from the ribs of one or more bunches of chard. Discard the ribs (or save them for another dish), wash the leaves, and cook until tender in abundant salted boiling water, 4 minutes or so. Drain the leaves, cool, squeeze out most of their excess water, and chop coarse. For every bunch of chard, melt three tablespoons of butter in a heavy panover medium heat. Add the chopped chard and salt to taste. Heat through and for each bunch of chard stir in a generous handful of freshly gratedParmesan cheese. Remove from the heat and serve.

SOOOOOO goood. Again, never thought I would be having rhapsodies over chard, of all things, but I am starting to have a clue as to why Barbara Kingsolver chose rainbow chard as her can't-live-without favorite food.

As for the turnips, not a clue yet. They're pretty, though. Right now I'm admiring them--food as art. Need to figure out something for them before they turn into food as garbage. Inventiveness with turnips is new for me.

The sweet potatoes are going to become baby food for my sweet potato. My 6-month-old, Rosie, has just discovered solids, and these will be perfect for her after they're boiled until very soft and processed through the finest blade on my food mill. I have these groovy 2-ounce baby food holders that I can fill up and keep in the freezer and use as I need them, so Rosie's an early locavore.

The apples will be devoured raw--no recipe needed. Those puppies are just too awesome to bypass in their natural state.

The pecans are going to require a shelling party, possibly this weekend. I'll probably freeze a bunch of them, although some sort of pecan coffee cake may be in the works. I'll let you know. I'm thinking of glazing a bunch of them, too, to be used in my salads. Yum.

The eggs will be used like, well, eggs. I get a kick out of these eggs, though--they range in color from brown to white to blue, and the yolks from pale yellow to this gorgeous shade of saffron that makes beautiful scrambled eggs. One of the best discoveries I've made since making a concerted effort to eat local foods is the range of colors, textures, and tastes of a single food. In a grocery store, even an organic store, the eggs would all be uniform in shape, color, and size. I had no idea fresh eggs could come in such a lovely shade of blue. It continues to be a lovely surprise.

The spinach has been my green of choice to be piled on my lunchtime sandwich and eaten raw. It also responds well to being sauteed in butter and olive oil just until it wilts, then gently tossed with a generous amount of salt and pepper, dried cranberries and tasted walnuts or pecans.

So that's the take for today. More to come as I figure out what to do with all this goodness.

Alright, here we go...

Last year was a big year for me, food-wise. I've always been a foodie (whatever that means--for myself, it simply means I have a borderline obsessive interest in all things food-related), but last year I had 3 things happen that changed my view of food completely and permanently.

First, I discovered the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. In a very gentle yet thorough way, she educated me in why it is essential to know where your food comes from. That local is even better than organic, and "certified organic" in a mega-grocery store is not all it's cracked up to be. That the agricultural industry is a mess, and we're paying for it in the food we eat, and most importantly why it is absolutely essential to support your local farmer.

Next, my husband got me to watch this documentary on PBS titled King Corn. It reinforced what I'd been reading, and made me swear off high fructose corn syrup (which, by the way, is in EVERYTHING). So, left with little real food left to eat in the grocery stores, what's a foodie to do?

Research, research, research--and that's how I found the third thing that changed my food-life forever: my beloved bastion of locavore goodness, my CSA: Farmers Fresh. CSAs, or Community Sustained Agriculture programs, are programs you can subscribe to and receive bags of local, in-season food on a regular basis. In my case, I get in-season fruits, veggies, meats, eggs, and even handmade goodies like muffins or soap or honey sometimes. It has been a revelation for me and my family to be a part of this program. I had always been more in favor of natural vs. processed foods, organic over non-organic, but after joining the CSA I realized that I had forgotten what a blueberry is supposed to taste like, an apple, a salad made of fresh greens.

See, when food has to come from California, for example, to a grocery store in Georgia, it naturally has to travel quite a distance to do so. Therefore, the California grower has to choose varieties of plants that are bred to 1) yield well, 2) look nice on the display shelf, and 3) travel well enough to make it a long distance without spoiling. Notice one key essential missing in these criteria: TASTE. Even more important, the behemoth of the large-farm, supermarket-mentality agriculture industry is squeezing out heirloom varieties of plants--plants that may taste heavenly, but don't travel well, or don't promise to spit out perfectly-formed versions of themselves like little clones every growing season. Or plants that don't yield to the genetic modifications of massive seed companies.

CSAs can offer these heirloom plants and animal products, because they don't have to travel far. They are farmers who may not be able to afford the cost and time necessary to go through the byzantine process of being organically certified, but care more about organic and sustainable growth and humane methods of food production than many huge certified-organic megafarms that supply food for major chains.

Local food tastes INFINITELY better than its alternatives. It is better for the environment, better for your health, better all the way around. And there are added bonuses: this past summer, when the tainted tomato scare happened, and people all across the nation were taking tomoatoes and tomato-based products off their plates and shelves and menus? That was because no one could trace the source of the salmonella-tainted tomatoes--were they from Mexico? California? What farm?

I smiled smugly (yes, I know, smugness is unattractive but...) and went to pick up my mouth-wateringly good local tomatoes from my CSA delivery. I knew my tomatoes were from right here, and there was no chance they were part of the recalled tomatoes. It's nice, in this age of mass production, to know where your food comes from and that it comes from people who care about what food you put in your mouth.

So, this blog is going to become dedicated to the food I get from the CSA, where it comes from, what I'm doing with it, and maybe even a little about the growers. It's going to be about eating mindfully, locally, and well (after all, I'm a foodie, not a martyr).

Come rediscover food with me. Join a CSA and do your own delicious research. Support your local farmer's market. Take your fork out of the hands of corporations. We're in for one delicious ride.

In Defense of (Fast) Food: A Confession

I read a book review today of Michael Pollan's book In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. It reminded me, again, of that uncomfortable place I have to come to live in since having my children. I agree in theory with practically everything Pollan posits in his book, mainly that food should be food, as close to its original origins as possible. It shouldn't be jazzed up with science and technology into "superfoods". It should be cooked well and eaten slowly and in moderation. It should be mainly plant-based. I agree with it all.

But I don't do it anymore.

I have become a gourmet food consumer, one who buys organic and looks for all-natural foods, but I don't cook anymore. I look for someone else to do it for me. I give up my control over the food I eat and my family eats to the suppliers of Harry's Farmer's Market and Kroger and Publix and hope for the best, hope they aren't lying when they say "all-natural", "preservative-free", "organic". My diet is probably more carb-based than veggie-based. I don't stop and think about my food anymore--I just eat it, mindlessly, and more often than not from the plastic bowl I just microwaved it in.

I know where to shop for food. I love the idea of well-prepared food, and I spend money to get it. But I don't do the actual preparing anymore. It's my dirty secret.

I'm resting on my laurels as a cook and baker, I confess. And I'm not sure what to do about it. I can tell you that you can a great quick dinner to go to go from Six Beans in Marietta, or that Entree Vous is great for pre-prepped meals, or that Harry's Farmer's Market is best for fresh , organic fruit salads. But if I'm honest, the bulk of my meals come in boxes and plastic wrapping and foil-wrapped tins. It's removed from it's raw state.

I know I'm missing something by doing this--the satisfaction of a from-scratch dinner, the frugality of cooking from scratch, the quality control over the food...but I don't know what to do to fix it. It isn't just that I don't have as much time to prepare the meals, the big thing is I don't have the time to plan them, so trying to cook from scratch usually ends up being a hectic, last-minute thrown-together mess of canned tomatoes, leftover mystery meat and frozen veggies--or worse. It's so tempting when Entree Vous offers all those nice meals to fill up my freezer with, meals I don't have to think about during the week--just pull out and thaw. But I still walk around with a vague sense of guilt, knowing that my family eats out too much, eats too much processed foods...and may even forget I know how to do more than work a can opener and a microwave.

I console myself with the thought that it will get better, that my kids will not always be 4, 1 and ? (I'm expecting--again!!). I won't always be dealing with the combined cooking blocks of morning sickness, barking dogs, screaming kids and preschoolers who won't eat anything other than chicken nuggets and peanut butter (but I swear, it's organic peanut butter! Organic frozen nuggets! Honest!! Shouldn't that count for something???!)

By buying organic, I pretend nothing has changed. But it has--I'm the slightly healthier, upscale version of a McDonald's addict. My food theories are not practiced. I'm a gourmet hypocrite. Michael Pollan would definitely not be pleased. But then, I wonder if he has kids. And what his response would be if said kids came up to him while he was simultaneously engaged in a) changing a poopy diaper, b) scraping dried Play-doh off the carpet, and 3) talking on the phone to a telemarketer and started chanting, "I'm hungryhungryhungryhungryhungryhungry" at the top of their lungs. Would he pull out the pasta maker, the Gruyere cheese, the semolina flour, the fresh milk? Or would he grab a kid's TV dinner from the freezer and yell "ALL RIGHT! STOP! DINNER'S IN 5-1/2 MINUTES!"

I haven't come to a conclusion about whether what I'm feeling is false guilt or not. I know I'd love to come up with a fool-proof, easy plan that allows me to live out my virtuous, slow-food theories and still maintain my sanity. Is it a fantasy world? Am I not trying hard enough?

Tell me, Mr. Pollan: can we have our fresh spinach and happy kids, too?

Pumpkins, and The World's Best Lemon Drop Martini

So this past weekend, Moon and I grabbed the fam and headed out with some friends of ours to Berry Patch Farms in Woodstock, GA for a bit of pumpkiny fall fun. Berry Patch is a great, family-friendly place with a playground area, hay rides, a pumpkin patch sized perfectly for little guys, and--my son's favorite--an old tractor for kids to climb on. And did I mention its FREE? Oh, yeah.

Here's a few snaps of the fun:

So what with hayrides and tractors and pumpkins and a picnic under a huge old oak tree, we were full up on autumn cheer, and I got so reckless as to volunteer to make s'mores out on our patio one night--the fire from the grill being as close as I could manage to a bonfire in our drought-stricken suburban neighborhood without the cops crashing our party.

But I digress...

On the way home, I was full of pumpkin-flavored good cheer, humming along with the new James Blunt CD (which is better than the critics say it is--not perfect, by any means, but quite listenable) when suddenly I was craving martinis. Not just any martinis, but the perfect Lemon Drop martini I'd had at Canoe on my anniversary. At first, I thought this was quite problematic, since dinner at Canoe costs about the same as a couple month's of my son's preschool tuition--worth every penny, believe me, but still not the sort of place you drop in on every time you get a martini craving unless your last name is Trump.

But fall is my favorite season, for many reasons, so I was full of the dreams of possibilities that come to me in autumn. Maybe there was even a little hubris left over from my rash s'mores-making promises. Either way, I thought to myself I will create that martini myself. I shared my idea with Moon. He agreed, as long as I figured out how to make a decent vodka martini in the process.

"Very dry, and not a dirty martini--the olive juice is just too much," he said.

So when we got home, I hit the Internet and started researching Lemon Drops and martinis in general. The martini has a dubious past, with everyone and no one taking credit for the drink, and its origins were quite different than its current incarnation. One of the earliest drinks claiming paternity of the martini is the Martinez, created in the 1800s, and swirling together the slightly odd mixture of bitters, maraschino juice, sweet vermouth and gin, and garnished with a slice of lemon. My 1950s-vintage Joy of Cooking calls for gin, a mix of sweet and dry vermouth, bitters and olives. Moon hates gin, so I was looking for vodka. One of my favorite recipes I'd ever heard for a dry vodka martini was vodka with a whisper of vermouth--you whisper the word "vermouth" over the drink just before you serve what is, essentially a martini glass of vodka. I decided to work with that, and indulge my husband's martini-drinking, James Bond fantasy. Shaken, not stirred.

After a trip to the mega-huge liquor store near me, I came home with a bottle of Cirac vodka (Moon's choice--a French vodka made from grapes and distilled from ice chipped from an iceberg), a bottle of Three Olives Citron and a bottle of limoncello, an Italian lemon cordial that has the color and scent reminiscent of extremely happy daisies. I already had dry vermouth at home. I mixed, measured, shook and poured, and the results were spectacular. Here's the recipes:

Moon's 007 Fantasy

5 parts VERY GOOD vodka to 1 part dry vermouth. Pour over crushed ice and shake the heck out it. Pour into a martini glass and admire the teeny ice slivers floating around for a moment. Stick three olives on a cocktail toothpick (I used martini olives marinated in vermouth) and serve.

The World's Best Lemon Drop Martini

First, make some sweet and sour mix. Make it, don't buy it. The beauty of a great LD martini if the fresh taste of the lemon, so everything needs to be, well, fresh. So, mix 8 ounces of fresh-squeezed lemon juice (about 8 lemons) with 2 Tbs. superfine sugar. Stir to dissolve sugar. Juice one more lemon just for fun, and hold onto that juice in a separate cup.

Then, fill a cocktail shaker with crushed ice and pour over the ice:

1 oz. citron vodka
1 oz. limoncello
2 oz. sweet and sour mix
1 ounce lemon juice
1 tsp. superfine sugar

Shake the heck out it, and pour the resulting ambrosia into a martini glass you have rimmed with lemon juice and turbinado sugar. Grab your microplane zester and grate a bit of very fine zest over the top of the drink.

Oh, yum.

You will have enough sweet and sour mix to make about 4 drinks, which is a nice bonus for hand-squeezing a bunch of lemons. It keeps nicely in the fridge for a day or two.

There. A perfect Lemon Drop Martini, in the privacy of your own home. Enjoy responsibly. :-)

Slow Foods and the People Who Love Them...

There's an interesting grassroots foodie trend afoot called the Slow Food Movement. (You can check out the facts at Wikipedia for the quick lowdown on slow food. But then, if you're that impatient, this movement might not be for you.)


Anyway, it intrigues me, because it involves so many of the things I believe in: organic, local food, as true to its source as possible, made from scratch, preservative-free. A healthy celebration of sustainable farming practices and humane food processing. Right now, I feel like an admirer from afar, similar to a geek in love with an accomplished celebrity I cannot hope to meet because with 2 kids under 5, no nanny, no housekeeper, and no place to put a vegetable garden, let alone raise goats, I'm a little overwhelmed at the thought of starting ALL my food from scratch. I don't have time to drink 8 glasses of water a day, let alone bake my own bread. But I'm willing to follow along as best I can, and definitely think its a trend worth pursuing.


One of the best parts of the slow food movement is eating locally-produced food, and there are "Eat Local" events all across the country in September. I'd encourage you to download the "Eat Local" scorecard from the Eat Local website and see if it's possible to get your food a little more close to home. Not only is it better for the earth, but--from a strictly hedonistic standpoint, which is the best argument when dealing with gastronomes--it generally tastes far superior to generic, dumbed-down-for-masses food that has been deliberately bred to withstand long journeys from its origin at the cost of its flavor.


One great thing I've recently discovered is Sparkman's Cream Valley milk, which I get at Harry's Farmers Market in Marietta (which means pretty much any Whole Foods or Harry's Farmers Market in the greater Atlanta area will have it). It's local and tastes GREAT. I've been making special trips over to Harry's just for milk since I've discovered it. Yes, it costs more--$3.99/half-gallon where I am--but...


/start rant/

Quality costs. For lack of a better term, we have Wal-Marted ourselves into some seriously dangerous territory by demanding quantities of food at low prices--prices that, perhaps, have not realistically kept up with inflation. To get those prices, food producers have sacrificed quality for quantity, and suddenly there are tainted food scares abounding, and a desperate struggle to quash the tainted food source when it is discovered--a search made more impossible by the fact that one single food can come from so many sources it's hard to know where the food was tainted or how. While the FDA (another rant for another time, the FDA) has decided it's perfectly okay to allow growth hormones and steriods into our dairy and meat sources, it isn't okay with me. I'm always a bit leery of anyone playing God simply to make a better financial bottom line, especially when it comes to my health and my family's health. So will I pay more for food that is thoughtfully produced by people who are vested in their community and the quality of their products, for dairy and meat that is hormone-free? You betcha. And though I'm not a fan of prosletyzing, I am going out on a limb here to say you should, too. Food is so many things, but one major responsibility of food is to provide our bodies a first, natural line of defense against disease, to support the body and help it function properly. It is so important, so scrimp somewhere else, but buy good quality food.

/end rant/

So I challenge you--how local can you go?

A couple good books on the subject:

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally by Alisa Smith & J.B. McKinnon
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

“Enchant, stay beautiful and graceful, but do this, eat well. Bring the same consideration to the preparation of your food as you devote to your appearance. Let your dinner be a poem, like your dress.”

~Charles Pierre Monselet

Baptist Chardonnay...

There's a great feature in the Atlanta Journal Constitution today on sweet tea. If you can, it's worth picking up a copy of the paper, because not only is there a great history of this beverage, but lots of sweet tea recipes (of course some of them have alcohol--you are in the South, y'all...) and--of particular fun for me--a wee little article on the literary history of sweet tea in the South. A yummy read all around. I would highly recommend checking out the recipe for Magnolia Grill's Sweet tea-Brined Pork Chops which looks especially yummy.

One of my personal pet peeves when it comes to iced tea is that nasty unsweetened iced tea plopped down in front of you with a little holder of sugar packets, Splenda and Sweet-n-Low. Any idiot knows that it is IMPOSSIBLE to properly dissolve sugar granules in a cold glass of tea--they all just swirl to the bottom and clump there in a sullen little heap. The result? A completely unsweetened glass of tea until you get to the last swallow, which is just a few drops of tea and a mouthful of grainy sugar. Oh, yum. Of course, on the other side of the spectrum is that proper sweet tea is served in most places in the South, but it is so sweet you can feel it candying the enamel on your teeth. There is very little difference between it and pancake syrup. Now for many Southerners, this is not a problem, but a bonus. Me, I prefer a little nuance with my sweet tea; a melding of sweet flavor and tea flavor. A balance.

One great solution I read about in the AJC article is found at Watershed in Decatur, GA--the restaurant at the very top of my "I Must Eat Here Before I Die" list. The restaurant serves their tea unsweetened, BUT they serve it alongside a chilled mini-carafe of mint-infused sugar syrup--how ingenious is that? I love that idea. I may steal it for my home parties.

Meanwhile, here's my recipe for sweet tea. It's evolved over the years from my original version of sweet tea, which I learned from my East Coast mother. That version involved a gallon of water, 4 regular-sized tea bags and 1/4 cup of sugar. The result was somewhat reminiscent of barely sweet dishwater. My Georgia-born-and-bred husband was NOT amused. To save our then-brand-new marriage, I quickly learned a proper version of sweet tea that please most palates--at least Southern palates, anyway:

Fill a pot with 3-4 cups of water and bring to a boil. Add 5 family-sized Luzianne brand tea bags (you can use other brands, but Luzianne really is the best.) At the same time, dump in 1 cup of granulated sugar, and stir it around a little bit to get the brewing started and dissolve the sugar. Let it sit for a good long while--about the amount of time it takes to feed, clean up, change and corral 2 children under three into their beds for a nap--maybe a little less if your children are true hellions. Pour the resulting strong, sweet tea syrup into a 3-4 quart pitcher and fill it up the rest of the way with cold water (add a bit of ice if you need to speed the chilling process to have it ready by dinner). Chill until there is a filmy layer of condensation glistening on your pitcher. Serve over ice--straight for many Southerners, but I prefer a good splash of fresh-squeezed lemon juice in mine.

And there you have it. Drink up, y'all.

Friday Night Dinner a la Kids

So it's Friday, and dinner is now done. Kids are in bed (sorta--at least they're in their rooms, which is something), and the kitchen is once again clean. Tonight it was a whim dinner, one of those nights when I run over to the Kroger supermarket that is practically in my backyard--not especially super, really, in fact it's pretty generic...but it is a market, and it is in my backyard. So after scanning the aisles, I felt a craving come upon me for fish...no, shellfish. No, crab cakes. Yeah, crab cakes. So--no just-off-the-boat fresh crabmeat to be had at generic Kroger, I settled for one of those tiny tin buckets-o-crab, the one labeled "special", one down from the eye-crossingly expensive "jumbo".

Then a yen for barbecued shrimp, so I added a pound of wild-caught shrimp--also eye-crossingly expensive, but I was in an expansive mood, and it was the day after Moon got paid. Throw in some bread and a little fresh yellow corn on sale (which looked, surprisingly, pretty good. Most produce at my local Kroger looks like it's one step away from wilting away from ennui. Not nasty, exactly, just a bit depressed) and there was dinner. Not the healthiest thing in the world, but occasionally it is necessary to eat a meal based on butter and oil.

So home again. Put the water on for the corn and found a great crab cake recipe in one of my favorite cookbooks--Cooking for Comfort by Marian Burros. Starting making it before I realized that I had no mayo in the house. Endured a small fit of pique since I had JUST BEEN AT KROGER...but I got over it. I am woman, I am resourceful. I am not pregnant or immune-compromised, so I can eat raw eggs if necessary. I pull out the good ol' The Joy of Cooking and whip up some Blender Mayonnaise. A quick taste test reminds me why homemade mayo is so much better than the jarred stuff. Mmmmmmmmmmm...what was I saying?

Oh, yes--crab cakes. Throw together the rest of the ingredients--adding a generous shake or three of Old Bay seasoning because crab cakes aren't crab cakes without Old Bay--and toss in the fridge while I work on the shrimp.

While I work, I think of the over-the-top, eyes-rolling-into-the-back-of-my-head good meal I had at Canoe last week. Then I think of the Lemon Drop Martini I had at the bar there. It was goood. I want one. Now. I have no vodka in the house, but a quick search through my pathetically stocked bar reveals some orange rum. On a whim, I thow a couple shots of that together with some lemon syrup and lemonade I have on hand, and shake it all up over ice. Pour it into martini glasses. It isn't half bad. Not a masterpiece, but drinkable.

I pour one for myself and my husband (who is kindly tending to the children so I can cook) and return to the shrimp.

I always look for a recipe when I'm starting out to make barbecued shrimp, but I never end up using one. The reason for that is once I start looking at recipes for barbecued shrimp, I realize it's more of a whatever thing. Once you commit to using that much butter in anything, the rest of the ingredients don't really matter. It's all about drowning the shrimp in butter and adding enough spice to keep things interesting. So I dumped the shrimp in a dish, melted a stick and a half of butter in a pan, and--because I cannot fathom using more of a butter-to-food ratio than that, I glug in some olive oil. Let the spirit move me as I poured on some Worcestershire, lemon juice, coarse salt, a few shakes of pepper and a little Cajun seasoning (I have 2 kids under 4--I do not have time to grind my own spices and blend my own spice blends. Get over it.) Oh, and hot sauce. Can't forget the hot sauce. Poured it all over the shrimp and baked it at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. Checked to make sure the corn was done, fried up the crab cakes, and served the whole mess with some hot, crusty bread to sop up some of that shrimpy, spicy butter sauce. Promised my Inner Nutritionist I'd eat healthier tomorrow to make up for the butter. Sighed with happiness.

The only thing I would have liked more would have been some roasted red peppers on hand to puree up as an accompaniment for the crab cakes. A dinner based on this much oil and fat needed a little astringency, a little vegetative sternness to rein things in a bit. But I didn't have any (another thing to add to my grocery list, darn it!), so there you have it. Friday night dinner.

My 3-year-old, the Pickiest Child on Earth, even tried some of the crab cake and said he liked it--a small miracle for the kid who so far seems to only like fruit, peanut butter, mac-n-cheese, pizza, sweet tea and crackers. And he ate corn, which was a large miracle. This also confirms my deepening suspicion that children would like more adventurous food if it was cooked fresh from scratch, rather than the dumbed-down, lowest-common-denominator versions we so often buy as "convenience foods".

But that's another essay.

Why, you ask, am I telling you all this?

To give you a taste (bad pun, I know) of what's to come. I am not a gourmet cook by any means--too busy. But I love fresh food, especially fresh organic food. I love the smell of open-air markets and really good grocery stores. I cook with recipes, but use them more like suggestions than orders--I'm bad with following orders. It's the punk rock in me. The cook I idolize most is the late, great Edna Lewis, who you should know about if you don't. The food writer I love the most is the late, great Laurie Colwin. And a really happy day for me is a day when I get to buy and make good food, and even better if I get to talk about it a bit.

So today was a good day.

Maybe tomorrow I'll tell you about our recent trip to Canoe and Colonel Poole's BBQ.

'Night, all. Don't forget to eat your veggies.



Link to Edna Lewis' info and recipes:
http://www.epicurious.com/features/chefs/lewis

Link to Laurie Colwin info and articles:
http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~esmith/colwin.html

Recipe for a Lemon Drop Wannabe:

1-1/2 shot of Bacardi O
1/2 shot of Monin Lemon Drop syrup
6 ounces of lemonade

Throw into a cocktail shaker over a mess of crushed ice. Shake and strain into martini glasses.