Lately, I’ve started going back to one of my favorite hip hop dance classes.  I love the class because it is fun, positive, designed to be accessible to beginners and drop-ins, but actually teaches you some fun choreography.  The steps aren’t hard, but the pace is quick.  You have to be able to wrap your head around the choreography quickly without getting bogged down.  And even more than that, you have to learn to avoid overthinking things and trust that the movement will make sense in your body if you just go with it.  Whenever I’m away from the class for awhile, it takes me a few classes to get my head back in the right space to absorb the steps and just dance.  I think cooking can be much the same way:  if you know how to chop, saute, grill and roast, then cooking isn’t hard—it just takes some practice and momentum to be able to figure out what to make without overthinking it and stressing yourself out.  Lately, I’ve been trying to make time to cook at home more.  It’s a work in progress, but I’m gradually finding my way back to the place where putting thing together feels more natural and automatic.  Relatively speaking at least.

As we were cleaning up from last weekend’s Cinco de Mayo dinner, an alarm bell went off in my head:  what am I bringing for lunches this week?  Fruit and string cheese were well stocked in the fridge.  I quickly threw together a weeks worth of pistachio-raisin mix.  For a main dish, beans are always a good default option.  Per my formula, I decided on that pepper that needed using for my red veggie (sauteed to make it sweeter) and arugula for a green veggie.  Feta needed using up, so in that went.  I still had lots of leftover Meyer lemon juice, so that was the basis of my vinaigrette.

I didn’t make ahead a big batch of soup or curry this week as I normally do, so this week needed to be full of quick improvised dinners.  Monday night was easy—leftover tacos.  Tuesday night, the Lemonator thawed some frozen chicken tenders to sauté and blanched some green beans.  (I did make my weekly farmers market and grocery runs, which helps with improv nights.  And green beans last  a while in the fridge).  To our dismay, the chicken started sticking and drying out in the pan when we went to cook it.  Dried out, unevenly browned chicken tenders are not an appetizing dinner.  Pan sauce to the rescue.  I deglazed the pan with sherry (I always have sherry on hand for emergencies of this type), added a handful of fresh thyme, a generous jolt of dijon mustard, a pat of butter, a splash of half and half, and my secret ingredient: finely diced Serrano chile peppers leftover from Cinco de Mayo. I gave everything a stir to combine the ingredients and coat the chicken, then let the chicken cook the rest of the way through. 

I love making pan sauces and this one was really yummy.  Sherry and mustard add great depth of flavor quickly and go with almost any protein.  Thyme is my all-time favorite herb.  But the real surprise was the Serrano pepper.  It married really well with the mustard.  You could taste the pepper from the first bite, but the heat came through later at the back of your throat as you chewed.

 

Wednesday night, the Lemonator started cooking up whole wheat spaghetti and bacon for spaghetti carbonara before forgetting that we were all out of parmesan cheese—and we make our carabonara with plenty of parmesan cheese!  Trying to think of another way to incorporate bacon and pasta, I decided to play with the flavors of a club sandwich.  I sliced up deli turkey and added it to the pan of bacon towards the end of cooking.  (I’m sure shredded turkey or chicken would be even better, but I went with what I had on hand.)  When the pasta was cooked, I tossed it with lemon juice, olive oil, crushed garlic, mustard and (don’t tell the Lemonator) a tiny bit of mayo.  Finally, I heated the pasta and meats together in a pan, seasoned with salt and pepper, and added a big handful of arugula to wilt down at the very last minute.  The Lemonator laughed when he tasted it.  It really tasted like a club sandwich!

No creativity left in my brain on Thursday night.  For me, rice bowls are a great healthy-but-comforting way to raid the pantry when I’m tired.  Normally I make them with brown rice, but we were all out so we used white.  Toppings are frozen peas and diced carrot (cooked in the microwave), canned tuna, soy sauce, sesame oil and lots of sambal oelek chile paste, which makes everything taste better.

Saturday brunch was baked eggs.   The base is diced tomatoes sautéed with with minced garlic, diced serrano peppers, and a spoonful of canned corn.  Then, I put the tomato mixture into two ovenproof ramekins.  The idea is to make depressions in the veggie mixture into which you can crack the eggs.   Then you bake at 350 for about 15 minutes or until the eggs are set to your liking.

Next time, I would make these in bigger shallower dishes so that the eggs stayed in their discrete pockets and did not spill all over the top in a messy and not terribly pretty fashion.  But they tasted great!  I recommend serving with toast so that you can scoop the egg-tomato mixture onto it.

Sunday night dinner…

Lentil soup with lemon juice and thyme.  You can’t be creative all the time.

Last but not least, happy Mother’s Day to Blueberry Mom.  Thank for teaching me to love food and make a mean pot of lentil soup.  This blog would not exist without you.

Lemonator Here.

By now I’m sure you’ve seen Hil’s post on our Cinco de Mayo festivities.  She’s asked me to follow-up with a recipe for homemade tortillas.  Lets begin with the recipe.

• 3 cup flour
• 3/4 cup shortening
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoon salt
• ~3/4 cup hot water

To make:  Combine all the dry ingredients, then cut in the shortening until the dough is crumbly and soft.   Add the hot water and knead/stir periodically until the dough sticks together easily, but is not moist.  I ended up needing a little more than the 3/4 cup to get it to the right consistency.  Be careful at this step not to add too much liquid… it makes actually making the tortillas a sticky, messy affair.  Let the dough rest for ~1 hour to let it relax and be more pressable.

We got a tortilla press a few years back from Blueberry Sis, and I definitely recommend one for making tortillas, especially corn tortillas.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have the masa to create them this time around, so another blog post on that will have to come later.  If you don’t have a tortilla press, you could also use a rolling pin (in fact, I recommend having one on hand anyways, as I will explain later).  It won’t be as easy to get the round tortilla shape, though.

Even if the dough is at the right consistency, it will probably stick to the tortilla press after you press it into a tortilla.  In order to prevent this from happening, you should line your tortilla press.  I’ve seen a lot of people say that wax paper is the best, but I’ve found that using a gallon ziploc is even better.  Just cut out two circles in the ziploc that will each cover one side of your press, and you are ready. 

Take a small handful of dough (about 1/16th of the total for each tortilla) and place it on the press.  Depending on your press, you might want to put it closer to an edge or the center as you see how the tortillas are coming out.  For mine, right in the center works great.

And PRESS for all you are worth!  The perfect amount of dough is such that you can just see the tortilla sticking out of the press when you are finished.

 

Open the press and peel off the plastic.  This should be a very easy process… if it is sticking at all, it means you have too much water in your dough and should knead in some more flour before trying again. 

Continue until you have made all of the dough into tortillas.  Heat a pan up to medium heat.  For each tortilla, give it a once over with a rolling pin to get it as thin as possible.  If it is thicker, it will come out more like Naan, which are also delicious, of course, but NOT tortillas.  Make each tortilla one at a time, heating each side for ~1 minute and then removing from the heat and starting the next one.  If you look carefully, you can see the edges starting to brown right as it is ready to flip.

And flip!

Serve hot, preferably with taco fixings! 

Hil wants me to make her a whole wheat version next… for that, I’ll have to be sure to roll out the dough even more, as I’ve found it more difficult to get thin whole-wheat things in the past.  I’m sure it will be delicious, though!

The Lemonator and I do not need much excuse to make tasty Mexican food for dinner.  And as excuses go, Cinco De Mayo is a pretty good one!  After mass, we dropped by the farmers market to pick up veggies for the week and lots of citrus. 

When preparing a meal like this that involves lots of citrus juice, I think it makes matters a lot easier to spend some time juicing lots of lemons and limes at the outset so that you can just measure and pour later on.  This is one of the few times when our electric citrus juicer comes in handy (a largely neglected birthday present for the Lemonator.

The cook must not go hungry during her preparations, so chips and salsa were in order.  I tend to forget that I cannot be trusted around chips and salsa.  That and French bread.  Put some in front of me and it is gone before I know what hit me.

 

First, we put some of that lime juice to good use in our shrimp aguachile:  lime juice, finely diced serrano pepper, crushed garlic and salt over fresh shrimp.  Make sure that your shrimp are deveined!  I hate deveining shrimp and was happy to find that mine had already been deveined for me.  Mix together the lime juice, peppers and garlic, then pour them over the shrimp.  Bonus points if you puree the peppers and garlic with the lime juice, but I liked the way the little flecks of pepper looked against the shrimp.  Season with salt.

I figured out after I took this picture that I would need a lot of citrus juice to get the shrimp to “cook” evenly.  You want everything to be covered by the citrus juice.  I have heard that this dish is sometimes served quite raw, almost like sushi, but I prefer to let the citrus juice cook the shrimp more.  Leave for several hours in the refrigerator, tossing occasionally to ensure even cooking, until the shrimp is pink and has a cooked texture.  As with any raw product, obviously be careful that you are using very fresh shrimp.  If you don’t like the idea of eating raw fish, you can also use cooked, but I would reduce the marinate time to more like 30 minutes or an hour to avoid making the shrimp rubbery and tough.

When they are done, they will look pink and cooked and pretty.  Serve them with a bit of the marinade.  They are delicious like this as an appetizer—cold and zesty and refreshing.  To make them into a meal, you can pile them on top of a tostada with cucumber, red onion and avocado.

And more of our citrus juice goes into our margaritas.  I like to use equal parts tequila and orange liquer over ice, topped with a mix of lime and Meyer lemon juice and about a teaspoon of agave nectar.  Per Nicole’s suggestion, I added just the smallest amount of orange juice to my citrus juice mixture. 

For salt rim, dip the glass into a bit of water…

 

And then a bit of salt.

 

Much better than sweet and sour mix.

The Lemonator assigned himself the responsibility of making skirt steak tacos with homemade tortillas.  Recipe for the tortillas to follow.

I topped mine with chipotle garlic hot sauce and minced onion.  The tortillas were incredible—warm, freshly made tortilla has to be on my top 20 list of the world’s tastiest foods.  The Lemonator has promised that he will (1) blog the recipe and (2) attempt to make some for me using whole wheat flour next time.  I can’t wait.

 

love is more thicker than forget

more thinner than recall

more seldom than a wave is wet

more frequent than to fail

 

it is most mad and moonly

and less it shall unbe

than all the sea which only

is deeper than the sea

 

love is less always than to win

less never than alive

less bigger than the least begin

less littler than forgive

 

it is most sane and sunly

and more it cannot die

than all the sky which only

is higher than the sky

 

–e.e. cummings

Blueberry Mom LOVES the Kentucky Derby.  She always watches and is known to throw parties on Derby Day.  I’m not sure why.  She is not Southern or particularly into horses.  I can think of three possible reasons for her love of the event.  1.  She loves sports of all types.  2.  Her beloved borzoi is frequently mistaken for a horse by small children.  3.  Bourbon is her favorite spirit and Derby Day is a perfect excuse to have a mint julep party. 

In Blueberry Mom’s honor, I whipped up a mint julep for Derby Day.

Traditionally, you muddle the mint and sugar to make a mint julep.  Blueberry Mom and I think that muddling alone does not impart adequate mint flavor to cocktails.  Mint  simple syrup is far superior.  (Ditto for mojitos).  Take approximately four sprigs of mint, cover with 1-2 tablespoons of water and 1-3 teaspoons of sugar or agave nectar, depending on how sweet you like your drink.  Microwave for one minute.  When the wilty boiled mint comes out then you can take a spoon and mash the mint to release the flavorful juices into the syrup.

Next, fill an 8 oz. glass with crushed ice.  If you don’t have crushed ice on hand, you can put ice cubes in a freezer bag and smash them up with a kitchen mallet.  Et voila.

Next, bourbon.  I like Woodford Reserve, which is the official bourbon of the Kentucky Derby.  Add 1 1/2 shots of  bourbon to your glass.  You want the ice to start melting down to dilute the bourbon.  Next, add the minty syrup to taste.  Stir.

 

Garnish your glass with a sprig of fresh mint, sip slowly and enjoy!

The Lemonator would like it to be known that today is also another important day:  Star Wars Day.  I told him that I was unfamiliar with that holiday.  “Well, it’s May 4th, you know,” he explained patiently, as though this would elucidate matters.  I told him that I had no idea what he was talking about.  The Lemonator sighed:  “You know!  Like, May the Fourth be with you!”

Last night, I dragged a reluctant Lemonator to a salsa dance class. I am a dance dabbler: I love to try out different styles of dance and have never gotten particularly good at any of them.  Partner dances—swing, salsa and other ballroom style stuff—have always been my favorite. I took a lot of ballroom classes in college and have missed it since then. So when I learned about a beginner level salsa class that was starting up, I begged the Lemonator to come with me.  He protested.  I promised him dinner at Tender Greens beforehand as an incentive.  That seemed to do the trick.

Tender Greens is a Southern California chain that the Lemonator and I really love.  Everything is fresh, flavorful and prepared right in front of you.  The basic backbone of the menus is the five types of grilled “hot stuff”—roasted vegetables, herb chicken, barbecue chicken, seared albacore tuna, and steak.  You can choose to have the “hot stuff” on a big salad, in a sandwich with roasted peppers and a side green salad, or on a plate with a side salad and mashed potatoes.  They also have a variety of special soups, salads and tarts depending on whatever is in season.  All options are delicious and affordable.  The Lemonator always orders the same thing:  grilled steak and red peppers on ciabatta bread with a side of Caesar salad.  I stole a bite—yum. 

He also obviously needed to order some mint lemonade. A different kind of liquid courage!

For my part, I went with a special:  arugula salad with roasted peppers, fennel, chickpeas, a skewer of grilled lamb and tzatziki sauce.  Delicious. 

We also love Tender Greens because it is one of the only places we can share dessert (all housemade, incidentally).  With some narrowly specified exceptions, the Lemonator will not eat fruit, chocolate, whipped cream, custard or frosting.  Needless to say, this puts limits on dessert sharing possibilities!  He will, however, eat the deliciously moist lemon olive oil cake that Tender Greens serves.  I’m not normally a cake person, but I like this one very much because it is very moist and not too sweet.  We shared a piece.

Then, it was on to salsa!  To the Lemonator’s relief, our instructor took things from the very beginning and the crowd that showed up was very easy going.  The instructor was very good at communicating the basics of how to get through the moves.  We had a lot of fun and will probably go back next week.  It’s nice to be able to get up and move around after being stuck sitting down at a desk all week—what better way to celebrate the start of the weekend?

For me, eating well is about 25% creativity and 75% comfortable rhythms.  If I don’t keep things simple during the work week, I’m never going to be able to maintain a regimen of mostly home cooked meals.  If I never play with my food on weekends or in the evening, I get bored.  Knowing what works is one thing and executing it is another.  It takes more discipline than I would like to admit to feed myself well during the week when food is the last thing on my mind.

For me, a successful food week starts with weekend shopping and Sunday afternoon prep.  I pick a lunch that I could stand eating a week straight and make sure I have ingredients.  I do not have the mental energy to concoct an interesting or varied lunch repertoire.  It works the best when I pick one thing, plan ahead for it and stick with it.  Anything fiddly or that requires prep is done in advance so that I can just grab and go.  If I want to eat pistachios and raisins as a mid-afternoon snack, I make enough individual bags to last me through the week.  I always feel ridiculous doing this.  How long does it take put some raisins and nuts in a bag in the morning?  Not long at all.  But I know myself.  I know what I am like in the mornings.  The odds of my snack making it into my lunch bag are exponentially increased if all I have to do it pick up.

Sunday night also means making a big batch of something that will feed me multiple nights for the next week.  I usually get bored eating the same thing every night, but it is vital to my sanity to have something that only needs heating up for the inevitably multiple nights per week when I’m either (1) at work longer than expected or (2) have just enough time to eat something before running to choir or a workout.  Lentil soup is the obvious no brainer:  vegetables, protein and fiber all in one big comforting pot.  I also try to keep a couple of veggies and proteins on hand such that I can cook myself a different dinner on the couple of nights a week that I get home early or not terribly hungry.

 

I can’t get through my morning at work without a good breakfast.  My breakfasts during the week are boring, but make me happy and keep me full.

Whole wheat toast with peanut butter has been my default breakfast since I was eleven years old. Lots of nutritious fiber, protein, low GI carbs and fat in one crunchy, creamy piece. Plus I can eat it one handed if I am in a rush. These days, I almost always use Ezekiel bread—I find that it keeps me full longer and I like the crunch when it toasts up. Desafortunadamente, although toast and coffee are all that I really want in the morning, they don’t keep me full until lunch.  I’ve had to add more food to my breakfasts in order to make it through to lunch time.

 

Adding fruit and yogurt or kefir to my breakfast  usually does the trick.  When my mind rebels against the idea of having to sit down and eat anything with a spoon, I go the smoothie route.  I love my bullet blender very much because it is so easy to make single servings of things and is so easy to clean up.  From left to right:  strawberry-kefir smoothie and blueberry-mango kefir smoothie.

I get very munchy at work when I am just hanging out in the office, so I like to pack things that I can either together or in separate snacks depending on my appetite.  This week’s lunch:  Turkey and arugula with mustard and mayo on whole wheat, apple, string cheese and a small cookie from the Homeboy bakery (parting gift from last weekend’s dinner).

I do not like sandwiches that taste mostly of bread.  Piling the protein high is key.  I like to roll my turkey it into loose cylinders before piling it onto my sandwich.  It makes the sandwich neater to eat and I like the effect on the overall sandwich texture—it gives the sandwich more heft when you bite into it.

Then when I get home at the end of the day, all I have to do for dinner is heat up my soup, sprinkle on a garnish and grab a piece of fruit or bread to complete the meal.  I think lentil soup may be my all time favorite comfort food. 

Just two more days until the weekend…

Yesterday, the Lemonator and I had the opportunity to attend a benefit dinner that aided one of our favorite charities:  Homeboy Industries.  Homeboy Industries is a big deal here in Los Angeles.  Los Angeles is the gang capital of the country and Homeboy Industries is the largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program in the country.  Homeboy provides a way out of the cycle of self-destruction and violence for many people who see few other options.  Homeboy Industries provides tattoo removal, mental health services, case management and job training to formerly incarcerated and formerly gang-involved young people.  Homebody Industries runs several businesses—including a bakery and a restaurant—that serve as job training sites and help fund Homeboy’s other services.  People deemed “unemployable” by most of society are able to get their first legitimate jobs at Homeboy, earning money to support their families and finding a new sense of confidence and accomplishment.  By offering both work and support services in a single location, Homeboy Industries significantly increases the likelihood that participants will take advantage of the full range of services offered.  In addition, former gang members who work at Homeboy Industries have the opportunity to work side by side with former rivals.  Gang violence is an incredibly difficult and complex problem, and Homeboy Industries truly makes a difference.  Their motto says it all: Nothing stops a bullet like a job.  Los Angeles needs them, and they need all the support that they can get. Oh, and they make really delicious bread, too.

Dinner was preceded by a mass celebrated by Homeboy Industries founder Father Greg Boyle (also known as Father G).  Father Greg is an amazing speaker—if he ever comes to speak in your neck of the woods, you should go hear him.  It is also a funny life experience to attend a mass in a room full of people in cocktail dresses!  Next came wine and hors d’ouevres prepared by Homegirl Cafe and Homeboy Bakery.  These were delicious and definitely the culinary highlight of the night.

A Homeboy Industries event would not be complete without lots and lots of freshly baked bread.  You could smell it from across the room. 

At the end of the night, they gave away bags of it for free. I scored a big loaf of sesame bread and a bunch of little cinnamon raisin rolls.

Homegirl cafe serves fresh, light modern versions of classic Mexican dishes.  Everything is colorful and seasonal, with an emphasis on fresh fruits and vegetables and beautiful presentation.  Homegirl cafe is famous for their salsas.  From top to bottom:  roasted poblano salsa, mango salsa, and guacamole.  All three were amazing, but the roasted poblano was my favorite.

 

Camarones aguachile.  The Lemonator thinks that the beautiful presentation was a pun—rock shrimp indeed!

a

I had two of the camarones and a skewer of al pastor with red and green chile sauces.  The al pastor was a nice savory-sweet combination and the shrimp were amazing.  The fresh, zesty lime flavor really came through.  I would have happily eaten a plate of those.  I also managed to grab two amazing passed appetizers—a watermelon, queso fresco, green apple and purslane skewer and a spoonful of scallop ceviche.  Both were beautiful and delicious.  Both were going fast enough that I didn’t have a chance to snap a picture!

The recipes for all of the food we ate are included in the cookbook Hungry for Life by Homegirl Cafe head chef Pati Zarate.  Of course I had to pick up a copy.  I love that kind of fresh, happy colorful food and am working on expanding my repertoire of Mexican recipes.

 

We also had to pay a visit to the cheese table, which featured a variety of fresh fruit, cheese and handmade Mexican candy.

I had berries (of course!), herbed queso and a piece of sweet potato candy. 

And some wine to go with.

Next we headed over to dinner.

Dinner was catered by the venue. To start we had a white and green asparagus salad with a balsamic reduction.  I am so stealing this idea.  It was simple but looked beautiful on the plate and was very seasonal. 

The main course was a surf-and-turf affair with forbidden rice, Brussels sprouts and carrots.  Our table got into a minor debate about what the grain was underneath the meat.  It was obvious from the color and texture that it was not normal white rice.  Guesses included wild rice and bulgur wheat.  I said that it was black rice (also known as forbidden rice).  Eventually someone flagged down a waiter to settle the dispute.  I was right—it was forbidden rice!  I need to see if I can find black rice to cook at home sometime—it is both delicious and good for you.

Since it is Homeboy Industries’ 25th anniversary, we also celebrated with cake from the Homeboy Bakery. 

  

Father Greg made his way around to say hi to everyone.

During dinner, we got to hear testimonials from a number of the homies who are currently working for Homeboy Industries in various capacities.  Wow.  No two stories were exactly alike, but they shared common themes.  So many of the people who spoke were exposed to neglect, addiction, abuse and violence from very early ages.  They described what Father Greg would refer to as a “lethal absence of hope.”  One young man shared how when he was six years old, he had a teenage neighbor who was a mentor to him.  His neighbor would tell him to stay away from gangs and to cross the street when he saw certain people coming.  He made sure that he got to school on time.  His neighbor would tell him that they were both going to graduate from high school and go to college.  His neighbor was shot to death right in front of him while they were walking together to school.  When he was six years old.  Even more striking than the horrific circumstances the speakers described was their tenacity and courage in choosing the difficult task of rebuilding their lives from the ground up.  Again, the words from Father Greg’s wonderful book, Tattoos on the Heart come to mind:

• “Here is what we seek: a compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it.”
• “If there is a fundamental challenge within these stories, it is simply to change our lurking suspicion that some lives matter less than other lives.”

Speaking of which, if you haven’t read it yet, please find a copy of Tattoos on the Heart:  The Power of Boundless Compassion by Homeboy Industries founder Father Gregory Boyle.  It is a beautiful, hilarious, heartbreaking, hopeful book about the redemptive power of love and the dignity and worth of every human life.  It is a book that has meant a lot to me on a personal level. 

I don’t blog much about my work.  Suffice it to say that what I do for a living gives me the opportunity and the responsibility of witnessing a lot of human suffering.  In particular, I spent some time a job that gave me an up-close-and-personal glimpse of poverty, gangs, urban crime and the prison system.  I will never be the same after doing that work.  I wouldn’t want to be.  Things that used to be abstractions to me are now specific names, faces, families, and stories that would break your heart.  At times, the pain I witnessed was overwhelming.  I strove to do my job to the best of my ability, but I remained keenly aware that our society is deeply fractured and broken in ways that are beyond the scope of my job and beyond my individual ability to fix.  Despite the tremendous success of his programs, Father Greg maintains that “success” and “results” are not really the point.  Father Boyle writes:

I want to lean into the challenge of intractable problems with as tender a heart as I can locate, knowing that there is some divine ingenuity here, “the slow work of God,’” that gets done if we’re faithful.  

Me too. 

   

When I have a lazy Saturday or rare free day to myself, there isn’t much I like better than enjoying the beautiful sunshine (there is never enough of that for us office workers!) and visiting some of my favorite local shops.  People say that cities are lonely and impersonal, but I don’t think that is necessarily the case.  The thing about cities is that you have get out and explore a bit.  After awhile, you start to see the same faces at your local yoga class, pet supply store and farmer’s market.  You get to know the flavor of different parts of the city.  After awhile, you have favorite haunts.  Even when you don’t have a friend to spend the afternoon with, you know all the places you can go that will be full of beautiful, unique things and fun people-watching.   

No free day is complete for me without either a long walk or a workout.  It is such a pleasure to be able to exercise when I’m not either half-asleep or exhausted from a long day of work.  I have lots of energy to burn, and I get to enjoy sunlight streaming in through the windows while I work out.  Incidentally, I’ve figured out that I actually do love exercise—just not running or long workouts at the gym.  I can even do unmodified pushups now!  But that is a subject for another post…

The used bookstore is always high up on my list of places to visit.  There are few things more beautiful than stacks of books.  Many of my favorite bookstores have closed in the wake of Amazon and the Kindle, but there are still a few great bookstores that I love to stop by when I get the chance.

The shop owners like to play classical music in the background.  This time, the sound of the music mixed with the happy squeals of children playing behind the building.

 

I guess the kids like the sunshine, too!

    

To my happiness, I found a copy of an old favorite cookbook: Laurel’s Kitchen.   I love this delightfully old-school, hippie vegetarian cookbook for its simple, frugal recipes that celebrate vegetables and whole foods.  In particular, it has an excellent selection of recipes for 100% whole wheat baked goods.  It’s fairly preachy about its food philosophy and (in the original edition) has some—interesting—things to say about women working outside of the home.  But the authors’ passion for whole foods is obvious and the recipes are tasty.  I have fond memories of attempting to make whole wheat spinach and ricotta canneloni with Blueberry Sis.  It will be a welcome edition to my cookbook collection.

                

I also paid a visit to one of my all-time favorite small businesses:  Soaptopia!  This place is amazing—they make high quality natural soaps and skin products that smell to-die-for delicious and work wonders on sensitive skin.  I have a family full of people with very sensitive skin and allergies to many fragrances, and everyone loves Soaptopia’s products.  The soaps are creamy and gentle and smell amazing.

The 50/50 balm may be my favorite product—think globs of rich moisturizing cream surrounded by scented oils, which you can swirl together and then apply.  Amazing.

You can buy the products online (or at Whole Foods, if you live in LA), but walking through the store is like an aromatherapy session.  If you come at the right time, you can watch them cooking up the soaps right in front of you.

One of my favorite weekend eats is whole wheat pita pizza.  It’s quick, tasty and easy to create with whatever you have on hand.  Last night’s version: marinara sauce, feta, canned tuna and fresh arugula.     

For brunch today, I made savory whole wheat French toast, which the Lemonator and I both love.  I actually prefer it to traditional sweet French toast.  You simply flavor the egg-milk mixture with salt, pepper, fresh herbs and grated parmesan cheese.  This is especially good if you have any stale rosemary bread, but any whole wheat bread will work.  The end result is hearty and flavorful, but not too heavy.  I like to serve it with a simple green salad with lemon and olive oil.

Bagheera has been eager to join in anything interesting going on.

But Kimba prefers to nap.

 

Happy weekend!

 

Gigantic daikon radishes are cheap at my local farmer’s market right now.   My pictures do not do not do justice to the size of these things.  They are enormous.  So naturally I come home with one almost as long as my arm before I have the slightest idea what I was going to do with it.  I have always eaten daikon radishes raw, either cut into plain sticks (like jicama) or in a crunchy, vinegary salad with carrots and bell peppers.  The Lemonator does not like raw radish, and I had doubts about my ability to polish off the entire thing alone.  I began to wonder if it was possible to cook with daikon.  Per the internet, daikon can be cooked—even cut up and roasted.  I had never tasted cooked radish in my life, but I am game to try anything once.

 

Since there were lots of great root veggies at the farmers market, I decided to roast it with chicken and other vegetables. This way, if the Lemonator did not like it, he would still have other parts of the meal to eat. I cut up the daikon into cubes, tossed it with a bit of olive oil, thyme, salt and pepper and roasted it at 400 degrees for 45-50 minutes.  My personal secrets to juicy roast chicken with delicious crispy skin are:

• Bone in, skin on chicken thighs or leg quarters.  They are cheaper, juicier and more flavorful than white meat chicken.  I find it difficult to keep roasted white meat juicy while still crisping up the skin.
• Pat the skin dry and season well with Lawry’s seasoned salt before cooking.  I know, I know, but it is delicious!  If you must, you can use regular salt.  Make sure that the skin is adjusted to fully cover the top of the meat—you do not want it sliding off, as this will let your meat dry out.
• Bake at 400 for 45 minutes to start.  It may take up to an hour depending on your chicken.  Because of the fat in the skin and meat, chicken thighs are very forgiving and shouldn’t dry out if you need to cook them longer.  Your gauge for doneness is the skin:  it should be a beautiful deep golden brown.  Most of the fat should have rendered out, leaving the skin thin, crisp and stiff to the touch.
• If you have potato lovers in the house, you can put thinly sliced potato under the chicken.  As the chicken cooks, the tasty fat will render out and soak into the potatoes.  This is very festive and tasty.

Yum. And it is true: you really can cook daikon radishes!  They are much milder and less spicy in their cooked form—almost like a juicy potato with a mild radish flavor.  The Lemonator even happily ate a portion.

I love raw daikon, but after trying them this way, I think that the cooked version will be making a repeat appearance in my kitchen.