Steak with Ramp Pesto

May 1

Our family eats well and we are mindful about what exactly we are buying. We eat modest amounts and we waste nothing. Meat protein is an occasional, deeply enjoyed treat. Onion husks, parsley stems and chicken carcasses are saved for broths. Leftover scraps of pork fat are folded into quesadillas to get a little more calorie into Colby. Stale baguette ends become bread crumbs. What cannot be used or reused as food is composted.

As we enter the bountiful glory days of spring and summer, the range of ingredients and creativity for use and reuse expands. Ramps are the first wild crop of spring to arrive at the market. Having lived on cabbage, carrots and potatoes for so many months of winter, the ramps' tender white bulbs and soft green leaves feel so precious. In order to use the entire plant, bulbs and leaves, Craig made a pesto. Such verdant smells! Such a deep green! He spread the pesto, gleaming like tiny emeralds, over a quickly seared piece of hanger steak.

The hanger, most tender when cooked rare, is a lean muscle. The inner core of the meat is a deep red, the moisture is sealed with a quick sear. I had a hard time at first with the level of rare that hanger is at its best. Then I cooked one to medium and it was so tough that it was difficult to eat. So, I gave the rare another try. The difficult thing about rare meat is that it is very apparent you are eating an animal, a creature. The texture, the obviousness of blood and life, is something to accept.

In the local market for food we know the people who raise the animals we eat. When we get a hanger steak from Sabol at the farmers market, we know the land the animal grazed, the husband and wife team who nurtured and cared for the calf, we know they decided when to "lay the animal down" not based on a market schedule, but an optimal life cycle for the animal and the ecosystem of their "moreganic" farm. When we eat their meat, we acknowledge the animal's life, and we also acknowledge the labor and intelligence of Richard and Sue Sabol. McDonald Farm also has strong, vibrantly healthy meat and the much coveted hanger. We have these farmers to thank for meat that is raised with love and dignity, and respect for the environment.

Wasting nothing does not just mean not throwing things away. Wasting nothing, or wasting little, means eating what your body actually needs, not too much or too little. Everyone knows by now that eating a lot of meat is not a very sustainable way to go. Eating more than you need in order not to throw something away is still waste. Depth of knowledge about a food system helps in thinking about waste.

In lean times it is simple to figure out how little you need to live. In bountiful times it is a privileged meditation to sort out needs and wants and limit waste. It feels like how it is in a relationship: in easy times you can coast, smile and enjoy each other; in hard times you get to know who you really are, what your bottom line is, what you require, what is essential to survive so that when a happy, easy time, like spring, arrives again, you may thrive.

Steak with Ramp Pesto
Clean two bunches of ramps. Thinly slice the white parts. Cut the green parts into thin strips and then finely chop. Add finely chopped parsley to taste. I like slightly more ramps than parsley. Add sea salt and black pepper to taste and a tiny bit of preserved lemon (Canal House recipe) if you like. Chop lemon and blend together in a bowl and add a generous splash of olive oil. Let rest for at least half-hour. Bathe your favorite steak in it! Great with (rare, of course) hanger steak.

Unconditional Love

April 23

The idea of unconditional love has always felt like an ideal not matched by reality. The love from my parents, for example, seemed conditional: if I behaved well I got more love, and if I was troublesome I got less love and more distance. I held out hope that there was some perfect balance between who I was and what they expected which would yield the ultimate prize: unconditional love. To be loved totally, and to know my heart was always safe.

This morning, Craig brought me my tea. A sliver of sun sneaking through the drapes illuminated the milky, pearly surface. I smiled before a single thought of the day arrived, before the list making started, before the girls started grabbing at me. I smiled about the tea, but what was touching me heart and making me smile was the gesture behind the tea.

Craig and I fight and argue and sometimes we do not communicate. We both have whole teams of emotional masons who build stone walls in an instant. The saying about not going to bed mad would never work with us. Our anger is not huge, it does not take up all the room in the house, but it is slow. Sometimes it takes us days or weeks to really move through something difficult together. Especially if it involves one of us acknowledging we are wrong about something. Then it can really take ages. We have found ways of living while in the midst of a hard moment. We still hug and kiss goodbye, we still say "I love you," we still have wonderful suppers together, we still treat each other with kindness.

And that is the tea: kindness. Craig's cup of tea in the morning, and he doesn't even drink tea, is our version of not going to bed mad. We make some small promise to each other over this first exchange of the morning. A promise of civility not born of repressed feelings but born of remembering our love first. And maybe that is unconditional love: in difficult conditions, I still love you.

The Admirable Cabbage, as Salad

April 12

Spring is here and soon we will not be eating so many cabbage salads. From November to April we eat cabbage salad almost every day. In the long Northeastern winter, the local vegetable selection winnows to cabbage, carrots, potatoes and onions. There is no drudgery to the frequency of our cabbage salads, carrot salads, braised carrots or various potato dishes. Their tastes and textures make sense in the cold. At every meal, I admire the cabbage.

Cabbage is such a sturdy, reliable plant, so competent, such a survivor. All qualities that are good to be reminded of when winter feels interminable. Cabbages and carrots (all winter crops, I think) create sugars to prevent them from freezing; getting sweeter helps them survive the cold. I sure don't do that. When I start to feel cold, I get crabby and complain, a lot. But each night when I eat my cabbage and carrots, I think of their survival in this climate and they inspire me.

Now, the growing season is fast arriving. The spring season this year is warm and rainy. With the days warmer, everyone is more relaxed and everything feels easier. No blizzards obscuring the road. No snow to shovel off the drive. No boots to heave, no black ice.

Soon there will be sun gold tomatoes, radicchio, snap peas, strawberries, blueberries, black raspberries, melons, squash blossoms, fresh rabbit and chickens. Soon the sturdy stance of the cabbage will give way to the fleeting, capricious black raspberry. Sweetness will be easy to come by.

When winter comes again, I know I have the lovely, trusty cabbage to look forward to. I will be nourished by her and perhaps too I may become a little sturdier, a little sweeter in the deep, long winter of our home climate.

Cabbage Salad
One cabbage halved, cored and shredded. A handful of parsley roughly chopped, a few stalks and leaves from the heart of a bunch of celery finely diced. Add a diced a shallot. Mix in a bowl. Shower with sea salt. Sansho and/or black pepper to taste. Dress with a squeeze of lemon juice, some chardonnay vinegar and olive oil. Toss and let sit before serving.
Also try: Add grated ginger and nori strips, a wonderful version if you are having rice and fish. Also, sliced scallions instead of shallots for variation.
If your cabbage is a little tough, chewy or pungent, try salting the cabbage heavily after it is shredded. Mix the salt into the cabbage and let sit in a colander for a half hour. Soak in cold water, rinse thoroughly and dry in a clean kitchen towel. Then make salad as above. The texture will be more fresh and crisp with a slightly milder taste.

Date Night

April 5

Tonight it would have been really great for Craig and I to have a date night. For many years we resisted the very notion of date nights. But eventually we got it: if you don't plan the time, it does not just magically appear. We have always been good at supporting each other in going out with a friend, even taking a few days to get away to the city to work, see friends and rest. One of the first times we stepped out of the house together, on a date, and strode out to the car holding hands, the thrill was dizzying.

Sometimes though, getting organized to go on a date does not happen, particularly during seizure periods when schedules scatter like confetti in the wind. So we have a date sub genre: the Home Date aka Having a Nice Dinner at Home Together While the Sitter Wrangles the Kids Date. We are fortunate to have a wonderful babysitter who is a participant in our family, a meaningful companion to the girls, and an incredibly loving, skillful and intuitive person. A couple of times now, after a week of lots of work and seizures when it felt like Craig and I had not communicated about anything but logistics, we had a Home Date. Craig made a nice dinner, we opened a bottle of wine and we just sat and talked.

Alice helped feed the kids, we focused on each other through that. We had a glass of wine while we ate. Alice got the kids in the tub, in their pjs and in bed, We stayed at the table together, savoring our conversation, speaking in complete sentences and actually finishing a thought. We finished our dinner, slowly, had another glass of wine. We relaxed and enjoyed each other like on a real date, only we did not have to drive and could split that final little bit of wine at the end of the bottle. I love the feeling after a second glass of wine. It is warm and diffuse, it relaxes muscles and eases concerns.

I told Craig the next morning that I loved getting out on actual dates, but I really liked Home Dates as well because I always knew the food was going to be amazing. It got me thinking about dates. I think they feel so good because it is a moment of promise to put each other first. In a busy life, with children and their literally constant demands, putting yourself and your loved one first is an incredible statement of purpose. A date says: I love you, and I enjoy you.

Craig made a simple, beautiful meal with an easy clean up for our date: scallops, rice and arugula salad. The arugula was a big thrill, the first bunches to appear at the Farmers' Market this spring. Here is the scallops recipe:

Seared Sea Scallops with Preserved Lemon and Parsley Pesto

For pesto, clean and rinse 1/4 of a preserved lemon (check out the Canal House gals for how to make these amazingly useful delicacies!) Julienne and finely dice. Finely dice about 2 tablespoons or so of parsley. Mix the lemon and parsley, add a dash of sansho pepper, a grind of black pepper and mix in a small bowl with really high grade olive oil.
Cut the green part of a couple of scallions into 2" lengths, split open and julienne. Set aside in cold water.
Rinse scallops and pat dry. Season lightly with french (or other mild) sea salt. Drizzle with olive oil (a cooking grade).
Heat a grill pan over medium high heat. When hot, add scallops. Cook until just done (about 2 minutes per side depending on thickness.) They should be a lovely color with dark grill marks and just warm in the center when cut open.
Arrange cooked scallops on a plate. Put a dab of the pesto in the center of each scallop. Shower with scallions.

Tiny Turnips

March 29

Back in January at the winter (indoor) Farmers Market, Brent and Teresa of Red Tail Farm had the tiniest, greenest little turnips I had ever seen. Brent told us they had sown their hoop house with the Japanese variety, Hakurei. When the starts came in, he went out to thin the rows. He pulled the first one and turning to toss it in to the compost, he decided to see what it tasted like. The tiny white turnip, about half an inch, and tender greens, about four inches long, burst with sweetness. When he told the story at market, his eyes lit up and he pantomimed staggering backwards at the flavor of the tiny turnip, as if the surprise of the sweetness had nearly knocked him off his feet. He harvested them gingerly, bundled them in to fairy sized bunches and brought them to market. I have thought back on this story, recalling the delicious ways we ate them, raw and cooked, and contemplating the heart of the story itself.

Brent and Teresa are farmers. Their land is outside their front door: life and work are one. They are ambitious and deeply educated and always learning. They do all the work; there are no laborers and only the most elemental of industrial tools (tractor, weed whacker.) Their investment is total, their work is their intellect, their hands, their instinct. The story of the tiny Japanese Turnip was told casually, a wonderful fluke; that he happened to taste them and they happened to be amazing. But tasting that turnip at that moment, before tossing, was an act of curiosity, inquiry - what does this tiny plant, the excess of the planting, taste like?

The farmer's attentiveness, the intersection of intellect and instinct, yielded the candy sweet bunches of turnips, which in turn became nutritious meals for others. The intimacy of this interaction, I think, is what has captivated me. To know that a portion of our food, our community's food, is brought to market with this level of care and intelligence brings me a rush of hope for our food system and the survival of botanical diversity. The respect the farmer, our friend, brings his work envelops our work, our cooking for our family. Can a turnip save the world? Perhaps not. But the care and attention around said turnip, that surely can.

BABY JAPANESE TURNIPS TWO WAYS
(regular sized Japanese Turnips can be used, just cut into quarters)

Raw Salad:
a couple bunches of baby Japanese turnips
lemon
sea salt
great olive oil

Rinse the turnips, trim root hairs and carefully half leaving greens attached to root.
Drizzle with lemon juice and and olive oil. Sprinkle a bit of sea salt. Let rest a bit and serve.

Quick Saute
a couple bunches of baby Japanese turnips
2-3 salted anchovies (well rinsed, filleted and chopped)
olive oil
red pepper flakes or a dried red pepper thinly sliced
black pepper

Rinse the turnips, trim root hairs and carefully half, leaving greens attached to root.
Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat and add anchovies. Stir until dissolved. Turn up heat to med-high and toss in turnips and red pepper. Remove from heat when just done, for tiny turnips about a minute, larger turnips two to three minutes. Add a crank of black pepper and serve.

Balthazar

March 22

One of the hardest things for me in parenting Colby is never knowing if an environment is going to be O.K. for her, and there being no ability to reason with, bribe or cajole her. It feels a little trivial, I will confess anyway, but I have missed not being able to take Colby certain places. In particular, Balthazar. Balthazar is gorgeous. One of my earliest experiences of New York City glamour was at age twenty-two, sitting at the bar on a summer evening after a dance class and having a cold beer in an elegant Pilsner glass. I snacked on the olives and thought how I as a little girl would have found the environment exhilarating. And I looked forward to taking my own kids there as an ultra treat from that moment on.

I tried taking Colby once, we were there for about eight minutes. People were nice, trying to help, but she started to cry and wanted out, and there is really no point trying to force a moment like that with her. When Coral had her first croissant at a local coffee shop and loved it, I knew I had my long awaited date for Balthazar, I knew she would love it: she loves croissants, she loves mirrors, she loves fans, she loves nice, pretty ladies and handsome men. Balthazar is a temple to croissants, it is plastered with French bistro mirrors and every member of the waitstaff, in their crisp black and white outfits, are so gorgeous they look like they are playing waiters in a movie.

We were seated at our table, grinning widely, both fully aware that this was a real treat. Coral looked at the fans, above the outstretched spring bouquets of peonies and cherry blossoms and said, "Fans dancing!" while they twirled above us. She ate her croissant exclaiming, "This mine Moma!" and dipping it in her warm milk with honey. It was bliss. It was the sort of moment I remember savoring as a child, having your parents all to yourself, in a special environment, eating a treat.

I thought of it as a treat for Coral, but actually it was a treat for me. To sit with my daughter, just two years old now, with whom I can easily anticipate moods and needs. I can read her and see things coming in a way that I cannot with Colby. Being with Coral is not a comparison between the girls. This moment together was much simpler than that. It was being with a child, my child, and sharing something we both enjoy: a lovely place, a buttery croissant, and each other. It was nothing short of a dream come true.

Nori Eggs and Happiness

March 15

A friend told me she was amazed that she never felt like Colby's life was sad. She said, "For everything Colby goes through, it seems like you make her life a happy one." As we spoke, Colby was recovering from brain surgery, still unable to walk, and deeply affected by the experience. Colby does suffer, her seizures are violent, shocking and exhausting. It is sad that she goes through that, but never have I ventured into thinking her life, or our life with her, was sad. It is possible to contemplate suffering and sadness in terms of things that happen to her; her seizures happen to her. But to say, to feel, that her life is sad, inherently, by definition of the seizures, is impossible. I realized, in turning my friend's comment over in my mind, that to see Colby's life as sad would feel like the ultimate failure.

It is not that I cannot say Colby's life is sad, it is that it is not true. It is not true because we, while she is our girl, in our care, focus on the joy. We celebrate and acknowledge who she is, who Coral is, who they, as sisters, are together. We acknowledge our success as a family in finding moments of happiness and focus in the day.

And all the things that happen to Colby, injuries, seizures, hospitalization, that is just the work. It is hard work managing seizures. It is hard work being in the hospital. It is hard work feeling like there is not enough time for both girls. But our life together is more than work.

The daily, moment to moment, focus is to raise these girls well. To give them the love and support they need to reach their potential. This week, around our table, that means feeding Colby by hand, but waiting for her to gesture when she is ready for another bite. This gives her a sense of participation and control. And for Coral, it means helping her learn to say "Please," and not talk with her mouth full: tiny, important steps in learning to navigate the world more smoothly.

Colby smiled as she ate her Nori Egg omelette this morning, Coral was saying, "Please, more Dada," their cheeks were still warm, flushed from sleep. We were present, in the moment, our joy was quiet and sturdy.

Nori Eggs
Using scissors, cut half a sheet of nori in into thin strips about 1/16" wide and an inch long. Put the strips in a small bowl, add sansho pepper to taste and douse in regular soy sauce or usukuchi (light soy sauce). Set aside.
In a bowl beat 2 eggs (the more free range, the better!) 
Heat a small cast iron skillet on medium-low heat. Add a splash of olive oil. When the oil shimmers pour in the eggs. Add a grind or two of black pepper. Cook as you would for an omelet. When the egg begins to set, lay a thick line of the marinated nori along the center of the eggs. Roll the egg over the nori mixture. Remove from pan and drizzle remaining soy/sansho mixture over the top.