Oven fries

Oven fried potatoes always sound so good. They are a healthier alternative to french fries. They are crispy and just a little bit salty, cooking quickly in a hot oven.

They are a perfect side dish, unless they are mushy, oily, undercooked, and limp. Unfortunately, most of our multiple previous attempts to make oven fries resulted in the latter set of adjectives.

That is, until now:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/health/nutrition/17recipehealth.html?em

These were incredible, and incredibly easy. The secret is in preheating the pan. We used standard Romanian potatoes, (they don't really have many varieties here, at the market your choices are "large" or "small") but next time I think I will try just sweet potatoes.

(Recipe #12)

Silence

It is the extraordinarily late hour of 9:30 pm on a Saturday night. Both of the girls are asleep and I am sneaking a small glass of port wine--and hoping that Babycakes does not want to wake up and nurse in the next 30 minutes. (If she does, I guess we will both sleep well tonight!)

Today was an ordinary Saturday, which meant coffee cake for breakfast, buying fruits and vegetables at the market, foodstuffs at the grocery store, lunch, naptime for the wee ones as well as my husband, Starbucks, getting ready to go to church, church, and recovering from church.

Church. I suppose you could say that going to church is my current cross to bear (that is, if you like really terrible puns). We are attending to the English language mass now because it is marginally more child friendly. But oh is it at a really special time. 6 pm. Right when Bee would be contemplating her dinner and then bedtime. So we are feeding her a hearty snack beforehand and bracing for meltdown when we get home.

I have unfortunately discovered that I am more likely to melt down than Bee. I don't know what was more stressful: listening to my baby daughter howling over the first and second readings while having her diaper changed in the drafty church entryway (fortunately my husband has nerves of steel and can handle this type of drama) or Bee going off to Sunday school for the first time by herself. She nonchalantly took the teacher's hand and marched out of the building, deserting her quavering Momma without a backward glance.

Church progressed in its usual fashion. More shrieks from Baby, nursing in public (I hope God didn't mind), Bee returned from Sunday school unscathed. We made it all the way to the end of the service and then it was time for Adoration of the Eucharist.

Extra adoration would never fly in an American church. Parishioners want their service to last no longer than one hour, and are many are already filtering quietly out the back door after receiving communion. As part of Lent, our priest has decided that it would be a good idea for the whole congregation to take a few minutes to pray and reflect at the end of the service.

You know, it was a surprisingly good idea. Staring up at the gold monstrance with its humble piece of bread, I found my sliver of peace in the momentary silence. It was my chance to "Be still and know that I am God" (Psalm 46). I was still. I focused on God.

I think I need to do that more often.

Good eats

My dear husband has enthusiastically embraced our 50 recipes challenge and so, with his help, I have tried four more things in as many days. We have been leafing through our cookbook collection, skipping over our "tried and true favorites" for something just a little different.

I have also continued to delve into "The Bread Baker's Apprentice," holding the cookbook at arm's length due to my continued love/fear of yeast baking. I love to bake. I can bake bread! However, I still find it exceedingly stressful. Part of this is due to the sheer insanity of baking bread from scratch with two little ones around the house. Is it time to shape the loaves? Oh no, it's time to leave them trembling on the counter while I feed the baby.

It doesn't help matters any that Peter Reinhart's baking instructions are extraordinarily fussy. I just keep telling myself that women have baked bread for thousands of years without a spray bottle and three pages of prose. I would like to suggest renaming his book the Bread Baker's Indentured Servant. While the easy solution would be to just shelve the book indefinitely, I cannot escape my servitude. Quite simply, his recipes are a revelation.

For example, pizza:
While it may look like a hot mess, you have no idea how delicious this pizza tasted. Oh, the crust! I will contain myself. I will not wax eloquently about pizza dough because that's embarassing. But really, it has surplanted all other pizza dough recipes in our house. And if you know us, you know we are pizza fanatics. This is one of Reinhart's easier recipes. You mix it up the day before, knead it some, stick the dough in the fridge until the next day. Nothing happens. Then you take it out and it sits on the counter for a few hours before you shape the pizza. Nothing else happens. No rising or bubbling. No telltale signs of yeasty wonderfulness. My husband was convinced the dough was dead until the pizza came out of the oven. But then we tasted it and it was heavenly.

Speaking of other celestial gifts, we also made banana bread:
Did you know that Americans eat more bananas than any other fruit? I believe it. And only Americans could have come up with something so sinfully delicious as banana bread. I found a one bowl recipe on simply recipes and threw in two big handfuls of chocolate chips and chopped walnuts. And let me tell you, that was a very, very, good idea.

And then on Monday we made pasta with tomatoes, cauliflower, and red peppers from our Jeanne Lemlin cookbook collection. I won't say much about it except that I was surprised that cauliflower goes so well with pasta. We are making the most of the limited in season offerings at the market. ( I also have a lovely cabbage and some potatoes in my fridge.) Thank goodness next month the spinach comes in.

Finally, I completely lost my mind and decided to make Vienna bread from "Bread Baker's Apprentice." Anadama loaf was one of the first recipes; Vienna bread was one of the last. This bread requires a pre-ferment. You make dough the day before and then add it to your recipe the next day. I made one loaf and six knotted rolls. I couldn't wait until dinner tonight and just polished off a big hunk of what you see in the foreground of the below photo. It was my best bread yet.


So yeah, yum. Hopefully more to come.

Recipes (#8-11)

3/4 time

I have been thinking a lot about time lately:

I don't know how it came up in conversation, but my husband happened to mention that when he was a child, his father was responsible for taking him and his two sisters to the grocery store on Saturday mornings. Their absence from the house gave my future mother in law a chance to clean, vacuum, and do whatever else she needed to do. A wonderfully noble gesture, in my opinion.

The part that shocked me was that my husband said that this grocery shopping expedition took three hours. Three hours to take three children to a Safeway located less than a mile from his house! I exclaimed that there was no possible way a simple grocery shopping trip could last three hours. I smugly informed him that time for children generally seems to move slower than for adults and surely he misremembered.

The conversation ended and I thought no more of it until I happened to glance at the clock on our way home from the grocery store today. Our trip to the fruit and vegetable market and grocery store had taken over two hours. Both of which are located within a mile of my house. All we did was attempt to shop for food with two small children. Now, I must eat my words.

I have had to carefully consider time when crafting a stay at home routine for myself and the girls. When at home with two small children, there is no need to rush. Three year olds and newborns cannot be hurried, so why try? (The only thing that can get Bee to do anything even a fraction more quickly than her own predetermined speed is bribery. I try not to resort to it too often. You know, no more than once per hour.) When at work, my day was tightly structured, beginning with my morning tea and greeting my colleagues, checking emails, and then on to business as usual.

I have found that staying home full time (even if for a short time) requires, at least for me, the same sort of routine. At first, I worried that not working would leave me feeling bored and unessential, now I fear I will like this routine more than going to work. So we are running errands in the morning, snuggling and reading stories after nap time, and making a habit of going to the playground. All done very slowly. Three quarters time.

I am learning that time is both ephemeral and endless. The period between 5pm and when my husband arrives home from work, for example, is nearly endless. The first three years of Miss Bee's life, however? Mere seconds. At Christmas, Bee's godfather told me, in a voice full of emotion, "Don't blink. Your children will grow up so quickly. Blink and you'll miss it all." I am doing my best to take his advice and savor these moments.

Full Bellies

So right now I should really be looking for a recipe to fulfill my craving for chocolate chip walnut banana bread, but I wanted to catch up on two recipes I made this week that were both very satisfying, in two different ways.

Anadama bread: I am slowly but surely overcoming my fear of "The Bread Baker's Apprentice." I mistakenly thought that the breads were organized in order of difficulty, and since Anadama was first, I thought, how hard could it be? (In fact, the author organizes his breads alphabetically. Whoops.)
It wasn't hard, but it wasn't so easy either: a two day process that started with fermenting the cornmeal for 24 hours. The next day, lots of proofing ensued, and the end result was an enriched sandwich bread that tasted somewhat like whole wheat. A lot of work for something I could buy at Harris Teeter. But oh, I am not in the United States where grocery stores are plentiful, and these loaves have grown on me since. They make soft and satisfying peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, are the perfect accompaniment to soup (see below) and spectacular cinnamon french toast.

Split pea soup (vegetarian): I have only had split pea soup one other time in my life. I vaguely remember trying a bowl at my grandmother's house. Hers included ham. This did not. There are a couple interesting things about split pea soup. First, it has a spatter distance of approximately one meter. Second, it completely covered the inside and outside of my soup pot, a feat not replicated by any other dish I have ever made. Finally, it is thick. . . as pea soup. Go figure. However, the good thing about pea soup is that it requires no time consuming vegetable stock, makes enough leftovers for the next day, and is very tasty.

(Recipes #6 & #7)

Dandelion

Let's talk about Baby N and her hair: She has inherited my husband's exact hairline, from the tapering in the front to the unmanageable cowlick in the back. Her hair stands straight up. It's gravity defying. (And now I know why my husband cuts his hair so short.)

Because of Baby's striking coiffure, especially when freshly washed, she bears a certain resemblance to one of the world's last living dictators. And that is one unfortunate nickname that I am doing my best to stop using. Because while it's funny now, I don't want my 13 year old saying, "Mom, I can't believe you used to call me Kim Jong-il!" Fortunately, my little daughter has caught on to smiling, and, as we all know, dictators don't smile. So she's just my fluffy-headed little peanut. Not the Dear Leader.

The other thing I was thinking about, probably around the fifth time I was attempting to put Baby to bed for the night: there is something about the way babies smell, especially on the top of their head and in their hair, that makes it impossible for their mothers to get mad at them. It's probably a self preservation mechanism that has evolved throughout the ages. Whatever it is, it's a mama drug. A drug to which I am gladly addicted.

Recipe Resolution 2010

One of my resolutions this year was to try new recipes. Initially my plan was to try something new every week, but since it's already February, my goal will be to try 50 new recipes in 2010. If you want to read about someone who is doing a better job at fulfilling a similar resolution, check out my doppelganger at A Postcard From. We both fulfilled our resolutions of reading 50 books in 2009 and have since moved on to eating. I am not sure which is more enjoyable, eating or reading, but eating and reading, at the same time, is one of my absolute favorite things to do.

Despite my love of good food, I think too often my family gets stuck in a repetitive dinner rut (spaghetti-peas n' garlic bread anyone?). We mostly cook vegetarian meals, and alternate between Italian (pizza! pasta!) and Mexican (beans, beans, beans!). The problem with this is that by eschewing meat as a main course I feel like we are becoming cheese-atarians. Which, while tasty, is probably not the healthiest way to raise a child. I'm all for cheese and butter and cupcakes too, more on that in a moment, but the idea of vegetarianism is to eat, well, more vegetables. So it's time for some new recipes in our lives. We will defy the quesadilla (or at least find some new veggie/cheese combinations) and embrace variety!

Defying the above principle, we started our quest with Jeanne Lemlin's spaghettini with blue cheese. This was a quick meal: cook pasta, mix some chopped fresh parsley with 1/4 cup olive oil. Toss in the pasta and crumble a few ounces of blue cheese on top. I would recommend it for a quick lunch. It's not the sort of thing you would serve when company is coming for dinner.

For Valentine's Day I decided to try two recipes from one of my favorite food blogs, Smitten Kitchen. "We" (probably not the best choice of subject since my husband really did 90% of the cooking) made her chana masala and indian spiced potatoes and cauliflower. We added in Mark Bittman's recipe for flatbread and had a feast. It was healthy, (except for the fried bread), delicious, and best of all, made so much that we have a whole other meal tonight. And maybe lunch tomorrow.

But let's talk about the cupcakes. I wanted to make something decadent for Valentine's Day so I decided on yellow cupcakes with fudge frosting. Technically, I have made these before, but never with so much butter and so many eggs. I found the recipe on Joy of Baking. Between our overly ambitious dinner plans, cleaning up, and caring for two small children, the cupcakes weren't finished until 9:30 pm. My husband ate them sitting on the couch, half asleep, while trying to convince Baby N it was time for bed and trying to figure out how one actually wins a biathlon (I love the Olympics and all its obscure sports). They were so delicious I had to eat two of them. The best part? My addition of lots of Guittard chocolate sprinkles.

So, ladies and gentlemen, if you were counting, that's five recipes right there. Now, if you'll excuse me, I really need to go eat something.

I hope its melted by now ...

My backyard in Virginia after the blizzard.

She'll really miss this in Romania:

My husband has been overruling my "no TV for tots" mantra and letting Bee watch Sesame Street a few mornings a week. And now that we've caved, I must admit, I'll miss that free hour too.

Home, by the numbers, in no particular order

A few highlights:

3 months in the US
8 trips to the mall
6 maximum hours of sleep per night
4 cheese steaks from Jerry's
3 pints of Ben & Jerry's ice cream
(maybe it is something about Jerry)
10 pounds left to lose (see above)
8 pieces of luggage packed and ready to go
(tomorrow? i hope so)
2 beautiful daughters
1 tired husband

Innumerable: Starbucks chai lattes, snowflakes, loads of laundry, delicious family dinners, more snowflakes, diaper changes, Christmas presents & wonderful memories

Inspiration for this post

S'no-w Joke

On Sunday, still digging out from "Snowpocalypse," we saw the forecast for today and preemptively changed our flights to Thursday. And it was a good thing too. Today's evening flights out of Dulles airport were canceled.

So--I should be flying to Romania right now but instead I am happily ensconced in my bedroom. Instead of sitting in an airport terminal I am watching American Idol. Bee is asleep and so is Babycakes--hubby is downstairs ironing (!!) and snow is just pouring out of the sky like laundry detergent from a box.

I really am not entirely sure our flight on Thursday won't be canceled as well. The weatherman is predicting blizzard conditions tomorrow. That's just fine by me. I am in no real hurry to return. Just need to make sure that my husband can be back at work next Tuesday.

Blizzard of 2010

Snowed in at our house--hot oatmeal for breakfast--making Valentines--my husband out shoveling with all the neighbors--cocoa with extra marshmallows.


We aren't going anywhere--extra cuddles with the girls--stacks of library books and magazines to read--pizza dough rising for dinner.


Power lines pulled precariously low--here's hoping the lights stay on.


Love. Home.

Embarrassment of riches

Oh I am really really really (maybe I should capitalize REALLY, in case I am not coming across clearly enough) going to miss my library. My library is three blocks away from my new house and filled with wondrous books. Everyone should have a library within walking distance. I am certain that walking distance libraries are an amenity in heaven.

Because of my library's close proximity I have been a regular reading fool and have three more books to review before I head back to Romania.

"The Year of Magical Thinking," by Joan Didion: I have never been a fan of Ms. Didion, but I challenge you to read this memoir and not be moved. She writes of a year of loss with such clarity, yet also manages to convey the utter confusion and devastation brought on by losing her spouse. The book was all about death, but it somehow wasn't depressing.

"South of Broad," by Pat Conroy: Not his best, but surely entertaining. I'll read anything Pat Conroy writes. He is one of America's greatest novelists and brings the South to life like no one else.

"The Wildwater Walking Club," by Claire Cook: Yes, this book was as stupid as it sounds, but it did inspire me to buy a pedometer.

Kicking and screaming

Less than a week until we go back to Romania, which would really be just fine if it were not for the fact that we have to fly about a dozen hours to get there. With a three year old and an 8 week old. Oh, the lugging of luggage! Oh the sardines in a can feeling of togetherness! Oh the potential for screaming! Thinking of flying back just fills me with yuck.

So I am half in denial and half frantic to shop at all my favorite stores and eat all my favorite foods before we return to Eastern Europe. I was at two bookstores today buying books for Bee, which is ridiculous, considering we have a small library of them in our apartment. And don't get me started on the quantity of art supplies I have purchased. If anything, going back to Romania will give my Amex card a break.

There is less to do in Bucharest (by that I mean less places to take two small children), but that will allow me to focus on my family. I am determined to make these upcoming three months at home with my girls enjoyable and memorable. Bake bread. Play dolls. I am looking forward to life in the slow lane.