pesto_FeedMeDearly

Rodney and I got engaged the Spring before we started business school and the time seemed ripe for a trip. With a small window between work and the start of school, we decided to pack up our bags and head to Europe. We spoiled ourselves by starting our trip in Spain, hitting Barcelona first, and then making a short stopover on the islands of Mallorca and Ibiza. We got into the usual kind of trouble over there, riding scooters on highways and staying up until dawn. I’m still thankful that we survived those few days, even if my camera didn’t.

From Barcelona, we traveled by overnight bus to France, where we met my parents who were living in Nice for a month. This all sounds very Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous, and I promise you that it’s not. This was the one time when the stars aligned and multiple family members somehow ended up on the same trip of a lifetime in the same area, at the same time. This will never happen again. Or maybe it will if we actually do become rich and famous.

To celebrate our pre-dawn arrival, my step-dad met us at the bus stop and hustled us back to their apartment where we were met with an impressive spread of French cheese, salami and duck terrine.

As you can imagine, we ate like gluttons; so much so, that Rodney and I made ourselves sick and had to spend the next day in bed suffering from severe gastrointestinal distress. Too much raw milk cheese isn’t always a good thing.

Fortunately, after our week of binge eating in France, we were on our way to the Liguria region in Italy. Our plan was to hike through Cinque Terre and get healthy again with a mix of salads, fish, and lotsa lotsa pesto.

If you’re a fan of pesto, there is no better place to eat this stuff than in Liguria. Pesto is religion here, with shriveled old Nonnas duking it out for bragging rights over who makes the best version.

With our bellies full of pesto, we headed south to Amalfi. Like our experience in Mexico, we didn’t know where we’d be staying, but hoped for the best, and ended up finding a gem of an apartment with a roof deck facing the Mediterrean. Our place was and run by a mother/son duo, both of whom loved gelato and neither of whom spoke a lick of English.

As you would expect, they grew basil on their doorstep. More pots than I could count, so heisting a few leaves here and there was a no brainer. 

We split our roof deck with another apartment, and thus found ourselves sharing dinners and conversation with an Australian couple who were visiting from the city of Adelaide.

“I dated a guy from Adelaide, he’s an actor, I met him on my study abroad in Sydney” I once mentioned. “Name is Damon Gameau.”

As luck would have it, their daughter was at a party with Damon when her parents called to check in. As heard from our side of the phone “Lovely time in Italy, beautiful villa in Amalfi, staying next to a gal who said she dated an actor from Adelaide. Yes, his name’s Damon Gameau. Oh you’re at a party with him! Well tell him that we’re with Jessica! His old girlfriend from Sydney.”

There was a lot of “what a coeencidence Muriel” kind of stuff before the daughter said “hold on Mum, I’ll go and tell Damon”.

A minute passed, and the daughter came back on the phone to report that Damon had never heard of me.

I don’t know how you can forget a girlfriend of 6 months, but apparently it can be done. We went on a mini vacation together. He introduced me to homemade carbonara and Tim Tams. We used to drink white wine in our cramped garden in Coogee Beach. We were in a house fire together. How can one forget these things?

So I dusted off my pride, and focused on the pesto. Because, what’s more important in life, amnesic ex-boyfriends who didn’t use enough shampoo…or pesto?

Exactly.

And here’s a little secret that I’ve learned in the past year or two: pesto can be made with just about any green. And basil, though I love it, needs to be treated with care or it can turn dark.

So my favorites lately have been of the more….exotic variety. Arugula pesto, carrot top pesto, radish green pesto, kale pesto. Name the green, you can make it into pesto.

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My go-to combo is usually garlic, olive oil, parmesan cheese, and pine nuts, but I’ve discovered recently that pumpkin seeds make a fine substitute for nuts for our nut-allergic friends (our daughter included).

You don’t even need a recipe for pesto, although I’ve provided one below – just blitz the garlic in a food processor, add everything but the olive oil and pulse to a paste, and while the motor is running, add enough oil until you hear it slushing around loosely. Season to taste.

So whether you’ve signed up for a CSA and are preparing to get overwhelmed with greens this summer, or you (like me) can’t bear to throw away the beautiful vegetable tops that so often become compost or trash, I hope that this gives you some inspiration to get your pesto on. Enjoy!

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Kumquats

Like my kids, I’m a relative newcomer to kumquats. I’ve often seen them in grocery stores, but it wasn’t until recently that I took the plunge and bought my first container. They’re not the most intuitive fruit to eat and prepare. Their bitter shell, although edible, is extremely tart, and the inside of the fruit is packed with seeds. But if you’re not game for eating them raw, they’re delicious candied in simple syrup, which has all kinds of fun applications (you can read more about those ideas here). Not surprisingly, the kids weren’t into them. But sometimes it’s fun to experience new flavors and textures together, even if you know what the end result will be.

ME: Ok, guys.  What are these things?

LAUREN: Orange cherry tomatoes.

ME: Good guess. What do you think, Sam?

SAM: Tomatoes.

EMMA: Potatoes.

ME: These are not tomatoes. They’re not potatoes.  These are called kumquats.

SAM: Kumquats?!

LAUREN: Kumquats.

ME: What do you think Emma?

EMMA: Salty.

SAM: You just eat it like that (with the skin on)?

ME: Yeah.

LAUREN: You even eat the skins?!

ME: Yeah.

LAUREN: It tastes like a sour orange.

ME: It does taste like a sour orange.

ME: Sam, did you try it?

LAUREN: Sweet bologna.
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highway_FeedMeDearly
Providence has a certain industrial beauty that gets me every time…

I’m going to tell you something that will aggravate you tremendously.

Then I’ll tell you a story that may cause you to reach through your screen, snuggle me close to your breast and tell me that these things happen to everyone, one day I’ll laugh about it.

First, the dagger throwing comment: I was one of those fortunate people who was blessed with acne-free skin. There has never been a period – high school, pregnancy, stressed out work situations – when I’ve gotten a pimple. It’s really nothing to brag about since I suffer from sub-Saharan level dry skin which comes with its own challenges. The silver lining though is that despite the occasional dry patch, skin blemishes have eluded me almost completely. So there you go, I hope your blades aren’t too sharp.

Now, before you throw them, hear me out on the rest of my story.

I traveled to Providence over the Memorial Day weekend to attend my 15-year reunion at Brown, and a few days beforehand, the spot directly underneath my nose became sore. “Strange, what is this thing?” I asked myself and willed it to heal with a combination of Cosmos-directed prayer and some cleansing turmeric tonic. Sensing a zit that was attached directly to my brain stem, I may have also used a few other techniques including toothpaste, baking soda paste, rubbing alcohol and raw cider vinegar.

Despite my efforts, the Cosmos didn’t hear my prayers, the baking soda was completely ineffective, and I woke up the next day to a spot that had doubled in size, developing a large white head. It seemed to mock me. I could practically see its little arms waving at me, telling me that it was likewise looking forward to seeing everyone at our reunion in a few days.

I searched for YouTube videos that would give me the desperately-needed advice to shorten my new friend’s lifespan. I also started to lurk on group boards where teens with cystic acne commiserated about their plight in life. The most common advice I came across was to do nothing – “don’t pop that sucker” they warned. It will lead to infection and scarring and a host of other tragedies.

So I left it, confident that in 3 days, the whitehead would get reabsorbed into my body and swallowed by a colony of white blood cells.

That evening Rodney came home from work and I put on my Wolf Blitzer hat, relaying the situation, and asking smart, probing questions about where it might have come from and how to best remove it. He agreed that things were looking desperate and told me to pop it.

Damn, now I was second guessing my strategy. Back to YouTube, where Dr. Oz told me that if I MUST pop it, at least use a sterilized pin. He then walked me through a technique too graphic to mention on a food blog. My kids, who were watching the clip over my shoulder, reacted with the kind of horror normally reserved for cicada invasions.

Out came the pin (which, of course, I did behind closed doors).

Long story short, just like the acne boards warned, I woke up on Thursday morning to see something under my nose that looked like a moldy pomegranate seed. It was angry and red with flabby skin surrounding a hard yellow seed. As a test case, I tried covering it with Bacitracin and concealer. Which just looked like a pomegranate seed covered with face paint.

I could only imagine my reunion conversations. “Oh, so wonderful to see you! Wow, you haven’t changed one bit!”

At this point, I was wondering whether I should cancel my reunion plans altogether, or if 24 hours was enough time to arrange for a cosmetic skin graft.

I emailed Rodney in one last plea for mercy.

“Questioning the reunion at this point.”

His response was that it wasn’t that noticeable…”and you have another full 48 hours until Sat morning when daylight is up on that piece.”

Having not seen “that piece” since he’d told me to pop it, I sent him a picture, subject line “You liiike your wiiife” (channel your inner Borat).

He did not.

At this point we both decided that my Friday night eveningwear for Campus Dance should be one of the following:

FridayNight

The obvious choice being Cara Delevingne in that sassy football outfit. I would probably wear that regularly if I looked like her and had a wardrobe full of football apparel.

I decided to go, independent of where my face would take me on Friday morning. And by some miracle (maybe the Cosmos were listening), it healed just enough overnight for me to look like a version of my former self.

And wouldn’t you know that all of that stress and self-pity became pointless when I drank a little too much red wine at dinner and passed around the picture that I’d sent Rodney. “Two days ago!” I hollered to my friends at the other end of our steakhouse banquet table.

Not my finest hour. Or the most mature…About as mature as strapping bottles of Gin & Jack to my shins with medical tape to avoid detection at our reunion event.

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But I think that’s what college reunions are for, am I right? To leave the kids at home, let your behavior regress a little, and slosh around the old stomping grounds with good friends?

This place brings back so many fond memories, one of the defining experiences in my life. A few images that I took from my visit back to campus….

The Van Wickle gates
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One of the inconveniences of a New York City apartment is the noise.

Say, for instance, you live on the North side of the street, with your window facing an apartment complex that’s filled with 23-year olds, fresh out of college, living the dream.

Say there’s a courtyard separating both buildings, and that like all people in their early 20s, these young adults like to party.

Say these parties happen in the teensy gardens of their ground floor apartments, and that they happen from the hours of 11PM until 1AM, sometimes later.

It’s annoying, but that’s what headphones are for.

Come 9:30PM or 10PM each night, after reading a chapter or two of my latest book, I retrieve an eye mask from my nightstand, switch my phone to airplane mode, and turn on the soothing sounds of ocean waves.

Rodney, on the other hand, chooses to go naked. Ear naked, not naked naked.

It’s smooth sailing on most nights. But on the evenings when the weather’s warm, the stars are shining, and the 20 somethings are in the mood to knock back some craft beers with their 50 closest friends, we’re in deep.

We had one of those nights recently.

Rodney, at 10PM interrupted me as the ocean waves were kicking in.

“I need your help, it’s getting loud outside. It’s a 2-man job. You need to hold the window screen open while I throw the water. That way I’ll have time to duck back inside without them noticing where it came from.”

Raising my contoured floral eye mask, I asked the obvious. “What are you 90?”

His response seemed to indicate that he is, in fact, 90. “I’m thinking one of those big buckets – the ones that hold a lot of volume. You just lift and I’ll spray. I really need Chris right now.” Chris being our friend in the building who hates the noise as much as Rodney. “Chris would help me throw eggs at them.”

What I wanted to tell my husband is that a chicken somewhere in Upstate New York didn’t give birth to big, beautiful blue-shelled eggs with golden yolks, so that they could end up in a shattered mess, drying against a pair of J Brands.

The only job required of these eggs is to allow me to purchase them at the farmers’ market for whatever full price the farmer is charging, carry them home gingerly in a burlap sac, and make them into breakfast.

Although I didn’t tell him that, I did tell him to knock it off and go to sleep.

But here, I must confess to an even worse egg crime: until this year, I didn’t know how properly cook an egg.

And I’m guessing that many of you are in the same boat. We have a general sense for how to cook eggs, but there’s room for improvement. Even restaurant chefs don’t always get it right. Ask Thomas Keller, who has claimed for years that the real test of a chef isn’t his or her ability to put together an elaborate dish; rather, it’s how you treat something humble, like an egg.

So, to prevent any ongoing egg shame, and the destruction of these gorgeous farm stand eggs, I thought I’d share a few tricks that I’ve learned along the way. I will fully admit that if I were to draw an egg continuum, I’d place myself here:

Total Disaster –––––––X––– Total Master

But still above average with some hard-won wisdom to share, so here we go:

Soft boiled eggs:

Soft boiled eggs were a mystery to me until I learned about the perfect 6-minute egg. My previous technique was a common one that you’ll find online; start the eggs in cold water, bring them to a boil, turn off the heat, and let them sit in the water, covered for 10 minutes. At which point I’d dunk them into ice water, and attempt to peel their shells, which generally removed half of the white in ragged chunks.

This technique has never worked for me. I don’t care what all of the online sources
say about not letting your eggs bounce around in the boiling water. I’d rather have an egg that I can peel properly than one whose white has not been “traumatized” by boiling water. And yes, I’ve tried the peeling tricks- the spoon, the Tim Ferris technique, which I talked about in this post; I even once bought something called The Eggstractor, which I saw on an infomercial. I learned a valuable lesson that with the exception of Snuggies, one should never buy anything from an infomercial.

If you haven’t been doing this to date, and want to achieve the creamy consistency of that perfect ramen egg, try this method – it’s the only thing I’ve found to work.

The technique: Bring your eggs to room temp (about half an hour outside of the fridge before you cook them). Bring your water to a boil, drop the eggs in, and set your timer for 6 minutes. After 6 minutes, scoop them out with a strainer, run for a few seconds under cold water, and peel. Boom, perfect egg.

For some reason, (and I’m guessing here) but the agitation in the boiling water seems to crack the shell ever so slightly, which allows the shell to separate from the egg white, making it far easier to peel. And 6 minutes is the lucky number. I’ve never once had it fail.

Want a firmer egg? Check out how much time is needed for each of the following yolk centers…

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Fried eggs:

Over the years, I’ve become much more adept at flipping over easy eggs without breaking the yolks. But even when done correctly, the yolk is always cooked a little more than I’d like it to be. And sunny side up eggs have too much uncooked white on top for my taste.

Although this is by no means revolutionary, the perfect solution came to me years after I’d started to cook. I discovered it while eating some restaurant corned beef & hash with a perfect egg on top and I had to smack myself in the head for not thinking of it. Fried eggs, with a perfectly (slightly) cooked top, and a runny center.

The technique: Add some butter to a pan on medium heat. Crack two eggs into the pan, and at the point where you would normally flip the eggs, simply cover the pan with a lid so that the top of the eggs firm up ever so slightly.

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green leaf lettuce

If last week’s fava beans were a disappointment, we found redemption in a head of green leaf lettuce. Sometimes you don’t need to smell, feel, and talk about a vegetable to make it appealing. Sometimes it’s so wonderful that your kid just shoves it in his mouth without asking questions. Sometimes…..sometimes you just get lucky.

ME: Ok.  Our first mystery food is…

LAUREN: Broccoli?

ME: Nope.  What is this called?

SAM: Salads?

LAUREN: I think I tried it before.

SAM: Salads.

EMMA: Salads.

LAUREN: Wheat… wheat… wheat.

SAM: Salads.  Greens.

ME: It’s called green leaf lettuce.

LAUREN: Oh, I have tried this before.

ME: Yeah?  Ok.  Wow, Sam just shoved it in his mouth! Sam didn’t even smell it or anything he just shoved the whole thing in his mouth.

EMMA: It smells like peanut butter.

LAUREN:  I love this.

ME: Ok.  Sam, you just ate the whole thing, so tell me what did you think?  Did you like it?

SAM:  I love it, not like it.
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