inspired salad

The following article first appeared in the Daily News Record on June 20, 2012.

*** 

Last week I got an email from my pastor.

“I’m just now eating something so delicious that I had to tell someone,” she wrote. “Who would that be? Well, someone who loves food enough to write about it.” 

And then she proceeded to tell me all about her lunch.

She had noticed her cilantro was going to seed, so she’d harvested it all in one fell swoop and then had to figure out what to do with it.

“I had earlier pulled four pink beets—how can they be so huge already?—and set them to boiling in their skins,” she wrote. “Ultimately, I minced the cilantro, diced the cooled beets, and dressed the salad with olive oil, lime juice and a dash of salt. That’s it, but wow! It’s good two days later and looks pretty to boot.”

My pastor doesn’t usually tell me about her lunches. In fact, I think this may have been the first time. So I did the only logical thing I could do in such a situation. I walked over to the fridge where my grocery list resides and scrawled “cilantro” and “beets.”

Two days later, I went to the farmer’s market and bought some striped beets and a big bunch of cilantro. Back home, I called my pastor at the office (interrupting her sermon writing, no doubt)  to double check on the proportions. However, it wasn’t until the following Monday morning that I actually got around to making the salad.

And then I devoured the whole entire thing right then and there. It wasn’t even lunchtime yet.

I didn’t intend to consume the salad all in one go. I had planned to make it, taste it, and then save it for later. But once I started eating the sweet, juicy beets and pungent, earthy greens, I couldn’t stop. I shoveled it into my mouth via the serving spoon, in great enormous heaps.

The initial feeding frenzy over, I started experimenting with what was left. I added some cooked quinoa that was hanging out in the fridge, and then I tumbled in some crumbled feta cheese. Both additions were lovely, and before I knew it, I had sampled the salad into oblivion.

There’s a moral to the story, of course, and it’s this: if your pastor emails you a recipe, make it. It’s probably inspired.

Cilantro Beet Salad
Inspired by my pastor, Jennifer Davis Sensenig

This is more a formula than a recipe. It seems like a crazy amount of cilantro, and it is, but it’s all good. Trust me.

1 cup roasted (or boiled) beets, cooled and diced
½ to 1 cup chopped cilantro, stems and leaves
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt and black pepper to taste
cooked quinoa, optional
feta cheese, optional

Toss together and taste to correct seasonings.

How to Roast Beets
Trim off the stems and leaves. Scrub the beets. Put the whole beets in a baking dish and drizzle with olive oil. Cover the pan tightly with aluminum foil and bake for 60-90 minutes or until the beets are fork tender. Cool slightly before peeling. Eat warm, with butter and salt, or refrigerate for later use.

How to Cook Quinoa
Cover 1 cup of quinoa with hot (not boiling) water and let soak for 5 minutes. Rinse and drain the quinoa several times. Both the hot soak and the rinsing help to reduce the bitterness.

Put the quinoa in a saucepan and add 1 ½ (scant) cups of water or chicken broth. Simmer, uncovered, for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until all the liquid has been absorbed and the grains are tender.

sweet and tender, toasted

The following article first appeared in the Daily News Record on June 6, 2012.

*** 

Little footsteps pitter-patted down the hall. A tray clattered. I lifted my head just enough to see who was bold enough to wake me. It was my little boy bearing two pieces of toasted, heavily buttered, store-bought bread and two grease-smeared glasses of water.

I glanced at the clock. It was 7:01, the latest I had slept in three weeks. I moaned weakly and scrunched further down into the pillows. My head was splitting, my whole body nearly sick with exhaustion. At that moment, my day—nay, my life—seemed insurmountable. I wanted to cry and scream and break glass, but I was too tired.

Despite my righteous indignation, I was acutely aware of my boy’s golden sweetness as he bustled about, arranging the tray on the night stand. Scrambling up on the bed beside me, he chirruped, “There was a baby bird in the driveway, Mama. It was trying to walk!”

For the last several weeks, thanks to the community play I was involved in, I had not been around to help give baths, read stories, and do bedtime tuck-ins and kisses. I was home during the days, true, but I was distracted. My little boy missed me. I could hardly fault him for that.

The unappetizing breakfast wasn’t his problem, either. I had all but ceased to cook, and bread baking was one of the first things to go. It was much easier to pop a loaf of sliced air into a shopping cart than to deal with bowls, flour, and a hot oven.

I had, one day, in a valiant effort to be nurturing, tried to make some oatmeal bread—a treat in our house. Fresh from the oven and slathered with butter and jelly, it’s swoon-worthy. It’s sweet and tender, almost dessert-like, and makes excellent toast.

The golden, high-domed loaves had been a peace offering, of sorts, compensation for all the skimpy meals we’d been having. Tragically, they were underbaked, one more casualty of my fuzzy-headed stupor. We devoured the hacked-off crusts before tossing the doughy insides to the chickens.

doughy remains

That morning when my sleep was cut short much too soon, I did eventually get a handle on my roiling emotions and eat my greasy piece of tasteless toast. After swallowing the last bite, I finally turned to my little boy who was hovering close by, watching and waiting.

“Thank you,” I said. And I meant it.

Oatmeal Bread
Adapted from the More-with-Less Cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre.

This is the bread that I wouldn’t have had to throw to the chickens if my head hadn’t been in the clouds. Toasted, it’s divine.

1 tablespoon yeast
½ cup warm water
1 cup oats, quick or rolled
½ cup whole wheat flour
½ cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons butter
2 cups boiling water
5 cups white bread flour

In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast in the warm water.

Measure the oats, whole wheat, sugar, salt, and butter into a large mixing bowl. Add the boiling water and stir to combine. Let cool to lukewarm. Stir in the dissolved yeast and the white flour. Knead until the dough is smooth and elastic, only adding more flour if necessary. Sprinkle the bowl with flour and plop in the dough. Cover with a towel and let rise until doubled.

Divide the dough into two pieces and shape into loaves. Place loaves in greased pans, seam-side down. Cover and let rise until nearly doubled.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes or until dark golden brown. Remove from pans and cool to room temperature.

kitchen theater

The following article first appeared in the Daily News Record on May 23, 2012.

***

I recently spent one entire rainy day alternating between reading to the kids, showing them educational videos, and trying to snooze on the sofa.

I had a good reason for being plumb tuckered out. The week before, my son and I had been cast in a play about an Anabaptist family living in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War. My son had gotten the part of a Union soldier and I had been cast as Edith, one of the family’s grown daughters. While I was thoroughly enjoying myself, the late nights and the stress of memorizing my lines and learning to wear a corset were taking their toll. Thus, the lazy day.

But right around 4 o’clock, I forced myself to rally. Rehearsals started at 6:30. We needed to hustle to get the house cleaned and supper on the table before then.

I put my younger daughter to washing the lunch dishes. I told the boys to blitz the downstairs. I assigned my older daughter to making biscuits. In the middle of it all while I sauteed the onions for our soup, I started practicing my lines.

In one of the scenes, Edith, who is known for her dreams and premonitions, tells her husband about her nightmare, which foreshadows the terror to come.

“My throat was burning,” I croaked, clutching at my neck, overdramatizing for memorization’s sake, “and all I could think of was water.”

The daughter on her stool, washing dishes, turned sideways so she could better see me and jumped into the part of my husband. “Edie...” she interjected. 

The boys had all but ceased their straightening up to watch my theatrics.

“And then up in the rocks I found a trickle of pure, clear water,” I said. I recounted how the trickle turned to a torrent. “It tore at my fingers and overflowed, gushing, soaking me, streaming down,” I cried, gasping, my shoulders heaving. “I couldn’t breathe!”

When I reached the end of the dream, the kids begged for a repeat performance.

“That’s enough for now,” I said. “My throat’s sore. We need to get these biscuits in the oven.”

My older daughter mused dreamily as she stirred the cream into the flour and lard, “You help your mama make biscuits in the play, and I’m helping you here.” Was she imagining our kitchen to be a stage set?

“That’s true,” I said. “But we never eat the stage biscuits. Besides, they’re probably hard as rocks from all the handling.”

We had no problem eating our biscuits. Even though I made a double batch, only one was left over. I ate it the next night, split and stuffed with ham, on my way home from rehearsal.

Biscuits
Adapted from Bernard Clayton’s Complete Book of Small Breads by Bernard Clayton Jr.

2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup lard
3/4 cup cream, half-and-half, or milk
cornmeal, for sprinkling

Measure the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl. Cut in the lard with a fork. Gently stir in the cream.

Dump the shaggy dough on to a floured surface and knead once or twice. Press the dough into a rough circle about 1/3-inch thick. Cut the biscuits with a biscuit cutter (or a drinking glass), dipping it into flour between cuts to prevent sticking. Repeat until all the dough has been used. But be gentle—extra handling yields a tougher biscuit.

Place the biscuits on a lightly greased, cornmeal-sprinkled baking sheet. Bake at 450 degrees for 10-12 minutes until golden brown and sky high.

For more information about the play “Jordan’s Stormy Banks” by Liz Beachy Hansen, visit www. vbmhc.org.

for the children

The following article first appeared in the Daily News Record on May 9, 2012.

***

I get a kick out of trying new recipes. Sometimes my experiments are rather wild. One time I served my family fried lemons and parsley wrapped in tortillas. Another time there was a cold cucumber soup that we all agreed was perfectly horrid (though I didn’t tell them my opinion until after we had eaten it, much to their dismay). And my husband still likes to tease me about the time I served him collard greens on top of oatmeal. The cooking flops don’t faze me much. New flavors are thrilling, and more often than not, the dishes are perfectly edible, though somewhat odd.

My children, however, don’t always appreciate my creative efforts. They are quick to grow weary of the steady stream of new ingredients and flavors. No doubt they would be happy as clams if I only ever made their favorite foods.

I do try to be sensitive. Some days they need comfort food, and whether or not I find the dish exciting to cook is not important. The other week, we had one of those days.

On that particular day, the children were grief stricken.

Five days before, they had rescued some baby field mice that were being attacked by our dog. My husband and I had warned the children that the mice probably wouldn’t live, but that didn’t stop the children from doing their best to keep the babies alive. My older daughter, especially, poured her heart and soul into caring for them. She made them a straw nest, heated up a rice-stuffed sock to keep them warm, bathed and cuddled them, and spent hours feeding them drops of milk from a syringe. On Monday morning when she discovered that one of the mice, a girl named Henry, was dead, my daughter was crushed.

One by one, the other mice died, and the three younger children spent the morning crying.

I tried to stick to our normal routine in spite of the sobbing, but it was hopeless. By mid afternoon I was exhausted. Our rest time—a fixed part of our day in which the kids go to their rooms and I sink onto the sofa to drink coffee and write—was ruined because the youngest child couldn’t stop crying. His focus had shifted from the baby mice to his frustration that I had yet to sign up to be his Sunday school teacher.

Finally I threw up my hands in frustration and set a pot of water on to boil for some pasta. I grated a block of cheese and whisked flour into melted butter for a white sauce. Supper would be baked macaroni and cheese, one of the kids’ favorites. Our day had been rough, but our supper would go down easy.

Baked Macaroni and Cheese

Sometimes I spice up the white sauce by stirring in a bit of grainy mustard, hot sauce, pesto, or chopped ham. Though I then run the risk of turning a comforting dish into something new and stressful. More often than not, I keep it safely simple.

1 pound macaroni
4 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup flour, rounded
1 ½ teaspoons salt
3 cups milk
8-12 ounces grated melting cheese such as Colby, cheddar, Monterey Jack, or Gruyere

Cook the macaroni according to package directions. Drain and set aside.

Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add the flour and cook briefly, stirring constantly. Whisk steadily, add the milk and bring to gentle boil. Stir in the salt and half of the cheese. Taste to correct seasonings.

Combine the cheese sauce with the macaroni and pour into a buttered 9x13 pan. Sprinkle with the remaining cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown and bubbly.

a better brownie

 The following article first appeared in the Daily News Record on April 25, 2012.

***

I can get a little obsessed when searching for the perfect recipe. For a while there, it was English muffins—I tried six or seven different recipes and still came up empty. And then there were the brownies.

The recipe from childhood just didn’t cut it anymore, I decided. I started playing around with the amounts of chocolate and butter, and with a variety of add-ins. On the fourth try, I found what I was looking for—a dense, rich, and profoundly chocolatey brownie.

I was thrilled with my little victory. But when I mentioned my triumph to my mother over the phone, she did not share my excitement.

“Good grief,” my mother sighed. “Why are you always trying to change things?”

“Well, um ... because the recipe wasn’t very good?”

“Pooh!” my mother snorted. “It’s the recipes that have withstood the test of time that are the best. You’re just being picky.”

I was momentarily flummoxed, for my mother is queen of pick. But I quickly recovered.

“Okay then,” I said, laughing to mask my rising hackles. “The next time you come visit, we’ll do a taste test. I bet you’ll agree with me.”

So one weekend night after the kids were tucked in, my parents and my husband and I clustered around the kitchen table for The Official Brownie Reckoning of 2012. I placed four anonymous samples, all different, on a cutting board and sliced each one into four bite-sized morsels. Only I knew which brownie was which. I braced myself for the showdown.

My mother stared down her nose at the selection. “I can tell you right now those are horrible.” She jabbed her finger at the brownies closest to her. “Look at them. They’re grey!”

“You have to taste them,” I reminded her.

She popped one in her mouth. “Oh my, these are awful!” She scrunched up her face like a prune and swallowed painfully.

I had planned to stay quiet until all the brownies were tasted. But suddenly I couldn’t bear it. “Mom!” I crowed. “That’s your recipe!”

She paused for a moment, considering. Then she shrugged her shoulders and popped the next sample into her mouth. “So what makes your brownies better?”

“More chocolate, more butter, and no baking powder,” I explained. I had to struggle to put a cap on my mirth. “They’re darker, richer, and fudgier. That’s all.”

You know what though? My mom is always saying it’s the simple recipes that are best, and on that one point she and I stand united. One of the recipes I tried included Nutella swirled into the batter. Other recipes called for pumping up the brownies with toffee bits and cacao nibs. But the brownies that ended up being my favorite were unembellished.

Brownies

If you prefer a lighter brownie, you can dial back the chocolate to 2 or 3 ounces.

½ cup butter
4 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
½ cup flour

Melt the butter and chocolate in a saucepan over low heat. Off heat, stir in the sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Gently stir in the flour and salt.

Pour the batter into a greased 8x8 pan and bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes. The brownies should look underbaked—still jiggly in the middle and only just beginning to pull away from the sides. A toothpick inserted in the center should come out wet. (If it comes out clean, you’ve gone too far and your brownies will be dry and crumbly.)

Delicious served slightly warm, with a scoop of coffee ice cream and a drizzle of caramel sauce.

in the midst of chaos

The following article first appeared in the Daily News Record on April 11, 2012.

***

I love it when my girlfriends come to visit. Good conversation energizes me and is a welcome diversion from the daily humdrum routine. Sometimes, however, maintaining a thread of coherent conversation while simultaneously mothering my little ones can be a feat of monumental proportions.

Such was the case one day in February. A not-often-seen friend was scheduled to arrive for lunch, so I corralled my two younger children (the older ones weren’t home) and briefed them on my expectations for their behavior.

But when my girlfriend glided through the door, oozing charm and goodwill, my children flew into a tizz of happy excitement. A new person is in the house and she’s smiling at us, whee! Promptly they forgot (or intentionally neglected to remember) my lecture. My fantasy of a peaceful meal—my friend and I expounding on all manner of weighty topics and my children sitting as quiet and still as holy church mice—fluttered straight out the window.

While I sauteed the spinach, ladled the thick, creamy lentil soup into bowls, and made a stab at preliminary catch-up talk, the children grabbed silverware out of the drawer. They scraped their stools across the floor tiles. They chattered nonstop. My stress levels shot through the roof.

Then during the meal, the children slyly kicked each other under the table. They picked at the food without interest, impishly stuck their fingers in their water glasses, and clanked their spoons against their bowls. They interrupted. They rocked on their stools. Their behavior wasn’t full-on intentional naughtiness, but in no way whatsoever did they resemble the timid little church mice of my dreams.

I had two choices. I could either disrupt the adult conversation to correct their behavior, or I could ignore them. Since focusing on them would draw attention to them even more, and since I was already discombobulated enough, I chose the latter. Shifting my body so I was directly facing my friend, I tried to pretend my kids weren’t even present. Only occasionally did I shoot them some hairy eyeballs, which they deftly dodged.

Preparing my children for a proper company lunch is hit or miss. Some days they behave beautifully. Other days—well, now you know how those go. Thank goodness I had taken measures with the food so I wouldn’t have to stress over that as well. The lemony red lentil soup, with mounds of sauteed greens, brown rice, and plain yogurt on top, was a smash hit. My girlfriend and I both had seconds.

Red Lentil Soup with Lemon and Spinach

Inspired by a recipe on Heidi Swanson’s blog 101 Cookbooks.

2 cups red lentils, rinsed
6 cups chicken broth (or water)
2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon turmeric
4 tablespoons butter, divided
2 medium onions, chopped
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 ½ teaspoons yellow mustard seed
2-3 lemons, the juice of
lots of fresh spinach
cooked brown rice
plain yogurt
black pepper

Put the lentils, turmeric, 1 tablespoon butter, and salt in a large pot and add the chicken broth. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until the lentils are very soft. Puree the soup using a handheld immersion blender or a regular blender.

Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet and add the onions, cumin, and mustard seed. Saute until the onions are very soft—about 15-20 minutes.

Add the onions to the pot of pureed soup. Squeeze in the lemon juice. Taste to correct seasonings.

Immediately before serving, melt the remaining tablespoon of butter in a large skillet and add the spinach. Sprinkle with salt and toss until wilted.

To serve: fill the bowls with soup and garnish liberally with scoops of warm brown rice, the sauteed spinach, plain yogurt, and freshly ground black pepper.

eggs galore

 The following article first appeared in the Daily News Record on March 28, 2012.

***

Our chickens have gone gangbusters. For several weeks we were getting only one egg daily, maybe two. And then the chickens laid eleven eggs in a single day. Eleven! Just like that we were flooded.

My kids are head-over-heels excited by all the egg laying. Even though we’ve had chickens for years, the springtime explosion comes as a delightful surprise each time—it’s like a perpetual Easter Egg hunt but without the sugar and plastic grass. The children make countless trips to the coop each day, and when they find two (or six, or ten) eggs, they cart them back up to the house in their shirts.

As they bang through the screen door with their loot, there’s always a report of some sort. Sometimes it’s the number, shouted out at the top of their lungs, but other times it’s an announcement about the impressive size, either extra small or extra large, or the news that one got slightly cracked or one had a bit of blood on it (ouch). My youngest child always sings the first few bars of “Happy Birthday” to me as he piles the green and brown little gifts into the metal egg bowl that sits on the counter.

My younger daughter spends a sizeable portion of her day down by the chicken coop. There is a long skinny door right above the nesting boxes so the eggs can be collected outside the coop. She opens that door and stands there, waiting for the eggs drop. “They’re sticky when they come out,” she informed me once, awe and surprise in her voice.

And the other day my older daughter came running in, brandishing an egg. “I heard a thump!” she squealed. “The chicken laid it right in the sunshine so it was glowing!”

Now that we’re swimming in eggs, once or twice a week we make a Dutch Puff for breakfast. Dutch Puff is an egg-rich oven pancake similar to Dutch Baby or Yorkshire pudding. It’s one of the kids’ all-time favorite breakfasts. Because the batter is mixed up and left to soak overnight, it’s a fairly quick hot breakfast, making it one of my favorites, too.

Some people add sugar and spices to the batter, but I don’t bother. The children drizzle theirs with syrup, and sometimes if I want to make the puff stretch further (one pan is barely enough to feed the four kids), I get a box of berries out of the freezer and mix up a pot of warm vanilla pudding to serve, too.

Dutch Puff

Dutch Puff rises sky-high in the oven but promptly deflates when out. In order to make the best impression, gather everyone to the table before taking the puff from the oven.

8 eggs, beaten
2 cups flour (I use half whole-wheat pastry flour)
½ teaspoon salt
2 cups milk
5 tablespoons butter

The night before:
In a large bowl, whisk the eggs. Beat in the flour and salt, and then the milk. Cover the bowl with plastic (or a shower cap) and let sit on the counter, or in the fridge, overnight.

Put the butter in a 9 x 13 pan and set aside.

In the morning:
Turn the oven to 350 degrees and slip the pan into the oven. When the butter has melted (watch it closely to make sure it doesn’t burn), take the pan from the oven and swirl gently to coat the sides and bottom. Whisk the batter thoroughly and pour it into the pan. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until the puff is billowing over the sides of the pan and the edges are a dark golden brown. Serve immediately.