Breakfast for one this wintry Saturday morning is avocado toast with lemon and lemon thyme, with a fried egg on top and more lemon thyme. Sugar snap peas on the side. The other slice of toast is simply buttered. It’s the heel of the loaf, and I rather wish I’d slathered it in plum or pine cone jam.
Matcha with half and half after.
I do so enjoy the ritual of weekend morning tea.
New Year’s Day lunch for one: ricotta, quark, smoked mozzarella, marinated artichoke, and a fried egg on toast. The green stuff is avocado slices and lemon thyme.
Butter and olive oil
1lb Italian sausage meat, or vegetarian seasoned ground meat substitute
4oz stock (vegetable or meat)
splash of white wine
2-3TBS flour
2-3TBS butter
6oz whole milk
15oz ricotta
8oz quark, or more ricotta
1/3lb smoked mozzarella
10oz marinated artichokes
Fresh lasagne noodles, or the type you don’t need to pre-boil
Fresh lemon thyme, or regular thyme
Salt, pepper, nutmeg
It’s that time of year, when Jews light candles and give presents and fry foods and generally remind ourselves that, hey, even though we don’t celebrate that *other* big holiday, we still party and overeat for eight days and nights sometime in December. And now it seems even the Chanukah sweater is ubiquitous. I predict Chanukah socks for hanging from the mantelpiece this time next year.
I haven’t had a chance to cook potato pancakes yet, although I did pan fry some frozen Trader Joe’s latkes (shhhh! I was running late after work and had no time to prepare dinner the night before, much like the Israelites escaping Egypt who had insufficient time for their dough to rise, resulting in masochistic crackers that, oh, right, wrong holiday). But the crisper is stocked with parsnips in case I get a chance to make parsnip latkes sometime this week.
Here’s a list of fried food recipes for Chanukah, or any other occasion:
Happy holiday commemorating the defeat of the hellenized Seleucids, who were neither Greek nor Assyrian!
At the pool, Evan encounters a Japanese-speaking toddler. They approach each other and stare. A pause. The little Japanese boy looks at Evan and makes a raspberry sound with his mouth. He grins. Evan grins. They stare at each other for a moment. Then Evan makes a raspberry sound, and grins at the other toddler. He grins back, and makes a noisier, sloppier sound. Evan responds in kind, and before I know it, they are exploding with laughter and sloppy fart noises.
The international language of Toddler demonstrated.
When I was a teenager, I loved Twin Peaks. I found it very funny, and enjoyed its peculiarity. (I was better able to appreciate its layered, intuitive complexity having watched it again as an adult.) When I watched David Lynch films in college, I was frustrated by what I felt to be an incoherent narrative. I changed my mind one day when a switch was flipped in my mind–you don’t watch a Lynchian film with your conscious brain. You watch it with your subconscious brain. You don’t so much watch (read: analyze) his films as much as you feel them, absorb them, let the waves of images crash upon your senses one after the other. Experiencing his films in this way results in a coherent experience–one that may be difficult to articulate, as it is composed of intricate layers of imagery and symbolism–but a sort of non-linear, illogical coherence nonetheless. I think of it as dream logic. If you watch his films as though they were dreams, they make perfect, remarkable, beautiful sense. And therein lies their meaning. Forcing David Lynch to discuss the “meaning” of his films before an audience is absurd. If the meaning could be articulated in simple language, why bother making the film? In fact, the meaning lies in the experience of watching the film. It’s the interaction between the viewer’s consciousness and the film itself. It’s showing, not telling. So, snarky writer for the Paris Review–stop getting your panties in a twist because David Lynch won’t tell you what his films are about. That’s not his job. Just watch the damn movies yourself.
I like to take Evan grocery shopping when I can. He loves looking at all the colorful fruits and vegetables. When he sees something particularly exciting, like an olive oil dispenser in action, he cranes his neck forward and his mouth makes a little “o” shape as he stares at the interesting thing, brows raised in wonder. He takes in a small gasping breath and says “ohhhhhhhhhhh!” as he kicks his legs back and forth in utter excitement. Insatiable curiosity in its purest form.
He was in his stroller near the cheese counter one afternoon when I took a taste of some brie with one of those tiny wooden tasting paddles. Evan looked up, fascinated, his mouth a perfect circle. “Cheese!” I said. “Would you like to try some?”
I scooped a tiny quantity of brie with a fresh wooden paddle, said “Nom!”, and swiped a bit of cheese in Evan’s mouth. He slowly gummed at it, wrinkled his nose, and frowned, still gumming. He cocked his head to the side, as he does when he examines something new. Then his face brightened as he began to swallow. He looked up at me and made a small “o” face. More!
It was my turn to gasp excitedly. My baby likes brie!
I bought a small wedge for us both to share. I couldn’t help it—I had to see if he would eat more at home. I grabbed a small container of crème fraîche from the refrigerator case to mix it with.
As it turns out, “cheese”—or rather pureed brie and crème fraîche—is one of Evan’s favorite foods. Who knew?
This is the fourth post in a series on making your own baby food. See the previous posts here:on making baby food, what am I, chopped liver?, watermelon feta salad or soup.
brie for baby
1 part brie (I used pasteurized)
1 part crème fraîche or sour cream
Puree the brie and crème fraîche in a coffee grinder and store in a 4oz/125ml canning jar.
brie for grown-ups
Eat. Watch your little one eat. Gasp. Oh!
As you can see, Evan is particularly pleased with this simple watermelon dish. The baby version of watermelon salad turns into a creamy soup, which Evan found a bit strange at first. He tried to eat the soup off the spoon, and realized that was not the most convenient method of consumption. "Slurp, slurp", I said, as I fed him, making the noisiest slurping sounds that would be perfectly polite at a Japanese ramen house. "Hoo!", he giggled. The more he eats this soup, the more practice he gets at conveying liquids to his mouth with a spoon, rather than a bottle. He seems to find the result worthy of the effort.
The grownup version of this dish is a warm weather favorite. With its juicy sweetness, watermelon begs for the salty counterpoint of feta cheese. The salad is incomplete without fresh mint leaves and some grassy, peppery extra virgin olive oil. I like to top the salad with some Aleppo chili pepper flakes. The salad would pair nicely with a good chilled beer, I think, and is best consumed outside in the hot summer sun.
This is the third post in a series on making your own baby food. See the first and second posts here:on making baby food, what am I, chopped liver?.
watermelon feta salad
Leave out the chili flakes to make the baby-friendly version of this recipe (see below). You can always add the chili flakes later.
1 small or 1/2 large watermelon
1 8 oz/226 g package feta cheese, cubed
1 bunch fresh mint
black pepper
olive oil
Aleppo or other chili pepper flakes
Serves 4-6.
watermelon feta soup
I love chopped liver. It may not be pâté, or even pâté de campagne, but it’s still delicious when done right. The trick is to cook the livers just so, such that they’re still a bit juicy, and chop them by hand to retain some rustic texture. Liver is best fried in–what else?–duck fat. I keep a jar on hand in the fridge just in case.
Chopped liver is fairly easy to turn into baby food. Just leave out the herbs (in case they aren’t sufficiently pulverized), and add a little more duck fat if necessary for ease of pulverizing. Evan seemed to like it, as you can see in the photo.
Nota bene: This recipe has more than two ingredients, such as it is best made for older babies or babies with no known allergies to any of the main ingredients.
This is the second post in a series on making your own baby food. See the first post here.
chopped liver
duck fat for frying
1 1/2 lb/680 g chicken livers (or half beef liver)
5 medium shallots or 1 onion, finely chopped
4 hard boiled eggs, peeled
salt, pepper, ground cumin, ground coriander seeds
balsamic vinegar
1 handful parsley
1 handful dill
Serves 4-6 as an appetizer.
chopped liver for infants
You can freeze the pulverized chopped liver for later use. Just make sure to leave enough room at the top for expansion during freezing. Defrost in the refrigerator, or by dunking in a shallow bowl of hot water.
