Bagels, recently

The best part of making bagels is mixing and kneading the dough with my bare hands. Second best is forcing enormous raisins deep into its warm interior and folding the dough over and over to accomodate said fruits. (I like to use double the prescribed amount.) This batch was made in honor of Brian's birthday last month with different kinds of deliciously jammy raisins.

Mushroom wontons

I made these mushroom wontons a few weekends ago and froze them. Now we are enjoying them in soups like this one with soba noodles and tofu, followed by cold evening drinks on our deck.

Our Garden, Week 1

This weekend we started our garden: two tomato plants, four bean varieties, two kinds of sorrel, a host of lettuces, one wild-haired chervil, and a little strawberry plant. Already I feel unduly maternal towards my lettuce, which I've never grown before, and which I'm starting from seed. Next weekend I'm adding basil and dill, and Brian's going to plant another set of beans.

Picnic

Brian and I met for a picnic lunch at Union Park a few days ago. He augmented his salad and stir-fry with a honey cookie while I augmented mine with the last of Sunday's pancakes. Verdict: equal satisfaction.

Weekend Wrap Up

A perfect weekend is a blend of cheerful industry, improvised adventure, and undemanding solitude. Such was ours. Saturday was gray and pouty with immanent rain, so (having gone on our Saturday grocery trip earlier this week) we stayed indoors and spent the afternoon cleaning and taking care of household chores. I scrubbed and wiped down the humid bathroom while Brian put on angry music to tackle the floors with our temperamental vacuum cleaner.

Later I made bagels using a recipe from this highly-recommended book, Brian cleaned a bike he's getting ready to sell, and we watched Ace in the Hole--an unrelentingly cynical film from Billy Wilder, one of my favorite directors.

Sunday was even nicer: a day of food and bicycle riding. We made pancakes; rode our bikes to the lakefront and through the sunny, empty city; bought falafel and beef kofta sandwiches at Baba Pita; cycled in fancy dress to Chicago Cut for a Mother's Day dinner with some of Brian's family; and ended the night with Fight Club, which neither of us had seen in about a decade.

Candy jars

Candies. On the left are peppermint puffs, which Brian loves to chew to a powdery goo. On the right are my favorite sweets: Polish cream fudges beloved by all Ukrainian children. The kids in my family had different ways of eating them when we were young. My oldest sister Yana ate hers methodically over several days. Dmitry and Oksana (and my Mom) consumed theirs within twenty-four hours. Natasha, I don't remember. Me? I hoarded and savored my stash for months until the fudge turned hard and crystalline.

In my child's mind, the mission of every relative traveling back to the homeland was to return with several pounds of these delights. We often went months without them. Now they're sold in lots of Slavic groceries, and none are more than a ten minute bike ride away in my current neighborhood. Over the weekend Brian and I took our bikes for a spin and I brought home enough fudge to fill my jar twice over, discovered the most delicious home-made pickles, bought a tin of herring, and gave in to a craving when I saw slabs of cold salt pork behind the deli case--all in one little Ukrainian store. Now that I have a supplier nearby, there's no need to hoard my fudge. I've been unfolding the yellow, red, and white paper wrappers and eating a few every day.

Happy onions

This month has had its ups and downs, escalator-style. Wonderful long ups and a few terribly slow downs. Today: an equilibrium of sorts. To celebrate I sliced onions (one of the pleasantest cooking rituals I know) and put them into an improvised curry so delicious and spicy that it made me breathe funny for a while after I'd eaten it. Things are looking up!

I hope my wonderful readers are having a good last few days of the old year before ringing in the new one.

Huzzah!

 

My friend whose love for lemons is nearly pathological has found someone to wed: a woman who eats deep fried garlic mashed potatoes for breakfast.

Sloppy sandwich

Today I put together something extra-wonderful for lunch. A delicious spicy black bean burger.

Pumpkins

Pumpkin donuts, pumpkin pie, and a whole lot of other pumpkin things filled up my October.

Most of these pictures are from a soup-making adventure a weekend or two ago, when we walked to Whole Foods and carried two pumpkins home with us on the bus. If you didn't know it already, pumpkins are harbingers of happiness. If you want cheering up, just walk down the street with a pumpkin in your arms. People will smile when they see you. They'll stop you to discuss your plans for the evening. "It's that time of year!" they'll carol with Christmas-bright voices, as they did to us. Caught up in the festive mood, Brian balanced his pumpkin on his head and refused to carry it any other way. (Did he look awesome, as he claimed? Well... I don't know--but his goofy grin certainly warmed my heart.)

At home we unloaded our groceries and took a twenty-minute apple cider break. We congratulated one another on our purchases, then proceeded to gut them. I carved, peeled, and cubed mine while Brian sorted through two bowls of pulp for seeds.

After we dumped the cubed pumpkin into a pot of boiling water, I nursed my shoulder (the one connected to my pumpkin-cutting arm) while Brian prepared the seeds for roasting. Then he pureed our pumpkin while I cleaned up the table for Round Two: slicing and dicing cabbage and carrots and turnips and things--tasks that inspired Brian to sing a brief ode to his green knife.

Then hundreds of minutes of stirring. Or perhaps thirty. While we waited, we ate pumpkin seeds and celebrated our soup triumph by inventing a truly awesome dance that the world will probably never see unless we make a music video.

Sadly, there are no pictures of the finished soup. We ate it immediately and I'm afraid it's long gone.

*All pictures in this post are my own except for the third one, taken by Brian.

Indian summer, Part I

Oh Monday. I put my To Do list aside (mostly) and enjoyed a rare day off today. I've been reading like crazy all month, so I began the morning as usual: with breakfast and a book.

But then the kitchen called to me and my stomach called back.

What kind of a breakfast person are you? Do you skip it, or eat enough to last you into the afternoon? Do you devour the same thing each day, or do you mix it up? Me, I have the same thing every morning: toast with butter, a glass of whole milk, a big mug of coffee, and a banana. When winter comes I switch to oatmeal. I love my morning same-olds. I am very loyal.

But when it comes to lunch and dinner and snacks and second-dinner, I love to experiment. Today I had cannellini beans with shallots and tomatoes from the garden. I toasted a hunk of rye bread. Then I dipped into a jar of home-made pickles to counter the sweet, warm heat of sriracha-infused tomatoes.

Then, in the evening, a quiet, softly rustling, almost-too-long-neglected bag of bok choy whispered my name. And a box of tofu chimed in longingly. Cook us.

All in all it has been a wonderful day of foods. And best of all, there's enough left over for tomorrow's lunch.

Dear friends, I have been the laziest blogger in the universe. My problem is, when I don't draw much I forget to write. And I haven't been drawing much at all. I'm putting so many hours into this new job, I haven't figured out how to fit everything into the time I have left over. How do you manage it? How do you choose what is important to you? Or do you suffer, as I once did, from a surfeit of free time?

Ginger ale

My weekend has been lazy and sluggish. The electric whine of cicadas makes the day seem about ten degrees hotter. It's been hard for me to get my mind in gear to read or draw. Instead, I've been watching films, solving Sudoku puzzles, and eating enormous amounts of fruit.

For days like this I recommend inactivity and cold drinks. Here's an easy recipe to keep you cool:

I love this variation of my favorite drink--lime and mint really make the ginger sing. My boyfriend and I prepared the syrups in the morning, left them to cool in the refrigerator while we went to the beach, and celebrated a hot Fourth of July with this cold drink at the end of the day. Delicious!

You can adjust the sweetness and spicy ginger flavor to your taste by adding more or less of the desired ingredients. For instance, I don't like my ginger ale very sweet, so I add less simple syrup and more club soda.

And here is a fantastic, ridiculously easy, wonderfully delicious way to use up some of the leftover mint.

Beans

My favorite things that come in cans.

Of course, old-fashioned beans are good when soaked and boiled and gussied up with a recipe, but I like modern beans, too. Canned beans--the kind best spooned out straight from the can. Such beans are a friend to lumberjacks, cowboys, and campers everywhere. And librarians such as myself

I wonder how beans would taste inside a sandwich? Clearly this calls for an experiment.

Success!

It looks like chocolate cake.

Swoop your finger through the frosting, and it'll taste like chocolate cake.

But it's strawberry cake in disguise.

Three uniquely disastrous times I've tried to make strawberry cake. It's the only layered treat that gives me trouble every time. It refuses to taste delicious. It loves to fall apart. When I cry in defeat, it laughs in triumph.

One attempt was beautifully pink but very dense. Another time the frosting was oddly runny and the strawberries on top slid off. Mostly recently the inside was perfect, but the frosting was so thick and lumpy that it broke off and took pieces of cake with it.

Two cakes ago, I nearly cried and gave up. But then I rallied my spirits and told myself: You can do it. Fourth time's the charm. Or perhaps it's the fifth time that's the charm.

It was the fourth time, reader.

(I made it for one of my coworkers who found a job he likes more. We celebrated his departure at work today. I didn't want to overshadow his achievement, so I did not mention my own. But now that I've mentioned it here, I feel great. Extra great.)

Owl

How is your weekend, dearest reader?

I've been relaxing with an orange and a mystery novel after a long day of work. Later this evening I'm going to my book club meeting bearing an honest-to-goodness box of Turkish Delight.

Remember when the Snow Queen seduced Edmund into her sleigh with a box of Turkish Delight? 

Each piece was sweet and light to the very centre and Edmund had never tasted anything more delicious.

I think she seduced me, too.

P.S. Bon voyage, dearest Owl.

Noodles

Find your package of noodles.

Take what you want from it. Don't hesitate.

Render it edible with boiling water. Then eat it.

You are on a mission, and your mission is noodles.

Sandwich Supreme

I like lots of things. Detective work, for instance. And watering plants.

Poems, too. And postcards. (I can't think of any reason not to send a postcard to a friend.)

I like writing letters and identifying birds. When I pass by an open window, I like to look in it. I like dictionaries and etymologies. And I'm especially fond of rainy days.

But there aren't many things I like more than a good sandwich. I love sandwiches.

I loved this sandwich so I much I took twenty pictures of it this morning. I think I invented it.

Whole wheat bread, cream cheese, blackberries, sunflower seeds, and pumpkin butter. Henceforth you ingredients will be known as Sandwich Supreme.

Sandwich Supreme, you were good. You tasted like cake.