From the old country (part one)

Most of the recipes I make are inspired from thousands of blog posts I cull through and experiment with (post to come later about that process). But all those things aren’t what got me into cooking. My mother made us dinner every night, a main dish and two side vegetables and some type of carb. She made some killer meals (and some not so great; cranberry chicken still freaks me out to this day). At the time I’m not so sure I appreciated what a feat dinner on the table really was, but now I appreciate it in ways words could not describe. Dude, cooking is hard and exhausting, and that’s just one part of the process, you have to plan all the meals and shop for all the ingredients. I recently twittered that I wondered sometimes if I was pulling enough weight in my relationship and then I remembered I do all the cooking and grocery shopping and yep that’s enough. That’s a full-time job, actually not, but I wish it could be because even though it’s really hard I have really grown to love it.

My mom is Italian and makes the absolute best pasta sauce and meatballs ever. She has ruined me for italian food, because no one makes it like my mother. My great grandparents immigrated from the old country at the turn of century so they knew their food. My mother lived up stairs from her grandmother who was blind, so my mom and aunt would help my great-grandmother bake and cook and make homemade Italian sausage. Every Sunday my great-grandmother would have the whole family over for pasta and fresh-baked bread and everyone would leave with leftovers and a loaf.

Out of this comes my mother’s sauce and meatball recipe. My mother would start making it before we got out of bed and we could smell the sauce when we woke up. There is nothing better than waking up to that smell. That feeling equates directly to love for me.

So part one is the meatballs part two will be the sauce (which is a much longer process). I have a confession here, sometimes I make the meatballs and I don’t have the energy for the sauce. So I used bottled sauce, now for clarification I never used a brand bottled sauce (like prago or ragu; I just cannot do the taste). I typically use the sauce that is bottled at my favorite local Italian deli, that’s my recommendation; find a small local Italian joint and see if they bottle their sauce and then use that stuff. Sometime I also use Dean and Deluca’s sauces, or I make this sauce which consists mostly of butter but is totally to die for. Now this method is not Karen Anderson Mother approved, but hey it works. Sometimes I also take the meatballs and bottled sauce and make meatball sandwiches and that is a total yum.

Okay so enough of the drawn out emotional blubbering, here it is in all it’s vague old country glory.

Old Country Meatballs

1-2 pounds of ground beef

1 large onion finely diced

1/2 – 1 cup of bread crumbs

1/3 – 1/2 cup of freshly grated Romano cheese (or until you are tired of grating)

Pinch of salt and pepper

1-2 cloves of garlic

1 egg

Depending on how much meat you use you will want to adjust the amount of bread crumbs and cheese and garlic. I almost always use two pounds so I lean on the heavy side of those ingredients. I also don’t measure I just do it by feel, the meat shouldn’t be too dry or too moist. Basically you want be able to form 1.5 inch meatballs without the meat sticking to much to your hands.

So mix all the ingredients above well, using your two bare hands. Then form the meatballs into 1.5 inch round balls. Place those balls into glass or metal pans. They can be right next to each other.

Then sprinkle cheese and bread crumbs on top. Put in the oven at 350 degrees for one hour. After they are done, place the meatballs in the pasta sauce and heat on low for 20-30 minutes. This way the meat soaks up the sauce flavor and becomes melt-in-your-mouth-yum.

If you want to do meatball sandwiches you’ll need to toast some hoagie buns in the oven and melt some provolone on to the bun and then pile on the meat balls and sauce. So good and so much better than that subway meatball thing Subway tries to pass off as Italian food.

Dough Kick

I have been experimenting in the scary world of yeast baking. Baking has always seemed liked some kind of witch craft to me. Mostly because baking with yeast felt like shooting in the dark. Sometimes the bread or dough would rise, sometimes not. And after you had spent hours prepping and anticipating for some lovely baked goods only to discover that nothing had happened in the greased bowl under a tea towel, there would be some serious epic mourning. The joy of a baked goods didn’t seem worth the sorrow of non risen failure.

I started off slowly with some pizza dough (which I plan on sharing some seriously awesome recipes in the days to come) and then just the other day worked my way up to a loaf of cinnamon bread. Melt in your mouth amazing. David and I love cinnamon bread, but it’s store-bought processed version is expensive and  mostly dry, only good for toasting. This version however was crazy good by itself or toasted and slathered in butter. Which by the way you should count the times Ree says to slather stuff in butter in this recipe. Seriously, no surprise why I cannot seem to lose a pound of flesh these days.

There are three tips I have to baking with yeast, just to help avoid failure.

1) Use the yeast in the jar, not the packets. It’s just easier and you can measure out exactly what you need as opposed to figuring out the fractions of what’s in the packet and how many partial packets you need. Packets are really only more convenient for bread machine bread which you use the standard packet quantity. I love jarred yeast.

2) Proof the yeast. This was a huge revelation for me. Take the liquids in your recipe warm them up to the point of being really warm (not lukewarm), but not scalding. I typically stick my finger in it and it should not be painful. Then pour the yeast in the bowl and gently stir. Let that sit for 10 minutes. You should be able to see the yeast expanding and you should be able to smell it. This process, I’m convinced, has made my dough rise much more consistently.

3) Don’t work in a time crunch. Yeast can feel when you are rushed, and it doesn’t like being rushed. I only bake when I don’t have a time table. As in I can let something rise for four hours if I need to. Generally when I’m home on my lunch break, I’ll prep everything and set up the dough for the first rise. So basically I double the rise time. This seems to work, when I’m in a rush the yeast will resist me at every level.

4) Also like Ree in this recipe, I have to create  the conditions in my house to make it conducive to the rising process. I turn on my oven when I start baking and while the bread is rising I set it in a metal bowl on top of my warm oven covered in plastic wrap and a tea towel. I’ll then open the oven several times before I leave it just to jump-start the process. Basically I’m trying to achieve a warm place for the yeast to do it’s work, and my home (kept at frigid temps so says the husband) is not normally warm enough.

Fighting Well

David and I fight. We fight about big stuff and small stuff, I consider this a normal part of living with a person 24/7. The fighting isn’t constant but it is there.

For us the challenge hasn’t been the fighting itself, but learning how to fight well and fair.

A counselor had recommended a certain tool and both David and I have found it helpful and we have started recommending it for others. The other day I saw a couple was fighting in public and I wanted to hand them the format, only because they just weren’t getting anywhere.

So here is a typical fight (overly simplified) without the format:

I’m so angry at you.

Why?

When you said this, it made me so angry.

Well, I’m sorry for making you angry.  (insert eyeroll)

That’s not an apology. (insert slamming doors)

End Scene.

So here enters the format. Basically you start out by saying what event has triggered your feelings (a), then you describe how you interpreted that event (b), and then you describe what that interpretation led you to feel (c).

Talking Format (copyrighted by Pia Mellody, her book is next on my list to read and review)

(A) When I heard/saw you…

Example: When I saw you leave without saying goodbye…

(B) What I thought/perceived/made up about that is…

Example: What I made up about that was that you don’t really care about my feelings…

(C) And about that I feel… (share your emotions and if you struggle with that pick one of the below)

Example: And about that I feel fear and sadness.

ANGER

FEAR

JOY

PASSION

SHAME

PAIN

LOVE

GUILT

Basically with this format you are not allowed to say “you made me”. It eliminates the pointing of fingers and requires that each partner own’s their own feelings. The format also doesn’t require a half hearted apology from your partner, because you are completely owning all of your own thoughts and feelings your partner shouldn’t feel manipulated into an apology.

With the format:

When I saw that you left dishes in the sink I made up in my mind that you don’t care about the work I do around the house and about that I feel anger and pain.

Okay, I hear you. I apologize for leaving the dishes in the sink. I really do care about the work you do around the house. I was just in a hurry when I left.

End scene.

See how that is much more helpful? I think even the process of having to reformat our thoughts and feelings has been a huge help. It basically slows the argument way down and requires that we really trace our thoughts or feelings back to the source; that thought that we made up in our minds.

The format is not just limited to the married or dating, I use it with friends or at work.

The other thing that David and I have found to be helpful is taking 24 hour time outs. Basically when either of us feel an argument isn’t getting anywhere we call a time out and make an agreement to not talk about it for 24 hours. This is especially hard for me, I hate it when there are things unresolved. But after some space and time, we can have the same argument 24 hours later in about half the time and zero name calling. We can actually make progress and resolve the issue.

I figure, David and I will always have disagreements, I think success just means fighting well and in the process learning about each other and how to love each other better. Lord, help us.

Claire and the Curry Caper (with link for killer Butter Chicken recipe)

Normally this is where I would post a picture of the fabulous recipe I just cooked alas the picture did not turn out well and I didn’t have the energy to properly set up another picture. So instead I am posting a picture of my very guilty looking cat Claire (wait did I say “guilty looking”? now that I’m examining this portrait she looks down right indignant).

So the other night David had plans to hang with a friend, so I made concurrent plans to veg out in pajamas and eat Indian food (which he hates). I placed my Indian food order and I drove out and back to pick it up (at least a 45 minute round trip). I came home, put on my pajama’s, prepared my plate of food (butter chicken, raitha, pankora, and naan). I found the perfect channel on the TV and I sat down, curry in my lap, with a deep contented sigh.

All of a sudden I hear a flurry of activity and I see Annyoung ( my oldest cat) chasing Claire (pictured above) down the hallway and before I can react Claire vaults off the arm of the couch and lands directly onto my dinner plate. I stare at her in horror and she begins to panic and as she panics her back feet begin to slip in the curry and she begins to projectile launch the curry all over my face, the couch, the floor and the wall. Finally she gained enough traction to get herself off my plate leaving shear devastation in her wake.

I cannot describe to you the sound that came out of mouth. It was a loud wailing that can only be categorized as deep insatiable grief. The next hour was filled with tears and laundry and vacuuming all while watching Claire carefully eat all the butter chicken out of her paws (so infuriating as I had not even had a chance to eat my food yet but here she was all licking her lips). Thankfully I still had some food left and so I ate what I could after cleaning up.

But that was a long emotional into for this very quick bit of info. I decided to make a  home made version of Butter Chicken that I found off the Tasty Kitchen blog.  Find recipe here.

It was fabulous, not a truly authentic version, but the ingredients were simple and the process was easy unlike most Indian food which requires special everything.

Definitely worth trying, just lock up the pets.

The dish I’d rather leave to the pros

I really like cooking. And so when I eat something from a restaurant I’m often thinking, “I can make this.” Or “geez this seems complicated, but I’d love to try”. As far as I can remember there is only one dish I love  and tried to make and have resigned myself to leaving it with the pros.

It’s the glorious classic, eggs Benedict.

I always order the harvest, which includes sautéed veggies and cream cheese. YUM.

But trying to make this beauty requires a skill and patience level I don’t ever anticipate acquiring.

The key is timing all the components to come out right at the same time, which requires like 8 hands and 5 kitchen timers. Between the sautéed veggies, poached eggs and temperamental hollandaise sauce I was flying around the kitchen with melted butter spraying our of the blender and poached eggs violently swirling in hot water. And at the end of my little experiment, the hollandaise was runny, the eggs were luke warm and the english muffin was cold and I was really really stressed out.

So about every month or so the hubs and I trek to a local breakfast joint order up some coffee and let the kitchen staff run around like crazy people and out comes the most delish breakfast dish of all time and all I had to do was show up. Dreamy.

The Salad Only I Love

With all the cooking I have been doing, David and I have developed a fairly simple rating method which determines whether the dish will be recreated (and the frequency of the recreation) or promptly dumped.

This rating system is based on a scale of 1-10. A ten is obviously the goal, but sometimes there are sevens which mean “good but not great”, fives which mean “I could live without this”, and threes which mean “please don’t do this again” or “i’ll just eat cereal for dinner”. Normally David and I are within a few points of each others ratings of the dish. But every once and while I’m a 10 and he’s a three. And this bums me out, mostly because I hate cooking for one person. HATE IT. Old roommates can attest to that; I never cooked when I was single. Never.

At any rate this salad is a three to David, but will always be a ten in my heart.

I love tomatoes, mozzarella and basil, so caprese salads are some of my favorites. But this caprese salad blows the rest out of the water. The key in this recipe is to slow roast the tomatoes for two hours in a mixture of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Here is a humble pic from the iphone. Mouth watering even now.

Kidney Stone ’09: Part Three

David was finally released from his felon filled hospital room and allowed to join the general population. I was super relived. We were told upon leaving that they would set up an appointment soon to remove the stint, blast the kidney stone and remove that gigantic beast of a stone. To be honest, I blocked this out. I didn’t want to come back. I just wanted to get out.

I dropped dear David off at home and picked up his pain meds. Friends and family stopped by all day to wish him well. David’s glorious family generously offered to temporarily take care of the three week old baby kittens David and I had foolishly decided to foster just days before the killer kidney stone.

I got David the above balloon and kept telling him to “bee better”. Hopped up on all of his meds, he found that to be humorous. Unfortunately I have no such excuse.

We blissfully lived through the next three weeks, although David says he was constantly peeing blood and fire, I was just please he looked normal and wasn’t doubled over in pain.

Apparently, the doctor explained, some people never come back in to have the stint removed. And ironically enough calcium builds up around the stint and becomes one gigantic kidney stone. I’m guessing that’s a bear to have removed. But we being responsible citizens went back to Truman for what we anticipated would be David’s final surgery, but alas the surgery gods were not smiling upon us (and by that I mean the head urologist at Truman totally mucked up my husbands surgery).

They called me in to talk to the esteemed head of urologist and when I went to see him, he literally smiled at me while beginning to walk away and said, “It went well. He’s fine.” And then in the category of things that make you think “how did this guy get a medical degree” he said, “couldn’t find it. must be gone.”

Ummm gone? Gone where? Did it grow legs and leave or what? What do you mean gone? And why are you still walking away from me doctor man? Where are you walking to? Can you take like 5 minutes and instead of just shrugging your shoulders can you explain what the medical phrase, “MUST BE GONE” means??? And for the love of doctors everywhere stop SHRUGGING.

And that is where my brain began melting out of my ears.

Book Report: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

This was a total kindle impulse buy. Oh yeah, I have a Kindle. I received it as a gift and I absolutely love it. It’s one of those things I would never buy for myself, but it’s been one of the most amazing gifts I have ever received.

So I was hopping around some bestseller lists and I saw this book. This is where my bit of confusion started. I, almost exclusively, read fiction. I rarely pick up a book that is non-fiction. Apparently I was looking in the wrong places, because I ignorantly read through the whole book thinking it was fiction. Looking back there were some signs, like citations of scientific journals and photographs of the “characters”. I think more than anything this just goes to show I read some really weird fiction, because there is fiction that cites fake sources and has photos of the characters. I have read that fiction. After I finished the book and saw the giant appendix and citation pages, I slapped myself back into reality. I had read a non fiction book of the science genre. I stand in awe of myself even now.

The book is about an African American women who in the fifties contracts ovarian cancer. She has this cancer removed at John Hopkins and the cancer cells from her tumor were the first in history that were able to be cultivated and reproduce naturally in a lab environment.  This was a monumental scientific breakthrough and before you knew it these cells were sent around the world and were being using in labs all over the globe. These cells actually made the polio vaccine possible, they have also aided the the research and development of medicine in hundreds of applications.

Henrietta died several years after her first cells began multiplying, neither her or her children ever knew that these cells were being used or that they were making labs and pharmaceutical companies a heathly profit. All the while Henrietta’s family was in the dark, impoverished, and without medical care.

This book weaves together the story of Henrietta, her children and the ethics of cell science and research.  It also tells the stories of her family members and others who have been left in the dark about what their own bodies have done to further science and other’s pocket books.

And for those who fear the non-fiction science genre, I can only reiterate my own ignorance, and say that it read like a novel. It is a great piece of literature, one that is worthy of transcending the science category. Beautifully written, the author Rebecca spent years compassionately trying to tell this story. Chasing down paranoid family members, risking her own well being for the sake of finding out the truth and telling the family what they should have known all along.

I give this book two enthusiastic thumbs up, I’m quite glad I accidentally found it.

Kidney Stone ’09: Part 2

I should state that as this story is about a kidney stone and surgeries surround such stone, this might be a little too much info for some people. So umm, read at your own risk.

Pain relief is a sweet thing and God bless whoever developed such awesome narcotics. David was feeling so much better and so ridiculously up beat, he kept saying I was the “bestest”. And well who can disagree? He was carted off for a CAT scan, and I headed to the waiting room to see the party that had developed out there consisting of David’s brothers, friends, and some of my friends. I filled them in, laughed for a few minutes and relaxed. Those few minutes surrounded by people I knew was so amazing. I needed that.

I headed back to the room, and David was there smiling like a goof ball. The doctor came in saw us, and said, “hey you have kidney stone.” And, “hey, it’s huge.” And “hey, we don’t treat those here.” And “hey, how about you head downtown?”

So off to the other Truman we went, two of my friends helping by driving my nerve wrecked self and hopped up husband down to the hospital. We had to argue with the admissions lady for the 15 minutes, showed her the IV still in my husbands arm and repeating the room number they were holding for us like 7 times. We managed to leave that waiting room without be shot at or shot up. And I considered that success.

Surgery was scheduled for the next day, of course it was only surgery one of two (did I say two? I meant three). Here’s the thing about kidney stones, apparently they are so sophisticated and unique and special that most hospitals don’t own the equipment to remove them. They RENT IT. Ummm what doctor? I can’t hear you. Did you say you rent the equipment you are about to shove up my husband’s ureter? AWESOME. And it takes like three weeks to secure the rental. What? AWESOME.

So what is the stop gap measure to ensure my husband isn’t going to die from kidney infection while we wait for the RENTAL unit? Surgery? Stint? AWESOME.

BEGIN RANT.  This is before the Obama healthcare plan and hospitals are RENTING equipment. And performing temporary surgeries on people while they wait for the right equipment. Post plan, I wondering if they’ll be hocking the equipment on side streets to the highest bidder. Maybe I’ll be able to perform my own kidney stone removals. END RANT

They wheeled him down to surgery and told me where the surgical waiting area was. I headed that way and entered a room filled with all sorts of incredibly ghetto personalities. And then they called my name and told me they were still prepping him and then the kiss of death, they handed me his wedding ring. And in front of all the strangers I sobbed. Looking back I can see myself and I want to say, get it together Kristen. But in the moment, I was just too freaked out to be logical. I marginally pulled it together and saw him off to surgery.

And then waited to hear when it was over. I headed up to his room to meet him. He was still looked pretty peppy when I saw him, although he was looking for his incision from the surgery, which just goes to show you, you should never explain a procedure to a man doped up on morphine without his significant other present. The method of surgery was a rude awakening which was discovered when peeing massive amounts of blood. AWESOME.

David then stayed at the hospital for another two days, for reasons that still remain shrouded in mystery (a mystery that was clearly itemized on our hospital bill – which is a whole separate post).

David, during his multiple night stay, was rooming with a very clearly evident drug seeker. Intense pain, but no diagnosis. He was constantly swearing, groaning, buzzing the nurses, swearing at them, calling them racists and liars, asking for letters for his parole officer. And the cherry on top, when the nurse asked him what was on his ankle, he said casually that it was his TRACKING DEVICE. That bit of info made me cry silently as I said goodbye to David each night, who in spite of intense pain, seemed to be enjoying his stay with his adjustable bed, heating blankets and calf massaging circulation units.

AWESOME.

Things in my kitchen

As I have a newly acquired, but very rabid interest in cooking, I have been slowly building up my kitchen essentials. And when I gaze on people’s wedding registries I often wish I could add these items to their lists.

Hello lovelies. You can find these at Target. Love them, David and I probably use this knife everyday. It has a great shape and a nicely weighted feel in your hand. Perfectly affordable chopping knife.

Everyone needs a micro grater. Everyone.  We use this for garlic, Parmesan, lemon and lime zest.

CHIP CLIPS can save your marriage. I love these.

Unlike the chip clips, food processors are not essential kitchen items (in fact they weigh a ton and can seriously clutter up your counters), but if you love experimenting in the kitchen I would say it’s great to have around. I use mine for homemade mayo, sauces, pesto and soups. Ours also has a small bowl which is great for smaller portions.

Heavy sauté pan with lid. I have the Cuisinart brand, both sizes; 3.5 quarts and 5.5 quarts and I use them constantly. Dishwasher safe, really heavy duty and they hold a ton of food.

And finally, a more recent acquisition; a salt cellar. I hate having to get the kosher salt out of my pantry every single time I need to season something (hello, first world problem). I also don’t want to unscrew the cap on my salt shaker when I need a pinch. I need easy access, PEOPLE. And so I bought a cellar, sits on my counter and I now season liberally.

All of the items I have listed are moderately priced and of good quality, obviously there are better and more expensive options, but these are just a few of my affordable favs.

Of course I am lusting after this expensive non stick sauté pan which is oven safe and can be used with METAL UTENSILS. GAME CHANGER; your cooking will no longer release toxic gases and kill small birds or children. Dreamy.