remedial eating

disproportionate joy

[Cold pillows.  Striped socks.  Fog.]

We passed through a murmuration of starlings, yesterday.

We were shuttling from house to car, quickly, late, and I wanted badly to ignore the weird hum in my eardrums.  The air was heavy, with chatter, vibration, quiet, pervasive, very Dolby surround-sound.  I glanced up, scanned the street, saw nothing out of place, same old cars, thresholds, houses.  Almost. 

[People who explain sock puppets in 3:28 minutes.  In language a kid can understand.  Even grown ones.]    

I turned to get into the driver's seat, stole a second glance, saw an altered reality.  There, on my neighbor's same old lawn, sat a carpet of birds.  Hundreds.  Thousands.  Absolutely still, every last one.  I stopped in my tracks, eyes wide, not breathing—waiting, I think, to see who would blink first.  Like I was in some MMOSC (Massive Multiplayer Offline Staring Contest).  Which seemed preferable, on balance, to some old Hitchcock film. 

[Ghouls who do math.  Bark love notes.]   

As I stood there, amazed, at attention, I noticed their numbers were the least of it.  I noticed that if I zoomed in on one bird, there stood an identical model, exactly four inches to his left.  And another, four inches to his right.  And to the North and South, two others, four inches from tail and beak, respectively.  That this pattern repeated itself endlessly, like plastic pegs on a Perler bead board.  Perfectly spaced.  Perfectly matched.  Perfectly still.  So still, I had all but not noticed a thousand birds, twenty yards over, upholstering the lawn.

Whereupon, it dawned on me...

Across the street?  Same story. 

Kitty-Corner?  Yup.

One house down?  Ditto. 

I scanned the neighborhood.  I realized every lawn, tree, porch and house for half a long block had sprouted wings.  Starlings, like stubble, stippled every last inch.  Legion doesn't even begin to describe it. 

[Flowers over the kitchen sink.  November Sundays that reach into the fifties.  Encouraging me finally to break down bean poles.  And us to rake leaves.  And them to play Ten Things, one last round before winter hits.]

It was, as they say, something.  And it seemed a fitting end paren to Thanksgiving.  I'm only okay at Thanksgiving, at properly appreciating The Big Blessings.  I've never been good at performing on demand—most shed pounds pre-wedding; I gained 15—and our national gratitude fest is no different.  It's a good exercise.  I'm down with it.  And I'm deeply, wildly grateful for the nowhere-close-to Givens.  Clean water.  Good air.  Sound roof and walls.  Health, family, friends, food, indoor plumbing.  And, to quote my kids at dinner last Monday, for "gravity, the Big Bang, and Mamo, because without them we wouldn't be here."  Absolutely.  In theory.

[Vocabulary lessons taught by friends.  Butter faces, sculpted by the same.  Friends who fly thirteen hours, each way.  And kindly bring along a Zoë-age niece.]

In daily practice?  Oof.  Tricky.  I get distracted.  The nitty-gritty elbows in.  Traffic jams.  Drains jam.  Jam doesn't set.  Plans upend.  Sleep plays hard to get.  Cars, furnaces, spirits, bones break.  Health is most easily admired in absentia.  Spam galore necessitates comment authentication.  (Ugh.  Sorry.)  Twelve gorgeous gallons of turkey stock are lost.  After chilling on the deck.  With a loose lid.  (Double ugh.)  And these are only iceberg tips.     

[Flowers as grand in their dotage as glory.  Soft gray days.  Libraries.]   

Appropriate awe overwhelms.  Gratitude, writ large, falls by the wayside.  I postpone proper appreciation for later, which is about as useful as pocketing snowballs for summer.  Much as I mean to, I forget to give thanks for staying put on this planet without tent stakes or tethers.  I'm gravity complacent.  There, I've said it.  You?   

[The indulgence and spectacle of forty candles on a cake.  Kids who still ask to help with the holiday brussels.  Even if they politely decline the eating of them.]

In practice, I'm better at small gratitudes, miniscule instances of actual thanks-giving.  The weird wonderfulness of one 1:3:15 pine block, en masse.  The intricacies of spent bean vines.  Particularly excellent first cups of coffee.  Those elfin moments, quick, quiet, both, whose rewards bear no relationship to their effort.  [Crumbs.  Crusts.  Scraps, buried in the brackets of a day.]  Apples, very much like these, these, and these, tweaked to become something else entirely.

I realize they look like simple sautéed apples.  Actually, they are simple sautéed apples.  Tart peeled apples, cooked fast and hot in a knob of butter, with a flick of sugar to catch and caramelize at the edges.  But this particular iteration involves an accretion of details that delights me no end.  They're cut small, into rough 1/2" cubes, which means more caramelized edge per square inch.  Small also equals several bits per bite, which means spoon instead of fork food, which means bowl instead of plate food, which if you answer to Molly, means a wide grin. 

What's more?  Their small size means they cook in ten minutes, quick enough for a Tuesday morning.  And—and I can't yet get over this part—in exactly the same time as old-fashioned oats.  Call it coincidence.  Feels to me like fate.  Especially after dipping into a bowl of both. 

[Mary Pope Osborne.  Series get no respect, and Jack and Annie follow a formula, yes, but hello?  Siblings?  Adventure?  History?  Mystery?  40+ titles to tease a young reader along?  Awesome.] 

They look a bit jewelled, ambered, transparent, with flavor that puts their looks to shame.  Toothsome in places, tender all around, with a complex sweetness, fruit-simple and sugar-burnt, they turn three ingredients into extravagance.  Henry likes them piled atop oatmeal.  Smart boy.  I like a mountain heaped high in a bowl, capped with Megan's buttermilk or whole greek yogurt, muscovado, toasted walnuts.  They're right at home tucked in a waffle's plaid, or anchoring a crêpe, or solo on a spoon.  They would likely make styrofoam go down easy.  They are like that.  Like Kaplas.  Versatile, wonderful. 

[Pear trees, the last of the last leaves to go.  The word murmuration.  The mystery of it.]

Oh, and those starlings?  We startled them.  Slowly, carefully, to majestic end.  The road we drove ran right through their ranks, and as we inched along, they astounded.  Scattered, swooped, dove, pirouetted, landed.  Over and over and over again.  It felt like we'd walked onto a Sophie Windsor Clive set.  A small-scale version.  With fewer picturesque waves.  And no canoe.  And more asphalt.  But magic enough for an ordinary Monday.  Joy disproportionate to the work of walking out the door.   

Caramelized Apples for Oats, Waffles, Yogurt, Spoons

2 large, tart apples (Pink Ladies are lovely)
1 tablespoon salted butter
1-2 teaspoons sugar

Peel apples, then slice the four "cheeks" from the core.  Flat side down, cut each "cheek" into several 1/2" slices, then turn crosswise, and make perpindicular slices, to yield 1/2" bites.  Repeat with second apple.

Heat butter in a large skillet, preferably non-stick, over medium-high heat.  Add chopped apples and sugar to melted butter, toss briefly to coat apples, then let sit undisturbed, 3-5 minutes, until undersides look like fall leaves, gold to bronze.  Toss gently (I use a silicone spatula for this), aiming to flip most over, and let cook for another undisturbed 3-4 minutes.  If at any point apples threaten to scorch, turn heat down slightly.  On my stove, I find a fairly hottish medium yields the best results, with insides just tender with a memory of toothsome, and outsides gorgeously caramelized.  Adjust your stove to suit.  Total cooking time will be 8-10 minutes. 

Remove from pan, and eat immediately, atop oatmeal, under yogurt, over waffles, as is. 

 

let's not confuse the two

Let's be clear: this is no eating squash.  It is a pumpkin, and not the pie variety, either.  The sort brought home from pumpkin patches, destined for eyeballs, mouths, moustaches.  The carving sort.  

Not that we're the sort to carve pumpkins post-Halloween.  This was one we carved just before.  But between politics and procrastination and twenty- (thirty?-) some loads of laundry, I have only just recently pulled up the photos. They are very orange.  And more than a little confusing.  Because during the same stretch of days we carved our jack-o-lanterns, we also consumed a few butternuts.  And several carnivals.  And a kabocha or two.  It seems it was a squashy October.  November seems set to continue at pace.  

(Of course, if you do have an edible pumpkin, I cannot recommend Heidi's soup highly enough.  Fry the onions in coconut oil, if you love its sweet aromatic whiff as much as I.  Triple the ginger, for a warming boost.  Make the browned butter ginger rosemary gunge, no excuses, as it tastes like stars look on a cold clear November night.  Not that we're here to talk pumpkins, or soup. Didn't mean to confuse. But superior soups must be noted.)

To keep things straight, then, let's do it this way: ornamental squash in first position, edible in second.  Am I pigeon-holing, here?  Why don't we anthropomorphize butternuts, also?  Two twigs up top, one bright crabapple in the middle, a few carved eyes, and bingo!  Rudolph.  But it would be tricky. Those long, thick necks would give you a real run for your money.  There's just so little hollow in a butternut squash. They're the solid chocolate Easter bunnies of squash, heavy, dense, substantial.  Which makes them particularly fine for eating, optimal bang for the effort buck.

The effort being no small matter, with squash.  Squash can be hard, unyielding beasts, thick of skin, wobbly of stature.  When my children were babies, I would tuck them in a sling and carry them about while I cooked dinner.  They loved this set-up, because they could, in turn, snuggle, sleep, sway, and see everything.  I loved this set-up, because it meant that we weren't restricted to cheerios and toast, that first year.  

This sling arrangement worked beautifully, until mid-fall, when the squash started rolling in.  The squash months were difficult.  Over time, I arrived at a terrifically awkward yet effective body-perpendicular-to-counter maneuver, babe turned this way, shoulder angled that way, heavy chef's knife at one fully extended arm's end, other arm doing its best Elasti-Girl imitation, reaching up-and-over-and-around baby, to hold said squash something like still.

It was nuts.  But I loved—love—squash.

(Oops.  Here I go, muddying the waters, again.  That second position pic is neither pumpkin nor butternut, but a blue plastic Lego whale.  For what it's worth, I was breaking down a butternut when it ran aground.  And do you see that yellow square?  It's a secret compartment.  Pull it out, and inside, hidden away, there's a single red brick, a heart.  

I heart that.) 

Things are a little safer, these days.  I can set them up across the table, carry conversations instead of humans, give them something to stir and scoop and spread and count and arrange and salt.  Stirring buys me five minutes, easy. Scooping and arranging, at least as much.  Not every child takes such pleasure, of course, in the orchestration of squash seeds.  I've others who subscribe to the Scoop and Dump School of seed management, still others who invoke the "EWWW!!!  No thanks!" clause.  Results may vary.  

But salt, salt is a universal, at least among my sample size of three.  It is small, and administered in pinches, and magically, I always seem to need exactly as many pinches as the child is years old.  Until they're too old to want to add pinches.  (It happens.  Quick as a wink, doing double-time.)  At which point, they occupy themselves.  Also magic.

Apparently, I take my squash with a serious side of nostalgia.  All asides aside: I came to talk salad.  Salad squared up with sweet cubes of roast squash.  And a dice of tart apple.  And toasted pecans.  And feta.  And dried cherries.  And have I lost you yet? 

Because I would have lost me, had I read this salad before I ate it.  On paper (on pixel?), it sounds, I don't know, baroque?  Even now, after eating my way through a dozen helpings, it sounds unlikely, excessive, too too. Apples and squash?  And also dried cherries?  And don't dried berries evoke bad aisle 7 "salad kits", the sort with week-old lettuce and stale croutons and tiny mummified packets of the aforementioned for color?  Let's not confuse the two. This isn't that. This is none of the above.  This is wonderful.  

I wish I could talk to your tastebuds, direct, slide a plate through the screen, bypass the brain.  Because this is how I first experienced this salad, straight from a bowl, brought by a friend.  There was pizza, also, hot and good, the sort I ordinarily eat three or four slices of.  That night, I didn't finish my first.  Too busy, I was, making a salad fool of myself.  Although, in retrospect, I would've been a fool to do otherwise.

Because this salad's so got it figured out.  There are tender, sweet caramelized cubes of squash, plus crunchy tart bites of juicy apple.  Briny, creamy nubbins of feta bridge the yielding and the crisp, the honeyed and sharp, the raw and the cooked.  Toasted pecans bring their own caliber of crunch, shattery, roasty, deeply mapled.  

And then, those dried cherries.  I'm still baffled by those cherries.  Baffled, because I don't like cherries in my salads.  So baffled, I tried leaving them out, once, only to come face to face with an uproar.  From the cherries, and the bowl, and yours truly: those cherries belong there.  Those cherries act like edible sequins, condensed winey bits of glitter and charm.  A few bites without, and without meaning to, you find yourself, and your fork, poking about, searching for garnet, until, score!  You spear one, add one square of squash, one apple, a pecan, a blip of white, a few leaves of green, until you've achieved The Perfect Bite.  

(Does anyone else do this?  Construct carefully composed bites?  Little still lifes, arranged on four tines, with life spans that make Mayflies look geriatric?  Maybe you're more the mindless salad eater, jabbing up forkfuls that just hold together, loading them in while you read The Times.  I tend to go 17th century Dutch Tuesdays and Wednesdays (Science, Food), distracted shoveler on all the rest.  Graciously, this salad holds up to both.) 

Two final footnotes.  Loads of flavor needn't equal loads of work.  Take the squash.  Roast a whole one (or two) hours (or days) in advance.  The cubes must be cooled, anyway, and you'll have a bowl at the ready all week. Witness the multiple slumped squash, above.  I roast several at a time, whole, sliced, or cubed, just to have their sweet goodness on hand.  

Ditto the toasted pecans.  We go through pounds of nuts, around here, both out of hand and in stuff.  Toasting improves nuts immeasurably, underscoring their oil, amplifying their flavor.  A toasted pecan is me, after my morning coffee, perky, sharp, tip-top, brimming with personality.  Unlike me, pecans keep their gains a dozen days or more.  Fill a sheet pan, toast a slew, keep cooled nuts in a jar, leverage your ten minutes' work all week.

Finally, play around.  This is the iteration of the salad I've settled on, and there are some pillars I wouldn't change: crisp apples, soft squash, salty feta, crisp nuts, the occasional bling and chew of dried berry.  Beyond that?  Latitude, galore.  The original had pepitas, not pecans, and they were awfully wonderful. Good candied nuts, the sort you'd set out with drinks, would, I think, be a slam-dunk.  You may prefer cranberries over cherries.  Blue cheese and feta are a toss-up, to me.  Roast the squash in coconut oil.  And perhaps smoked paprika, Sara-style.  Add maple syrup to the vinaigrette.  Or walnut oil.  Or whatever piques.  The three salads here?  Three different days, made three different ways.  Let's not confuse framework with formula.  The fun and yum are in the flex.  

A Salad of Greens, Squash and Apples for Autumn
with tremendous thanks to Tricia

If your squash has been roasted and refrigerated, allow 30 minutes, if you're able, to come to room temp.  Likewise, if you roast it same day, it will hold at room temp a good 4 hours.  I adore the tart Montmercy cherries from Trader Joe's, although any unsweetened, tart cherry will do.  

8 loose cups salad greens
2 cups cubed, roasted and cooled butternut squash*, approx. 1/2 a small squash 
1 large, tart apple (Honeycrisp or Pink Lady), cut into bite-sized bits
heaping 1/2 cup pecans, toasted**, roughly chopped
1/2 cup feta, crumbled
1/4 cup dried sour cherries, roughly chopped, or dried cranberries

dressing:
1/2  teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons cider or sherry vinegar
2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
plenty of freshly ground pepper

In a lidded jar, add vinegar and salt, return lid, and shake to dissolve.  Add oil and pepper, and shake vigorously to emulsify.

In a large salad bowl, add all salad ingredients.  Pour half of dressing over all, toss to combine, and taste for seasoning.  Salad will likely need more, though not all, of the dressing, plus additional salt and pepper, to taste. Adjust, toss, adjust, toss, clink a glass to fall, eat.    

*Roasted Butternut Squash:
Since reading Sarah's method for Perfect Roasted Squash, I've never looked back; it yields perfectly creamy, caramelized cubes, every time.  

Preheat oven to 425°, and place a rack in the lowest position.  Top and tail your butternut, peel, and slice neck from body of squash.  Halve both pieces, and scrape seeds from bulbous end.  Set each quarter on flat side, and cut into 1" slices.  Dice each slice into rough 1" cubes, set on a rimmed, parchment-lined baking sheet, and toss with two tablespoons' olive oil and 1 teaspoon kosher salt.  Cover sheet with foil, place in preheated oven, and roast 12 minutes.  Remove foil, return squash to oven, and roast another 12-15 minutes, until squash is deeply tender and caramelizing at the edges.    

**Toasted Pecans:  
Preheat oven to 350°, scatter pecans on a baking sheet, and place in the preheated oven for 10 minutes, or until the entire kitchen smells toasty and nutty and mapled, and until the nuts have darkened slightly.  Set a timer, and don't walk away; nuts burn in a wink.  Remove to a plate to end cooking, and set aside to cool.

 

under the wire

This past week, we've been slammed by sunshine.  Then rain.  Then sun.  

Rain.  Sun.  Rain.

Repeat.  

We've appreciated anew the reckless hellebore, that hardy soul that blooms when no one else dares. 

And realized with a start that our first flowers will soon pass.  And welcomed the parade of bulbs that will follow.

We've tidied an extra bit, not an extra lot, but a bit.  It is astounding how many spider webs lurk where you don't look. 

(Don't look up.  Because what you don't see—I've recently decided, in a long overdue analog to what you don't know—cannot, in good conscience, be dirty.)

We've been reveling in nights that are light until eight, walking, park-ing, reading, playing, drinking it in. 

(The mornings, ugh.  Less revelry, more dishevelry.  I hereby propose to the Daylight Savings Supreme Council that we shake things up a bit, gain an hour on both ends.  All in favor?)

The birds are back.  In spades.  In legions.  Sizing up our backyard birdhouses like so many sunbelt speculators, ca. 2004.  And apart from my newfound crow-wariness, the grand hubbub has been all kinds of fun.

We've watched our first daffodil open, and our second, and our fifteenth-sixteenth-seventeenth- ...  And with that, brought the year's first cut flower inside.  Seems like that ought to be a holiday right there, doesn't it?

We've made pie twice, and eaten it thrice, and practiced our 3.14159.  Because Pi Day really is a holiday.  An unofficial one, maybe, but no less tasty for it. 

We finished off the last of last Fall's caramel, and held vigil over the bare patch where we know to expect rhubarb.  Nothing ... nothing ... nothing ... something!  Too small to photograph, heliotrope elf torpedos, but there they were, Wednesday, right on schedule.

We've spied new growth rubbing shoulders with old, everywhere.  Green spears heading north, old brown blooms dangling south.  Little shoes, suddenly too small.  Pants that worked last month, all wrong this. 

We stumbled upon Erin Steed's latest gem, and fell (again) head over heels for her exquisite illustrations.  And one young boy's exquisite patience.  And a hat-wearing penguin.  And... oh, just go.

Go. 

Now. 

Read.  

We've found the first fly, the first ant, the first ladybug.  And after weeks of searching, the first roly poly.  Can you see it, up top, in those dusty cupped hands?  It was tiny, tiny, tinier even than those rhubarb tips.  But when you've been building habitats and hanging "VACANCY" signs and up-ending rocks since February, size is so not an issue.

Bubbly mudpuddles have taken up residence under every soap pump.  There's a fine layer of grit on the bottom of the bath tub.  We've tracked in enough mud to fill a raised bed.  It sounds almost romantic, doesn't it?  It's not.  It's just dirty.  But it's a good dirty.

I've made emergency runs to the basement for shorts.  Fielded—and punted—popsicle requests.  Refereed water fights in the backyard.  At half-past seven.  No goosebumps in sight. 

Yes, those are bare elbows, knees and toes, and yes, those are daffodils in the background.  Sort of like last year, emphasis on the "not at all".  Seventy-seven it was, this past Wednesday.  Next Tuesday's projection: 81º.  That would be Tuesday, March 20.  As in Tuesday, Equinox Eve.  Must be Summer.  Late Winter.  New World Order.  Whatever.  Let's go with a sneak preview of Spring.

Here is where I confess I am Toad.  A touch curmudgeon, dragging my feet, not quite ready to crawl out from under winter's covers. 

Not entirely Toad.  I would never ever say to Spring, point-blank, “Blah.”  I want to skip through the meadows and run through the woods and swim—okay, splash—in the river, I do!  Just, you know, later.  Just not quite yet.  I’ve got knitting in progress!  Basement sewing unfinished!  To-do’s still to do!  Can I burrow down one more month? 

(We've also taken cat naps, since the Daylight Savings Supreme Council seems to be permanently Out of Office.)

This is why I need Frogs in my life, like daffodils and insistent suns and small children in triplicate.  They cajole my slow self into making the switch.  They keep me honest.  They remind me to look up.  And between the bright hot, there are still those damp days.  We can squeeze in some wooly goodness, when the sun don't shine.  Work puzzles, string beads, while sitting out the drizzle.  And before the calendar officially flips, we can sneak in pork and apples, under the wire.

If you've been around here any length of time, you'll have noticed I don't talk meat-centered mains very often.  This is because I don't eat meat-centered mains very often.  Meat appears most weeks, if not most nights, but when it does, it is ordinarily a bit player.  Apart from the odd braise or festive shish kebab, meat mostly makes its way onto our table stir-fried with vegetables, consorting with tofu, or tossed with abundant greens, beans, grains or legumes.  A + 2B family, we are not.

Except on those rare occasions when we are.  This pork, these apples: they are the rare.  I've been making this dish for some ten years, now, often once a year, always regretting not more.  A single tenderloin is sliced thin and seared, as much for the handsome crust this delivers, as for the golden bits they leave behind.  When the medallions are bronzed, but not yet done, they're set aside to rest, and to give the apples and onions their turn. 

I didn't mention the onions.  The onions are important.  They are tiny little things, slivered, transluscent, but the source of that unmistakable allium baritone.  The onions are savory harmony to the apples' tart-sweet melody, a caramelized vegetal counterpoint to the rich disks of meat. 

Rich?  Oh, yes, that.  There's a pan sauce, also, built of booze, cider and cream.  And of course those crusty bits, good as gold, flavor bombs that become one with the sauce.  Well, and thyme, which I shouldn't underplay, because its soft herbal zip is evident throughout.  This all gets reduced, concentrated, until syrupy, whereupon the pork re-enters the swim.  Everything completes finishing school together, until pork, apples, onions, and cream can complete each other's sentences.  I could clutter another paragraph with ecstatic adjectives, or I could just encourage you to give it a go.  You can still sneak it in under the winter wire, if you wish.  But really, there's no deadline on delicious. 

Pork Tenderloin with Apples, Onions, Thyme + Cream
adapted from The Best Recipe, from the Editors of Cook's Illustrated

Long ago, I increased the apples and onions, both, as I always crave more of the caramelized chunks.  Ditto the sauce.  You could quadruple it, easy.  As to apples, use a good firm sweet-tart apple, such as Pink Lady or Granny Smith.  Both hold their shape beautifully.  As to "cider", I last used one Juicy Juice box, leftover from a party months ago.  And as for "Applejack", I used Tuaca, a completely unrelated liquor with a sweet, vanilla edge.  The original called for sage; I like thyme.  My point: apple varieties aside, this recipe is deeply forgiving.  Don't be held back by the details. 

1 pork tenderloin (1 - 1.5 pounds), sliced into 3/4" medallions
1 teaspoon kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon butter + 1 tablespoon oil
3 firm, tart apples, such as Pink Lady or Granny Smith, peeled, cored, and cut into 1" chunks
1 medium yellow onion, sliced thin
3 tablespoons applejack, brandy, rum, cognac, anything heady
1 cup apple cider or juice
1/2 cup chicken broth or water
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons thyme, dry or fresh
1/2 cup heavy cream
additional salt and pepper, to taste

Arrange pork slices in a single layer upon paper towel and blot dry, then sprinkle both sides generously with salt and pepper.  In a large, heavy skillet, heat oil over high heat until it shimmers.  Working in batches, with tongs, carefully lay several slices of tenderloin in the hot pan, leaving an inch between pieces to ensure browning, not steaming.  Let sit, undisturbed, 2-3 minutes, or until the bottom side is well-browed and releases easily.  (If oil begins to smoke, turn heat down slightly.)  Flip medallions, and sear on reverse, until golden.  Remove medallions to a clean plate, and repeat with remaining pork, adding another splash of oil, if needed, to keep bottom covered.  Reserve crusty skillet with all its glorious brown bits for step two.

With the pork seared and resting, sauté your apples and build your pan sauce:  In the same skillet you used to sear the pork, melt butter and oil over medium heat, and swirl to distribute.  Add apples and onions, stir to coat, and sauté, stirring occasionally, until apples are browning at the edges, 4-8 minutes.  Add apple cider/juice and brandy to apples and onions, and bring to a boil, scraping pan bottom with a wooden spatula to loosen the browned bits.  Boil gently until liquid reduces to a glaze, 3-4 minutes.  Increase heat to high, add broth (or water), any accumulated pork juices from the resting plate, salt and thyme (if dried, rub between fingers as you add it, to release its oils and brighten its flavor).  Boil until liquid reduces, thickens and becomes syrupy, 3-4 minutes.  Add cream; continue to boil, until reduced by half, 2-3 minutes.

Reduce heat to medium, and return pork medallions to the pan, turning meat to coat and nestling them down amidst the apples.  Simmer pork in the pan sauce until cooked through, 5-10 minutes (the USDA recently lowered the safe cooking temperature for pork to 145º; I cut open the thickest slice, and look for clear juices and a faint blush of pink).  Taste, and adjust salt and pepper to suit.  Transfer to a serving platter, spooning apples, onions and sauce over all, and enjoy.

shameless

Once, three hundred years ago, or at least three lifetimes ago, I was traveling by train through the Pyrénées.

We were somewhere between Barcelona and Madrid, barreling through the stark hills which the locals called mountains.  It was hard for my Northwest self to see "mountain" in the modest peaks out either window. They looked more like foothills, like Issaquah, like Snoqualmie, than like Rainier, which was my mountain archetype.  But semantics aside, they were mesmerizing, so scrubby, so rugged, so different from all I knew.

I remember riding with my nose pushed up against the chill glass, playing with that funny focus that trains invite.  Pick a point well ahead, affix your eyeballs, and follow it with your head until fwoop!, it's all gone. 

The prize in this solitary, high-speed game was the spying of villages, rare and sudden.  We whizzed through tiny, anonymous towns by the dozen, small congregations of gray roofs, incongruous as toadstools.  They were enchanting, mystifying, a little terrifying, stubborn little outposts against all that stone.  Up each main street, without fail, plodded a few elderly women, market-bound with net bags.  Backs curved with age, coats invariably black, hair always encased under waterproof scarves.

I remember how unwittingly they resembled their surroundings: concave huddled clusters, pointy-topped, pewter-hued, the women, the mountains, the both of them.  I remember being impressed they all wore the same uniform.  Mostly, I remember those identical plastic rain scarves, tied tight under absolutely every last chin.  And nothing but sunshine, not a raindrop in sight. 

Weird.

(By now, you serious students of Spain, and those with any passing knowledge of geography, will have noted that there are no Pyrénees between Barcelona and Madrid.  They run, of course, due North of Barcelona, dividing Spain from La Belle France. 

I know this.  I do.  I even spent a good hour, re-visiting Spanish topograhy, trying to square my memory with reality.  I had a serious talking to with my recollections, pointing out that in all liklihood, we were traveling through the Sistema Ibérico.  It was unyielding: Barcelona, Pyrénées, Madrid.  Memory's funny that way, able to move mountains.)    

But the main thing I remember was the teenage girl across the aisle.  She was beautiful, lean, lanky, like all Spaniards of a certain age, her hair deep and glossy as a good oil-cured olive.  She was sixteen, maybe seventeen, perhaps five years my junior, which seemed like a lifetime to my newlywed self.  I was amused by the way she lay strewn across the seats, arms here, long legs there, hair tossed back into the row behind.  Somehow, she stretched her ninety-two-pound self over three rows, and across the aisle, also.  

All this, I likely wouldn't have noticed, were it not for the singing.

Mostly, she chatted quietly with her friends, in rapid-fire Spanish, not one word of which I understood.  But she was also plugged into a walkman (three hundred years ago, like I said), and every now and again, in that hushed train car half-full of strangers, she would open her lips and without warning, sing, "IT'S MY PAAAAARTY, AND I'LL CRY IF I WANT TO, CRY IF I WANT TO, CRY-Y-Y-Y IF I WANT TO, YOU WOULD CRY TOO IF IT HAPPENED TO YOO-OU..."

Out loud. 

Really out loud. 

Singing's a misnomer.  Belting's better. 

In perfect English, Lesley Gore gone brunette.  Utterly un-self-conscious.  Shameless.  Excellent.

All of which is my roundabout road to what's above, and what's to follow: 

More winter love. 

More salads.

I've already admitted my affection for winter's gauzy light, barren beauty, and endless indoor play.  Though I don't think I've mentioned that the Best Play-Doh Toys Ever can be found in the foot massage section at Daiso (Westlake Center and Lynwood, for you Seattle folks).  After the kitchen drawer, of course.  And since I know I'm in the minority:  Do you see, you Spring Peepers, all the infant shoots, buds and signs? 

But three salads in as many months?  With March just begun?  You bet.  Because it's my blog, and I can dwell if I want to.  And I do, I so do. 

Thing is, I collect salads the way some women collect shoes.  Like wedges and espadrilles and thigh-high boots and gladiator sandals, I go giddy over the permutations, the possibilities.  I trot out salads for every season, soul and mood, and this next one sits resolutely in the Still Awaiting Spring camp.  (My footwear assortment, for the record, is downright disreputable.) 

Equal parts celery, romaine, and Asian pear, it's a concession to March, when fresh is still far off.  In Elsa Beskow's Around the Year, March is an Old Man, a metaphor I'm pretty sure she stole from late-winter's produce aisles.  Because that is how everything feels right now, grizzled, a little wizened, past its pull date.  I am never as grateful as I am in March for those hardy souls that manage a smile, even after a long-haul.  

Concession, wizened, manage a smile.  That wasn't a ringing introduction, was it?  Let me put it this way: I cannot stop eating this salad.  I meant to get an Asian pear picture for you, but blazed through half a dozen before snapping one.  So I bought two more, just for this purpose.  Then inhaled two more bowls.  I am helpless.  Imagine.

Concession, please note, is not spelled c-o-m-p-r-o-m-i-s-e.  This tastes like celebration, makes March look good.

The Asian pear is important, here, a sentence I never thought I would write.  Asian pears are odd ducks.  Technically a pear, with the texture of an apple, an ungenerous soul might call them wet, dull and bland.  Mostly, I have avoided them, because mostly, I've been that ungenerous soul.  But March is not mostly.  I somehow brought home six.  And discovered they have a soulmate in celery.

I've always been fairly celery ambivalent, also, keeping it on hand for soups and stews and little else.  But one night, the two found their way into my salad bowl, and by golly, if they aren't fruit-vegetable doppelgängers.  Both bursting with water, which translates as C-R-U-N-C-H, they are, sliced thin, a most excellent ensemble.  Ordinary apples won't do here.

Romaine goes in also, albeit as a minor player.  I do love a salad blueprint, flexible, democratic, but this is not one of those.  This is a salad of particulars, and proportions.  Many salads are mostly lettuce, and many of them are lovely, but lettuce can be a bit bossypants.  We're doormats that way, we Americans, thinking lettuce a synonym for salad.  It is not.  In this one, the lettuce can be left out entirely, and I've made it that way often, and liked it, very much.  In the end, I deceided I liked it better with, but do not let your lettuce get out of line. 

Because the soul of this salad, it's come-hither finger, is the riveting conversation between celery and Asian pear.  It is, in my humble opinion, dreamy.  They have an identical taut juicy crunch, celery's saline snap yin to the pear's crisp sweet yang.  They get along famously, and in equal measure, should make up the bulk of the salad themselves. 

As for the balance, think lemon and nuts, great lashings of the both of them.  Hazlenuts are my very favorite here, earthy and mysterious and softly sweet, but only if they're good hazlenuts.  I don't say this to be precious, but because hazlenuts are troublesome, turning coat faster than any nut I know.  Fresh, they are glorious.  Rancid, ghastly.  Taste several, and if any strike a wrong note, speak your condolences and chuck 'em, post haste (and freeze your next batch, to save their sweet souls).  Toasted pecans or walnuts will stand in nicely.

As to the lemon, don't be alarmed by the quantities.  I often invert the classic acid:oil ratio, opting for 3 times as much acid as oil.  Not because I'm fat-shy (um, hardly), but because I'm tart-friendly.  I have a ferocious sour tooth, as well as an abiding fondness for produce flattered by citrus.  And as it happens, lemon loves celery and apple pear.  Somehow, lemon makes celery sparkle, and turns up apple-pear's ordinarily mild-mannered personality.  In return, they somehow nudge the lemon toward sweet, like sugar's been added, like a miracle berry.  I don't undestand it.  I can't explain it.  I am only the messenger, here to tell you, toss these stalwarts together and the whole gang stands taller, prouder, livelier, perkier, than five minutes earlier.  As do I, eyes tilted toward spring. 

P.S.  Turn your eyes to the horizon, also.  This one's not much of a looker.  But boy, it's an eater. 

P.S.S.  Did I mention I've more salads waiting in the wings?  And I'll just keep belting them out, when I feel like it.  I'm shameless that way.  Forewarned, forearmed, FYI.

Celery, Asian Pear + Romaine Salad with Hazlenuts + Lemon
Serves 2 hungry souls, on the cusp of spring
(or 4 reasonable sorts, as a side)

This salad would be more beautiful if everything were bigger, the pear slices larger.  But I like the bite-a-bility of it, and find the celery and Asian pear benefit from a sliver-thin slice.  Even with this fussing, which you can take or leave, it is, at most, a five-minute affair. 

6 plump, long stalks of celery, sliced 1/4" thin
1 Asian pear, sliced 1/8" thick, then cut into thirds
1 heart of romaine (pale interior leaves), sliced 1/3"
1 cup sweet, fresh hazlenuts, toasted 10 minutes in a 350° oven, roughly chopped
3-4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, from 1-2 large, plump lemons
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
several grinds black pepper

Place sliced celery, Asian pear, romaine and hazlenuts in a wide bowl.  In a jam jar, squeeze lemon, then add salt and swirl to dissolve.  Add olive oil, cover, and shake well to combine.  Pour over veg, and toss well to coat.  Add pepper, taste for salt, adjust as needed, and dig in.

the important thing

We have this book, The Important Book. It's a slim little volume, with very modern (for 1949) illustrations, written by one Margaret Wise Brown. If her name rings a bell, it's likely because she wrote the most widely-read children's book ever. And if The Important Book never made Goodnight Moon's splash, it's only because it lacks the charm of a going-to-bed bunny.

Actually, it also lacks narrative. And plot. And characters. And dialogue. Bear with me.

What The Important Book has is the gift of the pause. Wise Brown assembles this cast of everyday backdrops—shoes, wind, daisies, snow—and stops where others would walk right on by. She offers up a quirky inventory of each thing's essential parts, and so invites us to do the same.

The important thing about a spoon is that you eat with it. It's like a little shovel. You hold it in your hand, you can put it in your mouth, it isn't flat, it's hollow, and it spoons things up. But the important thing about a spoon is that you eat with it.

It's a small collection of odes to the ordinary, Consider the Oyster for the preschool set.

I've been thinking on this business of Important Things as we wrap up Halloween, and barrel into the true holidays. Halloween happened.

Of course it did.

I just wasn't sure that it would. Do you ever have those holidays?

We don't do up Halloween in a big way. No haunted garages, no four-foot fake spiders, no styrofoam graveyards on the front lawn. Just the usual, which can resemble the bare minimum: costumes, pumpkins, candy, the odd craft, the end.

But October went by in a blur of colds, and by last week we'd yet to bring up the Halloween books. We'd yet to make the easy-peasy paper towel ghosts we've made for years, and we never did get out our little rubber bat stamp, and were just nailing down the last costume requests, with making and hemming still yet to do. But the important thing, about October, was the tending and healing.

And that's when I remembered the important thing about traditions, that they're only as good as the happy they bring. And sometimes that looks like repeating what was. And sometimes that looks like forgetting all that. (And sometimes that looks like an orange-o-lantern, invented by a boy who finally succumbed to his sister's cold, and feared he might miss the whole holiday.)

And you know what? We snuck in a screening of The Great Pumpkin after school, Friday, and giggled again over Charlie's poor holey ghost. And the fifth graders got their pretzel ghosts. And if we didn't do spooky paper towels, we did discover Perler bead pumpkins. And ad hoc'd a flock (fleet? brood? colony!) of googley-eyed bats.

(And surely the Important Thing about today is that I now know these animal groupings. A romp of otters? A shrewdness of apes? A scurry of squirrels? Hot dog.)

And Waldo's shirt sleeves got shortened, and Darth Vader made the parade, and the princess got her gown, though I had a little trouble with the scissors. (The important thing about a princess dress, as it happens, is that it's pink, and it twirls, and it's done by Halloween.)

And we did get those pumpkins, eventually. Halloween morning. From the pastoral aisles of the supermarket. "Heritage squash", actually, according to the sign, since the ordinary carving variety were all sold out. But it took us three stores to establish this fact, which brought a bit of the pumpkin patch hunt to it all. And when we carved them Halloween afternoon, I couldn't help but notice it all seemed more inspiration than procrastination. Halloween is, after all, one of those terminally late holidays, designed to drag children to the end of their patience and back. Wiling away a few hours elbow-deep in goop was not a bad thing at all. Maybe we'll wait on purpose, next year. And maybe we won't. The important thing is the possibility.

The important thing about an apple is that it is round. It is red. You bite it, and it is white inside, and the juice splashes in your face, and it tastes like an apple, and it falls off a tree. But the important thing about an apple is that it is round.

Now here is where Margaret and I part ways, though were she here to try it, I'm all but certain she'd agree: the important thing about apples is in fact the roasting. They can be stewed into a sauce, blush pink and served warm. They can be baked under a blanket of oats, butter and sugar, in which case they are called a crisp, and also delicious. They can be dipped into caramel, pretty much endlessly. They can be eaten out of hand, even by a three-year-old.

They can even be picked from an orchard in early October, on a whim of a Sunday afternoon. The bags fill quickly, and the gratification is instant, and sixty pounds go down in half as many minutes. But grocery store apples are just as fine, here. The important thing is the roasting.

I've roasted every vegetable under the sun. And I've eaten apples every way I know how. From where I sit now, I cannot quite figure out how I never thought to combine those two sentences. I could wallow. Or I could just thank Ashley. Thank you, Ashley.

Oh, heck. That won't do.

When writing thank you notes, my mother always taught me, one ought to be specific. Let's try this again:

Thank you, Ashley, for this exquisite little intersection of apples, ease and scrumptiousness. All fall, I'd imagined some way with cooked apples that brought out all the best bits, and left all the rest. I love a good pie as much as the next girl, but wanted more options without crust or crumb. I wanted the ease of apple sauce (but not the mush), the hands-off of baked apples (but not the knife-and-fork acrobatics), the caramelized swoon of sautéed apples (but not the stoveside babysitting). I wanted, in short, the apple impossible. You delivered, and then some. Home run, this one.

Just as it does with any vegetable, roasting intensifies apples' everything—their fragrance, their sweetness, their tartness, their appeal. Roasted apples are apples, amplified.

Brassy on the edges, melting within, they somehow still manage to hold their shape. There's a slip of butter and dark brown sugar, just enough to varnish the works, not so much to banish them to dessert territory. Indeed, I love these best as a slam-dunk at dinner, a sweet-tart side to all manner of savory. They are dashing alongside sausages or ham (or, for that matter, any porky thing), or double-stuffed tucked delicately into a crèpe, or anywhere applesauce might ordinarily travel. (Potato latkes, I'm looking at you.) It beats a bowl of peas, any day. And I happen to love a bowl of peas.

 

Not that they aren't outrageous with a scoop of ice cream. Somehow, suddenly, they are Tarte Tatin. Minus the Tarte. And minus the work. It is important that you try them this way, also.

 

Also, that they fill your home with the scent of six just-baked pies.

Also, that they are the work of five minutes. (Plus one deep-breathing, foot-tapping, hurry-up-and-wait hour).

Also, that I think we've a new fall tradition.

But the important thing about anything is the beginning. Is your oven pre-heating? Peeler? Pan? Apples? Go!

(Cardamom) Roasted Apples
adapted from Ashley Rodriguez, Not Without Salt

Cardamom snuck into my version, as tends to happen in my kitchen, edging out the original vanilla bean. The lesser amounts of spice will be mere background notes, complementing the apples but not announcing themselves. My children think they don't like spice in their apples, but gobbled these up with half-teaspoons of both. The greater amounts will be more pronounced, fragrant and flattering without overwhelming.

We used a combination of Jonathan and Golden Delicious, both of which held their shape beautifully.

12 small-medium apples (3 pounds, or 5 cups), peeled and cut into 1” chunks
1/2-1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2-1 1/2 teaspoons ground cardamom (optional)
3 tablespoons dark brown sugar
3 tablespoons salted butter

Pre-heat oven to 400*.

Place peeled, cut apples in a roasting pan. Toss with brown sugar, cardamom and cinnamon (if using). Dot with butter. Roast 50-60 minutes, tossing gently every 20 minutes are so, until apples are tender, golden at the edges, and butter and brown sugar are beginning to caramelize. Eat immediately, alongside savory fare, or topped with ice cream, or all by its glorious lonesome, standing stoveside.