remedial eating

lunch (actually)

 

Radishes. I was going to write about radishes.

I may still.

Not today, though.

 

 

 

I was also going to build shelves in the hall closet. The coat closet—probably, properly—but, we never use it for coats. We could use a place for games, though. And circuitry kits. And crafts and toys, and odds and ends, and so: re-purposing. Project. Shelves.

I bought boards, mid-April.

I brought them in, Monday.

And by in, I mean finally out of my trunk and heaped high behind the closet door. Which I guess, technically, constitutes "shelves in the closet". But drills, screws, and seven hours would improve their functionality, significantly.  

 

 

Also, I was going to see my mom on Mother's Day. Because we live in the same city for the first time in eight years, and so: obviously.

I so didn't do it. 

Because: bronchitis.

And so, instead, I was going to see her the next weekend.

That was two weeks ago.

Haven't seen her, still.

I didn't bother to plan for last weekend. Superstition. Experience. Call it what you will. We wound up calling it Strep. (At least we didn't have to call and cancel.) 

 

 

I was going to do a great many things. Fifty-two, give or take. (Humorous. Hubris. So close, these two words.) Things which were Urgent and Critical, a month back, when I sat tensely taut between single-spaced, double-columned lists of All That Needs Doing Before Summer!!, and the countdown of days, between here and there. And then, our sickest Spring on record. None of it serious, all low-grade nonsense, all mercifully, easily cure-able stuff. In other words, no big deal. Just an ongoing deal. Which, if you're a tiny bit focused, can mutate into or-deal. 

Or, unexpectedly, not.

I don't even know where those lists landed.

And, oddly, I don't much care.

 

 

What is weird, what is odd, is the lack of desperately-behind, must-catch-up wall-crawling that isn't currently happening in my head. It is my habit, when curve balls come, to dwell on the delta between goals and reality. To zero in on the yawning chasm of un-done to-do's. To mourn time lost. Assess the damage. Analyze, in the wake, how to increase output. To re-engineer future days and minutes to course-correct for what went missing. To maintain that tenuous balance between maximum productivity and those pesky, prevailing headwinds called Life. I can, in this way, be wildly efficient. Also, the tiniest bit intense.

In college, I learned a fully optimized factory runs best at 80% capacity. Theory being, the planned 20% downtime will absorb line shutdowns, employee absences, and any and all other unexpected glitches. As I recall, decades of widespread Fortune 500 research backed this finding. As I also recall, my instant and enduring reaction was, "absolute bunk". 110%, maybe. On holiday. Down from a running 127% average. But an effort in the mere high double-digits? Patently, egregiously wasteful.

By rights, then, by now, after six sidelined weeks, I ought to have the heart rate of a hamster, just off a joint spinny wheel session. Instead, all week, as we've inched back toward routine, and toward summer, I have this bizarre carefree levity. Is that the right term, even? Spring-ier step? Fewer jungle drums? Strange void where the Impending Finish Line/go!Go!!GO!!! once lived?

This makes approximately no sense to me.

 

 

I mean, the goals/achievements gap has rarely been greater. And yet. That list got lost, and weeks with it, and with those, all the urgency. (To be clear: the urgency didn't just up and walk away. There was no WHOOSH!, no insta-enlightenment, no Buddha under the Bodhi. More a foot-draggy, fuggy-minded, long-drawn-out, begrudging ok-lungs-you-win resignation. Nor was it exactly peaceful. Unless you consider grumbling, eye-rolling, harrumph-ing and intolerably whiny "peaceful". Wouldn't insta-enlightment be grand, though?)

And yet. Levity.

It's as though, by removing all potential for productivity, expectations slunk out the window, alongside. I think it was Anne LaMott who said, "Expectations are resentments under construction." I think it was Brené Brown who then built on this with "stealth expectations", and their sneaky knack for undermining happy. And calm. And so, ironically, productivity. Dang it.  

 

 

Actually, I know it was Brown, because somewhere in that early May "wasteland", I listened to Rising Strong. All of it. Also, Big Magic. Also start to finish. (Five stars, both.) Also, I finally figured out how to request, reserve, download, and listen to audiobooks. For free. From my library. This hadn't even made my list, because who would prioritize such piffle?  

And that's the thing: throughout those "lost weeks", so many things happened. Maybe not the things I intended. Mostly not the things I intended. Different things. Other things. Things I could either reject as Not the Right Things, or receive as New and Interesting Things. I would like to report that I made the switch, stat, and welcomed the New and Interesting, warmly. I would also like to retain some shred of moral credibility, so more truthfully: hahahahaaaaaaa!! I wish. So not my style.

Obviously, the right answer was (A).

 

 

I clung to this answer, fiercely, for weeks. There are fingernail-dents in my mark sense form to prove it. But at some indeterminate point along the way, I became a little confused on my position, on why I was fighting Not Doing so hard. Or rather, on why I would so willingly consign weeks to the waste bin. As if weeks were rubbish. As if time were trash. As if this idea of "time lost" were anything other than a fiction I'd fashioned myself, and a dangerous one, at that. 

And then, the other day, I was listening to Krista Tippett, interviewed by Pico Iyer on her own show. (Ample time + zero energy = perfect podcast algorithm. I was so very far behind on On Being, because, you know, it didn't merit a To Do.) "I like the language of surprise," she said. Whereupon my head promptly pulled one of those needle-hits-record-scratch full-stop screeches.

Wait, what?

Who puts "like" and "surprise" in the same sentence? I thought. Surprise = Interruption. Surprise = Disruption. Surprise = Not What I Planned. Ergo, Surprise = Bad. SIMPLE MATH. Then again, I so respect Krista Tippett. I kept listening. "The willingness to be surprised is a great virtue," she added. "It opens possibilities."

[            ]

[ ?!?!?!?! ]

[I have typed and deleted so many interjections, and acronyms, and punctuation points, in an attempt to capture my thoughts on this concept. No words. Mind. Blown. Clearly, clearly, I lack virtue.] 

 

For you flexible, spontaneous, fun-loving types, I'll just wrap here, because: DOH. Surprise = Possibilities. Of course. Of course. (Why did I not know this?) (?!?!?!) And for the rest of us—i.e., me, myself and I—maybe this New Math explains so much? That weird levity? The exhale of plans, abandoned? The odd profound quiet created by "No"? The strange terrain of allowing Surprise and its many possibilities free admission?

And by admission, I do not mean ushering Surprise through the palace gates and down the cellar stairs and to the stale inky dungeon below, to be corralled and quarantined and kept until such time as She either surrenders or expires. Whichever comes first. No. (Wouldn't that be lovely, though?) I mean greeting Surprise at the front door, maybe even with a smile (oh, who are we kidding?), showing Her to the rickety kitchen table, sharing tea and biscuits, the good ones, even, and conversing, face to face. For hours. And not just politely, either, but with genuine curiosity and keen questions and, yes, even ardent cross-examination? 

What if, when Surprise knocks, be it six weeks of sick or Serious Situations, we bravely (or kicking and screaming, whatever works) fill in the bubble for Answer (B)?

What if, when we write our days in our minds, we pluck different verbs, and speak not of time lost, but instead, invested elsewhere? Time re-directed? Cleverly re-deployed? Inventively, unexpectedly, irreverently re-purposed? What if we see this for the terrible system it is, chaotic and messy and totally not to code, and have filed appeals with appropriate parties, but know in the end that Surprise is Life's first and favorite synonym? Life, actually. Life outside my lists. 

What then?

And now, pardon me while my brain explodes.  

 

 

But first, lunch. I say this not as the worst segue ever, but because it is true, and constant, my unswerving fondness for food. In sickness and health, in good times and bad, brain intact or otherwise, I am hungry. Always. I have heard some lose their appetite when they're ill, or excited, or nervous, or... ? Help me out, here? Maybe there's a Venn Diagram whose AB includes "loves surprises" and "loses appetite"? I don't know. I cannot imagine. 

What I can imagine is wanting to eat well while expending approximately zero effort. Those radishes, up top? They required very little effort. But little was more than I wanted to muster. So when push came to shove, and my belly became grumbly, what I found myself craving—and, in fact, making—was this lightning fast Spring Thai curry. Over and over and over again. 

 

 

There was a grocery store endcap involved, one with coconut milk and curry paste and the provocative tip that these two ingredients alone, plus protein, could somehow yield curry. How charming, I thought. How cheat-y, I thought. How totally against The Rules, I thought. (Rules, of course, being Plans' kissing cousins.) I've made good Thai curry many times, sourcing galangal, bashing lemongrass, pounding ginger and dried shrimps and chilis. It is always heady. It is always delicious. It is always a lengthy, elaborate mess. Which is why "always" doesn't happen anywhere near as often as I'd like.

So even as I scoffed at the notion that one can + one bottle could = true curry, I uncharacteristically impulse-bought both. Maybe I was already flirting with a more welcome posture toward surprise. Maybe I was exhausted. Probably, I was under the influence of prescription-strength cough syrup. Either way, I did a rare thing and let raw marketing guide my lunch.

I'm so glad I did.

 

For even though I embellished in the end, I was properly impressed by that jar of curry paste, and serious lack of mess, and the gob-smackingly good soup a mere 15 minutes could make. This soup—and I've settled on it as soup, a looser, slurp-able, spoon-friendly thing, though you can omit the broth and serve it up, slurry-style, over rice—has come together differently each time. Still, a few common threads prevail. Alliums at the outset, which melt and slump and become a sweet foil against the spice. Fish sauce and lime juice, and a spoonful of sugar, all (to my tastebuds) key counterpoints to the curry. Ecumenical protein—halibut, shrimp, tofu, chicken—all of which I've tried, all of which I've loved. And finally, and telltale me, alllll the Spring vegetables.

At heart, the recipe below differs little from what is printed (I just noticed yesterday) right there on the back of the bottle. Except, this: "1 cup vegetables". That would be theirs. Mine reads more like "1/2 lb. asparagus, 1/2 lb. zucchini, 1/2 lb. greens, fistfuls peas, peppers, herbs". I would add that I've since included corn, sheared straight from the cob and added at the end, and it, too, is completely fantastic. So maybe 6 cups veg? Maybe 8? Maybe so many they're the main event? 

 

 

Because that is the beauty of this broth, its versatility, its backdrop abilities, its Abbott to the vegetables' Costello. Its spice and warmth and sweetness and verve are a gorgeous context for all Spring's things. It is where I turned after a dozen dances with my usual Spring Mess, when I was ready for new flavors, new accents, new drawls, but still squarely seated in Spring's bounty. It accommodates every last vegetable I throw at it, whatever's abundant, with grace and ease. It accommodates, equally, Tuesday's extra steamed zukes, Thursday's leftover asparagus, Sunday's unused greens. Not to mention those random crisper drawer orphans always rolling ignominiously about. Made from whatever the market offers up. Made from the week's odds and ends. Made from serendipity and scraps, of food and of time, alike. Practical. Flexible. Fantastically good. And fast enough to fool a person into thinking they'd not really cooked at all. Which so often is what a life needs. And what, so often, makes for lunch (actually).   

 

Lightning Fast Thai Spring Curry
serves 4-6

My current curry paste is standard-issue Thai Kitchen, available at any major supermarket. If you find yourself in an Asian market, you'll find half a dozen. Try them all. But the supermarket stuff is just fine, a mash-up of chili, ginger, lemongrass, galangal, garlic, and little more. Hello, easy. Green curry paste would also be swell. 

The steps below are a little loose, as is my method. The overall idea here is to start the broth, then add the "bits" in order of hardiness, i.e. chicken first (if using), then hardy veg, then tender things (seafood, peas). I find cooking and prep time complement each other beautifully, if you work and add in this order. In other words: no mise-en-place needed here. This is purely slice-and-add, 15 minutes start-to-finish. 

As to veg: play. I especially love leeks, here, as their silken layers love the spiced broth. Beyond these, any and all Spring staples are excellent, here. Asparagus, zucchini, anonymous greens, also carrots and cauliflower, not listed, but lovely. Add whatever looks good, from your fridge or nearest farmer. As summer comes, I'll swap in eggplant, green beans, tomatoes and local peppers. And once winter hits, kale, kuri squash, maybe mushrooms, definitely storage carrots. I cannot imagine a bad combination. 

1 Tbs. peanut or olive oil
3 leeks, halved and sliced (or 2 shallots, or 1 onion, sliced)
1 Tbs. red curry paste (+ more to taste)
1 (14 oz.) can coconut milk
1/2 cup water (optional)
1 Tbs. fish sauce (+ more to taste)
1-2 tsp. sugar (to taste)
1/2# (6 thick spears) asparagus, relieved of tough ends, then thick-sliced (1/2")
1/2# (2 small) zucchini, halved horizontally, thick-sliced (1/2")
1/2# greens (slivered kale, spinach, turnip greens)
1/2# tofu, halibut, chicken or shrimp, cut into 1/2" cubes
1-2 cups additional veg, chopped (red pepper, tomato, snap peas, fresh corn, mushrooms)
1 Tbs. lime juice

to top: fistfuls of mint/cilantro/basil (any/all); fried shallots; chopped peanuts; scallions

In a medium saucepan, add oil, and warm until shimmering over medium heat. Add leeks, stir well to coat with oil, and cook over medium heat until soft, slumped and melted, 5-7 minutes. Add coconut cream from top of can (if you think of it; it easily announces itself as a thick cap of white at the top of each can), and stir briefly to melt. Add curry paste, and fry in the leek-y fat for 1-2 minutes, until slightly darkened and fragrant.

Add remaining coconut milk, water (if using), fish sauce and sugar (start with 1 teaspoon), and stir to combine. While broth heats to a quiet simmer, add embellishments in order of vigor. If using chicken, slice and add first, allowing 5 minutes to simmer. Halibut or tofu can jump in alongside hardy veg (zucchini, asparagus, greens), and will want around 5 minutes to cook at a slow burble. Add shrimps, as well as any/all tender veg (snap peas, tomatoes, corn, peppers) at the last, allowing 2 minutes to heat through. 

Add lime juice, and stir well. Taste. Consider. More salt? Spice? Sweet? Add more fish sauce for salt, more curry paste for heat, more lime juice for sour, and sugar by pinches for more sweet. This is the mad wizard part of the process, and the most crucial, and the most fun. Add dashes and splashes, stirring well to melt and mix, until you hit that happy salty/sour/salty/sweet high point. When done, your veg will beam. Your protein, also. And best of all, your belly.  

Serve over rice, or any good grain, or straight-up as soup, topped with herbs + other bits.  

Keeps beautifully for 3 days.

the basic unit of celebration

 

Let's begin by thanking Nigella Lawson for this excellent, overdue phrase, shall we? I mean, we quantify so very many things: height, time, temps, votes, mph, rpm, hits, likes, eyeballs. It's more than high time we size up "the basic unit of celebration". Lawson is also to credit/blame for the estimable chocolate cake, to follow. But, more on that shortly.

 

  

I am so smitten with this notion of celebration, meted and measured. Of calibrating celebration, isolating its essential atoms, of identifying celebration's most granular elements. The bits and bytes of joy, I guess. 

We tend, by which of course I mean I tend, to seek Victories, I think. To nail Big Wins. To seek Solutions. To solve Big Problems. To ACHIEVE GREATNESS!! Indeed, experts advise that if we're to Accomplish Big Things, we're best served to leave small banal tasks off of our to do lists, and list instead Important Goals. That when our list reads "shower, eat, move", it's hard to remember to Save the World. I get this. I agree with this even, mostly, sometimes. This also gets my goat.

 

 

Because this doesn't accurately capture, I think, the revolutionary value in tinned beans, at the ready.

Our beans are stored in what is, in the loosest possible sense, our "pantry". In fact, it's a closet two rooms from the kitchen, into which I jammed stuff in the early weeks of unpacking. By "jammed", I mean crammed and rammed. And by "stuff", I mean all the things: dried Chinese mushrooms, random silverware, candles, frisbees, too-small shoes, light bulbs, bundt pans, springforms (sides only; bottoms deeply MIA), a big jar of dried milk, those beans. We don't drink dried milk. I don't know why we own dried milk. I especially don't know why we moved dried milk. But move it we did, and unpack it we did, and walk by it we did. For five months. Five. 

 

 

It was ugly, and messy, and inefficient, and just barely functional, and THANKHEAVENS, had doors that closed. And, it got us through.

And although every time I walked by—it sits by our main door, so: two dozen avert-your-eyes times, daily—it slayed me a little to know I was, once again, standing firm in square-shouldered denial. 

But just a little. The littlest little. Because, geez. Pantry, people. Hardly world peace. Hardly a priority. Hardly worth the time it would take. 

Then last week, at long long last, I set it to rights.

 

 

I emptied the whole thing onto every surface: counters, floors, couches, chairs. Children, had they been home. I also emptied the cupboard adjacent, because one thing leads to another, or no good deed goes unpunished. Can't quite keep straight which. I started in the morning. I worked all afternoon. I planned to be done before the bus came.

The table was still six layers deep by dinner.

We ordered pizza.

No one complained.

(Actually, this sequence pretty much captures my 2016 to date. Only sometimes, we substitute toast.)

 

 

Two days later, the table was (mostly) cleared, the stuff (largely) re-stuffed, but in more sensible, strategic ways. And today, I can find not only the chickpeas but also the soy sauce, tuna, and tomato paste. The lightbulbs have a more permanent home. And the dried milk? Oy. Pretty sure it's still in there, lurking in some deep dark corner. Can't win 'em all.

There are, however, no more shoes in the roasting pan. By such milestones, I measure my days.

 

 

But here's the rub: properly, a pantry put to rights is, at most, a mile-pebble. A millimeter-pebble, more likely. Certainly not a milestone, not in all caps, not in common parlance, anyway. And I get this. Agree with this, even. Mostly. Sometimes. But not always.

Because these minuscule feats, in these mundane arenas, have a weird, exaggerated impact on our days. My days, anyway. Disproportionate joy, in spades.

 

 

Because, Proper Noun Goals notwithstanding, boy, do beans on tap make my days better. When you can't find the beans, and dinner's delayed, and math untended, and tempers frayed, and harsh words traded, and tempers dinged, the tone tilts. Imperceptibly. Indisputably. Invariably in all the wrong ways. And you can and do bend like bamboo, and don your flexible thinking cap, and if you're lucky, laugh it off, and if you're not, pivot and adapt, and grasp at grace, or at least at forbearance, or at the very least, at the phone, for pizza, because: no beans.

And these hiccups and hurdles, they have their own merits, goading us toward grit, toward resilience. To get better at adapting instead of clinging, at rolling with instead of digging in. And we did! And we do!! And even as a non-change agent—as one who faaaaaaar prefers constants to variables, stasis to movement, Sargent to Hirst—even I appreciate this about change. All the disorder and disruption is, I genuinely believe, a great gift to our brains. Keeps them nimble. Sharp. Agile. When everything's just so, with a place for everything and everything placed, we relax, and soften, and get a little flabby in the supposed-to-be-bold-and-brawny bits. The initial discomfort, the prickly unfamiliar, is no more than muscles strengthening, slowly, steadily, mightily. Such good stuff, this.    

 

  

But sometimes?

You just want to find the damn beans.

And if a tangle of tins, sorted, isn't world peace, it is in any case a tiny triumph. An atom of order. A small, solid, tangible kernel of something that well-and-truly works. This, for me, is the basic unit of celebration.  

 

  

At this point, I should disclose there are no beans involved in today's recipe. Sorry. No sneaky fiber-boosted baked goods, here. I should also point out that I sort of sound-bited Nigella on this one, her actual words being "a chocolate cake is the basic unit of celebration." So she claims. Her pantry's no doubt in good standing.

Still, she has a point. I'm not normally especially keen on chocolate cake. Or chocolate, in general. (I know. I don't know what's wrong with me, either.) But in the recipe that follows, Nigella nails the nearly-impossible: a chocolate cake which even I admit is as good as an orderly dry goods cupboard. Miracle-worker, that one.

 

 

The cake in question is one Chocolate Guinness Cake, long-touted, hardly news. But somehow, I'd missed it until this past year, and in case you did, too, I'm here to rid your eyes of scales. Because Nigella's Chocolate Guinness Cake is the sort of cake which, upon making, instantly takes up residence in one's kitchen canon.

The batter taps into all the winning, time-tested, best chocolate cake plays: sour cream for tang, cocoa for texture, lots of liquid for an impeccable come-hither, custard-like crumb. I know these tools well from our beloved go-to chocolate cupcakes and chocolate bread. (Both also, and not coincidentally, Nigella. She knows from chocolate.) Really, we could stop right there. But where Nigella's chocolate bread calls for a cup of boiling water, her cake swaps in a cup of boiling Guinness. This, my friends, is brilliant. 

 

 

The Guinness—which I'd about as soon drink, straight, as battery acid (I don't do beer, either)—is utterly magic, in the batter. Burbled with butter until the latter melts, and the alcohol burns off, it leaves behind all kinds of wonderful, bitter, malty, interesting notes to ping off chocolate's monotone. Lawson's a lush with the vanilla, here, which I adore, its heady perfume the perfect yin to chocolate's yang. And because I am me, I add a whiff of coffee and a good flick of salt, both of which I find make chocolate more true to itself.

All of this, by the way, happens in one large saucepan, over approximately eight minutes. Half of that, cooling time. It's a one-bowl (er, pan) cake, the sort of thing that goes from bright idea to done in an hour, with only a pot and pan to clean up. Oh, and a mixing bowl, if you do the frosting.

 

 

Do the frosting.

The frosting is everything.

To read the original, the frosting seems more afterthought than anything, rustically dolloped across the top "to resemble a frothy pint of Guinness". Cute.

Cute, and devastatingly awesome.

 

 

See, said frosting is cream cheese frosting, which I think we can all agree is The Best Frosting. I'm not in the habit of frosting chocolate cakes with The Best Frosting. Maybe because I can't bring myself to add a full bottle of food coloring to cake. (Red Velvet being the classic mash-up). Maybe because our chocolate cakes are usually layer cakes, and layer cakes do better with buttercream or whipped cream. Probably, I'm just grossly negligent.

Certainly, I have been so wrong, for so long. But no longer. 

 

 

Because the tang and swoop of cream cheese against the complex bitter-but-still-plenty-sweet chocolate is, how shall we say, every great adjective under the sun? And, because the cake's just one humble layer, and the frosting admirably contained on the top, it's nothing we feel the need to reserve for birthdays and holidays.

Indeed, as my teenager noted last Friday, while inhaling a fresh slab and pounding milk shots, "This makes a great Everyday Cake." I agreed, wholeheartedly. I also thought this was a complete thought. But, he continued: "As in, you should really make one every day." And while I (sadly) lack the 15-year-old male metabolism to endorse that second sentiment? I kind of don't disagree. I mean, tidied tins are nothing compared to the feat of another high school day, complete.

Here's to a week of ordinary victories and small celebrations, my friends.

Chocolate Guinness Cake + Foppish Cream Cheese Frosting
adapted from Nigella Lawson, New York Times

As written, Nigella's cake is practically perfect, and I've made it to spec often. Over time I've tweaked the above and below to suit my tastes, namely: added salt and a whiff of coffee to the cake base, both of which amplify the chocolate. And I've adjusted the frosting to give it just a bit more body and volume. The original is extremely soft, which I like, but can veer toward borderline drippy, which I don't. We've swapped in some butter for cream, and upped the powdered sugar ever so slightly. Consider the frosting a template, and tweak butter and sugar to suit your tastes.

In terms of technique, note that if you begin with a large saucepan, you can stir the entire cake in the pan, making this a one-bowl wonder. (The original uses a second for the wet ingredients. I never do. You'll see my lazy work-arounds in the notes. They are totally not legit. I use them every time.) 

Cake:
1 cup Guinness stout (1-12 oz. bottle will leave you with a spill extra)
10 Tbs. (1 stick + 2 Tbs.) salted butter
1 tsp. kosher salt
2 tsp. instant espresso
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
2 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cup sour cream
2 large eggs
1 Tbs. vanilla extract
2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking soda

Frosting:
8 oz. full-fat cream cheese
6 Tbs. salted butter (balance of cube used for cake)
2-2 1/2 cups powdered sugar, to taste
1 tsp. kosher salt
1-2 Tbs. cream or buttermilk, as needed (optional)

Preheat oven to 350°. Line the bottom of a 9" cake pan (or springform pan) with parchment. Butter or oil sides and inside edges of pan well. 

In a large saucepan, over medium, heat stout and butter, until butter melts and stout burbles. Add salt and espresso, off the heat, and stir well to dissolve. Add sugar and cocoa, and stir again to dissolve. Let cool 5 minutes. Add sour cream, vanilla and eggs, beat eggs well with a fork in a little vortex across the top, then beat into the whole, to thoroughly combine. Add flour and baking soda, again stir the two together lightly across the top, then whisk into the chocolate sludge to combine.

Pour batter into prepared cake pan. Bake 45-60 minutes, until a knife inserted in the center delivers a damp, contained crumb. I always bake this in a standard 9" cake pan, and find it takes 50 minutes in my oven. Let cake cool 10 minutes, then run a knife around the edge. Place a cooling rack atop the cake pan, then flip, inverting the cake onto the rack. Let cool at least one hour, or until no warmth remains.

To make the frosting:
Beat cream cheese and butter together until combined and slapping the sides, around 1 minute. Scrape sides, add salt, and 1 cup powdered sugar. Beginning on low, beat together, increasing speed to medium, 2 minutes. Scrape sides, add remaining 1 cup powdered sugar, and beat again, 2-3 minutes. At this juncture, taste, and test for body. You can add more powdered sugar for more volume, or a splash of liquid for less. Or both. Your call. Each path is a good one.

When cake is entirely cool, plop frosting on top, spread haphazardly across the top, and dig in. Cold milk highly recommended.

Cake keeps beautifully for 3 days. Probably longer. We just can't say.

evidence of beavers

We traveled to Vancouver, B.C., last week, which was for us our Spring Break. It was a short trip, two nights, about as many days, more snack than meal, if vacations were food. Because, as one of mine said, "We just MOVED ACROSS THE COUNTRY. Why are we already leaving again?" (I might not have raised the most enthusiastic travelers. Also, he has a huge point.)

 

 

So we went, with few plans and zero itinerary, and followed our whims for 48 hours. Which is to say, we ate, and walked, and napped, and ate, and read and rested and ate some more, and walked some more through Stanley Park. Over and over and over again. 

It's quite a park.

 

 

I've been to Vancouver, and to Stanley Park, at least half a dozen times. Possibly a dozen. Maybe more. Even my oldest has been to Stanley Park. Though, as I tried to explain, last week, how he loved clambering over that giant red fire truck on his last visit, to his now-nearly-six-foot self, it rang a little, well, distant.

It's been awhile. We've been away so long. 

 

 

So when we were searching for someplace to stay, I settled on a funky place near Stanley Park, knowing that if we did nothing else, we would at least have great walking at our doorstep. (I know us well.)

And walk, we did. Morning, noon and night. Along the cairn-lined beach, toward the city. Around the seawall, as the sun set. To the Aquarium and back. (Yes! We made it to the Aquarium! Though technically, the Aquarium's smack dab in the heart of Stanley Park. Still. More seals, less trees.) And around Lost Lagoon, several times over.

 

 

In all my visits to Stanley Park, I'd never seen the so-called Lost Lagoon. (It's a big park, that Stanley. Big enough to easily lose a lagoon.) But our hotel was two blocks from this particular point of entry, and so, it was where we started each outing. And it was so good.

Paved paths, easy to navigate, with clear divisions for feet and wheels. Small enough for the smallest legs to easily make the rounds. A loop trail. All parents love a loop trail. Also, the scenery wasn't awful. 

 

 

The lagoon is edged with extraordinary trees of all sorts, ancient old-growth stumps to showy magnolias to crazy-huge Giant Rhubarb, which is technically no tree, but might as well be, given its epic leaves, enormous flowers, and extraordinary vertical ambitions. One bend was bordered with an absolutely exquisite rhododendron garden. I don't even like rhododendrons. But this, this was weep-worthy. In large part, because April happens to be prime Rhododendron season. I could tell you this is precisely why I booked the hotel that I did, when I did, where I did. Actually, it was just cheap. Also, I don't have anything like that level of planning. 

(By the same token, all you see, above and below, is not Stanley Park. Nor B.C. Nor even last week. It's closer to home, and several weeks back, because such is my organizational acumen, these days. Still, Spring is Spring, and glory is glory, and so we celebrate where we can.)

 

 

But the lagoon itself was, hands down, the main attraction. Anonymous fish we never quite nailed would leap up and out and belly flop back down, leaving only mystery and silvered circles, widening, widening, in their wake. There were mallards galore, and unfamiliar-to-us ducks, and many, many (Canadian, natch) geese. We even spied a swan, vast, white, majestic. Then another. Then a third.

That third and last specimen was sitting on a nest. A huge, HUGE, thick high padded grassy nest, neck tucked under wing, snoozing. Regal. Resplendent. Oblivious. We all sort of stopped and stared, stupidly. I think we were waiting for the credits to roll.  

 

When they didn't (because this wasn't actually Pixar's latest, just a standard-issue Canadian park), we resumed our beaver sleuthing. Because beavers are, apparently, regular residents of Lost Lagoon, too. Informational beaver signage lined one full side. Trees sported protective chicken-wire collars at their bases. Trees without collars rather more resembled stumps, with expertly-whittled, impressively symmetrical, pencil-tip-pointy tooth-sharpened tops. We even spotted several fine mounds of branches and brush we decided were dams. Evidence of beavers was everywhere.

We just couldn't find any beavers.

 

 

Moving in, I think, is one big beaver.

 

 

My first instinct when I wake, every day, is to catalog the dozens of things that are broken. Or missing. Or working poorly. Or still packed. Or unpacked, but unlocate-able at present. Or unpacked, but unwisely randomly stashed in weird inconvenient spots that make no sense at all unless you were there when to cross the living room was to climb over six boxes and around seven more and then, sideways, sucking in, between another twelve. (Helloooooo, microscope in the laundry room!).

Dozens is an exaggeration, of course. There are hundreds. Plural. Easy. All of which I see, simultaneously, because my mind thrives on detail, and analysis, and particularity, and order. These are wonderfully useful traits for, say, editing spreadsheets. When re-settling a family and re-creating Home and re-building community and restoring routine, amidst the ordinary full-on flow of five diverse lives? Not so much. So I make (with huge effort, and middling success) my mind stop in the double-digits. Because enumerating All The Not-Right Things is, shall we say, not helpful. Also, because even college-ruled paper only has 33 lines. Limits, people. 

 

 

And in this itchy state of forced patience, I sometimes (once every third blue moon) step back, and survey the situation, and see what Is instead of Should Be. Weird stuff, this Is business. I see—can you hear me squinting, here? hard?—progress. Lower case, subscript, slapdash, incomplete progress, my ornery mind adds. Incremental, unpolished, important, indisputable progress, retorts my fake-it-till-you-make-it zen mind. I no longer get lost on the way to school. Our taxes will be mailed. On time. Boxes no longer live in the living room. And even if we don't live there well yet, either, we're on our fourth round of re-arranging everything, and anyway, life is what happens when you're busy tripping over chairs. Something like that.  

I don't see Beavers, or Progress, per se. But evidence of beavers?

Everywhere.    

 

  

Nowhere is this evidence more apparent than in our creaky, coming-to-life kitchen.  I often think our kitchens are our days' best barometers. As goes my life, so goes my supper. When all is chaos, dinner is popcorn. Which is wonderful. Popcorn is communion food, stuff of community and comfort and grace. Popcorn also gets mighty stale after six months on repeat, and so, every time dinner is Not Popcorn, I am learning to pronounce it "Progress".

Progress measured in simple, steadfast, stuff-of-life fare. Chocolate chip cookies. Pots of stock. Pancakes. Tomato soup. Tomato sauce. Omelettes. Egg salad. Bread. Oh, bread. We baked bread, yesterday, for the first time in six months. It felt like an old, dear familiar friend, and also like revolution. Funny, that. 

Most of these things have appeared here, over the years, the soup, the bread, the pancakes, the cookies. But the egg salad, I realized, as I reached for the recipe, didn't exist, except in my head. High time, I think, to right that wrong.

Egg salad and I are fairly new acquaintances, our friendship a young thing of three or four years. I don't really remember (correct me if I'm wrong, mom) eating it as a kid, and in the decades that followed, only occasionally encountered it in the odd, unavoidable sandwich. Insipid, bland, book-ended by soggy bread, and absolutely slick with mayonnaise—one of two foods that literally make me gag (the other being, much to my childrens' bewilderment, Nutella)—"egg salad" was always synonymous, for me, with "run, RUN!". Or, more politely, "No, thank you."

 

 

Then, several years back, the egg salad stars strangely aligned. One day, Alice Waters' Simple Food simply fell open to page 281, "Egg Salad". Therein, I spied the world "parsley". Parsley! In egg salad? Also, scallions! Or chives. Or dill? Good grief. Green things in egg salad?!

I was intrigued. Theoretically enamored. Tentative. Thrice burned and all that. Unfortunately, Waters' revolution also included capers, my third (and, truly, final) anti-food. Also, a full third cup of mayonnaise. Gag me. I back-pedaled. Fast. 

But then, a few months later, my friend Keshena mentioned making egg salad. For dinner. For her family. And her kids—get this—loved it. My first response? "My kids would NEVER eat egg salad." My second: "Have I ever made them egg salad?" And, my third: "Have I ever made me egg salad?" So much for first response/best response.

 

 

So I set out to make an egg salad I might maybe actually myself even eat. With Waters as springboard, I added minced parsley, and chives, and dill, choosing to read "and" between every herb, where she originally wrote "or". Wanting some crunch, I added a tiny dice of minced celery, and radish, and shallot, whatever was orphaned and crisp in the crisper. And to hold the whole thing together, I swapped in mostly whole-milk Greek yogurt, cut with a slim slip of mayo, just enough to bind, not enough to notice. I stirred. I sampled. I was stunned. I could eat this egg salad. I could crave this egg salad.

My kids wanted nothing to do with this egg salad.

Sassed up with mustard, smartly salted, this 1.0 version was everything I loved, soothing and plush and lushly creamy and crunchy and punchy and herbal and bright. It felt like a brand new element, this egg salad, like some manna I'd never known existed. I made it, many times, in the months that followed, resigned to their eating pita chips and plain boiled eggs, while we inhaled the main course.

 

 

And then, a year later, several years back, it dawned on me to dial it down. To make a batch without all The Bits. No dreaded green, no weird chunks, no no-way, no-how raw onion anything. Just stripped-down, straight-up, yolk-yellow salad, soothing and soft and eminently scoop-able with a pile of pita chips.

BINGO.

Or, as bingo as it gets, which in our house is "best 2 out of 3". One still passes. One easily eats it. The third asked me recently, emphatically, to include the recipe when she packs for college. We are officially not remotely ready to discuss college, at this time. So for now, we'll just check the egg salad box, or boxes, for she and I, both. And call it one more tiny, true sign of that ever-elusive critter, progress.

 

Egg Salad, Straight Up (My Kids' Egg Salad)
with thanks to Keshena, for teaching me to try

Full-fat Greek yogurt is, I fear, going the way of the dodo bird, a shame. Here in the Northwest, Ellenos is a glorious, local Greek yogurt operation, whose original whole milk yogurt is as lush as it comes. Fage's 2% will do in a pinch, though I might tilt the ratio a touch more toward mayo, to make up for the loss in unctuous. If non-fat is your only option, substitute crème fraiche, instead.

I find a bit of mayonnaise is necessary to properly bind eggs to dairy, here. I also find that for those few times I must use mayo (BLT's, egg salad), I prefer Kewpie. If you're not a weird mayo-phobe like myself, by all means use whatever kind and quantity you wish.

6 hard-boiled eggs
1 Tbs. mayonnaise 
2-3 Tbs. full-fat Greek yogurt
shy 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. French's mustard

Slice or mince your eggs, as you prefer.* We consider our $1.29 plastic egg slicer essential kitchen equipment. I slice each egg one way, rotate 90 degrees, then slice again. Repeat. Add remaining ingredients to eggs, then stir vigorously with a wide spoon, applying enough chutzpah as you go to break down the yolks a fair bit. Add the yogurt, mayonnaise, salt and mustard, and stir again, vigorously, to further break down yolks into the sauce, and to combine everything well. Taste. It should be creamy and smooth, with a faint unidentifiable nip from the mustard, and just enough salt to make the whole sing.

Adjust salt/mustard/yogurt by pinches, to taste, then inhale. We most often eat this with pita or tortilla chips, though there's no reason it wouldn't sidle between two slices of sandwich bread, slip into a pita's pocket, or straight into a mouth with the help of a stalwart spoon. 

*There are, apparently, grand debates on this point, and factions, and regional styles. Who knew? I didn't see this fascinating Food52 piece until a few years into our egg salad journey. I can see, now, that I'm of the California camp, whereas my kids are solidly Tennessee in their tastes. But our slicing style—minced, by means of an egg slicer—is a hybrid of both, and unites us. 

Egg Salad, As I Like It 
with thanks to Alice Waters, for mentioning "herbs" and "egg salad" in the same recipe

The basic blueprint, for me, is this: 9 eggs + 1/4 cup creamy lush + 1/2 cup diced crunch + 1/2 cup minced herbs, laced with mustard and heightened with salt.

For the crisp, I'll use fresh fennel when I have it, or all celery if that is all I have, or red onion, or scallions, even water chestnuts, if crisp is scarce. As to herbs, start with 1/4 cup, working your way up from there. I like the full 1/2 cup, but I also like coffee strong enough to hold a spoon standing. Parsley provides a good backbone, but don't stop there. A hit of dill is nice if you like it, or chervil if you can find it, or those quiet wonders, chives, especially if you grow them and it's Spring and they're going feral, fast. A pinch of fresh lemon thyme is lovely. Play. Taste. Never the same twice. 

9 hard-boiled eggs
1 Tbs. mayonnaise
3-4 Tbs. full-fat Greek yogurt
generous 1/2 tsp. kosher salt + more to taste
1 Tbs. French's mustard + more to taste
2 stalks celery, minced (1/8")
2 radishes, minced
2 Tbs. minced shallot
1/4-1/2 cup chopped, fresh, sweet herbs (parsley, chives, chervil, dill, any/all)

Prepare as above, mincing eggs, then mixing them well with the next four ingredients (mayonnaise, yogurt, salt, mustard). Once your yolks are well-beaten, your salad golden, the whole lush and creamy, add the final four ingredients, or all of your minced vegetables and fresh herbs. Mix well. Taste, ponder, tweak. You may well want more mustard, or that extra mound of herbs, or another whisper of salt. Follow those leads. Then sit down to supper.