remedial eating

cloudy, with a chance of cranky

It's been a bit stormy around here of late.  No thunderstorms, though I wish I could point fingers.  No, the rumbling and flashes have been compliments of yours truly. 

Truly, the weather's been sort of awful.  Endlessly overcast, for one thing.  But mostly deceptive.  For some reason, I thought it was fall.  I guess the great honking V's of geese overhead and the annual back-to-school head cold triple-header and the drifts of golden honey locust leaves on our driveway fooled me.  I'm gullible that way.  I'm also mistaken.   Because it's been in the high 400's all week, which is clearly not end-of-September weather. 

Oddly enough, I just checked my facts, and discovered weather.com is also mistaken.  It claims the mercury hasn't inched much past the mid-70's all week, which is patently false.  Maybe it's a vast dot-com conspiracy.  Or maybe it's the humidity. 

It's been humid.  Wait, let me try that again.  It's been H-U-M-I-D !!!  If you could just get your hands around the air over here and give it a good squeeze, you could irrigate the Sahara.  Possibly the Gobi as well.  My car is a greenhouse.  We're all wearing our shiny noses.  Walking barefoot on our wood floors, you'd swear a band of rogue Oompa-Loompas snuck in straight off the cotton candy line and held an all-night polka party in our living room.  Without washing up first.  Sticky, sticky, sticky. 

Heat makes me grouchy.  Humidity turns me into a caterwauling mad-banshee-woman.  I know this, because I survived June in Paris once.  I was insufferable, even worse than the weather, but back-to-back movies on the Champs-Élysées and daily pints of Le Häagen-dazs spooned straight from the carton saw me through.  For a variety of reasons, this proved impractical this week.

It's possible that runnning the oven round-the-clock to coax juice from those last 30 pounds of tomatoes didn't help either.  Neither did my to-do list.

Apparently, I planned to accomplish everything right after the boys got back to school.  Not everything everything; I'm delegating America's aging infrastructure to someone else.  But everything under the "Little Moving-In Loose Ends" general header.  Like finally getting the boys' night lights up.  And going through those last two unopened boxes under the eaves, and also the three skyscrapers of photos/letters/South Dakota sunbonnets that represent my family's entire history.  Also, hanging those 83 pictures propped against every wall, and building custom shelves for that awkward broom-closet-turned-microwave-station, and stitching up chic-retro-mod-elegant curtains for the windows that don't have them yet.  Which is all the windows.  There are a few dozen of them.  Also, I don't sew. 

I wish I'd communicated this little list to everyone else.  I wish I'd communicated it to myself.  But it was sort of just there, in my brain, or maybe underneath it.  I think they call that part your reptilian brain, which seems fitting.  My mood was about that evolved. 

I moped.  I pouted.  I think I snarled, more than once.  It wasn't pretty.  Even I have a hard time putting up with me sometimes.

Still, snarling leaves two hands free to paint a room.  (Did I not mention room-painting?  There I go again.)  Most of the house is already pale shades of lovely, but Zoë's room needed help.  The old paint was cracking and openly spackled, and also ugly.  It should have been yellow.  It could have been yellow.  But it wasn't yellow.  It was -- to borrow a hue I once heard in my youth, and have encountered many, many times since -- 'baby poop brown'.  A faded shade, from an often-washed onesie.   But still.  It had to go. 

So out came the drop cloths, which, when I think about it, sort of serve as our own family's history, dribbled with fudge-colored stain from our first deck and creamy ocean green from Max's nursery and a colorful tracery of every other room I've painted this millenium.  Maybe I'll skip the photo albums and just pass these two tidy canvasses down to my kids.  I painted like I imagine any mother does, a little haphazardly, in thin minutes and wide open hours, half-crazed and wholly elated.   

And by mid-week, all four walls are the color blue is when it whispers.  It's the color of clouds tiptoeing, puddles sighing.  Of robins' eggs, not their pale dreamy outsides but their still-paler insides.  Just right with that great Gatsby-era pillow Mamo brought in May.  Just right for a little girl who's usually all tousled chestnut, but sometimes seems topped with spun copper. 

 

It looks like fresh air.  And it feels like a fresh start.  Especially with the two night lights and three pictures that, somehow, also made it up since Monday.  I even picked up the newly-tuned Bernina from the shop.  Next stop: remedial sewing.  All in all, once the cranky cleared, it was a pretty productive week.  

Even the peppers, which were inquiring all week as to where they featured on my cock-a-mamie to-do list, got their day in the flame.  Dirt cheap and sweet as candy, peppers are at the top of their game right now.  It's hard to beat a ripe, just-picked pepper, crunchy and crisp, simply sliced or shot through a lime-soused corn salad.  But roasting takes peppers in a smokier, silkier direction I find addictive.  Slipped loose of their charred skins, dribbled with olive oil, and scattered with handfuls of salty feta and sharp basil, these peppers taste of a dreamy late summer day.  Though even with paint under the nails and two feet stuck to the floor, they're pretty terrific.   

 

Roasted Red Pepper Salad
It would be wrong to say we picked the house we did because the gas stove is so fine for roasting peppers.  But it did help.  Peppers can also be roasted under the broiler or on a barbecue.  Do not substitute jarred peppers here -- this dish is all about that fresh, smoky sweetness, which, sadly, can't be canned.

Fresh oregano or marjoram are equally, differently delicious in place of the basil. 

3 Red Peppers, Roasted, Peeled, Sliced (see bottom of recipe for roasting instructions)
1/2 cup feta, preferably sheep's milk
1-2 Tbs. olive oil
1 Tbs. basil, slivered
1-2 tsp. balsamic vinegar, to taste

Slice roasted, peeled peppers into wide strips.  Cover a plate with pepper strips, then season with a drizzle of olive oil, a shake of vinegar, and a hint of salt.  Repeat, until you've used all peppers.  Sprinkle feta and basil over peppers.  Serve at room temperature, within 2-3 hours of assembly. 

***

Roasting Peppers:  The goal, whatever the heat source, is to completely char the peppers' skins which saturates their flesh with an intensely smoky flavor.  Think baby back sweet peppers.  Once blackened, you'll place them in a bowl and cover them with plastic wrap for an hour or more.  The steam will loosen the skins, which you can then rub off.  Like hazlenuts, little bits will be left behind, which is fine. 

On a gas stove: Turn flame to high, place pepper(s) directly on flame.  As each side chars (4-5 minutes), rotate pepper with tongs and continue, until all sides are blackened.  Cover and peel as above.

Under a broiler:  Move oven rack to within 3" of element, top position.  Turn broiler on to high.  Cover sheet pan in foil, and load up your peppers.  Broil peppers 4-5 minutes, then check.  Rotate a few times, as needed, until all sides are blackened.  Cover and peel as above.

On a barbecue:  Place peppers on grate.  Grill until first side is blackened, then rotate, as needed, until all sides are blackened.  This moves quickly if the charcoal is newly-lit and the peppers directly over the flame.  Alternatively, let them linger over the dying embers of some other dinner while you clean up, rotating as you think of it. 

putting up

I'm not always an easy person to live with.  I'm not awful, exactly.  I don't holler or leave piles of laundry laying around (not big ones, anyway) or own any off-limits sofas upholstered in white cashmere.  Though I did bring home a pair of mid-century wing chairs last week.  In raspberry silk.  With, um, gold and acid green raised velvet.  White might have been preferable.  

Aesthetics aside, it's my quirky timing, my odd sense of scale, that can make putting up with me a little rough.  I have this knack for zeroing in on the busiest of times, and adding just one more thing.  Preferably one more epic, labor-intensive, spectacularly messy thing.  Let's call it the Christmas Cookie Problem.  Partly it's my baroque background, my family's proud motto: "More is more.  But still more is definitely, definitely better."  But mostly it's me.  I'm the toddler who throws together a little wood-block Versailles between p.j.'s and preschool, then begs to add a few more turrets, just for good measure.  I'm the eight-hours-and-counting skier who sees the moon-glowing snow and thinks, just three more runs.  I'm the Bedouin who spies the achy, sagging camel and cajoles, "Chin up!  A few more bales of straw, and you'll be brilliant!".  

Fortunately, I also have a minor in Realism, which I try to dust off every now and again.  So when I see this?  I know better.

I know back-to-school like the back of my hand.  I know we're right back here, for a few weeks, all topsy-turvy in our bedtimes and temperaments and truly spectacular Mondays, the likes of which we haven't seen in months.  I know we'll there will be plenty of lumps and loose ends to work out, as we go about the delicate braiding and un-braiding of ourselves each day.  I know, most especially, that it would behoove me to wipe the calendar clean and do away with my to-do lists and just expect the unexpected.  And I do, really well, for two entire days.  Until this drifts onto the boys' window sill at bedtime:

Now.  I'm still learning how Ohio handles Fall.  New to me are the brittle, spent cicadas falling from trees and the twilight bats doing their swoop-stutter-swoooop and the re-scheduling of Halloween to October 29.  (Don't tell me you'd let some silly old candy fest get in the way of the Buckeyes vs. New Mexico State?  Priorities, people!)  But even I know a leaf like this means goodbye, tomatoes.  So back-to-school upheaval aside, I think: best to put up a few.

Alright, 18 pounds is more than a few.  So is 48 pounds, which is actually what I lugged home from the Saturday market, that first weekend after school began.  Scales have their limits, even if I don't.   Miraculously, I live with kind folk who discreetly observe I must have more than BLT's on my mind, and offer to take the boys away for the day.  Leaving me with Zoë, four gorgeous hours, and four hundred Romas.  Give or take.   

I should mention at this point that I'm not a canning kind of girl.  The only thing that scares me more than knives (which petrify me), is botulism.  It's occurred to me more than once that I ought to swap out my Henckels for knitting needles.  So we proceed, Zoë and I, with the utmost professionalism. 

We wash and blanch and peel, over and over and over.   We have bowls of peeled tomatoes, bowls of ready-to-be-peeled tomatoes, bowls of ready-to-be-blanched tomatoes, great mountains of washed-and-waiting tomatoes, little heaps of leathery skins here and there, seeds and juice and cores everywhere.  Every bowl is out, every surface rosy, the general effect sort of quaint mid-Western mother-daughter canning session meets Scream II. 

The plan is sauce, and sauce we make, gallons of it (freezer-bound, to bypass the nasty Clostridium botulinum business).  We haul out our two biggest Le Creuset pots, the one we scored for $4 at a yard sale and the other we scored at a friend's deep discount.  Zoë could easily sit in either of them.  Instead, we pour in a river of olive oil and pile them half-high with chopped onions, which over a long, lazy hour melt into a translucent slump of savory onion jam, all cheeky with garlic.  Here their paths diverge.  The blue pot goes robust, back-boned by a half-cup of fresh rosemary, a butcher's pound of bacon, and just enough aleppo for warmth, not heat.  The orange pot takes a brighter turn, just tomatoes and as many cups of fresh basil and parsley and thyme as we can pick and clean and chop tiny-fine.  We hum a little Simon and Garfunkel as we work, in between learning words like "soft" and "squishy" and "splat!" 

All 40 pounds of tomatoes we cram into these two pots.  Which, you may recall, is approximately 8 pounds shy of "all".  Which I can't help but think, despite my 10 bright orange fingernails and Zoë's 2 cock-eyed pigtails, is fantastic, since it means there are enough left to roast. 

Tomato sauce is nice, fine, lovely even, if you doll it up right.  But slow-roasted tomatoes are divine.  They taste the way I always want ketchup to taste.  They taste like candy for grown-ups.  They taste like someone cranked a tomato to ten on the volume dial, then amped it out through U2-grade speakers.  Sweet and salty and juicy-tart, crisp at some edges and Reubens-thigh-plump at others, each little oval is its own brand of wonderful.  I like them piled alongside eggs and extra-sharp Tillamook at breakfast, and folded into couscous with roasted vegetables and feta at dinner, and piled onto chèvre-smeared slices of toasted baguette pretty much any time of day.  Or eaten straight from the jar, which empties out faster than you might imagine.  

Which is why I picked up another 30 pounds yesterday, simply for roasting.  I'm half-way through.  Everyone's been awfully patient.    

 

Slow-Roasted Tomatoes
Adapted from Jerry Traunfield,The Herbfarm Cookbook

You can flavor these otherwise: with a sprinkling of ground coriander, slivered garlic, chopped parsley.  I'm partial to thyme.  

8 pounds roma tomatoes
8 Tbs. olive oil
1 1/2 tsp. salt
3 Tbs. sugar
1/2 cup loosely packed fresh thyme leaves

Preheat oven to 225°.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.  (Jelly roll pans, a.k.a. half-sheet pans, are wonderful here, as their rimmed edges hold in the juices.)

Halve tomatoes lengthwise, gently squeezing seeds and juice into sink.  Fill trays with tomato halves, cut side up.  Drizzle olive oil over all tomatoes, as needed.  Sprinkle salt and sugar evenly over tomatoes.  Place in preheated oven.   

Leave in oven 3-6 hours, switching halfway through.  Add thyme during this switch.  Continue roasting until tomatoes are smaller in size, browned at the edges, and still gorgeous red.  Baking time varies greatly according to the tomatoes' size and juiciness, and oven.  Alternatively, set the oven at 200°, go to sleep, and call them Overnight Tomatoes.

These keep well, refrigerated, up to 10 days. 

lost and found

Since I made the switch nine years ago, I’ve been pretty well smitten with the whole stay-at-home business.  I mean, the sick policy stinks, and I’m fairly certain there are more dirty dishes (and way, way more crumbs) than if we were all away 10 hours each day.  But mostly I count it right up there with clean drinking water and democracy and post-Folger’s coffee: a humongous privilege, and one of my life's great joys.  Except for The Dreaded Question: “What do you do?” 

Surely I'm not the only 24x7 parent who finds this about as simple to pin down as a 1-pager on National Health Care?   

"Daydream of napping" seems a little unfair.  I’m no good with sentimental, even though it’s entirely true that kids grow faster than corn, and I'd hate to miss more than a few kernels of these early years.  I’m tempted to answer literally, and sometimes I do:  “Assistant Lego engineer, patron saint of skinned knees, lead homework consultant, residential property manager, Special Ops Chief: Sibling Rivalry Division, amateur tax accountant, on-call IT director, head chef: cinnamon toast station, Pokémon hack, hopeless gardener, and chronically under-achieving janitor.”

Usually, though, I mumble something about being “at home with the kids”, which feels just a little inadequate, like Michaelangelo muttering on about a little paint-by-numbers project over at the Sistine. 

Or I used to, anyway, B.C. (Before Columbus).  But after moving across the country, I’ve finally found the answer.  Occupation?  Getting Lost.  (Sounds so much better than Professional Loser, no?) 

This is what I do.  The parenting business continues, of course, but really, my days are filled with the detours I take, the degree to which I misjudge my coordinates, and the dazzling array of Ohio countryside I accidentally witness in my wildly inefficient attempts to get from Point A to Point B. 

 
Partly, it’s normal, being new to the city and all.  I can't be the only out-of-towner whose motto becomes “In MapQuest We Trust”. 

Partly, it’s topographical.  To hear guidebooks tell it, Columbus is an easy city to navigate, but I find it trying.  Compared to Seattle, shot through with lakes and rumpled with hills, Columbus is tidy as graph paper, its thoroughfares straight and abundant.  And yet ...  Columbus is still small enough to think of signs as frills, not to be indulged in lightly.  Its footprint is so petite (no lakes, no hills), four map inches take all of four real-time minutes to cover.  Half that, on the highway.  And then there’s the seven problem.  Of ten major highways, five, half, include the number “7”.  True story:  directions to a park not long ago said to drive East on 670, South on 71, East on 70, South on 270, arrive at destination.  Or not.  It's exhausting. 

Mostly, though, it’s pure skill.  I’m average in most things, but when it comes to misplacing myself, I have a rare talent.  It doesn't much matter whether I'm off to some never-before shop or our everyday preschool.  Whether I'm alone and undistracted or small-talking with three kids.  Even whether I stick to the surface streets, where I can (and do) make course corrections early and often.  The interestate is just an opportunity to get lost faster.  Wrong turns come as naturally to me as breathing, and I make them with about the same devotion and frequency.

Hubris isn’t my downfall (not here, anyway).  It’s not that I won’t stop for directions; it’s just that they’re perfectly meaningless to me.  Otherwise helpful people offer up nonsense, like “turn North at the light” or “head West on 40”.  “South of Saturn and North of the Sun” is also true, and about as useful.  I simply have no sense of direction.  Really.  None.  When we first met, in college, my friend Annette was a little incredulous when I told her this.  So much so, she covered my eyes, spun me well, and asked me which way was North.  It's probably clear by now which way I pointed (or didn't), and it's entirely possible you heard the roaring hysterics that followed.  But the joke's on her: to this day, she's doesn't realize that even without the blindfold and vertigo, I still would've placed Santa's Workshop due South of Brazil. 

I've learned coping mechanisms.  Mention a compass point, and all I have to do is shut my eyes tight, poke the air clockwise, and chant “Never Eat Shredded Wheat”.  It's a bit dodgy at freeway speeds, but it comes in handy at red lights and road shoulders.  Also, I'm excellent with landmarks.  I rely on them heavily, and as long as I see one, I’m happy, confident I’m on the right track.  The tricky bit is the part where you can be on the right track, heading exactly the wrong direction.  I do my best.   My kids help where they can.

I could mope, I guess, about time lost, gas wasted.  But I’ve come to appreciate the unexpected joys of a route that’s rather more Etch-a-Sketch than Fed Ex Dispatch.  Without a milk run gone awry, it might’ve taken me years to discover that the US Polar Rock Repository sits right here in Columbus.  When a quick Target run landed me at the Jack Nicklaus Museum, how could I not chuckle?  It’s pretty clear I need to improve my driving.  So magnificently did I overshoot the “nearby” park we set out for last Spring, we went through maps like Russian stacking dolls: city, county, state.  But it turns out that the next county over is all rolling hills and silver silos, lovely this time of year.  And Batelle-Darby Creek, finally found, was worth every back-tracked mile, lush with May Apples and vast ant kingdoms and stunning water moccasin look-alikes.  

Besides, all this getting lost makes me a little more fond of those landscapes I've always found easy to navigate, like the steep stainless curve of my mixing bowl, the predictable geometry of butter.  Maybe the factory responsible for such things calibrated my Magnetic North to cookies instead of cardinal points.  Definitely, there are few cookies as familiar to me as chocolate chip, made so often I barely need a map anymore.  I could probably bake these blindfolded.  And dizzy.  Like any destination worth the journey, there are countless paths to great chocolate chip cookies.  This is mine. 

Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from Nancy Silverton

This yields a thin cookie that's caramelized at the edges, barely-baked in the center, and absolutely packed with chocolate.  If you like yours cakey or airy or anything like modest when it comes to the chips, I'm afraid you'll need to find better directions elsewhere.

8 ounces (2 cubes) + 2 Tbs. salted butter
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1 Tbs. vanilla
1 egg
2 1/2 cups unbleached flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
4 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup pecans or walnuts, roughly chopped, optional

Preheat oven to 350°

Slice butter (direct from the fridge is fine; slice each cube into 16 or so pieces), and place in bowl of stand mixer with white and brown sugars, plus salt.  Cream until combined, around 2 minutes. 

Scrape sides, add vanilla, and mix briefly, 30 seconds.  Scrape sides, add egg, and mix again to combine, 1 minute. 

Combine flour, baking soda and baking powder in medium mixing bowl, and whisk to combine.  Scrape sides of butter-egg mixture, pour in flour mixture, and mix on low, 30 seconds, or until just combined.  Add chocolate chips, and nuts, if using, and mix on low or by hand until just combined.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.  Scoop equal-sized balls of dough (1/2" for small cookies, 1" for larger cookies), and drop in rows on baking sheet.  Squish each ball down slightly, until it becomes a thick disc.  4-year-olds excel at this job, and only require a few chips' pay.  I usually get 4 rows of 3 small, generous 1/2" cookies to a sheet.  Repeat until both sheets are full. 

Stagger trays in oven (top left, bottom right), and bake 6 minutes.  While reversing trays (top to bottom, left to right), take a moment to whack each one several times, forcefully, against a hard surface.  The edge of the stove works nicely.  Bake another 2 minutes, then check.  As soon as cookies begin to turn gold around the edges, and the centers have lost their shine and turned matte, remove the trays.  Do not wait until cookies are golden all over, unless you want them crunchy and crisp throughout.  Total baking time is usually 8-12 minutes, depending on size.  Leave cookies on tray 5-10 minutes to firm up, or as long as you can stand it.  Eat warm, with cold milk.   

Note: This recipe yields 4 dozen+ cookies, which is too many for us to survive in a day.  If you have no willpower either, roll remaining dough into 1" wide logs and freeze.  (I usually bake two trays, and have two generous logs leftover).  When you're next craving warm homemade cookies and zero mess,  defrost a log slightly (30 minutes at room temperature), slice into half-inch circles, and bake as above. 

 

why i (don't) homeschool

I hear the call of homeschooling often.  I dream of following the instinctive arc of a child's passion, rather than the necessary constraints of a standard curriculum.  I envision a mad romp through geometry, geography, history, all filtered through a four year old's devotion to building, a nine year old's love of electronics.  I think of close friends, acquaintances, perfect strangers who have chosen this path for wildly different reasons, and who travel it with palpable care, grace and skill.  I imagine learning and life in sync.  Most often, I hear the call of homeschooling at 8:17 on a Monday morning in late January, with frigid wind and tardy bells whistling in my ears.

Still, homeschooling and I have yet to hook up, though I have my reasons.  Four, specifically.  Cute ones, too, don't you think?  It's not every day you get such jaunty reasons, all perky and pointy-tipped. 

 

It might seem a little flimsy, I guess, a handful of string beans up against an entire educational philosophy.  But in these beans is everything I adore about a great teacher, a good school.

Consider: to yield four beans by June, you have to plant seeds.  In Spring.  Simple stuff, stuff of my own preschool years, complete with name awkwardly Sharpie'd on popsicle stick.  Stuff I never, ever remember.  I know it's old news, know the Agricultural Revolution's been around for a while now.  I'll catch up, really, any year now.  But we were particularly busy this year (I say this every year), and so I find myself particularly grateful for the teachers in my childrens' lives, and the many beans, edible and otherwise, they've helped them grow.

Just this week, I've seen Max come home all enthralled over slanted strokes and upward curves.  Over cursive!  What kind of Annie Sullivan can get a group of third graders giddy over an elegant C? 

I've seen Henry, who's pouted all summer over school (which is to say, over the prospect of any pause -- errands, parks, bathroom breaks -- in his robot-building reverie), pull a complete about-face.  Seen him walk into last year's classroom, growing taller with each step.  Seen him lock eyes with his teacher, the one who looks and listens as though he's the only child East of Fargo, who drops instantly to one knee in the way of all perfect preschool teachers.  Seen his rumpled brow melt into that silly, slap-happy grin I thought he saved just for family.  

I've seen that, once again, my children are in hands that hold talents, tools, experiences, jokes, perspectives, skills and keen bean planting instincts magnificently different from my own.  It's just that old village business, really.  We all have our strengths, and I'd just as soon complement my own little set with some mighty fine others, especially when it comes to the rich business of opening up little minds and spirits. 

Village life can be complicated.  There are days I long to edit out the flotsam and jetsam that are part of the whole school package.  There's always a word, an attitude, a must-have doodad I wish wasn't there.  In school as in life.  But it's called diversity, and the school years are as good a time as any, I think, to learn tolerance and critical thinking and respect. 

Besides, every time I run the trade-off analysis, these small aggravations always lose out handily to all we gain.  Like the conference of fancy beetles our (by then enormous) beans hosted in early July.  They were tiny and shiny black and edged in a darling white picot.  They were also ravenous, and in a week's time turned the broad open leaves to filigree.  And then they were gone.  And the beans grew on.  Beans are tough, it turns out. 

Or, more recently, the most extraordinary of grasshoppers, so articulated, so elegant, I'm fairly well certain he walked right out of Wind in the Willows and on to our beans.  Surely grasshoppers only wear herringbone stockings in storybooks?

 

Also, a smidge of pride. 

And quite a bit of good eating.  Did you know beans need harvesting every few days?  Two months divided by every few days is a lot of beans.  We've stir-fried them with chicken and cashews, sautéed them with lemon and almonds, and eaten them simply boiled and slicked in olive oil and salt, which is the second best way I know to eat a green bean.  

The first best being, of course, salade niçoise, which I met during my own school years.  I'll never know why my French teachers believed a tepid bowl of watery tuna mash, February tomatoes, khaki canned beans and bottled Caesar ought to be our introduction to one of the world's greatest cuisines.  But they did.  All six of them.  And every year, I learned to loathe it just a little bit more. 

Some minds take a little longer to open than others.  About fifteen years, if you're me, and you're a little slow to realize that 24 teenagers in a first-period French portable will decimate any dish, no matter how sublime.  Had those early salades been made in high Summer instead of early second Semester, with marigold-yolked eggs and a parsleyed vinaigrette and this tuna and those beans up there?  I'm fairly certain I would have come around sooner. 

Henry did, instantly.  "I LOVE this salad!!" he exclaimed the first time we ate it.  Which was remarkable only because he boycotts all salads.  And all green beans, his own homegrown included.  (That first batch of four beans?  Ceremoniously cooked to perfection.  Ceremoniously licked clean of all butter and salt.  And deposited back on the plate with the verdict, "I like their buttery taste.")  And sure enough, every last green bean had been carefully sorted out of his salad.  What he loved, actually, was the hard-boiled eggs and tender tuna and boiled buttered potatoes.  Which is fine by me.  To hear a child of mine include "love" and "salad" in the same sentence is a minor miracle. 

I haven't succeeded in teaching any of my kids to love many green things.  But who knows, there may be a teacher yet who inspires in them an appetite not just for growing green beans, but for eating them also.

 

Salade Niçoise
Serves 4

I'm tempted to call this Niçoise-ish, as it's not strictly traditional.  Then again, there really is no one Niçoise, only the brilliant idea of combining some of late Summer's best and brightest (tomatoes, beans, new potatoes) with enough substance (eggs, tuna) to make it a meal and enough vibrant spunk (lemon and herbs if you're Molly, anchovy and dijon if you're Montpellian) to make it a party.  The one essential is great canned tuna -- not water-packed slosh, and not seared bluefin.  This one's exquisite, but any oil packed variety will do nicely.

I often keep hard-boiled eggs on hand, and the dressing can go together hours or even days ahead of time, in which case this is a twenty-minute meal. 

For Vinaigrette:

2/3 cup olive oil
2 lemons, zested, then juiced
1 cup mixed herbs, finely chopped (mostly soft herbs -- parsley, basil -- with a few Tablespoons of thyme and chives, if desired)
1 tsp. salt
several grinds of black pepper

Zest and juice lemons into a jar with a lid, then add salt and swirl to dissolve.  Add pepper, oil and herbs, screw lid on well, then give to your four year old to shake like mad.  Alternatively, I sometimes give this a quick blitz with a stick blender, which produces a lovely all-over green. 

For Salad:

8 ounces green beans
8 ounces new potatoes
2 large tomatoes, cut into wedges (or 1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved)
4 eggs, hard-boiled, quartered
2 tins olive-oil packed tuna
10-20 briny black olives (kalamata, niçoise)

1.  Put a medium pot of water on to boil.  Salt it well -- 2-3 teaspoons.  When boiling, add topped and tailed green beans and cook until just tender, 7-9 minutes.  When lovely, remove with a slotted spoon to strainer.
2.  Place potatoes in same boiling water.  Boil until just tender.  This will depend on size -- I start testing fingerlings with a knife at 15 minutes, though larger ones can take as long as 25 minutes.  When knife pierces easily to center, drain. 
3.  As soon as potatoes can be handled, slice into halves (fingerlings) or quarters (small new potatoes).  While still warm, toss gently in half of the dressing (I use the now-empty boiling pot for this).

To Assemble:

On a platter, arrange piles of dressed potatoes, green beans, tomatoes, tuna, eggs, and olives.  Pour remaining half of dressing over salad, and serve.