The Cleaner Plate Club

It’s not quite Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Night, a holiday I’ve talked about before. But that’s coming. In the meantime, here’s an ingenious way to make use of summer’s bounty: no-noodle lasagna.

You know how to make lasagna, right? No need for me to go into it?

The layer of red sauce…
followed by a layer of noodle…
followed by a layer of ricotta, perhaps mixed with an egg and some chard or spinach…
followed by a layer of mozzarella…
followed by a layer of red sauce…
followed by a layer of noodle…
…and so on and so forth until your kitchen looks like it has been the setting of a massacre?

You know this. You’ve done it. I’m not gonna’ tell you to make lasagna. I will simply tell you what I have long-considered the biggest pain-in-the-patookis about lasagna.

To my mind, the biggest pain-in-the-patookis about lasagna is not the massacre-setting. It is those danged noodles. Unless you are gonna’ let the lasagna sit overnight (something I never quite plan for, because I am not a planner, and which always makes me nervous, anyway, since I tend to mix an egg with the ricotta), you must first boil the noodles, and then lay them out in such a way that doesn’t make them stick together, and now there’s an extra pot to clean, and dang it, those noodles stuck together anyway…

And now. Now I have found a solution to that problem. And this solution also happens to be a solution to the too-much-zucchini problem of summer. And? If you happen to be one of those South Beach types? You will also find this to be a solution to the carbs-are-gonna’-kill-us problem. Continue reading ‘No-noodle lasagna…a celebration of zucchini’

I’m not ashamed to say it. This recipe was borrowed from Elise at Simply Recipes, which might more aptly be named Simply the Best Damned Recipes You’re Gonna’ Find on the Web.

She calls it Sauteed Swiss Chard Ribs with Cream and Pasta. I call it easy-peasy-yumilicious.

When last we left, we had used the chard leaves for a quiche tart. We had wrapped our leaves in a wet towel, and stored them overnight in the refrigerator. There were ten stems, about three cups chopped. This is slightly more than Elise calls for, but to my mind, more chard is always good chard.

This one is easy; so easy that you can make it in little more than the time it takes to make pasta, while wearing your bathing suit, still wet, after a late afternoon trip to the community pool:

Which is all good until you discover that your underwear is missing. But that doesn’t happen yet. Not yet.

First, we do exactly what Elise tells us. We chop the stems into inch-long strips:

We drop them in boiling water and let them simmer for three minutes:

Then we drain the stems, and melt butter in a saucepan. Elise says a quarter cup; I say “ummm…a bunch. You know. Like this:”

We simmer the stems in the butter on low heat for four minutes. Then we add a cup of heavy cream and simmer until reduced by two-thirds (or, as I put it, “until it’s thick enough that you want to put it on pasta”):

While it’s reducing, cook up half a box of pasta.

It is at about this point that you decide to change out of your bathing suit. When you do, you discover that your underwear is missing from the bag you took to the pool. You realize with horror that it must have fallen out of your bag, poolside, when your kids went digging through your things in search of crackers. The underwear you wore that day, the ones that are missing, are big white cotton Hanes Her Way briefs. Granny panties.

You imagine the other mothers who had been at the pool that afternoon — the one that wears adorable tennis skirts; the one in the movie star sunglasses; the one that took pole dancing lessons — picking up those panties and shrieking with laughter.

“Oh. Mah. God,” says Tennis Mom, dangling them from her manicured fingers.

“I mean, have you ever seen anything like these?” sniggers Sunglasses mom. She lifts her glasses to inspect the underwear more closely, then cooly puts the glasses back over her eyes, shaking her head.

“It would be funny…” starts Pole Dancing Mom.

“If it weren’t so pathetic!” cackles Tennis Mom.

Then the three of them place your underwear on the end of a long stick and parade around the edge of the pool, whooping with laughter, while their children dance merrily at their feet and the whole community looks on.

But back to the recipe.

When pasta is done, which should be right around the time that the sauce is nice and thick, mix together. Add salt and pepper to taste, and garnish with some fresh parsley, chopped, just to make it look pretty (if you used only ruby red stems, that would look nice, too):

This is quite good. The stems became slightly sweet in the cooking, which paired beautifully with the very rich cream/butter sauce. And it is rich, so you won’t want heaping servings of it. We paired it along with a huge green salad and some bread, which was perfect.

One thing I will do differently next time: chop the stems smaller; they really are tasty enough to deserve a place in every forkful. Smaller pieces would help spread the love. I might also try this as a sauce for fish. But everyone ate this meal happily, especially with a few extra sprinkles of kosher sea salt.

By the way, the next morning, you rush to the pool as soon as it opens, to see if you can scoop your missing granny panties out of the Lost and Found box. They are not there. You sigh, envisioning them atop a flagpole somewhere nearby. Soon — any minute now — you will drive by and see your underwear fluttering high above the community, that wide expanse of white cotton flapping in the breeze, a beacon of your inner granny for all to see.

You may no longer have your pride. But at least you’ve got chard.

See the part that's cut off? That's because a huge chunk of my crust broke off. You'd never know, would you? Except that I'm telling you.

Chard is in at my CSA:

Oh, chard. My love. One of my many true loves. You are so lovely to look at. So tasty on my lips. And…so good for me. Isn’t that the sign of a good relationship? That it brings out the best in a person? In that case, our love is good love, chard baby. The best.

I’ve said before that I like chard, because it seems like two vegetables in one: velvety green leaves, plus hearty stems of various colors.

Many recipes actually encourage cooks to use leaves only; just trim the stems off! they say. So blithely they say it! Trim them! Discard! It always seems so wasteful, and like they’re missing half the point. Would you chop your beloved spouse in half? And if so, which half would you keep? The head or the nether-regions? Not easy to choose, is it, oh recipe Gods? Sure, the leaves cook up faster than the stems; I usually just separate them, then allow the stems to cook for a couple of minutes before adding the leaves. Always worked for me.

Still, this week, I decided to play by the rules and separate the two. With the leaves, I made a tasty chard tart. But, because I cannot bear to discard the stems, I cannot bear to discard any part of my beloved chard, I used them as the basis for a pasta cream sauce. Let’s start with the tart.

Now, some of you may look at this tart, and think, “that’s not a tart, that’s a quiche!” But really. Don’t you like the word “tart” so much better than the word “quiche”? “Quiche.” The word does not have the same appeal. “Tart.” Oh yes. Just using it makes me feel saucy.

Besides, I think of quiche as being super egg-y, with a few vegetables mixed in. This recipe is far more about the vegetable than the eggs. So I choose to call it a tart. But you can call it quiche if you like. Let us not quibble. Let us cook.

Ingredients:
1 pie crust
2 honkin’ cloves of garlic
2 garlic scapes, chopped (optional; I used ‘em because I had ‘em)
Chard leaves (10 leaves, yielding about 9 cups chopped), well-rinsed, dried, and chopped pretty small
1/4 cup rice, slightly undercooked, and drained
2 eggs
Quarter pound of gruyere cheese, grated
Salt (I forgot to measure; try a quarter teaspoon, then sprinkle on some kosher sea salt after it’s cooked if you need more)
Few shakes of black pepper
Olive oil

Directions:
Wrap stems in a wet towel and set aside for another day.

Preheat oven to 350. Chop garlic, scapes, and chard leaves. Sautee garlic in olive oil. Once garlic is soft (but not browned), add chard (and scapes, if you’re using them) and cook until wilted. Once wilted, combine with other ingredients and mix. Drop into pie crust. Bake for about 35 minutes, until an inserted knife comes out clean.

The verdict:
I liked it. I liked it the first night, and I really liked it the next day, as leftovers (what is it about letting food sit overnight that makes it so much better?). I especially liked having the rice mixed in there — next time I might add even more rice, and forgo the crust altogether.

No longer afraid of green things, Merrie tasted it happily, thought the cheese was a little too strong and requested that I make it next time “with American cheese. White American cheese.” (I agreed, thinking, “Okay, then muenster it is.” She’ll never know). Wee Charlotte ate the crust. Then climbed out of her high chair onto the side table and threatened to jump, a devilish look in her almost 2-year-old eyes.

Blair ate it without much comment (he was too busy trying to coax Charlotte back into her high chair) but also happily ate it a second night.

Would I make it again? Yes. Next time, I might try it with goat cheese and fresh herbs, just for a change of pace. But I would make it because (1) it’s easy - the chopping was the hardest part, (2) it’s tasty, and (3) it’s chard.

“Today is blue day,” Merrie announced yesterday, as she clomped downstairs.

Indeed, the girl was blue. All blue. Bright blue T-shirt. Bright blue barrettes. Bright blue shorts. Blue scarf. And, the piece de resistance, electric blue cowgirl boots that we’d spray painted last October to complete her Supergirl costume. The only other color was a shock of red on her lips from some gaudily applied lip gloss. The effect was somewhere between smurf and rodeo clown.

Blue day started out fun — blueberry smoothie, blueberry pancakes. But by the evening, blue day had made me kind of…blue. Nothing big, just a series of unfortunate events, family style — a playdate gone awry, a beastly (still blue) six-year-old, a tantrum, a punishment, and an hour’s worth of screaming. I will never, ever stop hating you, Mommy!!! Neverrrrrrrrrrrr!! Charlotte, too, sobbing literally over spilled milk. A smelly dog with a herniated disc problem, also howling and sobbing. Runny noses. Too much noise. Blue mommy.

Very blue.

Fortunately, blue day was rescued, rescued rather quickly. It was rescued by a soup, a quick, simple, one-pot, wholly healthful soup. This soup starred, of all things, escarole.

Yes, escarole.

Escarole isn’t anything new; this leafy green has been around for 5,000 years or so. The Egyptians ate it. The Greeks. Ovid mentions the stuff, as does Pliny. It’s a staple in Italian cuisine. But the truth is, this vegetable is relatively new to me.

Like all leafy greens, escarole is a great source of iron, vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamin K, and minerals. Unlike other kale or collards, it doesn’t require too much cooking. It resembles a kind of wide-leaf, tough, homely variety of romaine lettuce - just heartier and a little more bitter.

This soup isn’t anything unique; you can find a gazillion variations in cookbooks and online. But I thought this version was so, so good. Good enough to turn a blue day into something better.
Continue reading ‘What to do with escarole: Most delicious escarole cannellini bean soup’

I received this email from Crystal:

I need your help. We’ve started getting our weekly (CSA) vegetable shares and I don’t know what to do with some of this stuff. Do you have any suggestions for bok choy, yukina, or mizuna? How about something exciting with radishes? I love cooking and creating new dishes, but these massive bags of greens are stumping me a bit.

Ah, yes. I know that feeling, the one of staring down heaps of green. ‘Tis not a task for the faint of heart. Let’s all come together in a collective huzzah for Crystal as she embarks on this task, shall we? One, two…

Huzzah!

Sorry; I didn’t wait for three. I was kind of excited about the whole thing.

My own CSA also grows bok choy, yukina, and mizuna. I, too, once found myself stumped by these babies. That is, until I learned that in addition to being wildly healthful, they are also wildly versatile. All can be eaten in salads, steamed, sauteed, stir-fried, or cooked in sauces or soups. In other words, you can’t go wrong with them. The’re fool-proof! Failsafe! Serve ‘em hot, serve ‘em cold! Serve ‘em raw, serve ‘em stewed! There’s no wrong answer! That’s my kinda’ vegetable.

My standard for all of these has been to a quick sautee or stir-fry, generally prepared one of two ways: either sauteed with garlic, olive oil, a touch of kosher sea salt, and a sprinkling of lemon or vinegar; or stir-fried with an Asian flair (garlic, ginger, sesame oil, tamari, rice vinegar, and a touch of something sweet; I don’t measure, but I’ll figure out exact proportions if you like).

However, I, too, am ready for a little change.  I now present a kind of Recipe Roundup, Ali’s pick o’ the web for less familiar greens.

Bok Choy

Personally, I love bok choy (an Asian cabbage, slightly spicy), because it feels like two veggies in one - the stalks stay firm and crunchy even when cooked, and the leaves wilt like spinach or chard. It works beautifully with ginger and garlic. Here are some other not-too-complicated ways to prepare it:

Elise’s Baby Bok Choy with Cashews. Haven’t made this exactly, though I’ve done similar meals. And trust me: you’ll never, ever go wrong with Elise.

Alanna’s bok choy salad with creamy vinaigrette. Alanna’s also a kitchen whiz; Alanna, honey, I’d love to cook together someday.

Or, if you’re looking for something really different, try bok choy in coconut milk.

Mizuna/Yukina

Mizuna is a Japanese mustard green, which you can often find in mesclun. It’s extremely cold-tolerant, so you’ll see it at plenty of farmers’ markets in northern climates. It has feathery green leaves, and has a mustardy tang. Yukina (also known as yukina savoy), is less well known, but is a variety of loose, delicate cabbage leaves. You don’t see many recipes for yukina, but fortunately, you can use yukina in all of the below recipes (and, frankly, in any recipe that calls for spinach, or chard, or other similar greens).

Calendula and concrete learned a little bit more about mizuna after accidentally growing it; she shares some nice links to recipes. I’d also point Crystal to wok-sauteed mizuna and chicken, via Whole Foods. Nah, better yet, try Nook and Pantry’s easier, pared-down version.

Many mizuna recipes are Asian in origin. But hey! We’re in a global village here! The world is flat, so let’s break out of Asia! Check out the Nourished Kitchen’s mixed potato salad with mizuna and sundried tomatoes (don’t worry; you don’t actually have to use homemade mayo).

Or, if you’re feelin’ eclectic, try mizuna and plum salad with parmesan, from the Kitchen restaurant in Boulder, Colorado. Yum.

Radishes

As for radishes. We all know them as plate garnishes, salad toppings, and the spicy healthful snack that our grandmother sonce served to us and which we never really enjoyed all that much. It’s time to take a new look at these veggies. They’re packed with vitamin C, they’re a powerful antioxidant, they’re chock full o’ minerals, and they’re a great source of folic acid, calcium, potassium, and dietary fiber.

Not a fan of radishes peppery kick? Then try cooking them. Wait, you can cook radishes? Oh, heck yes! In fact, cooking mellows their flavor. Try them grilled, steamed, or sauteed in butter.

And don’t forget those radish greens! Yes, the radish greens are plenty edible. (Note: the greens will dry out long before the globes, so you’ll want to use these earlier in the week). Try some radish leaf and potato soup. Or mix those greens into gingery meatballs. Mmm.

Crystal, let me know if you try any of them, and how they work for you.

In the meantime, I’m working on a great recipe for escarole soup. More later, friends.

I’m a child of the 70s; I grew up surrounded by avocado and gold furnishings. I watched the Brady Bunch on a pre-cable, pre-remote control tube television that had a large antenna and 13 channels on a dial. I listened to Free to Be You and Me without a trace of irony. I wore T-shirts emblazoned with the image of the Kool-Aid man. I ate Pop Rocks, splashed myself with Jean Nate fragrance, washed my hair with Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific, and had a crush on Adam Rich, the shaggy-haired kid from Eight is Enough.

And, like every 1970s girl worth her Dr. Scholl’s, I carried a Bonne Bell Lip Smacker lip gloss with me, on a rope around my neck. My favorite flavor? Watermelon.

All of which is simply a long, nostalgic way of saying that I’ve always had a thing for watermelon, real or fake.

These days, though, I’m trying to take in more real, less fake. Fortunately, with watermelon, that’s no problem; I could eat an entire fresh watermelon by the scoopful, oh yes I could.

(FYI, My 70s watermelon memories include the real stuff, too: at one church picnic, my dad karate-chopped open an entire melon with a single swipe of his hand. I searched for a video of someone attempting this, and instead got stuck at this video of a Bulgarian woman karate-chopping a watermelon and wooden boards with her enormous gazoongas. Do I love the internets at this moment? Or do I hate the internets? I honestly do not know ).

Watermelon? Not just good for nostalgia; it’s also good for you. It contains massive amounts of lycopene, piles of vitamins A, C, B1, B6, minerals, amino acids, and plenty of other goodness. Watermelon is high in citrulline, an amino acid our bodies use to make another amino acid, arginine, which is kind of like nature’s own Viagra. Va va va voom.

If you’re like, Watermelon? Meh. then don’t bother reading any more. Just clickie-clickie over to the watermelon knocker-chop instead. (Go ahead. You know you wanna’). But if you, like me, are all about watermelon, and you’re totally psyched that the warm weather is here at last, then maybe you want to join me in making some Lip-Smackin’ Watermelon-ade, this summer’s most refreshing drink.
Continue reading ‘Lip-Smackin’ Summer Drink: Watermelonade’

Listen, friends, there are some things you won’t read here. Stories of rugby practices held mostly at a bar? Photos of seafood-stuffed cleavage? Stolen cable television? Tales of boys’ jeans in a heap on the floor, told precariously close to words like “shag”?

You’ll have to go elsewhere for that. Even if it is a bit of my own past.

Here, we talk food. Here, we might talk about soba noodles, Japanese buckwheat pasta that is high in fiber and protein. Or we might talk about sea scallops, and how it’s important not to overcook these little fellas.

Better yet, we might combine the two to discuss the soba-scallop noodles that Jenn and I made earlier this week, as our children ran wild in the backyard and dogs sniffed around the counters and snarfed the occasional spilled bean.

The short story: Many veggies. Soba noodles. Edamame. Scallops cooked by Jenn. A little too much sauce (by which I mean tamari sauce, not the fun stuff, not this time). Two old roommates making messes and neglecting wee ones as we dished up both dinner and gossip aplenty.

Continue reading ‘No stolen cable. No shag. Just noodles.’

I whipped up a tasty, kid-friendly egg drop soup last night. There’s a recipe below, if you can hang in that long.

The short version of how this recipe came to be is quite simple: Merrie loves egg drop soup. She adores the stuff. At least three times a week, she begs to go to the local Chinese-Sushi-Korean dive just so that she can slurp up a bowl. This egg drop soup frightens me, however. It is yellow — bright, bright yellow. It is a shade of yellow that shouldn’t be allowed to exist. It is highlighter yellow. Neon yellow. I’m certain it’s filled with food coloring that’s going to knock five points off of her IQ each and every time she eats it.

Seriously. Their soup is so bright it’s almost…radioactive.

Which brings me to the second part of the story behind the soup. As many of you know, I’ve had a couple of bad weeks. Abdominal stuff. Pain. Bloating. Nausea. More recently, I’ve been feeling better. Not yet 100%, but so, so much better. When I was at my worst, my physician had ordered a bunch of tests (my endoscope went fine, thank you, and I have a very pretty stomach interior. I’d be happy to post the photos if anyone wants to see). One of the tests — a scan to see if I have a weak gallbladder — was scheduled for yesterday morning. I didn’t know much about the test beside the fact that I couldn’t eat beforehand.

Blair took the day off to be with me. We had an hour and a half between dropping the kids off and my appointment, so we went for a hike together. It was a beautiful, blustery spring morning, apple blossoms in bloom, gray clouds rolling overhead. Even with the test looming, we had fun. Lots of fun. After a decade of marriage, Blair still makes me laugh, and we still have plenty to talk about.

“We should do this more often,” I said. “We should do this on days when I don’t have to go take a stinkin’ test. We should do this, just the two of us, for no reason, and then go out to breakfast.”

Then, a short time later, we were sitting in a field of grass, looking at an expansive mountain view. Blair told me it was time to head over to the hospital. I sighed, picturing myself in a hospital johnny, lying on a table with a needle in my arm, some high-tech Siemens equipment taking pictures of my innards.

“Okay, but I like this part better,” I said. Then I sighed again. “I really wish we could go out to breakfast.”

Fast-forward 30 minutes. I’m seated in a hospital waiting room with Blair, marveling that there is a 2-year-old Time magazine is still on display (Al Gore: will he run for president in ‘08?). A friendly radiology tech in floral scrubs, cropped hair, us into a windowless, fluorescent-lit room. At the center of this room is an imposing machine. The machine looks like it could eat me. As she sets up the equipment, she asks casually, “and you won’t be around young kids today, will you?”

And I answer, “Yes, I will. I’ve got two.”

She stops what she’s doing, looks me in the eye. “Okay, well, I’m not going to say that you can’t be around them, but you don’t want to hold them in your lap.”

I stare at her. Not hold my kids in my lap? Why would —? Huh?

“You’ll be radioactive,” she says.

I try to make sense of her words. Surely I mis-heard. “I’ll be — what?”

“Radioactive. In this test, we inject you with a radioactive fluid. It will be in your system for 12 hours, during which time you will be radioactive. Please don’t hold your children.”

Blair told me later that at this moment, he thought, “Okay, THIS is not going to go well…” And he was right. Because this, friends, is where I start to panic. I gape at the radiology tech. I am picturing the scene in the opening credits of the Simpsons, the part where Homer gets the radioactive rod of plutonium stuck in his overalls. And I imagine that rod inside of me, lighting up my insides, house, my kids. Gee, kids, doesn’t Mommy have a special glow tonight?

And then the words come. I want to say something logical like, but I’m getting better! Not worse! Shouldn’t making me radioactive be a test of last resort? But I’m feeling trapped, and I can’t stop thinking about that plutonium rod — doesn’t Mommy look luminous tonight? — and panicked tears have started welling up in my eyes. I simply whisper, hoarsely, “This feels wrong.”

The tech eyes me carefully, then goes in search of a radiologist who can counsel me through this panic attack. Suddenly, I really notice all the “Caution: Radioactive” signs that are plastered around the room. But my kids! They’re too little to carry Geiger counters! For Pete’s sake, I try to keep them away from artificial food colorings! And if I’m too radioactive for them, how should I feel about this stuff being inside of me?

The radiologist arrives. Unfortunately for him, it is one of the two radiologists that I know personally — he owns a horse farm on our road, and he trot-trots past our house several times a week. We often chat. He and his wife bought a baby gift for Charlotte when she was born. They let the kids pet his horses. He thinks of me, no doubt, as a waving, smiling neighbor, not a crazy lady who panics in a medical imaging room.

He strides into the room, prepared to patiently counsel an irrational stranger. Then he notices it’s me, his neighbor, and that I’m crying. He is so caught off guard that he literally must turn on his heels, walk out of the room, regain his composure, and come in again.

We talk. “It’s a low risk,” he says. “But it’s not no-risk. Like flying in an airplane.”

I nod and look down at the floor. Gee, kids, isn’t Mommy just da’ bomb?

He thinks a minute. “But listen, if you’re feeling better lately, not worse, there’s really no need to take it today.”

I stared helplessly at him. He is saying the right thing, but I can’t get past the trapped feeling.

Gather ’round, kids! Mommy’s going to lead us in a round of “this little light of mine, I’m gonna’ let it shine…”

“Really,” he says. “Go home. If your symptoms get worse, you can come back. If they keep getting better, then you won’t need to worry about the test.”

The floral-scrubbed radiology tech smiles gently. “It’s okay to go,” she says. She wants to scream it, no doubt: Just go, Nutso! Stop wasting my time! Go! But she is too kind to scream. She’s in a healing profession. She’s a healer. A healer who was prepared to shoot gamma rays into my body. A healer who wields a terrifying medical device. But a healer nonetheless. “You won’t be the first to have decided not to do the test.”

Then I realize: they are handing me a get-out-of-jail-free card. I take it. I go. We thank them, walk out of the room, out of the hospital. We get some breakfast. Just like I wanted.

So then later, after picking up the girls, I’m able to hold them. I’m able to make egg drop soup with them — the first meal I’ve made with them for a while. After we eat, I help brush their teeth, read to them, and lie with them in their beds. On this night, these things feel better, more meaningful, than they do most night. While I do them, I do not worry about whether I should really be at Yucca Mountain (and with that comment I must confess that some Googling revealed that any risk to the kids was probably low, no worse than flying. But still. I never liked flying.)

And the soup? Merrie loved it. Charlotte loved it. Blair thought it was like the Chinese-Sushi-Koren restaurant’s egg drop soup, but “way-better.” It didn’t look radioactive. And you know what? Neither did I.

Here’s my super-easy, super-fast recipe for yummy non-radioactive egg drop soup:

Ingredients:
4 cups chicken broth, with half-cup reserved
2 scallions, chopped, white and green parts separated
1/8 tsp dried ginger
1/8 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp sherry
1/2 tsp soy sauce
1/4 salt, or more to taste
Few drops of sesame oil
1.5 TBSP cornstarch
2 eggs, beaten

Directions:
Pour 3.5 of the cups of broth into a pan, reserving a half-cup for later. Add the white parts of scallions, the ginger, white pepper, sherry, and soy sauce. Bring to boil and let cook for 5 minutes. Add 2-3 drops sesame oil (a little goes a long way).

Mix cornstarch with remaining broth, and add to pan. Turn heat to low. Beat eggs, then add to broth while stirring rapidly in a clockwise motion. Stir for one minute, until the eggs have cooked and look like shreds.

Sprinkle with the scallion greens. Serve hot.

Note: if you’re not worried about a wee one’s palate, you can slightly increase the quantities of spice. But I preferred to ease into the spices, lest Merrie be turned off and then spend the rest of her life believing that the only good egg drop soup is neon in color.

Big thumbs up from the family on this one. As for me, I’m just glad to be back in the kitchen again.

Okay, omnivores. Here’s a great twist on an American staple, and a fantastic, foolproof dinnertime option: Expat Chef’s brilliant Meatloaf Florentine, which she posted last fall in honor of National Meatloaf Day. It’s awesome. And it’s easy. And it’s a flexible recipe.

But I don’t want to tell you about the meatloaf yet. First, please indulge me briefly while I tell you about the meat I used, and why I used what I did.

I don’t buy conventional beef anymore. I just can’t do it. Last year, thirty-three million pounds of beef were recalled during 20 different recalls. This year, we witnessed downer cows being forklifted so they could be processed for our food supply, after which the USDA recalled 143 million pounds of beef. All of which might make a person feel safer (I mean, the bad meat is recalled, right?), except that the majority of recalled meat is never recovered and likely eaten. And the downer cow scandal? The processing facility was picked at random by undercover investigators (from the Humane Society, mind you. Not from anyone who’s actually paid to be investigating this stuff). Just doesn’t make me feel reassured.

It’s tough to say ‘no’ to conventional beef, though, for one main reason: the pasture-raised stuff is much more expensive. Like most things, you do get what you pay for — grass-fed beef also has far less overall fat, less saturated fat, more of the good fats like omega-3s and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), and lots more vitamin A, vitamin E, and beta-carotene. The ratio of omega-6s to omega-3s is closer to 1:1, whereas in conventional beef, it’s as much as 20:1— an imbalance that is increasingly linked with cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and depression, among other nasty things.

Still, I really can’t swing $12.99 per pound, particularly when I’m working with a recipe that calls for 3 lbs of meat. Thirty-nine dollars worth of meatloaf is just out of the question in our house.

So what to do? I did what so many people have already done on their journey toward Real Food: I went direct to the farmer. At nearby Cricket Creek Farm, pastured ground beef, from a facility that is exceedingly clean and lovely, and from cows that are some of the healthiest I’ve ever seen, goes for $4/lb. More expensive than grocery store? Yes. But in a more affordable range, particularly when the meal is stretched with veggies and lasts many, many days? You betcha’.

Here’s a nice photo of the farm, taken last summer (it’s not nearly so green in New England this time of year):

Besides, the experience of buying the meat was about as heart-warming as it gets. The kids got to pet friendly barnyard cats. They ate some fresh-baked cookies that sell alongside the meats and cheeses. They frolicked outdoors. Charlotte found herself enamored by the pigs:

Whereas Merrie discovered she was something of a chicken whisperer:

It was one of those gorgeous New England spring days, and it was an absolutely lovely way to pass the afternoon. The entire time, I just kept thinking how grateful I was to have a farm like this nearby, and a part of our lives.

Anyhow, the meatloaf. Yes, it’s great, and I like that Expat allows you to “stretch” your meat by sneaking in greens. My version was a variation of what’s on Expat’s site. To keep costs down, I used a can of tomato paste instead of ketchup (her suggestion).

But basically, I took all of these ingredients:

(that would be: 1 medium onion, finely diced; 1 large clove garlic, minced; 1 can tomato paste; 1.5 cups of fresh greens (spinach and chard, mixed), chopped; 1/2 cup of herbs (parsley, mostly, with a little fresh thyme and some dried basil); 2 eggs; 1 cup + 1 TBSP bread crumbs; a half-cup of grated parmesan; 1 tsp kosher sea salt; some black pepper; and a few sprinkles of red pepper flakes)

Then I sauteed the onion and garlic in olive oil first, then I combined it all — everything, all at once — with 3 lbs of grass-fed meat. Yes, with my hands. Which aren’t actually claws, despite how it may appear:

Then I stuck it in two loaf pans in a 350-degree oven for an hour, until my meat thermometer said that the meatloaf had reached 180-degrees:

And guys? It’s awesome. I mean, it’s a really nice meatloaf. Everyone ate it, and Blair kept saying, “what is it about this that’s so good? What’s the secret ingredient?” And I didn’t know the answer — maybe it’s the quality meat, maybe it’s Expat’s great touch, maybe something about the lovely afternoon we’d spent got absorbed right into those ingredients.

The recipe makes two loaves — it would have been plenty for a good-size dinner party; as is, we ate one over two different nights, plus a lunch. Then the rest of it we’ll be adding to other dishes, like pasta sauce, soup, and homemade pizza. I’m guessing that in the end, we’ll have gotten 4 family meals out of it, plus several lunches — not bad for $12 worth of meat.

When we first sat down at the table, Merrie turned her nose up at the meatloaf. “I don’t think I like this,” she said, grumpily, as soon as she saw it.

I ignored that comment, and then about 30 seconds later, I said “Hey, Merrie, this is made with the meat you helped me buy at Cricket Creek.”

Her eyes got bright for a moment, and she asked, “Mom, can we go back there again tomorrow?”

“Soon,” I promised.

Then I tried not to smile when I saw her lift her fork and start to eat.

Over the weekend, I took Merrie down to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass. Yes, I know that Rockwell is the scourge of the art world. I know he is dismissed as saccharine, unchallenging, simplified, utterly corny. And I’ll admit that for decades, I myself have ever-so-slightly rolled my eyes every time I see a hokey Rockwell print hanging on a doctor’s wall, or adorning the hallway of some sentimental grandma. Something about him made my teeth hurt.

Still, I knew Merrie would enjoy his pictures, the way they tell a whole story in a single image. I knew she’d enjoy his images of happy children, and the safe, simple world in which they appear to live. So we packed ourselves into the car, armed with coffee (for mom) and a muffin (for daughter), and headed south.

As expected, Merrie dug the paintings. But here’s what surprised me: I was really moved by the visit.

It’s true: Rockwell’s world is relentlessly sweet. It’s a world of white picket fences and big-hearted grannies. It’s a world of backyard baseball games, humble prayer, and drug store soda fountains. The freckled, apple-cheeked kids are always smiling. Adults are all hard-working, earnest. In Rockwell’s world, the worst trouble a child can get into is to ignore a “No Swimming” sign only to be chased, naked, from the pond. In Rockwell’s world, every runaway child will be discovered by a gentle police officer, then taken out for ice cream. It’s Pleasantville, plain and simple.

Insipid? I’d always thought so. But while I was there, I began thinking about the historic context in which he painted — the Great Depression. The rise of Hitler, World War II. I tried to imagine what it would be like to learn for the first time about the horrors of the Holocaust.

I tried explaining some of these events to Merrie. I tried explaining that the world can be dark and depraved, and Rockwell’s freckled faces — even his goofy hobos and heroic returning soldiers — were a kind of antidote to this, a call to Americans to cling to our own goodness even as we lost our own innocence.

It is a difficult thing, explaining Hitler to a 6-year-old. It is equally hard to look at Rockwell’s Four Freedoms paintings, the ones inspired by FDR’s 1941 speech to Congress, and to try to explain that they are just as relevant today as they were in 1943. That even today, people are still hungry, they are still oppressed, they are still fearful, and they can’t always worship as they wish.

I’m frankly embarrassed to admit it. But I was moved.

The next evening, I baked oatmeal chocolate chip cookies — I typically make up a batch of cookies, then freeze them and take out a couple at a time for Merrie’s lunches. I’d been reading about natural sweeteners, and so I tried using sucanat — which is sort of like a grainy brown sugar that has more nutrients than most refined stuff — which I had bought in bulk, alongside my organic rolled oats, which I’d also purchased in bulk. The girls were tucked in their beds, the kitchen smelled fabulous, and I was feeling frugal and wholesome, filling up plates with fresh-baked goodness.

And that’s when it hit me — I was doing a Norman Rockwell.

Not just the cookies, either. I mean this whole thing, this whole return-to-the-table, go natural, make-it-pure, buy-from-a-farmer thing. It’s very, very Rockwell-esque. And not only because it looks picturesque to go to a farmer’s market, or to serve a fresh-from-the-oven family dinner. I mean because it requires turning toward goodness, toward something wholesome, in a world that is still, and may always be, dark and depraved.

Sometimes I wonder about what I’m doing here, on this blog, talking about food when there are so many important things to talk about. It’s not like I don’t know that there’s a war on. It’s not like I’m unaware that close to a thousand U.S. soldiers have been killed since I started this blog, or that Pakistan has nuclear weapons, or that that global warming is increasing the virulence of existing diseases and may very likely release some terrifying new diseases, or that today alone close to 22,000 children will die from a preventable cause.

I know all of these things, and you do, too. These things are always looming, always hovering in the shadows. They are there as I write funny stories about getting my kids to eat vegetables, and they are there as we talk about sippy cups and meat recalls and brussels sprouts.

It’s true that I deeply believe that changing how we eat is one tangible thing we can do to change some of the world’s horrors — check out the UN report if you want to learn more about that. We eat over, and over, and over again. We do it many times, every day — it is one of the only things we do with such frequency — and if we can make some of our eating choices with an eye toward how those choices impact the world around us, I do genuinely believe that we can improve that world.

Still, there is something else at work, too. For me, at least, food gives me something I can retreat into, some kind of escape from the world’s many nightmares. Food — real food — is nourishing, food is beautiful, food is grounding, food brings people together. And when I connect my food to the farm where it was grown, it is even more of these things.

I suspect I’m not alone here, that the eat-local movement, the anti-fast food movement reflects some kind of national zeitgeist that is in some way related to the fear and anxiety that exists elsewhere.

Take farmer’s markets, for example. Since 1994, farmers’ markets have increased by 150%; since 2000 alone, they’ve nearly doubled. Go to a farmer’s market, and you’ll wind up chatting with neighbors. Then you’ll take your produce home, and you’ll put on an apron, and you’ll chop and peel and then make a meal that reminds you of one that you once had at grandma’s. And it feels good. Not just right, but good, the way Norman Rockwell’s families appear invariably, undeniably, good.

Invite people over to dinner, and you’ll wind up around a table laughing. Stop by a U-Pick farm for Berries, and your kids’ faces will soon be smeared with berry juice. All of it, so Norman Rockwell.

High-art types be damned. It turns out that Norman and I have more in common than I ever imagined.

If you want to bring a little more Rockwell into your world, but you aren’t quite ready to hang a print on your wall, I offer you my recipe for Norman Rockwell-esque sucanat-based oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. They’re not just tasty. They’re good.

Ingredients:
Half pound (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup sucanat (buy it in bulk or it’s too expensive)
Half-cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 and a half cups unbleached flour
3 cups rolled oats (buy in bulk for best price, least packaging)
1 teaspoon baking soda
Half-teaspoon salt
Half a pound chocolate chips (again…go bulk!)

Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix softened butter, sucanat, and sugar together. Add vanilla and eggs. In separate bowl, combine flour, oats, baking soda, and salt - mix these well. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the butter-egg mix. Blend in chocolate chips. Drop in small spoonfuls onto your baking pan, then Bake in oven for about 9-10 minutes. Note that because you’re using succanat, it’s hard to tell when the cookies are “browned.” You want to remove them when they’re formed, but still soft.