Light and Momentary

[perfectly timed and oh so delicious mashed potatoes]

This is the sound of me writing very quietly about how to time your mashed potatoes.

Speedy Gonzalez Brings You Yummy Green Beans

I was going to write a real post about Christmas creep, and how decorations are everywhere ALREADY, and how I was thinking, "Maybe I will just bow out of Christmas -- except WAIT, this is OUR feast that consumer culture has co-opted. Maybe I will respond to every 'Happy Holidays' greeting with 'Blessed Advent!' or 'Joyous Feast of the Nativity!' Would that make me sound like a person who might lasso you with a brown scapular and forcibly enroll you in the confraternity thereof? Maybe it would.

But I was busy changing my user short name on the computer we bought secondhand in the summer. The good thing about a secondhand MacBook is the price. The bad thing is that I've been staring at the original purchaser's name because I was put off by the "advanced" tag on the directions to change it. It's not hard, turns out. Except-- that's what I was messing with when I lost my data temporarily, and it disappeared again tonight. This time I did not panic and I did not smear poop on my shirt (oh, wait, that was the baby). I just logged in as root and copied my dot files with aplomb, knowing that even if it didn't work (and it did!), I had just backed up my dissertation data.

Well. This was supposed to be a quick post about green beans but I am three paragraphs in and there are no beans in sight.

Look! Beans ahoy!

This is my favorite thing to do with green beans. It comes from The Passionate Vegetarian, whose author also recommends this approach for summer squash and okra. Here's what you do: top and tail and blanch your beans. Chop some garlic and a ripe tomato. (Substitute a couple of canned tomatoes if you'd like, since ripe tomatoes are scarce in November.) Add some olive oil to a skillet and throw in the beans. Sprinkle the garlic and tomato on top. Cook on low for five minutes; cover and cook for 30 minutes more. Peek occasionally to make sure the garlic isn't burning. At the end, take off the top. If you have visible liquid, turn up the heat for a few minutes to cook it off. She says you want the beans coated in a sort of tomato-ey marmalade. Sprinkle with salt. She says to add dill but I do not.

This does not make a beautiful side dish because the beans get kind of shriveled. But OH if you do not like the looks of it, pass your beans to me and I will eat them all. We never have leftovers because I eat them out of the serving dish with my fingers and then lick my fingers.

Swedish Comfort Food

Today I submitted that job application. There was a minor crisis: my undergrad alma mater sent me a transcript for a different Jamie Gladly, who did not graduate (and more importantly, who is not me). I called the registrar's office and they are sending me the right one pronto, but the application was due today. I dropped it off minus the undergrad transcript, with a note explaining what had happened.

Then I freaked out just a little bit, because for all my angst about whether I would really want the job, I just applied to be a professor. Eek.

I had plans to get lots done on my dissertation this afternoon and tonight, but I found the process of pulling the application together more stressful than I anticipated. Instead I relaxed and made a comforting dinner.

In the summer that I turned 15, I went to Sweden for six weeks. I was really too young for the trip, I think; I was ferociously lonely. But there were many good things about going to Sweden, one of which was learning to cook pytt i panna.

Pytt i panna (the name means "little things chopped up in a pan") is just the thing if you have part of a leftover roast to dispatch. Mince an onion and cube a bunch of potatoes. Dinner will be ready sooner if you have boiled potatoes stashed in the fridge already, but do not despair if your potatoes are unboiled. Fry the onion in a generous bloop of oil (<- how's that for precision measurement?) and add the potatoes when it begins to color. This next step is unconventional but it works for me: if your potatoes are uncooked, toss them around in the hot oil for a bit and then add some stock so you do not wind up with a sticky mess and children gnawing at your ankles as you say "I think the potatoes are almost done now!" for the forty-fifth time. You don't want them to be awash in stock; you just want to help things along. It's almost like making potato risotto (potatotto?) -- toss them in the hot oniony fat and then add liquid slowly.

(Is there a secret to frying potatoes besides adding a pint of oil to the pan?)

While the potatoes are getting tender, cube your leftover roast. When the potatoes are almost there, toss in the meat and season emphatically, remembering that undersalted potatoes will be grounds for incarceration when I am Queen of the World. (Vote for Jamie!)

The daughter closest to my age in that host family taught me that you can go in two different directions from here. Either add some cream, or else fry some eggs in a separate pan and plop a fried egg atop each serving. Pass catsup at the table.

This makes for a monochromatic meal; we served it with peas and sliced tomatoes to break up the beige. Swedes like it with pickled beets. I recommend a little chipotle Tabasco, if you're not put off by the cacophony of clashing cultures. Thumbs up from all the boys, which is a rarity.

When Irish Eyes Are Bloodshot

I thought I'd make colcannon for dinner tonight, but I only had red cabbage. I also had red onion, red-skinned potatoes, and ham. So I made pink colcannon, and it was surprisingly popular.

Mince a red onion and slice a wedge of red cabbage finely. Saute in butter until tender. Add some chopped ham if it floats your boat, and some salt and pepper. While the veggies are cooking, boil potatoes in heavily salted water. You don't have to peel them unless you have time on your hands, in which case you should come to my house and keep me company while I fold laundry. (I started to say you should fold the laundry, but I'm not that bossy.) Mash the potatoes with a truckload of butter. Scoop some out for the baby to smear in her hair. Mix it all together and serve with a little dab of butter melting on top.

Darn it, I was going to post a picture but the baby is fussing. Maybe it's itchy to go to sleep with potato in your hair.

Yum

Potato recipe from Madhur Jaffrey:

Take about 2 pounds of potatoes (I used 4 average-sized specimens) and boil them in their jackets until tender. When they're cool, peel and cube them. Recruit a 4yo to measure out 2 t. cumin seeds, 2 t. black mustard seeds, and 2T. sesame seeds into a little dish. Heat 6 T. oil in a frying pan, and when it's hot chuck in the seeds. When they sizzle and pop, add the potato cubes. Toss them around in the oil for five minutes or so. Next add 2 t. salt, the juice of half a lemon, and cayenne to taste. Cook for another three or four minutes. Garnish with cilantro.

Diverted

Oh my goodness, I am struggling with motivation today. I arranged for Petely to go to preschool this morning (Wednesdays are usually our day to spend the morning together), and I am just not getting as much done as I had hoped. The kids in my experimental group go on and on (and on and on) and it takes forever to get through their transcripts. I keep typing "PASTA" when I am supposed to be flagging verbs as "PAST," which suggests to me that I should take a lunch break.

Danielle Bean is collecting meatless recipes and I am offering this one as a nutritious inexpensive family favorite. You would not expect children to clamor for a recipe calling for a bag of spinach and a whole head of garlic, but mine do.

So take that head of garlic and separate the cloves. If you put a few of them at a time under the flat side of a heavy knife and whack it forcefully with your fist, perhaps venting your frustration about the glacial speed at which your work is progressing today, you should find that their skins slip off easily. Chop them coarsely and cook them in olive oil with a sprinkle of red pepper flakes. When the garlic is tender, add in 2 cans of chickpeas and a big can (28 oz) of diced tomatoes. Add a 10-oz. bag of frozen spinach. The original recipe says to thaw and drain it first, but I tell you what: I just chuck it in frozen and crank up the flame to evaporate the spinach liquid. Salt to taste. Serve over pasta, or brown rice if you're feeling crunchy, with plenty of Parmesan.

It should be clear from yesterday's post that my kids are not spinach-lovers, but they will scarf this right down.

Notes for my daughter, about Thanksgiving

So far none of my children will cook with me. I am not the most patient teacher, unfortunately. Last night I was in the kitchen wondering if this new baby will like to cook, and what she will be like next Thanksgiving. This, I wanted to tell her, is how we do a Gladly Thanksgiving.

The key is butter. Pounds of butter. It is a myth that Thanksgiving is about turkey or autumnal vegetables. It's really the butter.

Name That Carol

Pete sings: "Deeka bez! Deeka bez! Deeka aaahhh way!" Can you translate?

I am up baking for tomorrow's cookie exchange. My mission, when I chose to accept it, was to bake 9 dozen cookies for tomorrow. Nine dozen! That's a whole lotta cookies. Two women have since dropped out, leaving me only 7 dozen to bake, but that exceeds my cookie output for, oh, probably all of 2007. (Elwood P. bakes lots more cookies than I do. Isn't that domestic of him?)

Ergo: bar cookies. (I hate the scooping up and splodging on the baking sheet routine.) These are called toffee tops. Preheat oven to 350 and prepare an 8x8 pan. (Prepare = line with foil long enough to hang over the edges so you can lift the cookies out of there. You'll be gouging out your eyes if you try to scoop them out of the pan.) Combine one and a quarter cups flour, a quarter teaspoon of salt, 2 T. brown sugar (packed), a stick of cold butter (cubed), a quarter-cup of slivered almonds, and a quarter teaspoon of almond extract, and blitz in the food processor. After everything is combined I add a tablespoon of cold water to cut down on the crumbly factor, but this is not in the recipe. Press into your pan, making a little bit of a rim at the edges so you do not glue the bars to your pan in the next step. Bake for 12 minutes. You want the crust to be slightly firm.

Combine 1/2 c. brown sugar (packed), 1/3 c. butter, and a tablespoon of water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and then let it boil for a minute, stirring intermittently. If you can, time it so that your toffee layer is done boiling just as your timer beeps for the crust. Pour the toffee over the crust and pop it back into the oven for 10 more minutes.

When the ten minutes are up (you want the toffee bubbling vigorously in the oven), pull out the pan. Let it set up for a minute, just so you have a bit of a crust. Sprinkle over 3/4 c. of chocolate chips. Cover the pan for a few minutes so the chips soften up, and spread with a knife to make a smooth coating. Sprinkle slivered almonds over the chocolate, pressing them in gently so they stick to the cookies when the chocolate firms up. Cut them fairly small -- they're pretty rich.

In addition to the 8x8 batch, I doubled the recipe and put it in a 9x13, and made a recipe-and-a-quarter in a 9x9 pan. I am hoping that my 9x13 batch will be all right in the morning, because its toffee layer is a little wobbly tonight. I had an expat Southerner moment while smoothing chocolate over toffee lava, when I said to myself, "Oh, no, it's not settin' up right." Midwesterners do not talk about things "settin' up right." What do they say, though? I've lived in the Midwest for...hm, I think it's 17 of the last 20 years, and I'm not quite sure what a Midwesterner says when she gets molten toffee lava instead of partly solidified toffee aa or toffee pahoehoe (that one's for you, Arwen).

Hurrah for the Fourth of July

For the Fourth we took the train to the state capital (big excitement for Pete, to board the train instead of just waving at it).  We heard a reading of the Declaration of Independence (remember the scene in Little Town on the Prairie when the Ingalls girls recite the Declaration along with the reader? can you imagine an educational system in which that kind of memorization was routine?) and saw some well-done Civil War exhibits, which provided me with a little perspective on my angst about the current situation.   We picnicked on the capitol grounds, with watermelon and potato salad.  I believe the eating of potato salad on July 4 is mentioned in the Constitution as a requirement for US citizenship.  If it's not, I propose an amendment.

Though my amendment is likely to fail, my recipe is not.  Give it a whirl.

Thomas Jefferson's Favorite Potato Salad and Probably Abraham Lincoln's Too

My very favorite potato salad includes bacon, so I usually start by frying up a couple of slices.  This is optional, though.  I cube eight medium potatoes and boil them for about ten minutes in heavily salted water.  Salting the heck out of the water is one of the keys to delicious potato salad -- I don't think you can get boiled potatoes salted properly after they're cooked.  I usually boil my eggs, about three of them, in the same pot with the potatoes.  While everything's aboil, make the dressing.  Combine a cup of mayo (or a mix of mayo and sour cream, or I suppose you could use yogurt if you were so inclined) with the juice of half a lemon and a healthy shake of Old Bay -- enough to tint the mayo a pretty pale coral. [ETA: I love lemon and have a high tolerance for tart. You might want to start with less lemon juice and see how it suits you.]  Drain the pot and fish out the eggs.  While the potatoes are hot, if you are feeling decadent and are not expecting any cardiologists at your party, you can sprinkle a spoonful of bacon fat over them.  If this strikes you as repulsive or if you worry about saturated fat, skip that step and just toss them gently in the dressing while they're still warm. Finely mince a stalk of celery (for crunch) and about three green onions (for punch).  When the eggs are cool enough to handle, crumble them in along with the bacon.   Stir it all together and save some for me!

The Drama Queen Cooks Dinner

I think the midterm was fine.  I think.  We had to create an SPSS syntax file for the last problem, and my first try was rejected.  "Bah!" said SPSS. "I spit upon your pitiful attempt."  Always demoralizing, with the clock ticking at the end of a midterm.  But this professor is extremely helpful, even in the middle of an exam.  She was passing by and saw my unhappy face.  "You're telling it to consider all the males and none of the males at the same time," she explained after a glance at my coefficients.  Aha.  That would make me a little tetchy too, were I a statistics software package.

To distract you from my drama queenliness, I offer you my standby chicken recipe for boneless breasts.  Perhaps it is odd to serve up a chicken recipe just in time for the first meatless Friday of the season, but it'll keep for Saturday.  Or whenever.

Preheat your oven to 350 and hit a 9x13 pan with non-stick spray.  Set up a little assembly line with your package of about 6 chicken breast halves at one end, next to a bowl of plain yogurt (about a cup), next to a plate of seasoned breadcrumbs*, next to your baking dish.  Roll a chicken breast in the yogurt, roll it in the breadcrumbs, and plunk it in the baking dish.  Sprinkle with sesame seeds if you like them, and drizzle over a half-stick of melted butter if you are a person obsessed with following recipes to the letter or if you are feeding a cachexia sufferer.  I haven't used the butter since the first time I made this, in 1993.  Bake uncovered for 50-60 minutes, depending on the size of the chicken breasts. 

*Seasoned breadcrumbs:  1 c. dry breadcrumbs or wheat germ if you have no bread to crumb, 1/4 c. grated Parmesan cheese, 1 t. seasoned salt, sprinkle of thyme, dash of pepper, whatever else floats your boat.  This is probably more than you need for six breasts, so you might reserve some of it in a separate dish.  That way you can dump it on the plate if you need it at the end, or save it for later since it won't be contaminated with raw chicken juice.

The yogurt makes the chicken moist and tangy and the breadcrumbs give it crunch and flavor, circumventing the whole dry/tasteless/cottony problem that plagues most boneless skinless chicken breasts.

Gaudete! Ientate!

[Rejoice! Eat breakfast!]

My kids love this oven pancake recipe and it is really easy.

Preheat your oven to 450^o and coat a 9x13 pan or comparably sized oval baking dish with non-stick spray.  (Don't skip this step; even with all the butter the pan will be a pain to clean if you don't and this is not Purgate Sunday.  There is a reason "purgate" (plural imperative form of "clean") and "purgatory" sound alike.)  Toss six eggs in the blender and let 'er rip for 60 seconds.  Pop your pan in the preheated oven with 3 T. of butter in it.  Add 1½ cups of milk and 1½ cups of whole wheat pastry flour to the blender jar, along with a half-teaspoon of salt and whatever flavorings suit you:  vanilla, almond extract, cinnamon, you name it.  Process for 30 seconds more.  By this time your butter should be sizzling; pull the pan out and sprinkle berries or thinly sliced fruit over the melted butter.  (You can skip the fruit if you prefer.)  Pour the batter over the fruit and bake for ten minutes.  Turn the temperature down to 350 and bake for another ten minutes, by which time your oven pancake should be golden and beautifully puffy.

While it's baking, summon everybody to the table.  It is prettiest right out of the oven though it will be delicious even after it has sagged.  Serve with maple syrup or sprinkles of sugar and lemon juice, and light your pink candle.

[Edited after I remembered the first time I tried to make this:  it's important to use a pan that lets the batter spread out.  That first time I put it in a round dish that was much deeper, with a smaller diameter, and the result was disgustingly soupy.  You want a thin little layer of batter so it will get done all the way through.]

[Edited again to say I've begun keeping the oven at 450 for the whole baking time. I find this gives me much more puff and nicer color than turning it down to 350. If you try it, keep an eye out toward the end of baking. I'd hate for you to burn your breakfast.]