Deb Perelman's Blog, page 44

look what else we baked!

It has always amused me that despite being a species with only two options, we get so excited to learn that the next member of it will be one or another. But there I was blubbering like I had never heard news so unusual and wonderful when they told me it was a girl, because like my favorite childhood movie that we dusted off a couple rainy weekends ago, we’ve never had a little girl. We hope she’s going to like it here.

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very blueberry scones

My son was served an eviction notice at the 38.5 week mark, which means that as I now approach my 40th week of manufacturing a new human (that, ironically, we will likely spend the next few years threatening to eat) I have unquestionably never been this pregnant before. I’m beginning to feel a bit like a circus sideshow; I think that most women in my condition simply stay home, what else could explain what a spectacle I must be when I go anywhere? Yesterday, I had to go up to the hospital to fill out some paperwork, which led to possibly a new world record of awkward conversations in an hour timespan:

Getting in a cab: “I need to go to the hospital. I promise, I’m not in labor.”

At the information desk: “Can you tell me how to get to labor and delivery? No, I’m not in labor.”

To the employee by the elevator, because I cannot retain basic information in my brain these days for more than twenty steps: “Labor and delivery is on which floor again? No, not for me, I mean, for me, but not today! Omgdebshutupshutup.”

To the stranger who said “Is today the day?!”: [Something under my breath that need not be repeated.]

.. to say nothing of walking into Labor & Delivery, but not to stay. (Although, believe me, I thought about camping out. I mean, being arrested for civil disobedience would be such a great story for my future momoir!)

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green beans with almond pesto

Just when I thought if my appetite ennui became any more listless I might have to change lines of work, the greatest thing happened: I ran out of space. I mean, I am fully At Capacity right now with baby, there is literally not another inch of my midsection that this child can annex for his/her condo renovation or whatever it does at night (you hear that, darling? mama even ceded her belly button!) and this has shifted my appetite one final time, yet at last for the better. Meat is out, starchy carbs are out, I just can’t, they’re too heavy, and in their place are heaps of vegetables with a side order of All The Watermelon. For once, my timing is impeccable as this coincides with the full swing of local farmers markets, with freshly picked piles of summer everywhere you turn. I’ve been angling for as many all-vegetable meals as I can pull off — mixtures of our summer go-tos like this zucchini saute, caprese, quick-cooked corn, roasted baby potatoes with herbs, and pretty much anything green, roasted to a blistering crisp with lemon juice — with just enough chicken or sausage on the side to please the 2/3 of my family not currently repulsed by such things.

Green beans, pole beans, string beans, whatever you know them as, have been a longtime favorite vegetable of mine. [I’m even trying to grow my favorite skinny and delicate variety, haricot vert, although at the rate things are coming along, I expect the first harvest sometime around the first frost.] I love this salad with fried almonds, celery and pickled onions most of all, but also in a pesto potato salad and even in an old-school Thanksgiving casserole with crispy onions. But, as of this week, each of those preparations have been cast aside for my new favorite, and the way it came about is the best/weirdest part. I spied this photo on Ottolenghi’s Instagram last week and guys, I had no idea how he made these or what recipe of his this might be but (I mean this warmly) I also didn’t care. I knew what I wanted them to taste like — the photo had me dreaming of a nutty and loud sauce that clung to every string of bean — and made it so, dusting off the almond pesto from the cookbook and applying it to a rainbow of beans, cooked until just crisp-tender.

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oven ribs, even better

As I’ve already admitted, I’m a boring preggo. No crazy dreams, sobbing at diaper commercials, middle of the night ice cream binges, pickle benders, sheesh, about the only thing I’ve ever gotten downright stereotypical about — eh, aside from months of frenetic nesting as evidenced by a gardening frenzy, walls! freezer stash and perhaps a few hasty furniture purchases — was when my husband came home from the store without the requested watermelon. How could he! Watermelon is edible air conditioning. It might be the only reason I’ve survived the summer thus far. It was a rough 22 minutes until he got back from the store (a whole block away) with more.

And so when a few weeks ago I began inexplicably craving barbecued ribs, I was ridiculously excited to have my first real, actual food urgency. “The baby wants ribs!” I texted a handful of meat-eating friends on a Friday afternoon, knowing that everyone likely had weekend plans and wouldn’t be able to make it, and thus fully underestimating the power of barbecue, like some sort of noob. Nope, not a single person was unavailable after reading the text, as will happen because: ribs. And so on Saturday morning, I sent my son on his two-wheeler down to Pino’s and told him not to come back with anything less than 3 racks (just kidding — I sent his dad along to assist) and got started on what is seriously the easiest and most popular summer party you can have — no grill required.

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chocolate chunk granola bars

As I shuffle towards the finish line of this family-expansion project we began so long ago that it’s become a running joke* there are days when I honestly do not understand why human beings need to gestate beyond 37 weeks. I mean, pretty much the minute the doctor estimated this kid to be 6 pounds, I concluded “it’s cooked! It can come out now, right?” and imagined our 4th of July, baby snuggled in wrap, beer in one hand, medium-rare burger in the other and, lo, it sounded pretty grand to me. Because, of course, we know from experience that’s exactly what the first weeks of having a newborn look like. Fortunately, there are other days when I wake up and feel almost like a person who does not have feet in her rib cage, when by some miracle, I’m able to swim a mile, find some forgotten dress in my closet that actually fits with dignity, and cook things we can pass off as dinners, present and future, and this is one of those days so let’s frolic in it.

In a few days, my son starts a day camp in which the kids are supposed to bring their own lunches — no, not even summer brings a reprieve from my favorite activity — and snacks. Snacks! Predictably, this has stressed me out because I neither want him to feel unloved for being the only kid without a package of some sort of candy/gummy/cookie monstrosity or some other unwholesome delight nor do I want him to develop a package-of-monstrosity-a-day habit. Ideally, I’d rather him eat something homemade where the ingredient list didn’t sound like a science project. Realistically, my best-laid plans will probably only take us through the first couple weeks, after which we’ll be too busy not to succumb to all the wonders of the packaged food world, but until then, I plan to give myself an A for effort. This is also a nut-free facility, a couple of his friends are gluten-free, another cannot have dairy, and all of these factors have collided to finally motivate me to update my go-to granola bars accordingly.

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herbed summer squash pasta bake

One of the things I’ve first-world struggled with since the beginning of this incubation period is a lack of appetite. Of course, there’s the glib side of me — great for managing weight gain! why “eat for two” if you can eat for half?! — but mostly, it’s a bummer. I thought that after the first trimester nausea passed, I’d be good to go and yes, I’m back to eating regular meals, but my enthusiasm has only returned in short bursts. Sure, I’ve shamelessly consumed all matter of crispy eggs with soy sauce, sesame oil and chile flakes (flipped only long enough to keep the food police at bay, or so I tell you). I will eat almost any green vegetable roasted to a blistering crisp with olive oil and salt and finished with lemon juice. Speaking of lemons, we go through homemade, barely sweet lemonade by the half-carafe. And some cravings are even fun; for example, “the baby wants ribs” was a text I sent out to friends a few weeks ago while led to a great deck party. But do you know when I sat down with my plate after an afternoon of carefully preparing three glorious racks of ribs, I could only eat one? It’s rather grim for a so-called food writer to go through life unmotivated by hunger and cravings, to have become a person who shrugs and says “Meh, whatever you want to eat is fine.” I don’t even know me.

And so, with just a couple weeks to go and with the additional invader of final-stretch fatigue, rather than continuing to try to push myself to cook things I lose interest in halfway — a saffron-brothed couscous salad from last week is the latest victim — I’m instead shifting my focus to future meals. Because if there’s anything I remember from the baby-feeding side of things from last time, it’s that I was hungry enough that I honestly would have eaten the sofa if I was more convinced it would have gone down well with a couple shakes of hot sauce. I kind of can’t wait.

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strawberry cheesecake ice cream pie

Sure, there’s nothing glamorous about carrying a watermelon, so to speak, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I rather enjoy many parts of being pregnant. For example, you get to wear elastic-waist pants all the time. Your hair gets really thick and shiny; I mean, sure, it doesn’t last but if this is as close as I’m going to get in my lifetime to my Pantene Moment, you’d better believe I’m going to revel in it. It’s so very wrong, but I even secretly enjoy the soft bigotry of low expectations as literally nothing I admit — that I’ve been only swimming two times a week instead of three recently, that if I cook dinner twice a week, it’s a triumph, etc. — is met with less than “Go you! That’s amazing!” I even delight in watching people’s expressions change to borderline-panic on the street as they realize this rather normal-looking woman approaching them is, in fact, colossal when viewed from the side.

That is, until the end. The final weeks are a little different, aren’t they? They are both too long and too short, erratic sleep, puffy feet, and can I admit that I dread standing in line at the grocery store because I know I won’t escape without having to converse with a stranger about the state of my midsection? I actually found myself debating the pros/cons of a grocery store run yesterday because of this, but fortunately, the need for cream cheese and graham crackers for cheesecake ice cream pie triumphed, as it always and forever should.

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strawberry cornmeal griddle cakes

Somewhere it is written, or it is now, that if your mom is a gazillion (cough, 35 weeks and 4 days, not that anyone is counting) weeks pregnant and she is the one that under ideal circumstances provides you with dinner, sooner or later that dinner is going to be breakfast pancakes with a side of bacon. You probably won’t mind.

It might be because she’d spent the first half of her week in Jury Duty, something she believes in so strongly in an abstract sense but, like most people, was resentful of as she spent two days sitting in a windowless room, watching her cankles swell (some recliners would be great, New York Supreme Court, kthx!), reaching a boredom level that can only be described as: well, she’s finally tackled Knausgaard. Maybe it’s because we had a little too much at our impromptu 15-pounds o’ ribs fest on the patio last weekend, and it hadn’t occurred to her to cook since. Or maybe it’s because it’s her birthday and while she had great plans for a towering strawberry shortcake stack, it turned out her energy level was more in line with a not-so-towering strawberry pancake stack.

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permalink to strawberry cornmeal griddle cakes | 73 comments to date | see more: Breakfast, Pancakes, Photo, Strawberries, Summer

saltine crack ice cream sandwiches

There are cookbooks and websites that seem to be inspired mostly by foods one might hypothetically desire after consuming a smokable plant now decriminalized in dozens of states. Then there’s the Smitten Kitchen, where recipes are mostly motivated by irrational cravings or failures of self-control. Days like this, I’m pretty sure our disparate paths have led us to the same place.

By now, you might be familiar with matzo crack, which is what happens when you raise the aptly-named “bread of affliction” to what has got to be its most hardship-free calling: butter, brown sugar, sea salt, dark chocolate and toasted nuts. In the Passover off-season, i.e. most of the time, I think it’s even better with saltine crackers. Baked, cooled, and broken into chunks, it’s crunchy, buttery and caramelized and I cannot be in the same room with it without debasing myself, so I sometimes hide it from myself in the freezer. This has led to a conclusion you might have predicted — that it tastes rather excellent frozen.

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crispy frizzled artichokes

Promise me something: The next time you see baby artichokes, whether in a 9- or 12-pack clamshell of indeterminate origin at your local supermarket or loose at your local farmer’s market (jealous, as ours won’t be here for some time), I want you to buy every single one of them. All of them. This is no time to share with the next customer or to be a good locavore citizen. Trust your local artichoke-obsessed food blogger on this one; without fail, they disappear for the season the moment you discover their awesomeness, which I hope we’re all about to do.

As I admitted recently, despite the fact that they’re my favorite vegetable, we don’t talk much about artichokes around here because I know they’re fussy to deal with, and for most people, this is a dealbreaker. It’s also because my favorite way to eat big artichokes is rather boring — boiled or steamed whole until deathly soft, the leaves pulled and dipped into a hodge-podged sauce of mayo, lemon juice, salt and black pepper. With a glass of white wine and a simple green salad on the side, I honestly don’t know why I eat anything else for dinner, ever.

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permalink to crispy frizzled artichokes | 31 comments to date | see more: Appetizer, Artichokes, Gluten-Free, Grilling, Italian, Photo, Summer, Vegetarian