Luisa Weiss's Blog, page 26

My Berlin Kitchen - Getting Fired Up!

Folks! If you pre-ordered your copy of My Berlin Kitchen on Amazon.com, it'll be released and sent out on Thursday. This Thursday! If you preferred to wait and give your hard-earned dollars to bricks-and-mortars bookstores, they'll be selling the book as of next Monday. That's 8 days from now! Haa-haa-hooo-heee!!

Now for a bit of shameless self-promotion:

O Magazine's October issue says My Berlin Kitchen is one of 10 Titles To Pick Up Now! It's also gotten wonderful mentions in Elle, Marie Claire, Culinate, Publisher's Weekly, Library Journal and Booklist.

The first blogger reviews are coming in and they have me practically in tears. In a good way!

Food Loves Writing says: "I went into the book eager to hear how Luisa and her husband met, what
made her move to Berlin, more details about her life in New York
publishing. What I didn’t expect was to find so much that resonated with
me, like the way she wrestled with decisions or the security that
cooking could provide when she lacked it..."

Lit Laugh Love says: "I can guarantee every single one of you that this will be the most
tattered book on my shelves as the years go on. This is a book I’m going
to turn to—for strength, for memories, for someone to share heartache
with, for recipes, for solace, and most importantly for the reminder
that life goes on. We need to follow our guts. We need to 'be brave'."

BrodartVibe says: "Her journey finding herself within these separate lives is a great
adventure with lots of great recipes along the way. This book in many
ways reminded of the journey of Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat Pray Love."

If you'd like more reader reviews, click on over to My Berlin Kitchen's page on Goodreads.

Also, the book's adapted first serial is running in this weekend's Wall Street Journal. Remember that disastrous cake I posted about a few years ago? The full story's in the book, but to tide you over until then and to whet your appetite for gooseberry cream cake, check out the article and recipe here.

Finally, a huge thank you, dearest readers, for your pre-orders and enthusiasm. I can't believe the book will be in stores and in your hands so soon. What a crazy, crazy ride this whole book-writing experience has been. (More on that soon, I promise!) I so, so hope you like it.

Dispatch from Italy: Pork Chops

I realize that upon reading Dispatch from Italy you might be expecting something, let's say, more sophisticated than pork chops. Whenever I hear the word dispatch, I think of George Orwell in the 1920's being all down and outy, for some reason. But this is where I am for the next two weeks, decamped at my mother's house with Hugo for a vacation of sorts where other people cook me lunch and soothe the baby and let me take forty thousand photographs of this view which never grows old:

Here's some lavender to set the scene for you:

This morning I picked figs, all hot and soft in the summer sun. This afternoon we'll go to town to run some errands and eat gelato, as it is my goal to work my way through the flavors in the case of the gelateria before we leave. (Yesterday: peach and watermelon. Today: chocolate and pistachio.) And at lunch today, Maurizio, my mother's cousin, made pork chops so good that I must must must tell you about them. I've never seen pork chops cooked this way before and I've never eaten pork chops this good, so I have to share. Isn't this what blogs were invented for?

(Is this the right moment to say that I'm really not a meat person? I mean, I'm really not. Give me a bowl of boiled green beans with olive oil and vinegar over a steak any day. But put Maurizio in a kitchen with a stack of meat and a hot pan and and suddenly I'm tearing into pork chops like some prehistoric cavewoman.)

The first thing you need to do is gather your ingredients. Watch out, it's not a long list:

Good-quality pork chops, one per person (if I had to guess, around 1/2 an inch thick)
Coarse sea salt (do not use fine, no matter what)
A lemon and that is it.

Crazy, right? 

Now take a heavy frying pan and put it over medium-high heat. (I'll bet a cast-iron pan would be best, but Maurizio used a nonstick one.) Coat one side of each pork chop evenly with one or two teaspoons of coarse salt. That's PER CHOP, people. They should look like this:

Lay the pork chops, unsalted side down, in the hot pan. There's no oil or anything to coat the pan. Let the chops fry until, Maurizio says, the salt on top starts to go clear, meaning they've absorbed the liquid from the meat (this takes a little less than ten minutes). Your kitchen will smell like browning pork fat, which is indescribably delicious. Flip the chops to the salted side. The browned side should look like this:

Now fry this side for just a few minutes, until the salt sticks to the pan. Remove the chops to the serving plates and, using a spoon, scrape off the coarse salt and discard. Flip the chop again, so that the nicely browned side is facing up. After all, your eyes are eating, too, as the Germans would say.

Serve everyone their pork chop and then, at the table, squeeze a good amount of lemon juice over each one and tuck in: 

I find it difficult not to tear into the hot, salty chop with my bare hands, but I do my best to restrain myself and use a fork and knife because just because I can eat figs straight off of trees right now doesn't mean I've turned into a total animal, you know? The chop is all juicy and wonderful and the lemon juice cuts through the richness of the pork and wouldn't you know, I even eat the bit of fat edging the meat because it's so darn good.

(Ha! I just realized Hugo's pacifier is lying next to my plate there. Poor Hugo, no pork chops for him.)

Next up for Dispatch from Italy, if I can get my mother to cooperate: pickled eggplant. Yes? Yes! And an update on which gelato flavors I've worked through. I know you're all on the edge of your seats. Now go forth and fry chops!

A Little Sneak Preview

Last fall, I was thrilled to record a piece for NPR's Berlin Stories series. Berlin Stories are "short, personal pieces" about Berlin that are broadcast on NPR's Berlin station. (By the way, did you know that Berlin is the only city outside the US with an NPR station?) For my piece, I adapted a chapter from My Berlin Kitchen, telling the story of how my mother, when she first moved to Berlin in the 1970's, got a German tradition involving doughnuts, mustard and New Year's Eve very, very wrong indeed.

At the time of the recording, Berlin Stories didn't have a recording studio yet, so we met at my friend Anna Winger's house to record the piece in her basement! (It's really, really quiet down there.) I had originally planned to simply read the chapter into the microphone, but it turns out that radio writing is quite different from book writing. So the producers and I sat around the kitchen table for a while working on the piece and eating salad until we were all happy with it. (The hideous nausea from the beginning of my pregnancy had just subsided and I was able to expand my diet beyond pretzels and potato chips. Lettuce never tasted so good!)

To get a little sneak preview of the book, you can listen to the piece here. I hope you like it.

(P.S. We buy our New Year's Eve doughnuts at this legendary bakery in Berlin. They're glorious.)

My Berlin Kitchen - The Book Tour!

I was informed last night by my agent, via this hastily snapped cellphone photo, that the first actual copies of My Berlin Kitchen have arrived in New York. (!) Which means that it's only a matter of time now before I get to hold a copy myself. (!!) I imagine it will be a little different than when I first held Hugo, a little less soft and deliciously scented, probably. But in its own way, no less monumental. (!!!) Right? If you had told me four years ago that one far-off summer, I would have two babies, one flesh, one paper, to my name, I would not have believed you. Oh, life. You can be so good sometimes.

(!!!!!!!)

And to make things even better, we're going on tour. Yes, folks, me and the baby and Max are getting on an airplane in late September and heading to the States to see you all and I am so stinking excited I can hardly stand it. I can't believe how lucky I am that I get to do this. (Also, terrified. Will anyone show up? Furthermore, are we out of our minds to attempt this thing with a three-month old baby?)

The tour schedule is as follows (I'll have more precise details, like addresses or other salient information posted in a soon-to-be-formatted link in the sidebar):

Friday, September 21st, 7:00 pm:
LOS ANGELES, CA - Vroman's Bookstore

Saturday, September 22nd, 2:30 pm:
SAN DIEGO, CA - Adventures by the Book, Westgate Hotel

Monday, September 24, 7:00 pm:
SEATTLE, WA - University Bookstore

Tuesday, September 25th, 7:30 pm:
PORTLAND, OR - Powell's Books

Wednesday, September 26th, 6:00 pm:
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Book Passage

Thursday, September 27, 12:00 pm
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Rakestraw Books

Thursday, September 27, 7:00 pm:
SANTA CRUZ, CA - Bookshop Santa Cruz

Sunday, September 30, 5:00 pm:
WASHINGTON, DC - Politics & Prose

Monday, October 1, 7:00 pm:
NEW YORK, NY - Powerhouse Arena

Tuesday, October 2, 7:00 pm:
BOSTON, MA - Harvard Book Store

Will you come, will you be there? I cannot wait to see your faces, my dream come true.

Meatballs for New Mothers

Hugo will be eight weeks old this week. Eight whole weeks! In the past two weeks, he has started smiling at us, big, toothless grins that I have decided are the best thing since sliced bread, the steam engine and the birth of Steve Jobs put together. He stares at us in wonder when we speak, uttering little coos like he's trying to answer our absolutely inane questions, eats like a champ (and, for that matter, sleeps like a champ, unless the hubris of putting this down in type damns me forever) and is an absolute delight.

I have always wanted to be a mother. I've had baby fever my whole life, at least as far back as I can remember. I babysat avidly as a teenager, nannied as a young woman and fawned over my friends' babies when they were born. I very, very much looked forward to becoming a mother myself one day. And yet, still, the first three weeks of Hugo's life were a kick in the teeth. I don't want to say they were the hardest days of my life, because they were bound up with the wonder of Hugo - the boy who made us family - but they were hard.

(Proof? This tweet, in that wretched third week, was totally, completely, wholly unrhetorical in nature.)

Our culture, our society, prepares us endlessly for birth. But no one prepares you for what comes next. It's because, of course, there is no preparation. The sleep deprivation, the hormones (the hormones!), the terror of realizing in one split second that you are this little person's caretaker, its most important person, for the rest of your life, man, it is seriously heavy stuff that is very difficult to handle, much less prepare for. I realize now how right other societies have it when their new mothers are surrounded by their community for the weeks following birth, caring for her, washing and feeding her. A new baby doesn't really need much, but a new mother needs everything.

If you're a cook and you know a new mother or a woman who will be one soon, these meatballs can be your contribution to the cause of keeping that woman fed and sane (sort of). They're easy to make, they freeze well, they are nourishing and the new parents can even use the leftover sauce for a separate meal (we don't eat meatballs on spaghetti in Italy*) - a boon for those weary souls who will probably find it difficult even just to boil water at first.

My mother doesn't consider herself much of a cook. (More on that in the book. And more on the book next time! Whee!) She only uses one cookbook, Ada Boni's Il Talismano della Felicità and even that one she only uses for inspiration, shall we say. (She takes a rather loose approach to following recipes, which irritates me to no end, but that's my cross to bear.) These meatballs come from there, but with one crucial difference: instead of frying the meatballs, she plonks them raw into a simple tomato sauce, eliminating a messy step and creating meltingly tender meatballs. (I think she got this idea from me? I'm not sure. I hate frying meatballs with a passion.)

To make the meatballs, gather up the following:

1/2 pound of ground beef, 1/2 pound of ground pork, two eggs, 2 slices of white bread, the crusts cut off, enough milk to soak the bread, a bunch of parsley, a nutmeg for grating, salt, pepper, and, er, that's it.

Put the meat and eggs in a bowl. Tear the bread into little pieces, then soak them in the milk and squeeze them out, adding them to the bowl. Mince up the parsley and add it to the bowl. Grate a bit of nutmeg into the bowl. (30 strokes? To taste.) And salt and pepper the mixture. (I used about 1 1/2 teaspoons salt. I think.)

Then, using your hands, mix all of this together until it's a smooth, uniform mass. Cover the bowl with a plate or some plastic wrap and stick it in the fridge for a few hours. When you're ready to cook, form the meatballs. I like smaller-sized meatballs, about the size of a small plum, two inches at most in diameter. Put them on a plate.

Next you have to make your tomato sauce. Which is as easy as browning a clove of garlic in olive oil and then dumping a 28-ounce can of good-quality tomatoes (puréed, chopped, whatever) and their juices into the pot and cooking this over medium-low heat for about 25 minutes (don't forget to salt the sauce). When the sauce tastes good and cooked, for lack of a better descriptor, gently plop the meatballs into the sauce like so:

Then put the lid on and let the sauce and meatballs simmer slowly away. Resist the urge to stir the pot; if you are concerned, shake the pot a little. 25 minutes later, turn off the heat. Let the pot sit there until fully cooled. At that point, you may freeze the meatballs or package them up to take to the new mother who needs feeding. This recipes makes enough for at least two meals for two people.

(*Are you asking yourself what on earth do Italians eat meatballs with, if not spaghetti? Well, this Italian likes serving them with polenta (also because leftover polenta fried in butter and doused with maple syrup is a prairie breakfast of the gods) or steamed rice, the better to soak up the sauce with.)

Meatballs may seem like a pretty humble offering, but to a hungry, bleary-eyed, frightened new mother, they can be deeply comforting. Especially if you tell her that I promise that whether she believes it or not, one day, not so far off in the future, she'll be feeling capable enough of making those meatballs herself.

Jeffrey Alford's and Naomi Duguid's Banana Coconut Bread

Well. All those people weren't kidding when they said that once you have a baby, everything else goes out the window: showering, eating, sleeping, even, shh, going to the bathroom! It all takes a back seat to baby. If it wasn't for my mother, who has come over almost every day since Hugo was born, laden with groceries, bags of fresh fruit and vegetables and fragrant pots of food for us (next time, hopefully, I'll tell you about the meatballs), we'd have been on a diet of straight cereal and milk. (She also cleans up without asking, folds laundry, does laundry, puts the baby to sleep, wipes tears, makes tea and sends me to bed when need be. It's no use competing, folks, throw in your towels now: My mother is the best mother of all time.)

Now that Hugo's five weeks old, finding time in the kitchen is still tough. I can boil water for tea, I can maybe sauté a few zucchini or quickly spoon some yogurt in a bowl and mix in a bit of jam if he's in a good mood, but cook the way I used to? It seems it'll be some time before I'm able to again.

But just this past weekend, Hugo obliged me by letting me bake a whole batch of brownies while he was bounced around the apartment by his father and even though, in my haste, I wiped cocoa all over my breast milk-stained nightgown (rowrr!) and took the brownies out five minutes too soon, it felt so good to be in there again, wiping counters, measuring sugar, doing the dishes. So, all in good time, I guess.

I made those brownies to bring with us to a friend's house on Sunday. However, the next thing I bake will be a loaf of this banana coconut bread and I don't plan on sharing it with anybody, except maybe my mother. I mean, see above and all. But actually, maybe what I should do is bake two loaves, one to eat and one to freeze. That's probably the best idea. You see, this banana bread is out of this world and I kind of never want to be without it again. Really, I don't and I don't usually think banana bread deserves those kinds of superlatives. But then I went and made this loaf of banana bread with dried coconut and a drop of rum and a crunchy cap of demerara sugar on top and not only did it taste delicious, but it kept for almost two weeks (in the fridge) and hardly tasted worse for the wear.

All of this happened a week or so before the birth, so I had a nice run of days there where I'd cut myself off a thick slice for breakfast or a little sliver in the afternoon to tide me over, crunching happily through the crisp top and gobbling up the moist crumb. As the days wore on, I wrapped up the end of it in plastic wrap, stuck it in the fridge and, uh, went into labor. At least that's how I remember it now. What I'm trying to get at is that a week later, after the baby was born and I'd recovered in the hospital enough and we were finally sent home, I found that little end of banana bread in the fridge, now over two weeks old.

We'd eaten vegetable soup for lunch that my mother had made that morning while Max and I were packing up our things in our hospital room and I was weeping at the thought of leaving said hospital room. Plus there had been a wedge of cheddar cheese and some old-ish bread that had survived the week without us (German bread is hardy stuff, people). But we were hungry for dessert or something sweet, in any case, to end the meal, which is how I happened upon the banana bread that afternoon. I unwrapped it, checking it skeptically for signs of mold (none), then sliced it, feeling it for signs of desiccation (none). We each got a piece and I gingerly took a bite, anticipating staleness, then realized it had, if anything, gotten even better with time. Ripened or something? It was delicious still, moist still, improbably so.

So it's sort of inevitable now that when I think about that banana bread, I think about that strange first day at home, the strange final days of pregnancy, becoming a mother and my own mother, too. I hope this banana bread stays my favorite for a long time to come.

Banana-Coconut Bread
Original recipe from HomeBaking: The Artful Mix of Flour and Tradition around the World
Makes 1 loaf

3 large, very ripe bananas
2 cups all-purpose flour
¾ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
Pinch of salt
1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1/8 teaspoon white vinegar
1 ½ tablespoons dark rum
½ cup dried shredded unsweetened coconut
1 tablespoon demerara sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter a standard-size loaf pan.

2. Purée the bananas and set aside.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, nutmeg, and salt. Set aside.

4. In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the vinegar and rum, and beat to mix well. Add the banana purée and the flour mixture alternately, about 1 cup at a time, beginning with the banana and beating to just incorporate. Use a spatula to fold in any flour that has not been absorbed, and stir in the coconut. Do not overmix.

5. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan. Smooth the top, and sprinkle evenly with the demerara sugar. Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until the top is nicely browned and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool on a wire rack for about 20 minutes; then turn the loaf out of the pan and allow it to cool completely. The loaf will keep, wrapped well, for at least three or four days.

Our Boy Hugo

Well, folks, I am still pregnant. I am in that strange no-woman's-land you get to after a due date has come and gone and let me just say, I don't think I like this place very much. Not only is it strange and unknown, but not a single map seems to exist for its shrubby roads and winding cliffs. Everywhere you think you want to turn to for assurance, certainty or comfort is clogged with weeds and pebbles. And all anyone can say, when you tell them where you've arrived, is to Enjoy It! Which is about the worst thing you can say to someone who just wants to get the hell out of dodge. When I hear that, and I hear it daily, multiple times a day, these days, I swear to myself that should I ever find a way out of this land and should I then in the future ever meet a woman who finds herself where I am now, the words "enjoy" and "it" will not cross my lips, no way, now how.

I wrote that on June 10th. On June 11th, at 1:30 in the morning, I was woken with a start by strong contractions and spent the next few hours pacing up and down our long hallway in the dark, going from our dimly lit bedroom where Max waited and timed things to the dark bathroom where I would hold on to the cool tiled walls until the pain subsided. When the sky was still dark, we decided to head to the hospital. It was just a five-minute drive away, but I couldn't help but clutch the car seats in fear of another contraction anyway. While Max parked the car, I walked through the silent gardens of the hospital grounds, gritting my teeth as the pain came and went, crossing my fingers that they wouldn't send us home again. In the hospital, things were calm and quiet. I was hooked up to a fetal monitor and then checked out by a kindly midwife named Birgit who told us we could stay. We could stay.

25 hours after those first contractions started, Hugo was born, lifted out of me in a flash and whisked off to a side room to be suctioned and monitored before he was given to his daddy in the hallway and then brought back to me. It was the strangest thing, looking into his eyes at that awkward angle - I was still lying down, being tended to, and Max was holding Hugo, all bundled up, near my head. I could have sworn that the baby looked at me with recognition. It seemed like he knew who I was.

We spent a week in the hospital, the three of us, holed up in a room with lofty ceilings and an ivy-covered wall outside our window, yellow roses on the table and pitchers of fennel tea by the bedside. We couldn't stop touching Hugo's feet, as soft as rabbit fur, his velvety mouth. We stared at his sweet eyes, caressed his dark hair. When the time came to leave, I wept - if I could have stayed, cared for by the nurses, and close, so close, to the labor & delivery ward that had been transformed into a holy place for us, I would have. We became a family in that hospital. I couldn't bear to leave it behind.

But we did and today Hugo is two weeks old. We are muddling through, the three of us, as we adjust to our new lives. It is everything they say it will be: wonderful, maddening, heart-breaking, and beautiful. Sometimes, when I hold the baby in my arms, I marvel at the fact that all of him fit inside me not so long ago. That I had no idea who he was just a few short weeks ago. That I love him so much already.

I'll be taking a little maternity leave for the next few weeks. Thank you for understanding!

The Waiting Game

This is what things have come to over here. I decided that the anemia rendering me a black-eye-shadowed zombie needed to be given a swift kick in the you-know-whats and started adding ground beef to my daily diet of a double dose of iron supplements. The verdict? So far I am feeling slightly less catatonic and out-of-breath, though that could also have to do with the intravenous iron infusion administered to my left arm yesterday by my very tall, kind-eyed doctor. I enjoyed the first hamburger I made at home far more than I thought I would, though, so I've decided that it deserves at least some of the credit.

I'm in the home stretch, folks, the one where every minute of every day ticks by excruciatingly slowly. These last weeks are a kick in the head. I alternate between thinking about which appendage I'd gladly sacrifice to kickstart labor and staring in shock at the teeny-tiny clothes stacked on the bed in the spare, er, baby's room, awaiting their dresser, incapable of comprehending that a baby, our baby, will be inhabiting those very clothes sooner than I can imagine and wondering how to eke out more time in these last days of being just me.

So distracting myself with ground beef and how to structure a hamburger sandwich that will be my son's birthright as a German-American seems sensible, no?

For the hamburger itself, I simply bought ground beef and added a bunch of salt to it before forming it into a single patty. I once read that when you make hamburgers at home, you should make a thumb-sized dip in the middle of each patty so that the burger doesn't swell up annoyingly while it cooks, rendering your sandwich even messier than it would be otherwise. (I know that really good burgers require more seasoning than just salt, but did I mention my zombie state? It keeps me from being able to page through cookbooks without my head hitting the table.)

While the meat cooked in a little bit of melted butter in a pan, because I am grill-less and because I also vaguely remember reading once that if you don't have a grill, the next best thing is to fry your hamburgers in butter (where all these great burger tips came from, I don't know. Forgive me, o unknown food writer! Maybe I'll remember in another nine months.), I gathered the fixings for the rest of the sandwich.

Bun, toasted.

Tomato, sliced.

Baby romaine leaf, washed and halved.

Pickle spear, sliced.

Mayonnaise, for a very thin coating on the bottom bun.

Ketchup, the Holy Spirit of my refrigerator, the anointer of every hamburger ever to pass my lips.

And then I assembled. And ate. And perked up right away, like a bunch of flowers after getting their ends snipped and water replenished. I don't know how long I can keep up the hamburger-a-day routine (two days in a row and I'm feeling all meated out), but who knows. Max caught wind of the project and is now clamoring to be let in on the deal when he finally comes home.

Yesterday I had to go to the hospital to drop off some paperwork and when I rang the bell of labor and delivery, a doctor in blue scrubs came out and asked me if I was the person scheduled for the c-section tomorrow. No, no, I stammered, I'm just here to drop these off and with that, I handed her the papers I'd brought. She smiled at me, took them and I left. Three steps down the hallway, I suddenly wondered what it would be like if I had indeed been that person she took me for. I imagined myself on an operating table the next day. Max next to me. A big sheet, a few tugs and, finally, someone handing me the baby. And suddenly I felt so overcome with longing that my lungs hurt. If I could have, I would have walked right back to the doctor and asked for an operation that instant.

So that's where I am, counting the minutes, the seconds, as they inch by, leading me towards the kid who's waiting for me, for us, just beyond what we can see or fathom. Soon, soon. Not soon enough.

Deborah Madison's Poppyseed Cake

I am stuck. Completely and utterly stuck. I've had these cake photos sitting in this post form for two weeks now and every day I open it up to start writing and every day I close it again because I don't know what on earth to say.

How about this: This cake, it is good. So good! So moist. A little crunchy, too. Not too sweet. Perfect.

My friend Sylee made it for me a while ago, except, because she's Indian-American, she used white poppy seeds instead of black ones. We ate slices of it at her place after a lovely lunch of fava beans and crisped prosciutto on wholesome bread, along with a mug of milky tea. It was such a nice Friday afternoon.

The original recipe uses regular poppy seeds, all chalky and blue. I love the way they pop in the creamy-white batter. I like their slightly stony flavor and the way they taste embedded in the sour tang of the buttermilk batter, the faint whisp of vanilla floating behind them like a nimbus cloud. I like how the cake is almost juicy with moisture, how the top ripples and folds once it's baked. I like the way it makes the house smell.

And that's about it.

If you could peek into my brain right now, I think you'd have a start. There's a crazy ticker tape parade of stuff going on in there at the moment: finishtaxes findacrib buydiapers whenisthisbabycoming owmypelvis shouldibeworried organicchangingpadversusregularchangingpad whocaresjustbuyaflipping changingpad sheets breastpump owmypelvis whenisthisbabycoming taxes crap taxes yikes whatarewegoingtocallhim bureaucraticpaperwork spineproblems willineedanepidural owmypelvisow and so on.

I've been so lucky so far - the baby is healthy and well, I am doing fine, there is absolutely nothing to worry about. And yet. As the gestation comes to an end, I find myself on the verge of anxious tears a lot. Some of it has to do with the annoying pelvic pain, some of it is because I miss my husband, who is working feverishly before he can take time off and come home before the baby arrives, some of it is because - utterly against my nature - I don't really have anything set yet. I know a baby doesn't need much, I know that we don't need to blow our paychecks at the baby store (trust me, we're not the type), but still, for my own peace of mind, I need to start dealing with the fact that we are still missing the most basic basics: enough clothes for the first few weeks, a changing pad, for cripes' sake, even just a few folded cotton cloths or towels.

Until I do that stuff, I'm afraid that ticker-tape parade of to-do lists and low-grade anxiety isn't going to go anywhere and I will lie awake at night as the rain hits the windows, feeling him bump and wiggle inside me, and worry. Which is silly, I know.

But really, that shouldn't stop you from making this cake. It's such a good cake. Especially when sliced thickly and served with milky tea in the afternoon. It's comforting and plain, but not boring and the crunch of the poppy seeds is a treat. In fact, when it cools off this weekend, I might even try to distract myself by baking it again so I can eat slices of it for comfort in the afternoons to come, soothing myself like I'll find myself surely soothing this baby just as soon as he gets here, right into my arms.

And who knows, maybe one day the smell of this cake baking will be something that our boy associates with home.

Deborah Madison's Poppy Seed Cake
From Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone
Makes one 9-inch round cake

1 cup poppy seeds
1/2 cup milk
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/8 teaspoon salt
3 eggs, separated
1/2 cup (4 ounces or 113 grams) unsalted butter
1 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk

1. In a small mixing bowl, combine the poppy seeds and the hot milk. Set aside until needed. Heat the oven to 375ᵒF. Butter and flour a 9-inch spring form pan. Set aside.

2. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

3. Place the egg whites in the bowl of an electric stand mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment. Whisk on medium-high until firm but moist peaks form. Transfer the egg whites to a small mixing bowl. Using the same bowl as for the egg whites, but now using the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the vanilla, then beat in the egg yolks, adding one at a time and beating well after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, as needed.

4. Drain the milk from the poppy seeds, discarding the milk. Add the buttermilk and the drained poppy seeds to the batter. Beat until well combined, then again scrape down the sides of the bowl with the rubber spatula. Add the flour mixture to the batter, in thirds. Again scrape the bowl with the rubber spatula, making sure it’s all well mixed. Fold in about a quarter of the beaten egg whites with the spatula, then fold in the rest, mixing gently until just combined.

5. Transfer the batter into the prepared cake pan, smoothing the top with the rubber spatula. Bake until golden and firm, with the sides just beginning to pull away from the pan, about 40-50 minutes. Remove from the oven and place on a wire rack. Carefully run a sharp, thin knife along the sides of the cake, just against the pan, then gently remove the rim and allow the cake to cool to room temperature before slicing.

Wednesday Morning Link Love

Two of my best friends were here this past weekend from New York and they've just left and I'm feeling bereft. They'd never been to Berlin before, so we spent the days zipping around the city and eating white asparagus. I'm not really that mobile anymore, so I had to keep taking breaks to keep my pelvis from breaking in half (that's kind of what it feels like when I walk, anyways), but I loved every minute.

This interview with Gabrielle Hamilton about the memoir-writing process is interesting to read, but the best thing is buried in the last sentence: She's writing a cookbook!

Max is the vinaigrette master in our house, never failing to make the most perfectly balanced dressing without a single measuring spoon (left to my own devices, I always, always overdo it on the vinegar), so I'm going to be pushing him to try this concoction as soon as possible.

This article on how plastic packing contaminates our food is unnerving, to say the least.

Did you know McCormick's "pure" vanilla extract contains...corn syrup? Depressing.

How to grow your own pea shoots (and then put them in your scrambled eggs).

If I start to write about what the books I read as a child meant to me, I get all weepy, I really do. My childhood books were everything to me, my whole world. Whenever I'm reminded of a particularly good one, the way I felt when I first discovered it comes flooding right back. I so hope our boy is a reader - I can't wait to rediscover those lost worlds with him. If you need inspiration for children's books, Jenny Rosenstrach and Andy Ward, the bloggers behind Dinner: A Love Story, have just written a book about 121 of the greatest kids' books of all time and are giving it away for free with an order of Jenny Rosenstrach's new book, Dinner: A Love Story. But you've got to hurry - this offer is only good until Thursday at midnight. More info here!