I can’t say I haven’t been posting here because I haven’t gotten my sea legs on the whole parenting thing yet. I have. The problem Olive and I are tackling (i.e., have not yet tackled yet) is the current physical layout of our apartment. Toddler Z’s room is inches away from our kitchen, which makes cooking between naps on the weekend for my family, let alone for this blog, extremely difficult. Cooking when Z’s awake and Olive is taking care of him is how I roll these days.
Cooking for all of us, which means being efficient so Z can have what we’re having, requires me to forgo many things I’d normally be making right now—Bok Choy, Pad Thai—chewy foods Z would get excited about but wouldn’t be able to chew. You really take your teeth for granted when you have all of them. I keep hearing that when teeth take long to come in (at 14 months, Z has only 4 teeth), the stronger they will be. At this point, I’m waiting for his pearly white rocks to emerge so we can put that theory to practice. “Here Z, have a walnut!”
Still, because I know the holidays can be stressful, and I don’t want to leave all of you alone to stir in your tzimmes, I offer up this menu for Passover, combining an old school classic, in case you’ve got family members who need their gefilte fish made from scratch, and some modern recipes with a few twists. The almond garlic soup could stand alone for lunch, as it’s pretty filling, but is elegant enough for any holiday and feels right during the crisp and cool early Spring days that coincide with Passover.
Here are some dairy-free recipes for a pesce-vegetarian Passover menu (pretty healthy to boot, too!):
Lebanese Hummus
Almond Garlic Soup
Roasted Carrots with Olive Tapenade
Homemade Gefilte Fish
Beet Horseradish
Chocolate dipped coconut macaroons
Happy Passover and Hoppy Easter to you; I’ll see you on the other side!
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Dear readers, how I’ve missed writing for this blog! You might be wondering if I ever gave birth or what our yumi looks like after nine months in hibernation, 3 months in captivity and 5 months of exploration. I’ll spare you my birth story and just say our happy baby Z is healthy, thriving, and bursting with enthusiasm for life. Here he is swinging for the first time.
Finding a sense of balance between full-time work, having a relationship with Olive, and maintaining the semblance of a social life, while also taking care of a baby has been a challenge. I feel as if I’m only now emerging out of my just-had-a-baby cocoon, rediscovering myself as a creative and enterprising spirit by coming back to cooking and writing.
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While I patiently wait for Olive’s cameras to be back in full service, the last month has been dedicated to some research and development. I’ve been working on another beet recipe which I’m really excited about, as well as the chicken enchiladas talked about a few posts back and a new Thanksgiving menu lineup. As you can see above, I finally got to pick my favorite Winesap apples from a farm in upstate New York and have a great recipe to share as a result. Last but not least, I’ve been expanding my buckwheat vocabulary using buckwheat flour in cakes, waffles, and pancakes, so stay tuned for dark and earthy baked goods, too!
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Growing up in a Jewish family, eating chicken was a pretty regular affair. It was on the table for breakfast lunch, and dinner</slightexaggeration>, so for a long time once I was living on my own, I hardly ate it, let alone bothered cooking chicken. Recently, however, I’ve rediscovered poultry. Using whole, young, organic chickens has reinvigorated how delicious chicken can be. I’ve never met an organic chicken that wasn’t moist.
As much as I resisted chicken in all its forms after surviving the poultry deluge of my youth, the taste of fresh chicken soup from a whole, raw chicken is unparalleled. To fully appreciate what I mean, I encourage you to try this. Moreover, roasting a whole chicken followed by using the carcass and leftover bones and wings for chicken soup is really a very economical and green way of nose to tail cooking, so I recommend that if you’re inclined to squeeze all the goodness out of your chicken, use the remaining carcass and bones for a future soup base or risotto stock.
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This recipe is now participating in Gojee’s virtual potluck event!
Starting on Thursday, January 26, check out other potluck dishes fellow gojee contributors shared. Go to gojee.com and enter “gojeepotluck” into I Crave. You can also follow #gojeepotluck on Twitter.
My fall cardigans and shoes are lined up and ready to go and I’m psyched for fall movie season. I’ve been ready for summer to end for weeks. Probably because this used to be when school would start, the cooler weather triggers a conditioned response in me. For me, fall is about beginnings, and inherently optimistic possibilities. And in truth, there is something new on the horizon for Olive and me, a schooling of sorts that’s already underway but will reach a whole new level of intensity sometime in January.
You may have noticed my irregular posting this summer. My low energy in the kitchen wasn’t only due to the never-ending heatwave, but a nonstop, slow-cooking, squiggling project in my belly.
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