Kitchen snapshot

I love taking the macro lens, close-in shots. Not only because you can see every drop of sauce and bit of garlic.

But also because, when you zoom out a bit, you can see that I cook in the middle of this kind of chaos.

Toddler special-treat lunch of ravioli, garlic, butter, and zucchini. Homemade playdough smashed in the pestle with fennel seeds. Leftover banana in a little bowl. Crumbs. Life.

It ain't pretty, but it is beautiful.

Angst with a side of cake

I used to write a lot. A lot. All the time.

It's so hard now, thinking while a little voice upstairs calls out regularly, "Quiet time over, mama? quiet time over mama?" The 50th time, my head explodes and all my words disappear.

***

I had one of those "wait a second, these aren't my people" flashes this weekend. We went to a party swarming with kids and pumpkins. I made a Deborah Madison cake with pears we scrounged freegan-style from the unoccupied rental next door.

And we took most of the cake home. I guess it looked weird next to the grocery store carrot cake. I was all, "who are these people, forsaking my monochrome lump of homeliness?"

I know I sound like a bitch no one would want to invite over to dinner.

But like everyone, I suppose, I walk around feeling like an alien. Sometimes it's lonely being so different.

I mean, seriously, this cake was nothing but fucking awesome. No one got it.

And on some level I really believe that if I can find the ones who will devour a pear-almond upside down cake—not Himalayan sea salt fussy, not ultra-sweet Costco cake—I will have finally found my tribe. And we'll sit around and drink cocktails and talk dirty and knit, and I'll feel like I've come home.

Then W. and I came home, tumbled the limp sleepy kid into bed, sat in a living room heavy with the scent of white lilies left on the doorstep by a good friend, and ate cake. And rued the frugal decision not to pick up a bottle of Black Label.

And realized that I have come home.

(My tribe is small. But I really did sit around and drink wine and knit and talk occasionally dirty with a few good girlfriends last night. So I'm counting my blessings and trying to enjoy the spark of being just a tad off typical.)

Pear-Almond Upside-Down Cake

(adapted from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, by Deborah Madison)

3 T. butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

3 medium-sized pears

1/4 cup almond paste

1/2 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup sugar

1 t. vanilla extract

1/4 t. almond extract

3 eggs at room temp.

2/3 cup almond meal (they sell this at Trader Joe's, or you can grind blanched almonds yourself)

1 cup flour

1 t. baking powder

1/4 t. salt

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Put the butter and brown sugar in a 10-inch cast-iron skillet and heat on medium until the sugar is melted. Remove from heat. Peel, core, and slice the pears about 1/4 inch thick. Overlap the slices in concentric circles on top of the melty sugar/butter. Break the almond paste into pea-sized pieces and sprinkle over pears.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla and almond extracts, then the eggs, one at a time.

Stir in nuts and other dry ingredients. Spoon over the fruit and smooth out gently.

Bake in the center of oven until golden and springy, about 35 to 40 minutes. Let cool in pan a few minutes.

Now the tricky part. Put a big round cake plate upside down over the skillet. With potholders protecting your hands, grab the plate and the skillet firmly and flip over with authority. (This is easy for me to say. W. always does this for me. I'm chicken.)

If any pears are left in the skillet, just transfer them to the top of the cake and pretend the whole thing came out perfect.

Dutch baby

When the toddler gets a little out of hand, I can growl, "We're eating babies for breakfast. That's right. BABIES!"

Delicious with lemon juice squeezed over the top and then sprinkled with powdered sugar. Washed down with coffee.

We make a little sidecar for the kid:


We use a recipe for Big Apple Pancake from an old Gourmet magazine as a guide, but add all kinds of fruit. Strawberry isn't actually my favorite. I think apricot and blueberries might be. The original is awesome in winter.

***

And before I jump into the recipe, let me just clarify my stance on unsalted vs. salted butter.

I don't give a fuck.

Seriously, I don't know why so many cooks get so worked up about salted butter.

I like salty butter on my toast, so it's what I have in the fridge.

I keep track of work schedules and the daycare center closures and doctor's appointments and when the dog next gets her heartworm meds and a complicated orchid fertilization schedule and on and on and on.

I don't need to regulate butter usage on top of it all: "No, no, that butter's for baking. Use THIS one." I think my husband's head would explode. He still hasn't recovered from that time he snacked on the crust of bread that I was saving for that night's onion soup dinner.

And I cried.

Because holy crap, I was looking forward to that soup with the toasty bread.

Poor guy.

Anyway, back to babies.

Dutch Baby with Fruit
--based on recipe from Gourmet, Nov. 2004
--serves 2

1/2 stick butter
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup flour (white or whole wheat pastry)
4 eggs
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt
sliced peaches or apricots, halved strawberries, frozen blueberries (about a cup of fruit)
lemon wedges and powdered sugar

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 450°F. Put butter into 10-inch cast iron skillet and put in oven to melt.

While butter is melting, dump milk, flour, eggs, granulated sugar, vanilla, and salt into a blender. Swirl butter around skillet to coat sides and bottom. Add about 2 T. melted butter to blender, leaving the rest in the skillet. Blend batter until smooth.

Place fruit in one layer in hot buttered skillet. It won't cover the bottom completely--if it does, you have too much fruit and will end up with a juicy mess of breakfast.

Pour batter over fruit.

Put skillet in oven. Bake until pancake is puffed and golden, about 18 minutes (depending on amount of fruit).

Serve immediately with lemon wedges and powered sugar.

Quinoa child

One of the hardest parts of parenting for me is letting the 2-year-old DO, not jumping in and fussing over how she does it.

Flour all over the floor, pants on backwards, bubble wands held sideways, balancing acts gone wrong--every bit of my parenting being strains towards jumping in and fixing. I manage to restrain myself most of the time.

Because look what she does when we give her the chance.


She asks for a bowl, a wooden spoon, some playdough. For pinto beans, garbanzos, orange lentils, then quinoa. All by name. She makes pretend dinner alongside papa, who is making actual dinner.

She hardly spills at all. Then she climbs down from her stool and asks for the vacuum to clean up stray beans.

After she's in bed, papa and I actually clean up the stray beans.

It's worth it.

--

Other nights, she winds around our legs screaming "HOOOOLLLLD YOUUUUU" while we try to saute. Ahhh, two!