May 13, 2012 - 7 comments
I won’t get to see my mom for Mother’s Day today, since we’re in different states; happily, I will get to see her in just a few days when I fly home to attend a wedding. For today, I figured since my mom’s been mothering me for nearly thirty years, I would like to offer up:
Thirty Things About My Mother
1) She was so glamorous. No wonder she earned such big tips in the years she worked as a bartender.
2) (She looks really good in red.)
3) She has two Masters degrees. She earned the first in India, but American universities wouldn’t, at that time, honor foreign graduate degrees. So when she came here she got another one. Oh, and a few years ago, for her job, she took more graduate-level classes–for credit. No biggie.
4) She doesn’t want me to send her flowers, contrary to what all of the Mothers’ Day ads and grocery store displays suggest. An obsessive gardener, my mom has no patience for store bought, greenhouse-grown blooms. She’s much more concerned about the flowers in the ground in her front and back yards. When I was a kid, it was my job to go outside at dusk and coax her to come inside after having spent an entire Saturday digging, weeding, transplanting, watering, and mulching.
5) She never once told me “I’ll tell you when you’re older” or “You’re too young to understand.” Whenever I asked a question—no matter what its nature, or how busy she was—she would find away to answer me.
6) She has this weird thing for Cool Whip. My dad used to make special fun of her, teasing her for eating “foam.” Since my mom is on the same discount grocery card account as me and Jill, we will occasionally get a targeted coupon for the stuff; I send it to mom in the mail to support her little habit.
7) She married my dad after meeting him just twice. In their wedding pictures, my mom looks guarded and my dad looks scared. They both look crazy-young (twenty & twenty-five, respectively) and so beautiful.
8) She left little love notes in my lunchbox for years, which I occasionally got made of for but inwardly cherished. Would that I had saved a few for posterity.
9) She has simply atrocious handwriting. This made it quite convenient to learn how to forge her signature.
10) She loves: pistachio ice cream, peanut butter, the aforementioned Cool Whip, tuberoses, the “f” word, Mexican food, foreign films, anything pickled, sour candy, well-written books in which very little happens, and Jon Stewart.
11) She hates: goat cheese, Christmas card newsletters, the smell of scrambled eggs, fake politeness, Newt Gingrich, last-minute plans, people who do not vote, being called a “widow.”
12) She has mad baby skills. I have never, ever, ever seen a baby who wouldn’t go to her, smile at her, be soothed by her, play with her, etc. The tiny ones can sense her thirty-plus years of experience in early childhood education, I think; at the very least, they know they are safe with her.
13) She curses like a sailor. Seriously, the woman has a fouler mouth than I do. I think it’s hilarious, but I like to pretend to be scandalized by it.
14) She loves classic American rock. When my parents first came here, the only entertainment they could afford was a radio, so she fell in love with the music of the 60s and 70s, and passed that love on to me. She’s the reason that Jill calls me the “jukebox,” because I can sing along to even the most obscure song on the oldies station.
15) She was a tiger mom before it was fashionable—not the scary, chain-you-to-the-piano kind, but the strict, you-will-take-responsibility-or-else kind of mom. She did not let me do everything I wanted to do. She did not reward me for good grades, because good grades were expected. She did not try to be my friend. She tried, and succeeded, in being a relentlessly consistent parent whom I respect, feared a little, and still do my best to honor.
16) She is deadly funny. It’s when she isn’t even trying, of course, that she’ll deadpan or make some kind of sarcastic remark in passing and I snort with laughter.
17) She’s not afraid to tell it like it is. I learned, at some point, that this means one should be careful when asking for her opinion—“Does this outfit look okay?” for example. Veena isn’t one to tell you what you want to hear. I love that about her.
18) She is naturally generous. From her, I learned that you always send people home with leftovers, you make a double batch of an easily freezable food and drop it off at the house of a friend, just because. You send birthday and condolence and congratulations cards in the mail. At the holidays, you give gift cards to the men who mow the lawn, leave trays of cookies for the people who pick up your trash. You always have time to make a pot of tea for a visiting friend.
19) She can make anything taste good, and distinctively hers. I’ve never eaten anything she’s made that wasn’t absolutely delicious. She doesn’t use any recipes, and she taught herself to cook.
20) She cares not a whit for professional sports, but she often sat with my dad in the den, crocheting while he cheered his teams on.
21) She spoiled my dad. His favorite foods were almost all incredibly high maintenance—complicated pickles, fried snacks, meticulously brewed tea—and she indulged him in all of it. I miss him, of course, but almost miss them together more.
22) She is loved by all of my friends. I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard “Your mom is so awesome” after someone meets her for the first time.
23) She is organized to a fault. The woman writes more lists, files more files, color-codes more folders and types up more plans than anyone I know.
24) She is brave. To have me, she faced miscarriages and the heartache of infertility. When my dad lost his job in high school, she managed to carry our family without losing her mind and while doing her utmost to preserve our quality of life. Since we lost my dad, she has shown more courage and strength than I knew she had—and I knew she had a lot. I am amazed by and so proud of her.
25) She was, she tells me, giggly and chatty as a kid. I find this very difficult to believe.
26) She’s like an elephant, with reels and snarls of various personal and intellectual trivia: the scientific names of various animals, the names of almost any flowering plant you can point to, various prayers and invocations of half-a-dozen religious traditions, political trivia, pieces of Indian folk wisdom, details about a family vacation we took a fifteen years ago.
27) She has a crazy-accurate sixth sense. If she doesn’t get a good feeling about someone she meets, that bad feeling always proves to be well-founded (I learned this the hard way as a teenager).
28) She made me listen to “Sound Money” on NPR as a kid, because she wanted me to be financially literate. She signed me up for ice skating lessons, because they were on Saturday morning and that way, I’d never ask to watch Saturday morning cartoons.
29) She speaks four languages (Hindi, Punjabi, English, & Urdu).
30) She is going to be the absolute best grandmother in the whole wide world. I cannot wait to watch that happen.
Happy Mother’s Day, Amma. I made you a cheesecake.
CHEESECAKE WITH MINTED BLACKBERRIES barely adapted from Dan Barber, as published in Gourmet
The cheesecake pictured here was made in my sweet little 6-inch spring form pan; I made the same amount of crust called for in the original recipe, but cut the recipe for filling: 2 packages cream cheese, ½ cup sugar, 2 eggs, ¼ cup half-and-half with a 2 tablespoons removed, 1 ½ T flour, & ½ tsp. vanilla.
My mom prefers a very classic cheesecake recipe, which this is—creamy, not too sweet, dense. If you like a fluffier cake or one with more tang, substitute in fresh ricotta for some of the cream cheese.
If blackberries aren’t your thing, you can serve this cheesecake with all kinds of fresh summer fruit: strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, mango, etc.
for the crust:
6 T unsalted butter, softened ½ cup packed light brown sugar ¾ cup all-purpose or spelt flour ½ cup sliced almonds, finely chopped
oven: 350ºF with a rack placed in the middle
Line a 9-inch square baking pan with two sheets foil, leaving generous overhang on all sides. Lightly butter the foil. Alternately, if using a spring form pan, butter the bottom and sides.
Beat the butter and brown sugar at medium speed, until light at fluffy. Reduce speed and add the flour and almonds, mixing until combined and the dough clumps together.
Press the crust onto the bottom of baking ban (if using a spring form pan, press up along the edges as well).
Bake until the crust darkens a shade and begins to shrink, 20-30 minutes. Cool crust completely in the pan on a wire rack.
for the filling:
3 (8 oz.) packages cream cheese, softened 2/3 cup granulated sugar 3 eggs ¼ cup half and half 2 T all-purpose flour 1 tsp. vanilla extract (almond extract is also nice)
oven: reduce to 325ºF.
Beat together the cream cheese, sugar, and flour at medium speed until smooth. Reduce the speed to low and add half and half, then the eggs one at a time, then finally the vanilla.
Pour the filling into the cooled crust, then place in a water bath and bake until nearly set (a tiny bit of wobble in the center is okay). This will take between 40-45 minutes. Cool the cheesecake on room temperature for several hours, then chill, uncovered, in the refrigerator for at least two hours.
If you used the square pan, lift the cheesecake out using the foil overhang, then cut into squares. If you used a spring form pan, run a knife along the edge of the cheesecake before removing the spring form side and slicing.
The cheesecake will keep in the fridge, loosely covered after being fully cooled, for three days.
for the minted blackberries:
2 cups fresh blackberries, rinsed 1 T sugar 1 T mint, finely chopped finely grated zest of 1 lemon
Combine all ingredients and leave at room temp for 30 minutes. When ready to serve, drain blackberries with a slotted spoon and place atop cheesecake. You can also prepare the blackberries ahead of time and keep in an airtight container in the fridge for a few hours.
So excited to share this post with y’all–Greg is a dear friend, and I’m addicted to his homemade sriracha hot sauce. We haven’t used the bottled stuff in weeks! Even better–I watched him make the stuff in my own kitchen, so I can attest that it’s ridiculously, wonderfully simple–Nishta
I’m not sure where to start this story. You might tell me I should start at the beginning, but there are a couple of different starts, on a couple of threads, that meet up far down the line…..
One of those threads starts many years ago with an article in a major NYC perdiodical (Times ?, Post ?, Magazine ?). The title used the expression “Homemade Rooster”. There were a few cross posts about the article, and I saved a link for future reference, knowing that someday I’d use that recipe.
Another thread starts just over a year ago and can be summarized with the word : “yarden.” I come from a long line of men who hate to do yardwork. When the time came for me to grow up and buy a home, I sought out a condo (no yard, no lawnmower, no edging). It seemed like a good plan. What I didn’t plan on was falling in love with a woman with a green thumb, a woman who would see my distaste for regular lawnmowing and make the following proposal : “Let’s get rid of all the grass and replace it with beds.” Thus, the entire yard became a garden. Yard + garden = yarden.
The transformation started in March of 2011 and by April we were enjoying fresh tomatoes, mourning the squashes that were lost to pests, and watching pink eyed peas outgrow weeds. We had a few crops that we struggled to make use of. What do you do with four small eggplant? What do you do with two jalapeños? Well…in my case, I could wait a few days and have a couple more jalapeños…and a few corno di toros…and some serranos…enough for me to pull out that old rooster sauce recipe and give it a try.
Now, if you have spent any real amount of time in your kitchen, you’ve had an experience where something turned out to be so much easier and so much better than you expected that you wondered why you’d not made it long before. This is one of those recipes. I was blown away by how fresh and flavorful that first batch was. I started finding new pairings and uses for it. All too soon, I was out and knew the yarden would not be able to keep up with demand. Also, I would need to refine the recipe from “whatever peppers are harvested from the yard” to something reliable and reproduceable.
We all know that there are a lot of spicy sauces out there. There are times when you want Tabasco, times where your prefer Texas Pete’s and other times when anything less than Cholula won’t do. The differences between the many sauces isn’t just in their heat, it is in the other characters and favors that they bring…the vinegariness of Tabasco, the earthiness of Cholula, and the depth of Huy Fong’s sriracha (aka Rooster Sauce). In the case of the recipe that follows, there is a fresh, fruity pop. I love the rooster, but I won’t be buying any off of the shelf for a very very long time.
HOMEMADE SRIRACHA
ingredients:
½ pound fresh chilies, coarsely chopped
-Naturally, you can use any kind of chili you want. I like Fresnos. I recommend Fresnos. Bright, fruity, spicy but not too spicy. You could go with habaneros, but that would be madness.
4 garlic cloves
-Four, eight, whatever
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup distilled white vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar
Throw everything into a saucepan, bring to a boil, return to a simmer and cook for about 20 minutes. The idea is just to get everything cooked and softened. Remove from heat and let cool for a few minutes.
Transfer the ingredients to a blender or food processor and blend for about 5 minutes.
This mixture should yield about a pint of bright orange goodness–after two weeks in the refrigerator, there might be some separation, but it will stir back together (and you’ll have consumed it by then anyway).
Greg Lopp is a self described foodie, code poet, philosopher, and ultimate frisbee player. He’s also the kind of guy who brings great beer to a party and stays late to help you clean up, without being asked. I named some brownies after him once. He and his wife Sharon, their three cats, and their yarden live here in Houston.
At Easter, my friend Marynelle posted the following on her Facebook page:
A lot of people remember to give something up for the 40 days of Lent. At church yesterday, our rector reminded us that the Easter season is 50 days and charged us with finding as much joy as possible in the next 50 days. In the words of Barney Stinson, “Challenge Accepted.”
Marynelle is one of my oldest friends—oldest in that we’ve been friends for half my lifetime (15 years), and she knows more about me than is really safe for me. She’s guest blogged around here before and is generally a pretty awesome lady; one of the things I love about her the most is that she’s always pushing herself. Which, in turn, inspires me to do the same.
I didn’t get the TV reference until I Googled it, but I accepted the challenge, too. We agreed to text each other at least once a day with our pieces of joy.
Some days—most days, in this blessed life of mine—finding the joy is easy. Usually, it’s obvious: Jill & I celebrating our anniversary, my students working enthusiastically on a kick-ass service project of their own design, planning a big dinner for friends I love. But then there are those days when I find myself mired in frustration, anger, loss, sadness, or just plain grumpiness. So I text Marynelle.
She’s helped me see that joy is not conditional. Sometimes you have to dig around for it, and sometimes the quickest way to find it is to acknowledge what is NOT joyful in any given situation. And let’s be clear—there are things that are decidedly not joyful. There are things that just plain suck. There is not “joy in everything,” no matter what the Hallmark cards tell you.
But I do think there is joy for the taking on any given day. I am training my eye to see it, and myself to go out and make it, when necessary. At the very least, this little project means I get a text message once a day from one of my favorite people—and that is a little piece of joy in itself. I recommend it.
SPRING SALAD serves 4, easily halved or doubled
I almost added strawberries to this salad, but didn’t—you could. Instead of croutons, you could substitute nuts. A soft goat cheese would work nicely in place of the hard-boiled eggs, if you’re not a fan.
It’s a salad. Play around with it. Don’t take it too seriously. Same goes for the dressing—swap in a different vinegar, trade olive oil out for walnut or avocado.
ingredients:
2 cups mixed greens 1 bunch asparagus 2 hard-boiled eggs ¼ cup mixed herbs, chopped (don’t omit! they really make this salad work) -I used scallions & dill; tarragon and parsley would also be nice generous handful croutons -to make your own, see this post
Trim the ends from the asparagus, then cut into 2-inch long pieces. Rinse. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil; while the water heats up, fill another bowl with ice water. Cook the asparagus for 1-2 minutes at a rolling boil, then drain and immediately place into ice water. Drain from ice water, drizzle with olive oil.
To assemble the salad, toss the greens, herbs, and asparagus together. Top with the eggs and croutons. Drizzle with dressing (see below) or serve dressing on the side.
for the dressing:
¼ cup olive oil 2 T. orange juice 2 T. champagne vinegar 1 tsp. Dijon mustard salt & pepper
Whisk together, taste & adjust accordingly.
I’ve been trying to rethink breakfast.
A few months ago, Jill and I had a conversation with our friend Ruthie, who was at the time working on changing her eating habits after being diagnosed with gestational diabetes. In checking her blood sugar several times a day, Ruthie had noticed something really suprising—a bowl of cereal, even the “good” kind (full of whole grain, flax, wheat germ, nuts, no corn syrup, etc.) made her blood sugar spike like crazy. And just a couple of hours later, her blood sugar would crash.
This confirmed what I had noticed about my own breakfast routine. I, of course, crave sweet and carbohydrate-laden things: biscuits, pancakes, waffles, toast, muffins, cereal, oatmeal, etc. And while I was managing not to eat things that were blatantly unhealthy at breakfast, I would still get hungry just a couple of hours after I had eaten. That’s no good when you’ve still got two classes to teach before lunch!
So I started working on doing breakfast differently—more protein, less sugar. Eggs are obviously a great fit, adding a dose of protein to that piece of toast I so crave, often with avocado and/or hot sauce on top. Even a quick egg scramble isn’t always feasible on some rushed mornings, so I took to making big frittatas on Saturday or Sunday, packed with greens (chard or kale), some crumbled sausage, and any herbs or other vegetables we had on hand. Cooled and cut into wedges, these reheat quite easily in the morning, and are portable enough to eat safely on your way out the door; you can also portion out and bake the same ingredients into muffin tins, if you like.
If I’m just plain craving one of the starchy things I love so much, I try to improve on the basic idea by adding protein where I can: plain yogurt to go alongside fruit or in a smoothie, a Morningstar Farms veggie patty alongside a muffin or piece of toast, chopped nuts in my steel-cut oats, peanut or almond butter on a homemade whole-wheat waffle or bran muffin.
To expand my “alternate breakfast” repertoire beyond eggs, I turned to other cultures for inspiration. Most food cultures besides our own have a broader range of what’s considered “breakfast food,” beyond sweet carbohydrates. In Turkey, for example, where Jill learned to love breakfast, a typical breakfast consists of cheese, spicy sausage, hard-boiled eggs, olives, jam/honey, clotted cream, and some kind of bread. I also love Vietnamese noodle pho for breakfast (though I haven’t tried making my own yet), and the Mexican/Tex-Mex classic chilaquiles (breakfast tacos with black beans & vegetables are also delicious.)
I turned to my own culture for ideas as well. Poha, the flattened rice dish I blogged about previously, is in regular rotation at my house. By accident, I discovered that I like it better when I substitute shredded Brussels sprouts for the peas—nutrition bonus! And today I’m blogging about another Indian breakfast dish, upma, essentially a savory cream of wheat. I love it because it serves a great base for yogurt and/or any roasted vegetables or nuts you may have on hand.
This may seem like a weird thing to eat for breakfast, and maybe it will be, for you, at first. But I’ve found that the best, most filling and lasting breakfasts are the “weird” ones. A bowl of lentils. Reheated pizza or stir fry. Polenta with a fried egg on top. Southwestern-style quinoa patties with salsa. Once you start thinking beyond the usual, it’s freeing, and good for you, too. Thanks to our friend Ruthie, whose adorable three-and-a-half-week-old son Benjy is pictured below, Jill & I haven’t bought a box of cereal in weeks!
UPMA RECIPE
This recipe is very basic and yields quite a plain finished product, as it’s meant to be topped with various things (see below) to add texture and additional flavor. If you like, you can easily incorporate other vegetables (potatoes, green beans, peas, etc.) along with the onion, ginger, etc.
If you have the chance, please let me know if the comments about your favorite alterna-breakfasts. I would love to try your suggestions.
ingredients:
1 cup cream of wheat (will be labeled “sooji” at the Indian grocery store) half an onion, medium dice ¼ cup ginger, minced 2 T curry leaves, roughly chopped 1 tsp. mustard seeds pinch or two of asafetida salt water vegetable oil
optional: heat in the form of a fresh Serrano or jalapeno pepper, minced (seed the pepper if you’re wary of heat or just use half a pepper) OR one dried red chili pepper of your choice
traditional toppings: fried cashews (though you can dry-toast them to keep this a little healthier), cilantro, dollop of plain yogurt
other possible toppings: fried or poached egg, roasted or sautéed vegetables (radishes, cauliflower, eggplant, mushrooms), wilted greens
In a deep, heavy-bottomed saucepan, heat 2-3 tablespoons of vegetable oil on medium high. Allow to heat up for a few minutes before tossing in a few mustard seeds as a “test.” The seeds should immediately hiss, crack, and turn ashen; if they do not, wait a few more minutes before adding all of the seeds. This is also the time to add the asafetida, if you plan to use it.
Turn the heat down to medium and then carefully add the onion, ginger, curry leaves, and fresh or dried pepper. Cook the mixture until the vegetables just begin to soften—you do not want them to brown.
Add the sooji to the pan and spread it around the surface of the pan to roast, stirring regularly, for 5-7 minutes or until the sooji starts to smell nutty and turn light brown. When it’s ready, add the water and a teaspoon of salt, stirring until the sooji has absorbed the liquid and your desired texture has been achieved; some people like their sooji more porridge consistency, others (like me) prefer it to be more firm.
Remove from heat, taste for salt, and serve.
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Welcome
I'm Nishta, and I'm pretty much always thinking about food.