Eating Real Food

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I saw a post recently warning folks about safety issues with certain vitamins and supplements.  The post also alluded to "big medical".  Isn't it less expensive and better for our bodies to eat real food that's been grown in a thoughtful way (and doesn't contain corn unless it's actually corn) and move 15 minutes a day?  And if someone wants to stick it to "big medical" they can do it by eating right and moving our bodies enough to avoid overweight and obesity with all its attendant (expensive) medical care and drugs. :)

It just seems better for the soul to spend the time searching for recipes and shopping for things someone has grown in the ground, cooking something tasty and enjoying it with the fam instead of wasting time and money researching and purchasing bottles of pills.

Ratatouille Tart

OK, off the soapbox.  My discovery of the week was a sort of modified ratatouille tart.  I used the savory tart recipe from Mark Bittman's Best Recipes of the World, layered grilled eggplant, peppers, onions and squash in the partially cooked tart, then poured into it 5 eggs mixed with some gruyere or Jarlsberg-type cheese I had on hand. I then topped it with sliced fresh tomatoes, Parmiggiano Reggiano and extra olive oil, popped in the oven at 350 for 30 minutes or so, and voila!

Single serving of that yummy Rataouille Tart

Below is another super-easy thing to do with grilled veggies, and everyone reading this has probably thought of it already but I'll share anyway.  Once the veggies are grilled, they can just be piled onto boiled rice (or other more healthful grains) and drizzled with an extra virgin olive oil.  Sprinkle a bit of thyme or chives or parsley to dress it up and give it a little more flavor, and serve with a Cotes du Rhone or other light red wine.

Grilled eggplant, squash and peppers on rice.

Eggplant

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Eggplant ready for action

I've ended up with an overabundance of eggplant, so have been searching for good recipes.  My favorite so far is Alton Brown's Baba Ghanoush (see video here and written recipe below), and I also tried a Mirza Ghasemi (eggplant, tomatoes, onions, garlic, egg, turmeric) from my Persian cookbook, Food of Life.

Na'an lavash from Food of Life

Both of these are dip-like things and I had run out of the excellent pita from N&J's Bakery in Wichita so I had a look in the Food of Life cookbook to see what bread recipes might be there.  A lavash recipe didn't look too tricky so I tried it and was delighted with the results.  I cooked it on a non-stick cookie sheet on the grill, which no doubt contributed to the wonderful flavor.

Alton Brown's Baba Ghanoush
2 eggplant (2 c)
2 cloves garlic
3/4 t salt
5 T lemon Juice
4 T Tahini
Salt and pepper

Alton Brown's Baba Ganoush

 Poke the eggplant with a fork in at least 6 spots to release steam, then grill (or roast) at 400-450 for 7-8 minutes a side, until black all over.  Let cool, then scrape out insides and drain in a sieve for at least 30 minutes.  Don't neglect the draining... undrained eggplant takes on a bit of sour tobacco smell/taste that isn't very pleasant.

Toss the garlic into a food processor along with the salt, lemon juice and Tahini and process together.  Add eggplant and process.  Salt and pepper to taste, garnish with a sprig of parsley and serve with na'an or pita.

Mirza Ghasemi from Food of Life

Mirza Ghasemi
Click here for a food.com recipe.  Suggested changes:  drain the eggplant after scooping out the insides, add a diced onion to the garlic when you sauté it.  Add 1/4 t (at least) of turmeric.

Zucchini and Yellow Squash

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One of the truly great pleasures in life is to plant edible things, watch them grow, then harvest them, mix them with a few (usually very few) well-chosen ingredients and then savor them.  The pleasure is all the greater if it can be done with family and friends and a decent bottle of wine.

We've planted three yellow squash, three zucchini, seven tomato plants (cherry, Roma, two slicing varieties), five eggplants (which were supposed to have been Asian but are not) and eight red, orange and yellow peppers.  The rest of our produce (and eggs!) has come from Katharine's garden or Farmers Markets.

Fajitas

One of our favorite quick and easy summer dinners involving zucchini or squash (and tomatoes!) is fajitas.  We slice either kind of squash into about the same size as the peppers and toss each veggie separately with a bit of canola oil and season them with salt, then grill them on medium high.  Onions typically go on first, then peppers, then squash.  We cut up tomatoes (slicing tomatoes are cut into thinnish wedges, cherry tomatoes are halved) and salt them a bit, and tear off some leaves of romaine.  We use a tortilla warmer to heat flour tortillas, then we grab a selection of salsas (Pickapepper and Frontera Arbol or Ancho or any chipotle salsa for me; Cholula or Valentina for Mark at the moment).  If we have a piece of meat left over from the previous evening we slice it then and heat it.  (PS, Rick Bayless' margaritas go very nicely with this).

Squash  Blossoms



You know all those pretty blossoms on the yellow squash and zucchini plants?  They can be harvested, lightly battered and fried for some serious scrumptiousness.  We were first introduced to this delicacy when we were traveling in France with Lauren (who was two at the time).

When the flower is on the end of a baby zucchini, the whole thing can be harvested and fried.

Squash Pancakes/Frittata
When I was on the search for eggplant recipes, I came across a gold mine of a website called "Serious Eats".  On it was a suggestion for squash pancakes.  I thought we might try it for our Meatless Mondays dinner, and in general it was quite tasty but we will be using egg instead of yogurt as a binder next time so we can get a more frittata-like texture.

Change is Afoot

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Everyone in the neighborhood has chairs in front.

Such a lot of change in the life of our family. Lauren and William moved from Virginia to Cleveland last week, Katharine and George are finishing up their first berry-picking season together and getting ready for the Wee Elder to arrive at the end of August, things are adjusting for Mark, and I am thinking about my schedule for the fall.  And today Mark's parents and I visited Larksfield Place.

Wonderful dinner, per usual.  New table and chairs!

 The details are great fun, though: I spent a few days last week in Cleveland helping Lauren and William get moved into their rental house.  (They were kind enough to make me feel like I helped, anyway... I felt like I did a little more cheerleading while Lauren did most of the work - that girl doesn't stop moving very often!) We had a couple wonderful meals out (lunch at the Flying Pig and dinner at Paladar) and a couple of wonderful meals in (her famous squash pasta and a new Pasta Primavera from Frank Skitt's cookbook), a trip to the West Side Market downtown, visits to their new schools (University School for William, Ruffing Montessori for Lauren), and a walk around their delightful new Fernway neighborhood.

George's and Katharine's blackberry fence and veg garden

I can't get back into my new room at Coleman Middle School (where I've coordinated tutoring and mentoring for almost 20 years) for two weeks and Katharine is headed to Minnesota the last two weeks in July so it occurred to me it might be fun to offer some focused help with garden, house and whatever needs to be done to prepare for the arrival of the Wee Elder. The first order of business was the taming of the garden, which has grown a bit more than Katharine had expected. She took care of errant tomato branches while I cut back some weeds, sprayed a 20% vinegar solution on some of the bermuda and covered one of the paths between the raised beds with black paper and mulch. My hair was full of tiny burrs at the end of it all and Katharine had to take a brush to it and pick, pick, pick out the little guys. I spent the 20-minute drive home pulling the burrs out of my top and tossing them out the window to sprout along the roadside.

Picking blackberries

George and Katharine have done a terrific job keeping up with the raspberries and blackberries and using social media to let folks know when and where they are being sold, etc.  They've also hosted You-Picks every Saturday in June (photos and videos at www.eldersliefarm.com).  I didn't know what to expect the first time I went and was delighted to see that not only was it possible to go pick berries, but Katharine had prepared scones and mini-blackberry cobblers, Phil (George's dad) had picked up some very tasty coffee, and they had a wonderful set-up in the old carport.  I made some gelato and sorbet to contribute to the effort, which came out quite nicely if I do say so myself.  The whole thing was awesome.  Last week (June 30th) it was too hot to do much picking but they still had the baked goods, and a few people were able to go picking.  I'd go up there just for breakfast on Saturdays as long as they care to keep hosting us.

Must decide what I want to be called, and soon.  "Grandma" is not on the list of options. Mark will be Papi, like the Italian cousins call their dad - very approachable and friendly and endearing... would love to figure out something along those lines.

Notes on Traveling

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I named my blog "Chard, etc." so I would have the option of writing not only about simple, tasty preparation of readily-available, healthy and interesting ingredients ("chard"), but also about anything else that might come to mind ("etc.").  Having just returned from a particularly enjoyable two weeks in France, the first in Provence and the second in Paris, I feel compelled to write a post that fits the "etc." part of the blog title.

Travel with Friends and/or Family
Mark and I have had the great good fortune of finding a lifelong travel companion in the form of a dear friend from high school.  We have made several trips together over the years, and our travels have been made all the richer by sharing experiences with her.  Terri is not as delighted by food and wine as we are but she fully supports our interest.  We are not as taken by antiques and shopping as she is, but we enjoy engaging with her in her pursuit of beautiful and/or quirky old things, and her appreciation of interior decorating.  She is an attorney, Mark is a physician and I recruit and train volunteers to tutor and mentor middle schoolers so there is always something to learn about each others' vocations.  Other common topics of conversation include children, politics and religion; we are generally on the same page politically and have a common-enough background theologically that discussions on those topics don't ignite sparks but neither are they boring.  Maybe our most important common interest is the love of learning and the pursuit of new experiences.

We are also fortunate to enjoy traveling with our siblings.  Times spent together in Colorado, Oregon, North Carolina, New York City and at each other's homes in Omaha, Milan and Bend, Oregon have been rich, and always include cooking together and enjoying extended times of conversation and exploration of whatever area we find ourselves in.  Since we are in our 50's, our conversations frequently include a good number of stories of past travels as well as recent cooking or dining out adventures, books or articles read or movies watched, etc.

We made the choice early to cut back wherever needed (furniture and home items, eating out, drive-throughs for drinks, etc.) so we could afford to travel as a family and we have not regretted it.  The memories we have of traveling with our daughters, beginning when their ages were measured in months, are truly priceless.  Seeing things through a child's eyes, even if we'd seen it ourselves several times before, makes things new and interesting all over again.  The bonding that happens in a family through going on a new adventure together, and weathering the joys and challenges encountered, is most decidedly worth the effort and expense.  When Mark was between residency and fellowship we took Lauren (then 2 years old) with us to Europe; that time of daddy-daughter bonding absolutely would not have happened otherwise during his medical training.  Our daughters have now married, and our time together last summer in Estes Park and this spring in Breckenridge with an equal number of boys and girls at the table (and hiking, climbing, etc.) was particularly thrilling for Mark, who has been outnumbered for so long.  What a wonderful way to get to know our new sons-in-law.

Maybe one of my favorite features of traveling with others is the opportunity it affords me to learn something new about Mark.  Other people ask him questions I haven't thought of, and quite frequently his response includes an opinion or insight I haven't heard, or an experience from his childhood that is new to me.  We've been married 33 years, so I find this a particularly delightful side benefit.

Take Advantage of Opportunities to Meet the Locals
Occasionally when it comes up that we are going to a certain place, someone will say, "Oh, you should meet so-and-so; you would really like them." For many years, we tended not to take people up on the offer of an introduction and I have learned this is a mistake.  On a previous trip with Terri to Provence we met some friends of hers who live in Paris, and had a perfectly enjoyable time together. The couple stayed with us in Provence for a few days this time and we saw them again in Paris and had an absolutely delightful time together.  Their insight to the culture and their city made our experience so much richer.  And getting to know them a bit more was delightful on a personal level, as well.  I hope to have many more adventures with them in the future.

My sister in Milan gets together with friends often for dinner, and when we are there, they are kind enough to include us in their gatherings.  We have met some truly wonderful people as a result.  Her friends have been remarkably generous; one couple offered their beautiful flat near St. Moritz last year, and after she had mentioned it three times, Mark asked Gretchen (my sister) if it would be appropriate to accept their offer.  When she said it would be fine, he did accept, and we went that weekend.  Those three days resulted in one of our favorite memories ever...  two stunning hikes, in the Swiss National Forest and across from Piz Bernina, a particularly tasty dinner involving fennel three ways, and discovering (to background music of Keith Jarrett's Koln Concerts cranked up a bit) that a full moon was rising over the mountains opposite in a crystal clear night sky.  It sounds a little silly, but another particularly satisfying memory from that trip was remembering to do the grocery shopping before we left.  Dairy products in Switzerland are terrific, of course, but we have not found produce there to be as good.

The note-to-self from this trip regarding "locals" is that the manager of a rental home is probably a local.  We had a delightful conversation with Sarah Kennet, the manager of the fabulous home we rented near Sablet (north of Avignon), and if we there are no actual "locals" where we are staying sometime in the future, I might just invite her equivalent for a glass of wine or a cup of coffee.  In addition to being a delightful person, she was an excellent resource regarding all things Sablet and Vaucluse.  The prettiest restaurant we visited was not a Bib Gourmand but was at the top of her list.

Stay in Apartments if Possible
Friends from college happened to be taking a sabbatical in Paris and we stayed in their tiny but pretty apartment in the 15th arrondisement, off the beaten tourist track.  We experienced a new side of the city as a result.  If we are staying in one place in Europe for more than about three days, we usually rent an apartment through vrbo.com or homeaway.com.  Popping down to the corner for the morning baguette and/or croissants and shopping daily at the vegetable and fruit stands for the ingredients for that night's dinner (or picking up one of those fantastic roast chickens) give those who enjoy cooking the opportunity to interact a bit with the neighbors, and be exposed to interesting varieties of produce, meat and fish that are not available at home.  (Granted, if we lived in New York City or San Francisco, etc., this would be nothing new, but this midwesterner gets pretty excited about this concept.)  The other great advantage of staying in an apartment is the ability to pack lighter - most accommodations have a washer and some have a dryer.

Do It Now
When an opportunity presents itself and you have the option to take it, do.  Don't save it until later.  I learned this about 30 years ago in Cortina.  We arrived on a stunning day with a gorgeous view, gorgeous weather, well before the existence of weather.com.  Mark suggested skiing half the day, since we had arrived in the late morning, and I thought for some unknown reason that it would be better to just go the full day the next day.  Of course the next day the weather turned and I still haven't seen the beautiful view I had the opportunity to see that day.

Bib Gourmand is Your Friend
We discovered the Michelin Red Guide (to restaurants in France) many years ago, and our favorite feature then, as now, is the Bib Gourmand designation - good food at moderate prices.  It's amazingly reliable and we have planned entire trips around these gems.  Not many years ago there were few Bib Gourmand restaurants in Paris, but this year we were happy to discover Michelin has published an entire book of  Bib Gourmands in France, and there are now a plethora of them to choose from in Paris.  The interior of the restaurants is quite varied, as is the cuisine (our last evening in Paris was at a Flemish restaurant), but the common factor is a chef who cares a great deal about food, and its presentation, and cares enough about the ambience to make for a pleasant atmosphere in which to enjoy that wonderful food.  The wine lists in these restaurants frequently match the concept, as well - good wine at moderate prices - and although Mark knows enough about wine to make good choices, we have asked for and taken the recommendations of the staff with good results.

Pace Yourself
I think the balance we maintained on this trip of time spent sitting and chatting with friends or family, frequently over a meal, and times spent exploring Paris or the Vaucluse (the area of Provence we were in)  was pretty great.  There were plenty of options for activity but rather than the activities being the goal in themselves, they were the vehicle for more time with friends or family.  That slight shift in paradigm was significant.

Eat Well Without Breaking the Bank
We are finally at the stage of life where we can afford very nice restaurants, but we get much greater pleasure out of dining out at the Bib Gourmands and picking up sandwiches or cheese, salami and greens, fruit, and a bottle of wine at the local markets and having what is essentially an indoor (or outdoor, if the occasion presents itself) picnic.  There's something very satisfying about opening sacks or pulling this and that out of the fridge and spreading it all out, or dressing some greens or maybe preparing a simple pasta.  And of course since Mark is such a good cook, we love to support any efforts he cares to make in that department, which happily for us is often.  Very good olive oil, garlic, onions and herbs are readily available in France and Italy so it's very easy to make a more than passable meal.

It's an Adventure, Not a Problem
When things happen that weren't in the plan, I've learned to choose to see it as part of the adventure.  We prepare the best we can for the unexpected (carry an umbrella in Paris in the spring, take more than one credit card and be prepared with cash since Europe now uses credit cards with a chip instead of a strip, Icebreaker carries amazing products for packing small but staying warm, get rid of the car as soon as possible on the outskirts of a big city and take the metro the rest of the way, leave an hour earlier than you think you need to for the airport) but otherwise, we assume things will come up that we didn't expect and if we come out on the other side of the experience having learned something, that's a good thing.

Keep a Diary or Journal
I've tried over the years to keep notes or a diary of our trips and now that my memory isn't quite as sharp as it used to be, I'm so thrilled to have even cryptic lists of the activities of the day and/or an expenses list.  I also required my daughters to keep journals and coming across the girls' journals from time to time over the years has brought great joy.  They've both moved out now, and taken their journals with them, but every now and then they report coming across them themselves and have told me they are glad I was so adamant about that.  Katharine (our younger daughter) conducted weekly adventure camps for a small group of boys one summer and she had them write notes at the end of each day and then start the next  morning using those notes to write a journal entry.  Brilliant.

Chard with Orecchiette

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I love chard, especially the chard Alexis grows at Elderslie Farms in Wichita, Kansas.  I often get asked what to do with it so as I was making chard with orecchiette a few days ago, I took some photos  thinking I would be ready for the next person who asked.  When my friend Polly called a bit ago to ask for the recipe, I figured it was God's way of saying it was time to take action.  So here goes...

Use good quality ingredients; extra virgin olive oil, chard (ours is from Elderslie Farm... buy local if you can) and DeCecco or Barilla pasta.

Chard with Orecchiete

1 pound orecchiette pasta (DeCecco or Barilla or better)... or Farfalle, Penne, etc.

2 large bunches swiss chard (it looks like a lot when you buy it but it cooks WAY down)

2-4 T good quality extra virgin olive oil (Berio, Bertolli, Whole Foods 365 or better)

1/2 red onion (yellow is fine, too, and shallots work well), chopped small

2 oz cooked bacon pieces (if desired) OR 2-4 T pine nuts, toasted

2-4 T white vermouth or white wine

Cook the pasta in plenty of salted water until al dente.  Meanwhile, chop the stems of the chard and cook them in the olive oil with the chopped onion on medium until starting to brown.  Add the wine/vermouth and let cook down.  Add the chopped chard leaves, cover and toss occasionally to cook evenly.  Salt to taste (about 1/2 t).  Add the bacon or pine nuts.  Toss the drained pasta into the chard and stir a bit.  Add fresh extra virgin olive oil (a couple of tablespoons or more).  Transfer all to a bowl and enjoy!