The Butterfly Named Mango

My three year old celebrated Rosh Hashanah at preschool this week.  The Jewish New Year has many traditions that revolve around food...from eating apples and honey to celebrate a sweet new year, to Tashlich where bread is thrown into a body of water to signify the casting off of sins to start the year with a fresh slate. 

This week a piece of paper came home in her backpack.  It is a blessing that they worked on as a class, and I would like to share it with you.  There is an utterly random food reference that made me laugh.

The Blessing For The World

We wish the world would have millions of monkeys and a butterfly named Mango.  Also, the world needs lots of present.  The world needs kisses and cakes and princesses.  We wish for peace, justice, and lots and lots of Mommy love and many beautiful flowers.  That's all.

The butterfly named Mango.  Why Mango?  The national fruit of India, Pakistan, and the Philippines.  The mango is used in rituals of Ganesha, remover of Obstacles, patron of arts and sciences, and deva of intellect and wisdom.  Butterflies in many cultures signify the soul of either living or dead.

Combine the two: the world needs a soul that removes obstacles by nourishing art, science, intellect, and wisdom.  A butterfly named Mango, mascot for world peace.

Coffee at the Breastaurant

If you haven't noticed, lately I have been blogging about coffee.  Lately being the past year of my life, but having two children between the ages 1 and 3 has that effect on people.  Lil' Bit started school, and I volunteered to be a "room mom."  This week I will meet with the other "room moms" to talk about...well not sure...the room? 

The "room moms" discussed where to go have a cup of coffee and figure out this vague job for the year, and I thought to myself Hooters.  What would these two other thirty-something women, I barely know say if I threw out the name of the local breastaurant?

"Hey ladies I have an idea.  What about Hooters?  I hear they have great coffee and it is loud with plenty of room for my 1 year old to roam around.  If it is nice we could sit outside on the deck...."

What I if I said that with a warm straight face to these two women, these mothers, with whom I have never had more than a three minute conversation? 

Breastaurants are strange.   I first learned this word about 2 months ago when Chef says to me one night while lying in bed, "So breastaurants are pretty lucrative, and there is a new one that is a bit more sophisticated than Hooters that is really taking off.  It is called Twin Peaks. What do you think?"

"Did you just say the word breastaurant?"  I had never heard that word before, and I found it utterly hilarious and perfect. Breastaurant.

"As long as people have to sit at tables to eat and the food isn't total crap, I am cool with it.  I mean, if that is where you want our daughters to pick up shifts as teenagers during the summer.  I had a friend in high school who really worked her way up the Hooter ladder.  Got into a calendar or something." 

Chef dropped it.

The girls and I drive past a Hooters on the way to school every morning.  It sits nestled on the water next to a small bridge and marina.  It is a place where some people come to eat, watch sports, and stare at tits, and where some people work. They fry wings, or sling beers and cleavage.  It is a lucrative business model that has its rightful place in society.

I think we need to explore this restaurant concept further.  Maybe transform the common package store and bar to a haven for the under-appreciated heterosexual woman.  A softly lit tavern where you can get 2 for 1 margaritas, where you can watch talk shows or reruns of dramas and comedies from the 90's...like Melrose Place, or the Golden Girls, or My So Called Life.  Where you can get a great mixed salad and buy your bottle of gin for the week, and perhaps where the waiters strut about in black Speedos, and retro threadbare shirts that are just a little too tight.  A Package store with a big P.

Now that is an idea I will run by Chef.  A market that really needs to be tapped....

Late Summer Harvest

The eggplants were tired at 29 South, so Shannon pulled them.  Before our amazing gardener did the dirty work I managed to snag a few fruits.  Eggplants and peppers are amazing vegetables.  Through the maddening heat of late summer they push through a bounty that is unbelievable given the circumstances.  They are relatively small plants, with smallish leaves and it is surprising how they produce so much fruit, and they seem to thrive in the dead heat of summer.   

I think we could learn something from late summer vegetable plants.  They have extraordinary stamina during a time of year when everything else seems to be dragging.  And they do so with panache.  I mean look at these colors.

It is hard to go wrong with roasted vegetables.  Olive oil. Salt. Pepper. 

A holy trinity.  

 

I needed a quick fix for dinner the other night and looked to the veggie bowl.   Eggplant from our garden and summer squash, red and green peppers from the farmer's market.   There was some Israeli cous cous in the pantry.  Feta in the fridge.

It is hard to go wrong with roasted vegetables.  Olive oil. Salt. Pepper. A holy trinity.  

 

The end product was so good I forgot to photograph it until it was almost finished three days later.  This is one of those dishes that just gets better as leftovers.

The recipe is so easy and you can use it for any veg.  Here...try it this weekend.  It will become a regular go to in a pinch.  This is my recipe, one I concocted using broad strokes of improvisation...so excuse the vagueness.

Ingredients:

• 4 cups of seasonal vegetables chopped in 1/2 inch cubes.
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• 1 tablespoon of salt and pepper to taste
• 2 cups of cous cous of any kind
• a big hunk of feta cheese, crumbled (Buy feta in a block and crumble it yourself...not as dry as pre-crumbled cheese and no low fat cheese...unless you must.  The real deal adds a creaminess to the dish.)

 Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2. Chop your veg and put it in a bowl.  Toss it with olive oil, salt and pepper
3. Spread veg out on a cookie sheet and put in oven.  Roast for 30 minutes.
4. While veg is cooking, make the cous cous according to the package directions.
5. When cous cous is done put it in a large bowl and add veg to cous cous.
6. Add feta to bowl and toss and drizzle with olive oil.
7. Add salt and pepper to taste.

*As a side note:  I like to add fresh basil, or mint, lemon or chopped kalamata olives to this dish depending on the veg flavors.   

Wild Horses, Wild Women

This summer I went to an epic bachelorette party, or as they say in England...an epic "hen" party. It is a new tradition for a woman to be thrown a raging party by friends before marriage compared to its compliment, the "stag" party.   While the latter has been around for centuries in its common form, the idea for women to go out and get plastered as one last hurrah has really only become common since the 1960's. 

This particular party was no bar hopping hose down.   Nope.  The bride to be, my cousin, brought 11 of her closest gals to a sea island where she spent much of her childhood exploring life.  That is Sarah above showing me how she can peel a shrimp in two moves.   I prided myself as a three stage peeler, but growing up on an island as the daughter of a ship captain...well lets just say the girl knows her way around seafood.

As family in the restaurant business, I volunteered to be in charge of food and beverage...the duty of a bridesmaid called.  I did this without much thought to what it would entail, you see Cumberland Island is mostly National Park.  You have to get there by boat, cars are allowed only to the handful of people that live there, and there is no grocery or liquor store to restock if the cupboard runs dry. 

Chef and I set to work listing all that would be needed.  There would be two breakfasts, two lunches, and one dinner to be prepared on site.  I asked the bride to be what her favorite foods were for each meal and a menu took form.  As did a cocktail line up.  Not hitting a bar scene had no bearing on the debauchery we had planned.   Beer, Wine, Tequilla, Vodka, Gin, and Goslings Rum for the bachelorette's favorite beverage the Dark and Stormy (captains daughter classic) were boxed with appropriate mixers and readied for the boat ride.  

The day before we set off we began stockpiling boxes and coolers in our living room for the voyage.  A repair man came to our house to fix something and asked what it was all for.  I told him "camping" not wanting to explain that we rented a house on an isolated island...yada yada yada.  He looked at me like I was a capricious lunatic. 

One of the other bridesmaids was helping us with this endeavor and when it came time to load our little fishing boat she doubted it would run with such a load.  Oh, but run it did.  We cracked open some beers for the ride and Sarah, her sister/maid of honor, and two ginger bridesmaids cast off with Chef as our captain.  He got us to the island safely, did his Sherpa duty, and then left us to our business.

I had a game plan, and each meal went wonderfully.  Breakfast happened spontaneously as we dragged ourselves out of bed.  We had two fabulous picnic lunches.  One at Plum Orchard, a grand abandoned home perched on a field scattered with wild horses.  There we dined on a variety of gorgeous cheeses shipped from California, by a bridesmaid that was unable to attend.  Another lunch on the beach with a variety of salads brought by the bachelorette's sister in laws.  We had two dinners on the island.  The first meal we made at our little cottage.  The menu:  boiled shrimp, Sarah's father's grouper with special sauce,  grits, and mixed green salad.  Chef had taken the grits out of the package, and without internet we had no idea the proper way to cook them.  Luckily, a southern sister in law swooped in and gave us a lesson. 

The last night we had dinner at the Greyfield Inn.  Every Christmas Eve, Sarah's family comes to the inn for dinner, and she wanted to share a taste of her family tradition with us.  It was a gorgeous meal.

After dinner, we had a lingerie party, did shots and went skinny dipping in shark infested waters.  Who needs a table top bar dance when you have man-eating fish, rip tides, and tequila to make your last hurrah wild and crazy?   Tipsy girls being circled by large predators...just like any run of the mill bachelorette party bar scene right?  Wrong.  This bachelorette party was extraordinary, just like the lady it honored.

 (Sarah on the right, with her sister Molly...beauties!)

Sister

Today is a coffee with lunch kind of day.  My grandmother told me her mother always kept a pot of coffee on the stove and a pot of rice.  That is my grandmother above, an exceptionally classy lady, a member of the Greatest Generation, a dying breed of women, who always had coffee with lunch.

One of my earliest memories is standing behind her in the kitchen.  Sister, as we called her, has her back to me at the stove.  She is in an A-line skirt, navy blue heels, and cream blouse, with an apron tied in a tight bow above the hip.  My father's mother cooked a formal dinner every night for her family of six, usually in heels.  She never spat, except when brushing her teeth, and she gave me my first set of pearl earrings.  Oh, and she loved Chardonnay.

One of my earliest posts here on Ecoculinaire was about Sister. She passed away early this June, and I will never forget the last living moment we shared with her as a family.  We were gathered around her bed, where we had been the entire week.  Around this woman who touched so many hearts with her bright smile and open mind.  Her bedside had been a peaceful, solemn place, where stories were quietly shared as friends and family gathered.  But that Friday, at around Happy Hour, there was a shift in the air.   My grandmother always had nibbles out at 5 and an open bottle of white wine to be enjoyed by anyone who stopped by...and people did stop by to sit a spell.  She called this hour "wine time." 

It was as if the idea came in on a sea breeze.  It was not discussed.  It was not planned.  A spontaneous wine time erupted at Sister's deathbed.   Suddenly my aunts began bustling about in the kitchen.  Cheese plates were brought out, and my Uncle's incredible crab dip.  Glasses brimming with Chardonnay and crackers piled high were passed from hand to hand around my grandmother.  The hands of her children and one of her six grandchildren.  We were there, and even though she had been unconscious for almost a week, we knew Sister was there too.

My grandmother was the essential Southern lady.  A Yellow Dog Democrat who practiced tolerance and lived with an open intellect which allowed her to befriend people from all walks of life. A woman who exuded both a rich warmth and a delicate elegance, like a meringue.   Women of her caliber are dwindling and I think we all need to take a hard look at ourselves today in relation to our grandmothers.  Women born long before the Women's Liberation Movement, who held pride as matriarchs and found their own stride as their children opened new doors for them. 

What doors will we open for our mothers?  Just something to think about over a cup of coffee at lunch.

Boiling Over.

So sorry for my spotty posts this summer.  Have you ever had a window in life where no matter what you do nothing seems to get you ahead of the game?  Weeks of time pass and one thing happens after another in such a fashion that you know the Universe is trying to tell you something, but there is just no time to digest any of the change because there is just almost too much to bear?  I feel like we all go through certain periods of life where change rolls in like a pot coming to a boil, one bubble popping at a time until everything is up in the air.  You just try to keep it together so you don't loose your lid...then things begin to fall into place.

The dust has finally settled here, and so have my nerves.  We are at that point after a move where you feel comfortable enough to have a friend over for a glass of wine without worrying that they might think you are a terrible hoarder.  I purchased my first house plant for our new digs, a big beautiful fern from the Riverside Arts Market...an incredible food and arts market that just so happens to occur about a mile from my house on the banks of a huge river in the shade of a gigantic bridge.  The market happens every Saturday, and it is fast becoming a weekend tradition. 

There are many new wonderful things in our life now we are living in this city of rivers.  As we slug our way through the end of summer, I sense a lot of new beginnings.  The next few weeks I will be sharing with you some of the more extraordinary experiences I had this past summer, now that I am in a place where my lid is secure and the dust can be easily swept under the rug...if need be.

Unpacking Chef's Kitchen

You know you live with a Chef when you unpack your kitchen after a move and just the variety of salt alone takes up half a shelf.  Chef and I have had to do some serious downsizing.  Our new digs is literally half the size of our last home, and while we have given away contractor bags full of clothes and toys...all kitchenware is sacred.

Do we need two mixers?  Yes.  Do we need two ice cream makers?  Yes.  Do we need three can openers?  Maybe.  It is impossible to use two can openers simultaneously, much less three.  You never know. 

For some reason I was given the task of unpacking the kitchen.  Perhaps because I am the "homemaker" and the kitchen is the center of our home.  Or it could be because it is the most daunting of the rooms to unpack.  There are so many different tools that categorizing them in any meaningful way is next to impossible.  Where do I put the meat cleaver?  The tortilla press?  The crepe tool?  The pasta drying rack?  Egg mold?  Silplat? The entire collection of random Asian ingredients whose labels are a total mystery? 

When you share a home kitchen with a culinary artist, your kitchen is not just a place where family meals are prepared...it is also an artist's studio.  Like any other professional artist, a chef's tools are utterly essential to the creative process.  So I will find each a home in our little bungalow kitchen, so Chef has all he needs at his fingertips to concoct his artworks, and continue to bless our table with masterpieces. 

Now where to put the blowtorch?