my cool new friend

Living in the DC area can make you think that you are profoundly lacking in social skills. Then, when you relocate to another area, you realize that most people don’t demand to know where you work within two minutes of meeting you, don’t give a sh** where you went to college, and don’t vie to prove who has the highest stress level.

People are FRIENDLY! Here in NC, there’s this fabulous thing called southern hospitality!

One beautiful late summer evening, I headed out to the grocery store when I spotted my pal Jocelyn and her adorable five year old son Kane. Naturally, I commenced furiously chasing Kane around on the grass while chatting with his mama, at which point Coen, the equally adorable four year old boy who lives across the hall (who was, as always, clad in his Batman tshirt and cape)  and his mama Roxanne showed up, and the running and the chasing and the making dinosaur noises just got funner. So we planned a cookout for the following weekend, for all of our fun neighbors to hang out.

Gender roles divided pretty hilariously, with Steve and the other men grilling outside and discussing extreme sports…

 

And the ladies inside, teaching the kiddos how to play the drums on packs of plates (courtesy of my roommate Alli, the girl who will start a drum circle anytime, anywhere).

I offered to bring meats for the meal, spending a small but worth-it fortune on organic ground beef for burgers as well as organic turkey and beef hot dogs.

Everyone else also contributed too, though I only got a few pictures. Jocelyn’s guacamole and AWESOME watermelon-basil-feta salad.

Steph’s carrot cake cupcakes (uhhhhhhhhhhhhhmazing- packed with walnuts) and Charlie’s stuffed mushrooms (which I didn’t eat because I’ve recently been unable to stomach the thought of eating a pig and they were stuffed with pork… but everyone else said were very tasty!)

Jocelyn and I are extra tight, so we’ve had a few fun date nights with each other. Most recently on my 25th birthday (!!!) when I stayed home sick/”sick” from work and she set aside her freelancing for a few hours to gossip, eat chicken soup, and together watch Dances with Wolves.

We are really kindred spirits- the first night we met, she ended up creating astrological charts for me and Steve. And then we excitedly gabbed about antioxidants. And psychoanalyzed the men in our lives.

Another time we got together, Jocelyn made me the best roast chicken I’ve ever tasted (a title I can sadly no longer give the Zuni Cafe recipe). I sadly neglected to take a picture, but I’ll describe: she begins with the Martha Stewart recipe, which involves a plethora of fresh and dried herbs and an olive oil basting technique. Bringing her own delightful new age sensibilities to the proceedings, she then says several prayers over the chicken, thanking it for its sacrifices, and rubs the herbs in.

Anyway, dessert was extra fab. Jocelyn has an impressively well-stocked pantry and a Vitamix (jealousssss). She threw together in the Vitamix some cacao powder (on which she waxed poetic for a bit regarding its health benefits)…

 

… agave nectar…

… and coconut cream which, who knew, they now sell at Trader Joe’s.

 

With strawberries dipped in it, it was pretty epic. (To be truthful, the boys focused on the brewskies and the girls focused on the dessert!). It was also vegan, gluten free, paleo, yadda yadda. None of those are necessarily my scene, but if they are yours you hafta try this dessert!

Then when I returned the favor, I made an oh-so-easy and oh-so-tasty soup. I roasted a chicken and used its bones to make stock. I sauteed zucchini, sweet onion, and corn in oil then cooked it with the stock and pureed it with a ton of fresh parsley. AMAZING SOUP. I took the chicken off the bone and made a Caesar salad, with Romaine lettuce and yummy cheese. And because Jocelyn’s kiddo Kane can’t have gluten (she experimented with taking it out of his diet since he was having a crazy bloated belly and not only did the belly get better, his asthma disappeared!), I made my favorite gluten free specialty: socca!

It was quite the feast.

The soup was particularly delicious- homemade chicken stock is SO easy and SO delicious. Kane, the five year old, got seconds, which I thought was a real vote of confidence in the recipe!

 

Funnest of all, after dinner we played blocks. Because I am currently teaching preschool, and thus there are fun toys all over my house. These are particularly cool- you can make skyscrapers out of them! Trees on the roof optional.

Fact: when you are five, the most fun part of building with blocks is knocking them all over.

Easter, etc.

Cookies!

 

Inquiring minds who want to know: oatmeal date nut cookies, which are already vegan, can also be made gluten free. They’re just a little crunchier and snappier, and who minds that?!

I baked those tasty things for a church choir potluck. For Easter! It being June as I write this and Easter, of course, not being a June holiday, let me clarify. I celebrate Orthodox Easter (the Easter of the Orthodox Christian church- if you have Greek, Russian, Lebanese, Romanian, etc. friends it may be theirs, too) and it’s on a different calendar than Catholic and Protestant churches. So it was a LOT later than American Easter. (Though, er, still awhile ago).

So anyway this Easter potluck was so we could practice the complicated and difficult music. Except only five people showed up (and two of us were related). So it was not all that successful, except the food part!

Making the food was actually a fun challenge since for food to be Lent-appropriate, it should be vegan (I don’t eat totally vegan during Lent because of calcium fears, but many in my church do, and the food served at the church itself should be supportive of the church’s official policy, obvi).

It also had to be gluten free (or should be, out of kindness) because both our church’s choir director John and his wife Betty have Celiac disease.

Also, Betty for charming reasons best understood by her had come up to me in the middle of church one Sunday and handed me this pad thai sauce container:

I appreciated her gift, and figured I might as well use it on something I could share with her.

So I cooked up some rice noodles, made some tofu:

threw in some veggies:

And voila, pad thai. Ish. No final picture- it was ugly. But good!

And we also brought, of course, dessert.

But the really exciting dessert was a week later, on Easter itself. Something I have allllllllllways wanted to make? Olive oil cake!

I discovered this scrumptious-sounding if ever so slightly vague recipe for olive oil cake and mostly followed it (subbing a mix of white flour, whole wheat, and semolina for the plain flour) then consulted this overly complicated but methodologically clear olive oil cake for timing (which caused me to let the cake rise for two hours before baking it) and anyway it was great!

Heat some olive oil

Infuse with lemon

 

Plus anise seeds (mm)

 

The recipe wasn’t clear whether or not you were supposed to strain out the seeds, and I thought a few might be nice to help retain the flavor, so I casually poured the oil mixture in the batter, leaving behind the lemon and approximately half the seeds in the pot.

Batter was SUCCULENT! Could’ve eaten the whole thing with a spoon. So dense and creamy.

Baked that off- it didn’t rise much but it was real tasty! For the finished cake, I improvised a glaze which involved orange marmalade thinned with water- not a lot more complicated than that.

This ended up REALLY good.

 

Meanwhile, right before Easter, we received a VERY generous Easter basket from a very sweet family friend. It contained this GI-NORMOUS sweet, almond-paste-studded Easter bread.

   

And the Easter celebration itself was at my sister’s godparents’ home. They had gotten a lot of it catered. The spread was quite beautiful.

 

They had requested that all the lamb be cooked well done (…) I snuck into the kitchen with the caterers and begged them to save a medium rare bit for me. They obliged, and were very very nice :)

My dinner plate:

Blessedly medium-rare lamb with scads of tzaziki (definitely eyes>stomach on that one, but Steve was nearby so all was good), grilled vegetables (done by caterers- EXCELLENT! Perfectly cooked!), spinach and cheese pies, roasted potatoes that were wonderful, and salad. And wine! Gave up booze for Lent. Such a worthwhile thing to do. I’m no lush, but I only want to drink when I feel like drinking, not when everyone around me is. It was a useful exercise in mindfulness.

Spent much of the meal lounging by their pool, looking at their e-normous house!

 

Believe me when I say this barely scratched the surface on dessert. Phase 1 was enjoyed poolside.

Gazillions of berries, koulourakia (traditional Greek cookies), some of my olive oil cake, one of Steve’s oatmeal-toffee cookies.

cookin up a storm

I am currently ensconced in my basement listening to the wind howl(ish) outside. Relieved to have the day off and not have to drive in this, relieved to have the excellent company of my cat and boyfriend, relieved to be wrapped in my sister’s Snuggie she foolishly did not bring to college. Still have power, for now. It’s going soon, inevitability.

Anyway, obviously it’s been awhile, so here’s a nice update on my life, in the form of haiku!

We begin with stress. Stress begets somewhat atypical and not particularly virtuous food choices. 

roasted tomatoes
boxed macaroni and cheese
surprisingly good

 

plus from the freezer
ravioli and dumplings
Can you tell I love carbs?

 

Woke up one morning
only a grilled cheese sandwich
would gladden my heart

 

I put a leftover okra-tomato mix inside with the cheese. The tomato was great. The okra was not, with cheese. Live and learn. Took it out.

 

I was pushing the calcium for the week before my bone marrow donation because they gave me blood thinners they warned me could lower my calcium. So. Yogurt!

  

Injections that stim-
ulate blood stem cell growing
make you feel like crap

I discussed this in my last post. Man, being nauseous all day suuuuuuuuuuuuuucks. I have a new sympathy for pregnant women, and a continued desire to never become one myself.

Oooh, plain oatmeal with sliced banana I gagged down for breakfast!

 

My mom made me soup for dinner, which was very kind of her since the only thing more disgusting to me at the time than eating food was cooking food.

Then I took phenergen, which really never did that much for my stomach (awesome.) but was also difficult in that for it to be most effectively absorbed I had to take it two hours after eating or one hour before. With the schedule of meds I was on, it meant I would have to take it and then have a midnight snack. I called Steve and was generally sort of weeping weakly at the thought of food, and he recommended buttered noodles. Thank God for buttered noodles.

 

But enough of the griping, eh?

I made the donation. While I wouldn’t call it fun (when you wear a tourniquet for a few hours, you start to feel as if someone is stabbing you over and over in the arm), it was an amazing thing to be told that my bone marrow had produced 335 million new stem cells (!!!) and that they were going on an airplane to Europe that night (!!!) to be given to the recipient the following day.

I will hopefully receive an update on her condition 30 or 60 days after the donation. I think about her often.

Anyway, I got well! Slowly, and a little weirdly (the day after my donation I was awake for maybe five hours total; and the day after that, my first day back at work, I had Wendy’s for both breakfast and lunch- a surprisingly delicious egg sandwich with a REAL egg! and a baked potato- and then went to a bar with Steve to watch the Nationals heartbreakingly lose and had tater tots for dinner) but eventually, I was okay.

Back in fightin’ form
Charm City birthday weekend
heavenly/pricy

Steve took me for a belated birthday weekend in Baltimore. We had an amazing time. No pictures!

Then my mom wanted to do something the week after to celebrate my birthday. I don’t think turning 24 is a big deal, but I agreed since she had a cake she’d won at a silent auction she had to claim. So we called it a “cake eating occasion'”, and it was actually really fun to hang with the fam.

And ohhhhhhhh the cake.

It was gorgeous (I had to freeze the rest due to lack of self-control, but kept a big ol’ slab in my fridge for a few more days). The remains of the beautiful writing and gold leaf dusting:

 

Awesomely dense cake
Then hazelnut mousse atop
Crunchy choco-shell

 

All that celebrating was fancy but expennnnnsive. So Steve and I took a vow not to eat out for a month. And lo and behold, I have had a BLAST actually COOKING again!

Afghani pumpkin
So rich! So sweet! You should try!
Recipe online 

God, SO delicious! Wonderfully sweet and tender pumpkin, perfectly seasoned; and the garlic-yogurt sauce on top perfectly balanced it out.

To accompany:

On a quest for naan
First recipe just okay
Set off smoke alarm

 

Kale chips ala Steve
Unphotogenic but great
Olive oil; soy sauce

Steve has also stepped it up- he made a wonderful improvised curried roasted sweet potato soup when I came over to his place.

Classy new backdrop
Steve’s new couch from Ikea!
Neutral; good lighting

Also from Ikea: the table I helped build. We used it for… POTLUCK!

It had been a lonnnnnng time since we did the potluck ritual. Frankly, it got to be a bit much for awhile. But after a break of, oh, 16 months, it seemed fun and exciting again. And great to get everyone together.

The following is a haiku in three separated lines.

Fab cheese and crackers…
 

 

…Two STRONG types of sangria…

  

…Identical lentils!

Patricia and I both made lentils. Hers involved coconut milk. Mine was inspired by a shockingly tasty spice packet I got at a fab new little Indian store I discovered.

Silly theme this time
Steve is reading Atlas Shrugged
Railroad shaped pizza

I told people that Steve wanted to make railroad-shaped food items inspired by his recent reading. I said that this could be interpreted as a theme of architectural food; book-inspired food; or right wing food.

Some people had fun with the right-winger theme.

We watched this ridiculous video.

And so, we reach the past few days, hunkered down anticipating the looming hurricane. Cooking up a storm.

We have winning naan!
Whole milk yogurt is the key
So fun to watch puff!

This recipe is great and foolproof! You keep the pan dry (I used a cast iron skillet, per the recipe’s recommendation) and put in the bread til it poofs.

Flip it and admire the brown/black speckles.

Cook just til the other side is done, then remove and smear with butter (Steve thoroughly enjoyed this assignment)

SO GOOD! Actually tasted like legit naan! Albeit whole wheat, health fiend that I am (though thanks, Mom, for accidentally buying the whole milk yogurt. That’s what MADE it!)

 

Yummy pockets!

Here we are Sandy
Fortified with comfort food
Edgy but well fed

A lunch for Steve and I, made in a cozy and still (for now) electrified kitchen.

Split pea soup and flatbreads with a variety of toppings.

 

All contain cheese. Clockwise from the top left: mango chutney, tiny garden tomato, za’atar, and artichoke tapenade.

 

And now I have a hurricane outside and six library books to read. Life could certainly be worse.