battle 23–day 2–cabbage

I was feeling a little more optimistic about January when I didn’t keel over after cabbage stew, so I decided to briefly set aside my unnecessarily ambitious plan to conquer the whole month in one week and dedicate the next few days to cabbage. Plain ole cabbage.

I fear and have avoided eating cabbage for a lot of reasons. For one thing, it’s a vegetable. For another, it has a stupid, jarring name. I am not a fan. And also, I definitely discriminate against it for being grown in a patch with orphan babies. That just doesn’t seem right. So it’s taken me a while to overcome these ingrained biases and get to the point where I understand that cabbage is just another leafy green, like arugula, or something else lovely I already love. I can love cabbage, too, I can love cabbage, too, I can love cabbage, too.

When I was complaining about cabbage to JVV’s friends on facebook (I don’t know why y’all are still my friends, I am so cranky), lots of folks offered up some really great ideas, but most of them involved cooking it in ways that would make the cabbage too closely resemble my nemesis, the onion. To me, cooked cabbage looks like onion’s red-headed stepsister, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t woman enough to take her on. Then I remembered rhu-Barb saying somewhere, sometime, something like, “You could always just add shredded cabbage to shrimp tacos.” Mmmm. Tacos. Voila. Thank you, rhu-Barb.

To make shrimp tacos, I took a little bit of my awesomeness, added a tad of my greatness, mixed it together with my brilliance and topped it with cabbage. Twenty-some odd weeks ago if I’d tried to make this meal, I would have had to track down and compare 15 different recipes, consult with the Google on everything from the origins of cabbage to the history of the taco, and spend countless hours wandering grocery aisles looking for the abundance of ingredients I still hadn’t decided on for gourmet tacos that would probably still be a bust.

But now I’m a pro, so here’s what I did instead. I combined the top notch culinary skills we’ve all taught me throughout the course of this project with some very important life skills I’ve spent years honing, i.e., a little bit-o-kitchen know-how plus a lot of laziness equals one fantastic taco.

After Terrible Vegetable Smorgasbord Sunday, Melissa sent me home with the leftover cabbage she’d picked up at Trader Joe’s while I was napping. Cabbage, check. Then I started pulling out some of my favorites, spectacular standbys like avocadoes, tomatoes and cheese, all items I always have in the house. Favorites, check. Then I got fancy, zeroing in on Elwood’s seriously good homemade hot sauce and ranch dressing to cool my mouth from Elwood’s seriously hot homemade hot sauce. Fanciness, check.

Now I just needed the shrimp. And I was so close to putting this whole meal together without wandering any aisles.

David and I have never been very smart about our freezer. We don’t know how to buy frozen food, we don’t know how to eat the frozen food we do buy, and we don’t know how to freeze food if it’s not already frozen.  I don’t necessarily hold this against us because I’m happy to eat fresh food, but in the case of fish, frozen is probably the safest route for me, except for the part about not knowing how to buy frozen food. The one reliable frozen fish item David and I have purchased consistently over the years is breaded, popcorn shrimp, which is probably really processed pig parts in the shape of tiny shrimp, but we like it. And we always get the same kind: Kroger brand. So last week, pre-tacos, we were thinking about having shrimp and potatoes and David said he would pick up the shrimp on the way home, but when he got home he had in hand a different brand of frozen shrimp because he couldn’t find the kind we normally eat. It turns out we really liked the new brand, not least because the shrimp were definitely real and were supposedly caught near St. Simon’s Island, which is nearby (I dig local) and my family is from there, so I felt good about supporting folks from home. Mmm shrimp. But this week, shrimp taco week, when I asked David to pick up the same shrimp for shrimp tacos he could not remember where he got it. This was cause for minor panic at our house. For me. Before either of us embarked on an all-out shrimp hunt in the frozen aisles of all the grocery stores we frequent, I made him retrace his steps in his mind.

“Try to picture the aisle where you got the shrimp. Were there high ceilings (which could be Kroger on Edgewood or Publix on Glenwood) or lower-ish ceilings (Publix on Ponce)? Was it bright-ish (Publix) or darkish (Kroger)? Were you sort of near the front or the back of the store?”

Then I realized I was describing our grocery stores, in detail, to determine on which aisle he had been standing when he plucked the shrimp from its case, and I began to feel reasonably confident that I probably won’t ever get lost in my grocery stores again. I’m having kind of a big head about this right now.

We were able to conclude from this little exercise that he got the shrimp at the Publix on Ponce and the reason he got the new brand in the first place was because he was at Publix and we usually get Kroger brand, so it stands to reason he wouldn’t have been able to find our usual brand at Publix. I’m like a food sleuth. I amaze me. Big head getting bigger.

On taco night, I tossed the shrimp in the hot sauce, made a pico out of the tomatoes, avocado and cheese, then tossed that in the ranch dressing, put them all in fancy pants pretty little flour tortillas and topped those babies with some shredded cabbage. Holy best taco ever. Big head explodes.

battle 20, 22, 23–artichokes, parsnips, cabbage

The second friend to offer to hoist me out of the slump was my neighbor, Melissa R. It’s not unusual for Melissa to offer to cook for me under normal circumstances, but circumstances have changed in the last year and keeping me alive no longer tops her list of priorities. I suppose suggesting that I topped her list of priorities previously is a stretch, but now I’m really way down on the list. I’m like…third.

So here are the new circumstances: first, Melissa had a baby and the way that goes is he needs to be fed more often and my guess is more nutritiously than I do; and second, because my food preferences are changing, it’s not as easy to feed me as it used to be when her husband and I both refused all the same foods and she could make the same bland, colorless, tasteless meal for everyone.

But she perseveres.

So last week I was whining and complaining about all the terrible vegetables in January and how I really didn’t know if I could stomach them. Turnips. Bleck. Parsnips. Bleck. Even Melissa, who comes from farm people and will eat anything that grows out of the ground or off a tree or otherwise tastes like dirt, said the snips are good for nothing vegetables. But she was not about to let something as banal as cabbage get the best of me. (Cabbage, of course, is what I was the most afraid of. Gross. I hate the way it looks all slimy and translucent when it’s cooked. Like an onion. I seriously want to vomit right now just thinking of it.) We came up with this grand plan to knock out as many of January’s vegetables as possible the next day, then Melissa went grocery shopping and I took a nap.

Terrible Vegetable Smorgasbord Sunday included the following:

Trader Joe’s spinach artichoke dip—Heavenly. I ate so much of this I didn’t want to eat anything else, but in the spirit of TVSS, I eventually had to turn my attention to…

Mashed potatoes with parsnips—Less exciting, but not unmanageable. My beef with potatoes and parsnips is similar to kohlrabi trying to act like a potato, except this really is a potato…with parsnips. It was hard to evaluate the parsnips because of the awesomeness of the potatoes, except the potatoes were ever so slightly less awesome than usual, and obviously parsnips were the culprit. However, it didn’t make me want to cut my arm off or anything, so if faced with another mashed parsnip Christmas situation, I would probably be able to handle my shit.

Beef stew with cabbage (and no onions)—Surprisingly delicious (the cabbage, I mean…obviously Melissa’s stew was going to be good).  I got text updates all day on the progress of the cabbage stew, which Melissa thinks she burned at the last minute, but since we’re  a bunch of amateurs and we were preoccupied by rooting out slimy cabbage bits, we totally didn’t notice (by “we” I mean “I”), and we ate it anyway, happily. Then we discovered, with lots of joy and exultation, that we like cabbage.

Terrible Vegetable Smorgasbord Sunday was like winter’s answer to summer’s fried food night. We accomplished a lot easily and deliciously with not a lot of effort. I still wasn’t done with artichokes (spinach artichoke dip seemed so good it felt like cheating, I needed to eat an artichoke) and I felt like I had one more cabbage demon to slay (cole slaw), but I went ahead and considered myself done with parsnips. Good enough.

battle 21–day 1–rhubarb

To help peel the project back off the ground, I pleaded with JVV’s facebook friends to give me exciting mix and match ideas, or—and this was what I was really going for—to cook any of these terrible vegetables for me in exciting ways. Emphasis on all the someone-else-doing-this-for-me parts.

I got some hits on that. I like this trend. A lot.

The first offer I received was from my new favorite friend, rhu-Barb. I’ve known Barb since she and BFF Lauren and I all worked together a number of years ago, but for some reason she didn’t catch the anti-veg itch when we started this back in the summer because she didn’t know I was me (penalty against Barb for this transgression). It was only in about mid-December, after Lauren—drunk with blog stardom from her third or fourth cameo—made everyone in her immediate vicinity read every post with her name in it that Barb put two and two together. So she went back to JVV’s auspicious beginnings and read about every fire, explosion and upended pizza until she knew about my vegetables better than I did. Then she e-mailed me:

Dear Julie,

You are the smartest, funniest, most hilariously awesome person I know, and I agree with you, you do have great hair, plus, vegetables are the single most terrible invention ever in the universe and I hate them, too, but I have managed to survive them, and I think you can, too, with this secret: cake. I would be obliged, honored even, to make a vegetable cake for you any time.

Your biggest fan,

Barb

I may have taken some liberties with that e-mail, but it definitely had the word cake in it. And she definitely offered to make it for me. And I definitely took her up on it.

Barb’s offer made my mouth water—rhubarb coffee cake and fresh-squeezed, homemade orange juice—and I was a little cranky with her for offering it during squash week when rhubarb week was still a month away. I wanted it to happen, like, that day. Then I realized, while I was being cranky in my head with my biggest fan for offering to make me a bunch of delicious homemade awesomeness, that my mouth was watering over a vegetable. A vegetable that had previously made me gag. Don’t I win something for that? Like a cookie?

Or cake.

Barb stuck to the rules and planned to bake rhubarb cake during rhubarb week.  Then she, Lauren and I gathered in Lauren’s office before work one morning and rhu-Barb unveiled her vegetable cake.

Friends.

Few things in life make me happier than cake. It does things to me that make me blush. Until now, the rules have dictated that my vegetables must be prepared in the form of a dinner-type main or at least a substantial side, but since we’ve struggled to get moving again and we’re considering all kinds of new rules in this new year, let us fold into our arsenal of ways to win vegetables—fried, with meat, or covered in cheese—a new weapon: bake it in a cake.

Rhubarb. Won. And, we’re back.

rhu-Barb’s Amazing Vegetable Cake

• 1/2 cup butter or margarine
• 1 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 cup buttermilk (use the full-on fat kind, seriously)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 3 cups sliced rhubarb
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda

TOPPING:

• 3/4 cup light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

–Before you start: Preheat oven. Grease pan.
–In medium bowl mix butter, sugar, egg, buttermilk, and vanilla.
–Stir in rhubarb, flour, and soda.
–Pour into greased 13 x 9″ pan.
–Combine brown sugar, walnuts, and cinnamon; sprinkle over batter.
–Bake in 350 oven for 45 minutes or until inserted toothpick comes out clean (course, if your toothpick hits a piece of rhubarb, it will not come out clean…take another stab).

NOTE: Approximately 9-10 stalks rhubarb needed. If you cannot find them at the market, Publix has frozen rhubarb. Its usually somewhere near the ice cream and/or frozen juice. One bag will work, but sometimes I go crazy and use a bag & ½. If using the frozen kind, let it thaw a bit in the fridge for a day or so (you don’t want to use it frozen, but just barely thawed), then drain off the liquid and chop it up a little smaller (like each chunk into 3-4 pieces) because the way it comes is too big.

Note from Julie: I love Barb’s recipe. Very instructive. Very helpful.

battle 20–artichokes

This time I don’t have any good excuses. I’ve got nothing. Really. Nothing.

OK, I’ve got one thing. A girlfriend said to me yesterday that she’s in a “post-holiday can’t-get-all-my-balls-back-up-in-the-air funk,” which described precisely what’s happening with me right now. I’ve got a lot of balls. And since grocery shopping and cooking are still not automatic for me, it’s been a pain in the ass to work them back into my routine. Balls.

Obviously I didn’t intend to start the new year with such a lackluster performance. I actually jumped right into artichokes on artichoke Sunday when I was at the Midway Pub watching my Steelers win one of their last games of the year. Midway serves artichokes fritters as an appetizer and I figured I could start the year off right with a big Steelers/artichoke combo win. The Steelers won, but it didn’t matter (if W.S. Melanie had started her football blog yet I might have a clearer understanding of why the Jets are still in the playoffs and the Packers and Steelers aren’t, but since it probably has a lot to do with math, which I hate almost as much as onions, it’s likely I would have skipped over all those numbers and still not know, sorry Mel…anyway, back to vegetables), and the artichoke fritters were boring. So boring they didn’t even warrant a full post. Super boring.

A few days later I gave artichokes another try with the artichoke cheese dip at Melton’s App and Tap (I frequent some fine eateries). Boring.

And there I was. New year. Shitty vegetable. Nothing to report (what was I going to say? I lost my first battle of the year? No way). So that was it, I came home day after day and didn’t cook, didn’t write, didn’t do shit.

Fortunately I have you friends to remind me so frequently what a slacker I am.

Finally I decided that since I let myself get so far behind that it would be fine to mix and match and combine and reorder and get crazy with January’s vegetables to catch up. New year. New rules.

Here’s what we’re up against in January (and honestly, why I’ve been reluctant to start the new year with typical New Year’s verve, I mean, come on, January): artichokes (those are technically left over from December, but I’m giving them one last chance), snow peas, rhubarb, rutabaga, cabbage and turnips.

Kill. Me. Now.

battle 19–day 2–butternut squash/christmas!

I took a few days off after my big onion-less soup victory (a few weeks’ distance from the soup experience has changed the narrative of its taste and smell and overall success from being boring to superb, in my mind) to get ready for Christmas. I had deliberately scheduled butternut squash for that week because it seemed like a pleasant winter vegetable and I would rather have something warm and friendly on my Christmas table than something disgusting that no one would eat, like turnips.  My sister, Bethany, who has been angling for another blog cameo since her last appearance was less flattering than she cared for, signed on to make Christmas squash so I could concentrate on everything else.  But unfortunately for Bethany, just because she cooks something yummy doesn’t mean her second appearance on the blog will be any more flattering than the first (even though she also has good hair, it kind of runs in the family).

In the days leading up to Christmas—which was at my house this year and was the first time since both my sister and I have been married that we would all be together on Christmas—I began to plan a menu and schedule what I should cook when so I could achieve the one thing I want to accomplish in this project: everything coming together at once. If I was able to do that on Christmas day it would be like my own little Christmas miracle.

I’d put together a pretty straightforward menu, but one that incorporated as many elements of the project as possible without straying too far from traditional Christmas goodness (I didn’t want my dad to go hungry, plus since he had so successfully scheduled Thanksgiving so that everything landed on the table all at once, hot and ready to eat, I would be relying on him pretty heavily to help me do that at my house, and I figured the least I could do as thanks was make a few things he wouldn’t mind eating).

Our Christmas menu for six (which was clearly enough to feed 112):

• Roast and gravy
• Orange maple glazed sweet potatoes (which I first made for pre-Thanksgiving at Melandy’s)
• Brown sugar Brussels sprouts
• Epic butternut squash casserole (so named by Bethany)
• Mashed potatoes
• Mixed green salad
• Grandmother Judy’s butter muffins
• Pumpkin crisp (this delight has found a permanent home my repertoire; I love it)

I got the sweet potato and Brussels sprouts recipes from the Fresh Market Holiday Handbook WS Melanie sent out months ago but I only got around to looking at the Wednesday before Christmas. I knew the sweet potatoes would be easy and the sprouts looked even easier, and because I had just about convinced myself that cooking only easy things would be the best way to achieve synchrony, they both went on the list. Everything else was pretty standard: roast, red meat, obviously; David is a mashed potato expert and for me no holiday is complete without them, so that was an obvious inclusion; the salad was just because it seemed like the right thing to do; my grandmother’s butter muffins are a holiday staple; pumpkin crisp instead of pie for dessert because I love it and I don’t love pie; and finally, last but not least, the butternut squash casserole my sister promised would be epic.

I had talked to my sister about a  dozen times earlier in the week and traded several text messages about plans and how much time she would need to make epic squash (many, many hours) and whether she would make it at my house or her house and whether there would be enough oven space and and and…. We also talked about how she and her husband should bring all their presents to our house so we could all open everything together and then have our big dinner and then all collapse on the couch in beautiful, stuffed misery and watch football. I said, hey, make sure to bring your dog so we can spend all day doing all the things we’ve always done on Christmas since time immemorial.  It was around this plan and these conversations that I built my schedule, my hard-and-fast, dinner-at-3, because-that’s-what-time-we-always-have-dinner schedule.

So you can imagine my surprise when late, late, late on Christmas Eve I got a little text message from her that said, hey, we’ll be there around 2.

This was when If You Fuck Up My Christmas I’ll Kill You Dead Julie told It’s All Good in the Spirit of Christmas Julie to take a hike, and replied:

Me: No, no, no. Party starts at 11.

This was me being generous, still tending slightly toward Christmas spirit; I really wanted them there at 8 a.m.

Her: Sorry, lunch with husband’s family.

And this was when searing venom began to shoot out my eyes, ears, nose, fingers, toes, ala fire-breathing dragon lady, but worse, because it was me.

Me: I don’t like this at all.

So she called me. Her husband lost his mother to breast cancer a number of years ago, so it’s especially important to them to spend holidays together with his father and sister and celebrate in the spirit of holiday togetherness.

Me, on the phone: OK, let me sulk about this for a minute. I’ll be fine.

We hung up. I sulked. And then I relented. Begrudgingly.

Me, back to texting: OK, we can wait to do presents and dinner. We’ll just make it supper. Do NOT open ANY presents before you get here. At least let me have that.

Me again: And don’t be late or I’ll poke your eyes out and won’t give you a good blog cameo.

She said something nice and sincere here.

Me: I’m serious about poking your eyes out.

The next day they arrived early and her epic squash casserole was heat-and-eat ready. I’m not saying I’m a bully, but sometimes the fear of god, or eye gouging, goes a long way. I’m just sayin. What?

Christmas dinner was a fantastic success. My dad worked out the schedule, I chopped up my fancy vegetables with the fancy knives my parents gave me for Christmas (someone reads the blog!), and then I delegated the shit out of everything else, which actually felt great. Having more hands on deck made achieving my ultimate dinner goal much more manageable, and at 6:05, my entire Christmas dinner—including four new-to-me-in-2009 vegetables—was on the dining room table, hot and delicious looking. Happy Christmas to me. We did it.

And Bethany was right. Her butternut squash casserole was epic. Won.

Bethany’s Epic Butternut Squash Casserole

Cut two large butternut squashes in half, lengthwise. Get all the goo and seeds out of the middle. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place them face down on a cookie sheet and roast at 350 for 1 hour.

Let cool.

Scoop all the mushy goodness away from the skin. Combine with two eggs, salt and pepper, a mountain of shredded cheese (I used sharp cheddar), and lots of bread crumbs. Mash it up really good. Spread in an appropriate sized baking dish. Throw a few pats of butter around the top (I did about 8). Then bake at 350 for 40 minutes.

Remove from oven.

Crumble Cheez-its over the top to form a nice crust. Bake for 5 more minutes.

And another thing: This is my friend Sarah’s blog documenting her treatment and personal commentary on breast cancer issues. It’s funny, enlightening and includes some great not-your-typical breast cancer resources: http://www.thetitoffensive.blogspot.com/

battle 19–day 1–butternut squash

I made my very first soup last night as my official fuck you to the first day of winter.

Truthfully, I’m actually starting to recover from my winter blues, which is ironic since winter hadn’t even started when I sank into my funk. But now I’m feeling less and less inclined to end every day on the sofa, sulking in front of the fire, and more in the mood to venture out for some hot yoga or a sweaty jog with fresh, crisp air piercing my lungs (that last part looks less appealing on paper than it did when I imagined it in my mind, so maybe just hot yoga then). See? I’m not always a grouch.

Part of this transformation, definitely, was finally finding some worthwhile winter vegetables and enjoying the stick-to-my-bones goodness I can make with them, like soup. I’ve always really appreciated the concept of soup for just that reason—it’s so warm and filling and mmmm—but I’ve never been able to embrace it fully because I can’t see everything that’s in it, i.e., vegetables, i.e., onions. The only soup I’ve ever met that didn’t include something I wouldn’t eat was Campbell’s chicken noodle, and so my whole life the only soup I ever ate was…Campbell’s chicken noodle. And gross.

I was pretty excited about butternut squash week because yellow squash week had been so successful that I figured butternut squash would probably go equally well. Plus, since the one thing I know everyone makes with butternut squash is soup, I was going to get make my first soup ever. Easy vegetable plus fun meal equals easy, fun win.

But goddamn onions. Why do onions always have to spoil all my fun? And why is every soup in the history of the world (including probably Campbell’s chicken noodle) made with onions? Why?

My easy win quickly turned into a lot of grunting and bitching and moaning and reconfiguring and reimagining. The first recipe I found, which was perfect for my level of culinary know-how, read like a nursery rhyme for toddlers: gimme some butter, gimme some onion, gimme some stock, gimme some squash; put em together and what’ve you got? Soup!  Pretty easy. Except for the onion. When I rejected that and reassessed, butter, stock and squash seemed a bit paltry for a soup that was supposed to kick my winter into high gear.

Next I turned to some of my favorite cookbooks—Christa’s Simply in Season and my Clean Food—and began combining recipes and making things up, still determined to make the best soup ever without onions. I’d done it with squash casserole, I’d kind of done it with kohlrabi fritters, and by god I was going to do it with butternut squash soup.

As I poked around the kitchen looking for things to put in my soup, I asked David his opinion on the onion.

“Do you think I can use garlic instead of onion?”

“No.”

“But I mean, since garlic and onion are in the same family, wouldn’t it have kind of similar effect if just I used a bunch of garlic instead of onion?”

“No.”

“But listen, don’t you think I could just…”

“How many different ways are you going to ask me this question?”

I glared at him. Then I went to the bottom of the stairs and yelled, “Christa!” I’ve mentioned already how much I like having Christa around, haven’t I? She came out and I asked again whether I could substitute garlic for onion. She said, without really answering the question but knowing there was no way I was going to be convinced to put onion in the soup, “Garlic is always good.” Done.

During prep, I cut up my squash and chatted with David and Christa in the kitchen. When I got to the stringy, seedy part I looked around for instructions on what to do next. Christa said, “You need to get in there with a spoon and dig it out, like with a pumpkin.”

“I’ve never done that with a pumpkin.”

“You’ve never carved a pumpkin before? OK, like with a melon.”

“I don’t eat melon.”

David said, “Like with a cantaloupe, Julie.”

“I don’t eat cantaloupe, and I’ve never done this before!”

We all stood there a little shocked with each other: them with me because I’ve never eaten melon and cantaloupe, me with them for not automatically assuming this about me.

After I finally figured out how to carve my squash (a skill I promise to transfer to melon and cantaloupe should I ever make that leap), I began to build my soup, which now consisted of butter, garlic, stock, squash and… apples. Yay! I don’t know why squash and apple sounded like such a brilliant combination to me, but I was really stoked about it and added…a lot. So I combined everything in a pretty pot, turned it down to simmer, and sat around and waited for it to get soupy and delicious.

After an indeterminate length of time (a little bit, a while, not very long), I checked on the consistency of the squash and apples. They seemed to be softening up, so I started to move them to the blender. This is where good recipe instructions separate themselves from great recipe instructions. One told me to remove the chunks with a slotted spoon and put them in the blender (but then didn’t really give many clues as to what happens after that). The other said to put the whole mixture in the blender, stock and all. At first I started with the slotted spoon because that seemed pretty specific.

Chunks in blender. Blender on. Remarkable lack of blending. Weird smoke smell.

I really wanted to avoid a repeat of Brussels sprouts night, so before I cranked the blender up to high, I asked David his opinion about the blender, hoping he would take one look at it and diagnose the problem immediately.  He didn’t. He just turned it on and tried again, as if I had not just done that exact thing 30 seconds ago. More smoke smell.

Then I abandoned the specific slotted spoon recipe and switched to the whole mixture recipe and dumped everything in the blender, stock and all, and turned the blender on. Blending happened. No smoke smell. Lesson learned.

And what I got for my efforts was a beautiful, creamy butternut squash soup! It was so pretty! My first soup! I scooped myself a bowl, took some pictures and slurped my first spoonful.

Eh.

I mean, it wasn’t terrible. It was fine actually, and I ate most of it, but I wasn’t sure if what was happening in my bowl was great, if it would be my go-to soup to warm my innards and soothe my soul this winter. What was it missing? What did it need more of, what did it need less of, what did it need? When Christa came back into the kitchen I said, “Please taste this and tell me if it tastes like butternut squash soup.”

“Of course it does, it’s butternut squash soup.”

Yes, it was. Thank you, Christa. I did it. I made my first soup. And right as I was about to close the chapter on my squash soup, won, a job well-done, she said,

“So what did you learn?”

Sigh. I may have had this very brief, fleeting thought that maybe I can sort of understand the concept of onions enhancing flavor, and maybe next time I make this soup, which will be around the time hell freezes over and pigs fly, I might try it with the onion. Maybe.

battles 17 & 18–day 1–carrots & kale

When I saw that carrots and kale were my next two battles after Brussels sprouts I had this reaction: this is kind of a stupid project, maybe no one will notice if I just quit.

Carrots, ugh.

Actually, I think of carrots as two different vegetables: raw carrots and cooked carrots. And I don’t really hate raw carrots. I sometimes snack on them at parties and think they are a totally fine vehicle for escorting ranch dressing to my mouth, and I have even been a relatively diligent raw carrot consumer ever since my mom put the fear of god in me that I would go blind if I didn’t eat them. But like cucumbers, I kind of think of raw carrots as a completely boring, totally nonessential vegetable. Except for that blindness bit. I have a physical reaction, however, at the mere thought of cooked carrots (like just now, writing it made the gag reflex in my throat do a little somersault and I’m pretty sure I threw up in my mouth a little bit). How can I have two totally separate feelings toward the same vegetable? Raw carrots? Fine. Cooked carrots? Vomit.

When I was setting up the project I really debated whether I should include carrots because I can stomach raw carrots, and if I like them one way, shouldn’t that technically excuse them from having to participate, because cooked carrots, eh, who needs em?  This was a real struggle with myself. I really had to talk me into the fact that conquering cooked carrots would be a valuable endeavor, too. The only reason I came to terms with adding cooked carrots to the list was because I really, really love pot roast and I don’t know a soul on earth who makes pot roast without them (well, other than me). So, on the list they went.

But then carrot week got here. And I almost quit the fucking project.

I sat around for a week and did nothing. I had a great recipe from WS Melanie, who checked in on me periodically to see how I was doing (with carrots, I mean, for Pete’s sake), but I did jack shit. The week did happen to coincide with me being sick and David and Christa being out of town, which I thought were completely reasonable reasons for not cooking, but in the end I was just so unmoved by carrots and so much more tempted by crackers and hummus that I never so much as opened my crisper and peeked at my carrots.

Of course, when the week ended I freaked out. Carrot week was over and now kale week was here. And because I was a goddamn baby about carrot week and avoided it altogether, the only thing left to do was to do them both at once. Carrots and kale. Stupid dumbshit project.

Obviously I immediately began to avoid this whole week, too. Monday I baked cookies and decorated our Christmas tree, which I thought was totally necessary and clearly not an avoidance strategy at all. Tuesday I was exhausted from all that non-avoidance and went to bed early. By Wednesday… either I was going to buck the fuck up or I was going to quit, so I spent the afternoon telling myself in my wimpiest, most unconvincing self-help voice: I win shit, I win shit, I win shit.

I went to the Decatur farmers’ market, bought some Russian red kale and some pretty little carrots, and then I headed home to psyche myself up for my big battle. I win shit. I win shit. But it was really cold. And I was tired again. And blah. And it was really touch and go there for a minute. For several long minutes. I win shit. I win shit. I trudged upstairs and sighed loudly, hoping someone would hear me and rescue me from this awful misery. Then I put my PJs on.

Is it just me, or are PJs totally transformative? I don’t know what it is about the cold of winter and the warmth of fuzzy, comfy PJs, but in the instant I change out of work clothes and into PJs I become like a whole new person. A whole new person who can win the shit out of carrots and kale.

I went downstairs and re-familiarized myself with my kitchen. My kitchen, my friend.  Since it has been a while since I’ve really gotten into dinner and project planning I didn’t have a big menu arranged for the night, I basically just had carrots and kale. I did have WS Melanie’s recipe for carrots, which was pretty basic, so I read that and got out all the ingredients I needed—honey, butter, balsamic vinegar—and started on the carrots while I tried to figure out what to do with the kale.

I thumbed through cookbooks and quickly remembered why planning and preparing is essential. Buying kale was an important first step toward creating a dish with kale, but if I wanted to make something with anything more than kale, like sweet potato, corn and kale chowder (which I absolutely did, doesn’t that sound amazing?), I would probably also need sweet potatoes and corn. And grapeseed oil, thyme, vegetable stock, rice milk and cashews. None of which I possessed, of course. I had kale and I had carrots.

While the carrots cooked (gaaaaggggg) I washed and chopped the kale and kept searching for an easy, minimal-other-ingredient recipe. Then I took the carrots out of the water, drained them and tossed them in the butter, honey and balsamic glaze I’d been heating on the stove. When they were done, I put them aside and eyed my kale, still unsure about its fate. Then I made the best snap decision of my life. OK, of this project. OK, I made the best decision of the night. I picked up the handful of chopped kale and I dropped it in the honey-balsamic glaze. For good measure I added a few pecans. I mean, why not? If I didn’t like it I could just try it again the next day (maybe with a little more preparation, maybe with sweet potatoes and corn for chowder), and if I did like it then I won some shit…big.

I win shit. I win shit. I win shit.

The carrots were definitely a coup because I’ve hated them so much for so long. I still don’t know if I’ll be able to do them in pot roast, but I’ll eat them with that super sweet honey glaze any time. Delicious. But the kale. Wow. I’m going to go in the kitchen completely, utterly unprepared and start making up stuff more often.

I’m just sayin. I win shit.

Worried Supporter Melanie’s Honey Carrots

• 16 oz baby carrots
• 4 tbl spoons butter (1/2 stick)
• 2.5 tbl spoons honey
• 1 tbl spoon lemon juice
• 1/16 teaspoon ground ginger

• Combine carrots and enough water to cover in a large saucepan. Cook over med-high heat until tender, about 5 minutes, drain well.
• Combine butter and honey in a large skillet. Cook over low heat, stirring continually, until well blended.
• Add lemon juice and ginger to butter mixture and mix well.
• Add the carrots to the skillet and stir to glaze. Cook, stirring occasionally, until heated through. Serve immediately.
• Variation. For a twist on this traditional side dish, substitute balsamic vinegar for the lemon juice. (I used balsamic instead of ginger and lemon juice.)

battle 15–day 4–sweet potato/thanksgiving part 3

My folks moved last year from their sleepy little golf community in east Tennessee to a sleepy little farm community in western P-A, and Thanksgiving was our first time visiting them in their new house. We were there for three days. We spent all day Thursday doing Thanksgiving. And all day Friday doing Black Friday (the thought of which would usually make me want to gouge my eyes out, but the population density of my folks’ area is sparse enough that Black Friday at the Westmoreland Mall was more like a Tuesday afternoon at Lenox: busy, but not soul destroying). By Saturday, we had pretty much exhausted everything there was to do in Greensburg, P-A.

While Mom, Dad and David sat around Saturday morning hemming and hawing over what we should do that day, I meandered about my parents’ oversized and underused kitchen, thinking about what kind of fancy cooking I could make happen in there before the weekend was over (my arrogance continues to blossom). It was still breakfast time and I was starving so I started opening drawers and cabinets looking for inspiration. Then I saw the mound of leftover sweet potato soufflé/casserole in the fridge and genius happened:  sweet potato pancakes. Gen-ius. And even though David usually has cereal and my mom usually has four cups of coffee for breakfast, I was pretty sure that as soon as I announced my grand plan everyone would come running to the kitchen to watch genius unfold, then the pure deliciousness I was dreaming up in my head would happen magically and translate seamlessly to our plates (completely trumping coffee and cereal), and then we would all live happily ever after.

“Hey you guys, I’m going to make sweet potato pancakes, want some?”

They looked at me like I had two heads. David said, “Eh, I already ate.” Mom said, “No, I don’t think so, sweetie.” My dad didn’t even feign interest; he just walked away. “No thanks.”

But I was pretty fucking sure I was on to something. Google agreed. We consulted on a few different variations of the many, many sweet potato pancake recipes out there, all of which start with sweet potatoes as the main ingredient, but since I was starting with soufflé/casserole as the main ingredient, I chose several recipes to work with so I could pick and choose the rest of the bits and parts until I thought it looked right. Very scientific. Fucking genius is what it was.

Following is one of the more basic sweet potato pancake recipes with my genius modifications:

• 1 1/4 cups mashed cooked sweet potatoes (I used about two cups of the soufflé/casserole.)
• 1 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
• 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt (I added the flour, baking powder and salt exactly as prescribed.)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg (I don’t really like nutmeg, so I didn’t use it.)
• 1/4 cup butter, melted (I figured the casserole/soufflé had enough butter, so I didn’t add any more.)
• 2 eggs, beaten (Same with the eggs.)
• 1 1/2 cups milk (Same with the milk, but then the batter was looking kind of gloppy, so I added a little milk here and there to moisten it up a bit.)

• Sift dry ingredients into a mixing bowl. Combine remaining ingredients; add to flour mixture, stirring just until dry ingredients are moistened. Drop by tablespoons onto hot greased griddle or skillet and fry, turning once, until browned on both sides.

The actual preparation of the batter was pretty standard and didn’t draw a lot of attention from my house full of naysayers, but once I dropped the first dollop of sweetness onto the skillet and the smell of yummy goodness began to fill the kitchen, those naysayers changed their tune. Sweet potato pancakes smell good. One by one my suddenly hungry family filed into the kitchen, “just to see.” Then my mom, who really is a trooper and quite likes trying new things, was the first to shed her hesitation and jumped right on my genius bandwagon. “Julie! Those look great! Let me get my camera!” Flash! Flash! Snap.

And they were fantastic. I’ll be the first to admit I had no idea how they would turn out. I had never in my life had a sweet potato pancake and only knew they existed because I’d seen them on a menu at a ‘frou-frou’ brunch place a few weeks before, but I would never dare order it, and I would have given my folks the same look they gave me if they said that’s what they were making for breakfast. But this is my project and I’m the judgy genius around here, so if I say it will be a masterpiece, it will be. And it was.

battle 15–day 3–sweet potato/thanksgiving part 2

One Thanksgiving down, one to go.

In normal people world, planning to cook my first major dish for family Thanksgiving might have caused some anxiety for someone who doesn’t know how to cook, since holidays are already fraught with tension and too many hens in the kitchen just adds to the angst. But I was pretty excited because A) um, my parents aren’t exactly food critics, and B) this was the first time my parents and I would be in the kitchen together—cooking together—since I started this project. I could finally make good on my threat to teach my mom how to cook.

I had decided early on, in like August, when my mom first asked me to start thinking about what I wanted to eat for Thanksgiving (yes, August, for real, and she asks me what I want for Christmas in June, so…I would say she contributes significantly to my obsessive love for the holidays) not to mess with our tried and true Thanksgiving formula, because even though we discuss the menu and possible alternatives ad nauseum as if it will make a difference, it doesn’t; we still have the same thing every year, and every year we have sweet potato soufflé. And since it was sweet potato week on the blog, this year sweet potato soufflé was all mine.

But I’m still me and I wanted to get as fancy as I could with the soufflé recipe without upsetting the apple cart too much. I could have used my mom’s recipe, but because this project is all about learning to cook new things in new and different ways, I owed it to my sweet potatoes to root out a great idea so we’d have something new and different on the table, but I also didn’t want to stray too far from our same-y same regularness, so my dad would eat it.

I thought about this all fall but didn’t really start my recipe search in earnest until the last minute. I’d had about 37 conversations with my mother about the menu and she was starting to get worried, because I hadn’t given her a grocery list (um, sweet potatoes) for my soufflé, because I hadn’t found a recipe yet. I wasn’t worried. I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to find a good sweet potato recipe the week before Thanksgiving. I was right. My friend Mark, who signed on early to be a researcher for this project (doesn’t that make it sound like we’re totally legit around here at Julie v. Veg?), offered his own personal recipe for sweet potato casserole. Here’s a thing: It didn’t occur to me until I started writing this that there might be a difference between a casserole and soufflé. It didn’t even occur to me when I was making it that what I was making was a casserole and what we usually make is a soufflé. For the record, no one else noticed either. So, that’s another thing. (I bet sweet potato soufflé really is just a casserole, but they call it soufflé because it’s alliterative. I respect that.)

Thanksgiving morning my dad was going over the schedule of what would be cooked when so that everything came together at once (he may not be a master chef, but he possesses the kitchen skill I envy most, so he’s OK in my book), and I saw my chance to get into and out of the kitchen before all the day’s madness happened. Despite this great opportunity to cook with my parents for the first time since my dad taught me how to make a grilled cheese when I was 12 (the one food item I cook well, and the one thing I could eat every day for the rest of my life and be perfectly happy, so technically, my dad did teach me everything I ever really need to know about cooking), I still prefer to be in the kitchen alone, so while everyone was waking up and getting dressed and before the real cooking started, I snuck into the kitchen and tried my damndest to make some sweet potatoes by myself.

Snap! Flash! Snap! (Well, it was really more like, Flash! “Wait a second, why isn’t this doing what I…Julie, hold still…what the?” Flash! Flash! “Dammit.”)

I had barely started mashing the potatoes (which I was doing with a mixer because my dad didn’t know what a potato masher looked like and swore they didn’t own one, a fact I believed since we always ate potatoes out of a box growing up, but later when I located a masher and showed it to him he said, ‘Well, huh, lookie there’…thanks, Dad) when my paparazzo mom came bounding around the corner with the digital camera I gave her last year for Christmas, swearing she has finally learned how to use it and if I would please just hold still….

So I paused to give her a few lessons in digital photography, which was totally by design, because then she became engrossed in exercising her newfound expertise (and was therefore less interested in asking why I was doing what I was doing every single step of the way). Most of the photos herein are hers. I think they’re quite good; don’t you?

Once I was done furtively combining all my ingredients and I had let my mom take a sufficient number of photos of the process, we examined the final product before putting it in the oven. It looked kind of…wet. Was it supposed to be this wet? It was really wet. At this point…I…asked my mom what she thought. Cringe. To be fair, I’d never made a sweet potato soufflé before and I really hadn’t ever eaten it either, so I had no idea how wet or congealed or mushy it was supposed to be, but I figured she’d been making it every Thanksgiving for 20 years, so she would obviously know way better than I would, despite my arrogance about being the best cook in the house, and sigh, what an, ugh, awesome opportunity for her to…help me. If I had known we were making a casserole and not a soufflé, I probably wouldn’t have panicked at this point and would have chalked up the wetness to the fact that this was just a totally different recipe, but I didn’t make all those connections, thus the panicking. Mom’s solution: cornstarch. She said it thickens without adding taste. I have to admit, that was kind of a cook-like thing to know.

It came out looking totally normal and it looked beautiful on the table with the rest of our regular, same-y same Thanksgiving feast, which was delicious and perfect and wonderful. And holy sweet sweet potato soufflé/casserole, it was like, dessert sweet. I liked it just fine, but more importantly, my dad loved it. Win.

Mark’s Fabulous Family Sweet Potato Casserole

• 6 cups mashed sweet potatoes (5 or 6 potatoes)

Bake them on an aluminum foil lined pan at 375 degrees for about an hour, then peel and mash.

• 2 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 1 cup milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Combine ingredients above and put in greased baking dish (13×9 pyrex oblong works well).

Topping

• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1/4 cup melted butter

Combine topping ingredients and pour over potato mixture.  Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Serve and enjoy!

battle 16–day 1–brussels sprouts

You probably know by now how far behind I am on posting updates to the blog and that I did not, in fact, take my week off to catch up (pfft, like that was going to happen, I used my week off to sit on the sofa in front of a cozy fire and catch up on my DVR). I counted last night and I owe you about five updates about my kitchen adventures. I will do it, I promise.

But first let’s talk about how I caught my kitchen on fire last night.

I suppose I really should go in order and tell you about the other five things I did recently with cauliflower and sweet potatoes (as well as a side project with Oreos), because it really sets up how much I’ve grown with this project. At one point over the holidays I said to my dad, “I. Don’t. Know. How. To. Cook.” But because I delivered that line not long after we’d eaten the best sweet potato soufflé in the history of the universe, prepared by me, along with some pretty fine turkey gravy, prepared by me, my dad said, “How much longer are you going to use that excuse?”

So really, I am kind of starting to get the hang of cooking. I understand more about the physics of heating food, and I kind of know which utensils are better for what, and I can even begin to put together menu items in my mind….with vegetables I’ve never had before but imagine might be kind of good…and think, that might be awesome, I should try it.

So that’s where my head was last night when I caught my kitchen on fire. Cooking? Piece of cake. I’ve totally got this.

But first-first, does anybody care that last night was the first night of Brussels sprouts week? Yes, you do. What I’ve learned about Brussels sprouts is people either love them or hate them, and I’ve been catching it from both sides ever since I started this project. It is the number one single most talked about vegetable because people have such intense, visceral feelings and experiences that define their love or hatred. I have to admit, the people who express serious love for Brussels sprouts surprise me, since it’s supposed to be the vegetable that represents all other vegetables as the worst in the history of vegetablehood and the reason children feed veggies to the family dog, but they are serious about it. People love Brussels sprouts. And the minute they come up in conversation they turn all mushy faced, like they’re talking about a lover, and say sexy things like, “Mmmm, toss them with a little bit of garlic and olive oil and…” and then they casually throw out a bunch of other words and foods I’ve never heard of or cooked with but sound decent and sexy enough, like prosciutto and pancetta. However, the folks who hate Brussels sprouts, the good Americans who grew up hating vegetables and hiding their peas in milk, my kindred spirits, hate Brussels sprouts. Their faces contort and they gag and spit, and I think, “How childish.”

Also, apparently it’s spelled and pronounced Brussels (with an –s–) sprouts. Like the city. Not brussel (lowercase, no –s–) sprouts, which is how I’ve imagined it and pronounced it all my life. I prefer my way, of course.

I didn’t have any trouble finding Brussels sprouts at the grocery store (which stands to reason since so many people love them). And once I got them home, I didn’t have too much trouble figuring out what to do with them. Melissa B. joined us for dinner and because she had some experience cooking Brussels sprouts, I relied on her expertise, Google and the Joy of Cooking to get the ball rolling. We tossed “them with a little bit of garlic and olive oil,” and let those babies cook themselves to deliciousness. This part of cooking has become so easy and painless it’s almost boring to report on.

Thank god I caught my kitchen on fire.

While the sprouts were on the stove doing whatever it is they were doing at low heat for 20 minutes (is this just plain ole “cooking”?), Melissa and I were deliberating over what else we should eat with our sprouts. I’d located some OK-looking chicken fingers in the freezer, and we thought maybe we needed one more thing.

“Mac-n-cheese?” I asked. We love mac-n-cheese. And really, who doesn’t? The last time Melissa and I had mac-n-cheese the only other item on our plates was cake (mmmmm cake), so anything slightly nutritious would be an improvement; pairing Brussels sprouts with mac-n-cheese would be like gourmet dining. But she had brought a yummy loaf of garlic bread, so we decided to save mac-n-cheese for cake and have fancy bread with fancy sprouts. After the chicken came out of the oven, I popped some buttered slices of garlic bread on the top rack, and cranked the oven up to broil.

Last night’s dinner was not one that came together all at once (if I ever learn how to do that, that will be the best skill I learn from this project). It came out in bits and pieces, slowly. The chicken happened first. Then the sprouts. Then the bread. Sort of.

Melissa and I nibbled on a few pieces of chicken while we waited for the sprouts and bread to be ready. Then we thought maybe the chicken needed some punch, so I dug out some ranch dressing and the. world’s. best. hot. sauce. ever. on. the whole. planet. oh. my. god. In September Meat Pusher Elwood gave me some of his homemade hot sauce, which I think at the time he did because I like to put hot sauce in a certain adult beverage I consume in mass quantities, but I’ve kept it in the fridge waiting for a special occasion to break it out because homemade hot sauce just seems too awesome to waste on my frat party-esque drinking binges. While frozen chicken strips may not seem that special to the casual observer, it was Brussels sprouts night and I did catch my kitchen on fire, so I would say last night was pretty fucking special. Thanks, Elwood.

We had more or less devoured the chicken (which actually turned out to be quite good) when I went back to the stove to examine the Brussels sprouts. They looked ready so I removed them from the stove and placed them all pretty like on a plate and started taking pictures with my phone (so sorry the photo quality is poor; I left my real camera at work). And then the fire alarm went off. I was like, what the what, Liz Lemon?! We all looked at each other, do you smell smoke? No, do you? No. I laughed and said, well, this is the first time I’ve set off the smoke alarm. That will be funny for the blog. Ha. Ha. The dogs went a little berserk for a minute and tried to root out the beeping, David opened the front door to let out the imaginary smoke, and I went back to my Brussels sprouts.

Then we really did smell smoke and Melissa and I at the same time realized what was happening and dove for the oven. “The bread!”

We opened the oven and there was the bread, on fire, with flames shooting out everywhere. Melissa immediately reacted by herding the dogs into the other room, and I immediately reacted by standing there and staring at the fire. David ran in and I looked at him and said, not really with any amount of excitement or worry, but more matter-of-factly, “I don’t know what to do.”

He looked at me like I was a fucking idiot. He grabbed a potholder, reached in, pulled out the flaming cookie sheet, dumped the fiery bread into the sink and turned the water on it. Crisis averted.

And then I heard “HOLY FUCK!!” And a bunch of other expletives too profane to include here on this family blog. Apparently the potholder David grabbed was actually a very convincing “decorative” potholder imitator, which melted to the hot cookie sheet and burned the ever lovin shit out of David’s hand. Oops.

So, I caught my kitchen on fire and maimed my husband. I suddenly felt the sharp rise in success I experienced in recent weeks was all for naught. And I would have been really depressed about this development, except for Christa. When Christa got home last night, she said, “You had a kitchen fire? You’re a real cook now.”

And the Brussels sprouts were great.