Making A Green Home

Sometimes I get scared over the state of the world—the food shortages, the climate change. The problems seem overwhelming, the solutions out of reach. When that happens I try to look at my part of the puzzle, what impact I have in the situation. I’m a little late for Earth Day, but I’ve been wanting to write about my efforts to be greener and more sustainable in my home. Because if we don’t care for the earth, where are we going to get our food?

Here's a little of what I've been up to.

For the past year or so I’ve become obsessed with the idea of landfill.

I realize that this is an odd thing to be obsessed with. Many people don’t think about where their garbage goes—for many years I was one of them. I recycle faithfully, and the rest of the trash gets trucked away every Wednesday morning and not given another thought. We pay people to whisk these things out of sight. That’s how the system works.

But then you look at the figures: the average American produces 4.6 pounds of solid waste each day. That means the city of Seattle generates over two million pounds of waste daily; San Francisco nearly three and a half million pounds; and New York adds nearly ninety million pounds (based roughly on 2006 census numbers). And that’s not including the suburbs. Where is all that junk going?

For that past year or two I’ve been taking stock of what products I use, what waste I generate, and considering what changes I could make. The good news is that the changes are pretty easy, some of them are even fun.

FOOD STORAGE CONTAINERS



I’ve recently switched my food storage from plastic to glass—to get away from using disposable containers and also to sidestep the worrisome things I’ve been reading about storing—and especially reheating—your food in plastic. Whether you believe the articles or not, I figure it’s just easier to avoid the issue. Glass is more durable and will last for years.

I grew up using the Luminarc jam jars, pictured above, for storage of halves of lemons and bits of leftover tomato sauce, and I really love them. The lids fit well and don’t lose their secure fit, even over time (my mom’s had hers for over twenty years) and they just look pretty in the fridge. These come in two sizes, short (show here) and tall (good for leftovers). For years I bought mine at Crate & Barrel, but you can often find them at health food stores. I also see them at thrift stores these days, for about $.69 each.



For storing larger leftovers I did some research and ultimately purchased a set of Pyrex containers (the round ones above are filled with frozen leftover Moroccan lamb stew). They’re glass with a plastic top and can be used for baking, freezing, and reheating in a microwave or oven. They are available in most hardware stores and large outlets such as Target. I’ve been really happy with these. The square and rectangle-sized containers means you can bake a casserole or roast vegetables in them and then just snap on a lid for easy storage. There’s no messing about with plastic wrap or tin foil—and nothing to throw away later.

SOAPS AND LOTIONS



Once I started looking at containers I realized how many of them we use. When I was a kid we washed our hands with bars of soap, but these days there’s a container of liquid soap in my bathroom. That’s another piece of plastic I don’t need. So I bought a cute soap dish and went back to bars of soap for hand washing, and I found a local soap company that uses minimal packaging.

Giving up my favorite bodywash was a bit harder—I will admit that. But again, it’s a plastic container I don’t need. Instead I found an organic bar soap that smells so divine it makes me want to wake up in the morning just so I can use it. A year later I’m now giving up that soap in favor of a local company. I figured I don’t need to have my soap shipped from New York when I can support a Seattle company that sells their products at my Sunday farmers’ market.

I’ve also switched to buying my lotion in bulk and using a glass dispenser in the bathroom. Many health food stores offer soaps and lotions in bulk (I get mine at Central Market in Seattle). The side benefit of this is that I now have pretty soap dishes and glass containers on my bathroom counter, which look a lot nicer than plastic.

Another eco-friendly bathroom thing I do is to use olive oil instead of shaving cream or foam. Now, before you think I’ve gone off my rocker I will say this was not my crazy idea. I read it in Real Simple magazine and it actually works great (with the added bonus of not having to moisturize your legs; it does make the bathtub a little slippery). When I think about all the aerosol cans of shaving cream that get tossed each year, I’m really happy with olive oil, which is a natural and renewable product. Please note that I do not use my favorite cold pressed Bariani olive oil for such things. I have a supermarket brand for that.

KITCHEN AND LAUNDRY SOAP



The hardest thing for me thus far was giving up my laundry detergent—I'm very picky about how my laundry smells. I once nearly fell in love with a guy because I loved the smell of his laundry detergent; every time I saw him I just wanted to cuddle. When he moved away he gave me his half-used bottle of detergent to remember him by.

My mother’s friend Liza has been on my case for several years about giving up my laundry detergent. She has done a lot of research, after falling sick and developing chemical sensitivities, and told me that most detergents have cancer-causing ingredients in them. I resisted for a few years but finally went out and bought a bottle of Seventh Generation laundry detergent. The following passage was printed on the back of the bottle:

“If every household in the U.S. replaced just one bottle of 100 oz. petroleum-based liquid laundry detergent with our 100 oz. vegetable-based product, we could save 460,000 barrels of oil, enough to heat and cool 27,000 U.S. homes for a year.”

That got me.

I used Seventh Generation for a while, then switched to Ecos (another vegetable-based product) because I prefer the scents they offer (Magnolia and Lily is my favorite). I do use Seventh Generation’s dish soap (Lemongrass and Clementine scent) and I love it. I was recently in a situation where I found myself washing dishes with a mainstream dish soap that was so heavily fragranced and bright green that it creeped me out a little. I don’t think I could ever go back.

I've switched my dishwashing machine soap—for the rare occasion that I actually use my dishwasher—from liquid to powder because the packaging is more biodegradable (a cardboard box vs. plastic bottle). I'm trying to make the jump to powdered laundry soap. I'm going to try this one, next time I run out.

INSULATED MUGS AND SHOPPING BAGS

Living in coffee-loving Seattle, I am a bit horrified to see the amount of paper cups the local population goes through each day. I’m not a coffee drinker myself, but I do love tea. A few years ago I made a New Year’s resolution that I wouldn’t use disposable cups any longer, but would invest in an insulated mug and use that instead. I can’t say that I’ve never used a paper cup since then, but about 98% of the time I have my mug with me (I do have to remember to wash it out when I get home).

When I moved to Seattle I bought a new bag, as I wanted to take my laptop to cafes to work there, and it has a nifty side pocket where my mug lives. It takes a slight amount of effort, but when I think of all the paper cups I’ve managed not to use—and thereby not to throw away—over the past six years, it makes me really happy.

Naturally, I also gave up bottled water long ago. Giving up bubbly water for special occasions took some effort. I sometimes think about getting a seltzer siphon.



A year after I resolved not to use paper cups I decided to get rid of paper and plastic bags as well and to bring my own reusable bags to the store. I remember when I lived in Austria almost everyone brought their own bag—or cute little basket—and if you didn’t you had to pay for the store bags. I keep some in my car, others on a hook near the front door. I’m rarely without at least a few reusable bags. I am sure many of you are the same.

Over the years I’ve had a series of canvas and cotton bags—always very functional, never very attractive. Then, a month or so ago, Molly and Brandon brought back cute shopping bags from Europe and I was lucky enough to get one as a gift. Brandon warned me that I’d get compliments on the bag and he’s right—every time I take it out someone says how much they like it. Why had I never thought of shopping bags as fashion accessories before?



Now I’m on the hunt for cute shopping bags. I adore this one, and this is pretty cute as well. I bought one of these as a gift for a friend and she liked it. And I recently found a brand called Oil Cloth Brand bags, which doesn’t seem to have a website but they hit the trifecta for me: a long shoulder strap (my preference and hard to find), waterproof material, and cute patterns. I found a few at City People’s Mercantile in Seattle, but I’m on the lookout for more stores that carry this brand.

SHOPPING IN BULK

I grew up shopping in health food stores, so buying my dried foods in the bulk section is second nature for me. It really does cut down on packaging—instead of getting my quinoa packaged in a both a box and a plastic liner, I scoop as much as I want into a plastic bag, write the appropriate code for the item, and have the clerk weigh it for me. Once I get home, all the grains and beans and flours go into glass containers (these are from Ikea).



I buy my spices in bulk as well. This allows me to buy as much or as little as I want. I also buy my tea in bulk. I know loose tea may not work for all people or all situations, but you get better tea when you buy it loose and the amount of packaging involved in tea bags makes me want to use them sparingly. I love my Bee House teapot, which was a gift from friends, and that tiny bag of my current favorite herbal—Safari Sunset by the Republic of Tea—will last me for a few weeks. It’s also a lot cheaper and produces a better product than buying a box of tea bags. I still do use tea bags on occasion ( I like a few herbals that are only available bagged), but I am trying to wean myself mostly off them.



For coffee drinkers looking to cut down on paper filter use, there are reusable coffee filters. I have one of these for camping trips and the feedback has been good, but I guess you have to weigh the fact that the paper filters decompose and the reusable filters don’t.

Another thing I’ve been trying to do with my bulk good shopping is to reuse the bags and twist ties. When I get home I simply dump my grains into their glass containers and put the bags and twist ties back into my shopping bag. Then, the next time I go shopping I have a ready supply. I cross out the item code from the first use and write in the new code and am able to get up to twelve uses out of them before I run out of space completely. You may think it’s silly to be concerned at this level—it’s a feakin’ twist tie—but I think small efforts, repeated over years, can make a difference.

COMPOSTING

I’ve also been composting, which takes most food waste and some paper (napkins, paper towels, etc) out of my garbage. This is a topic that really deserves a post of it’s own. I will say though, with composting, recycling, and the other efforts above, I’ve reduced my garbage output to one shopping bag of trash every other week. Seriously, I’ve been known to put out the garbage for collection only once a month (with composting there is no food waste in the garbage so it doesn’t smell). That makes me feel pretty good.

I’m certainly no perfect environmentalist—I don’t hang my laundry to dry, I'm not eager to give up my toothpaste for baking soda, and I wince when I think of all the metal Altoids containers I am contributing to landfill (note to Altoids company: please sell in bulk), but I am making an effort to look at my impact and reduce it.

I don’t write this to seem all preachy or holier than thou. I just wanted to share some of the ways I’m trying to channel my concern into productive measures that—I believe—are increasingly necessary for our population to to move forward. I’d love to hear about any greening efforts other people are making—feel free to leave ideas or reports in the comments.

The only way we’re going to get through this is together.

No Words

I was all ready to put up a post—really I was. It was one of my usuals: some sort of cooking quest, a couple of foibles along the way, a recipe at the end. Maybe it was even a little bit funny—one can hope, right?

I was all ready to do it, then I started reading the paper.

Food shortages are the news of the day—real, serious food shortages. There’s the drought in Australia that’s shutting down rice mills. The country of Japan has run out of butter. And then there’s Haiti. From an article in the New York Times:

"In Haiti, where three-quarters of the population earns less than $2 a day and one in five children is chronically malnourished, the one business booming amid all the gloom is the selling of patties made of mud, oil and sugar, typically consumed only by the most destitute.

“'It’s salty and it has butter and you don’t know you’re eating dirt,' said Olwich Louis Jeune, 24, who has taken to eating them more often in recent months. 'It makes your stomach quiet down'…

"Meanwhile, most of the poorest of the poor suffer silently, too weak for activism or too busy raising the next generation of hungry. In the sprawling slum of Haiti’s Cité Soleil, Placide Simone, 29, offered one of her five offspring to a stranger. 'Take one,' she said, cradling a listless baby and motioning toward four rail-thin toddlers, none of whom had eaten that day. 'You pick. Just feed them.'”

How can I write about silly kitchen escapades when people are eating dirt, trying to calm their aching bellies?

Throughout history there’s always been hunger, I realize that. I know that in the grand scheme of things I have been fortunate beyond belief, rarely having to think where my next meal might come from. But things feel tenuous to me these days—perhaps also to you. Call it the climate change, the oil crisis, the biofuel situation (don't get me started), but there are those who say it will impact us all soon, if it hasn't already. I don’t know about you, but it makes me want to dig up my teeny-tiny lawn and plant cabbages.

Right after I send all the rice I can find to Haiti.

At a time like this, I just don’t have it in my heart to tell you how dreamy French feta cheese is when you mix it with fresh herbs and heirloom tomatoes and how you really must give it a try. It all feels so superficial suddenly.

This is something I struggle with sometimes. When people learn that I keep a website and ask me what it’s about, I always feel awkward when I say it’s about food. It sounds superficial—and yet, at the same time, I know that food connects us powerfully. It is a vehicle for traditions and culture, a way for us to celebrate, to care for ourselves and each other. I know that where we get our food and how it’s grown is an important and vital issue—one that we have to reckon with in a serious way right now. And while I may not have suffered real hunger, I know it can fuel wars, overthrow political parties, change the landscape as we know it. Food is important, lack of food even more so.

I read something else recently, a short piece by Felicia Sullivan that reminded me again of the importance of food (and made me look forward to reading her new book). I’d recommend reading the whole beautiful thing, but here is a teaser:

"Now, standing in the grocery store, I stared at the rows of sugar, cinnamon sticks, and flour, and I remembered why I set out to bake in the first place: to make mistakes and learn from them, to realize that even with the best ingredients and precise measurements, the perfect cake might fail to materialize. I couldn’t control how the flour was milled, but I could revel in the process of making something from nothing. It’s the journey that’s miraculous, not the results."

This food thing, it has depth and breadth.

I’ll be back soon—writing about food and life, I’m sure. But these days I’m feeling a bit more sober about things. Feeling like I want to live close to the ground (I haven’t been planting cabbages, but there have been some kale seedlings, arugula, broccoli, leeks).

And—as if in answer to my concerns—this weekend in the New York Times Michael Pollan is telling us to plant a garden. Because food is important, never more so when there isn’t enough to fill the plate.

The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken

Once, not long ago, I dated a man who traced his lineage back to Italy. He was tall, dark, and handsome. We drank red wine under shooting star showers; he cooked romantic dinners for me; and one day he told me about how his family gathers together each Christmas, to make ravioli. It wasn't the large, warm Italian family of cliché—it sounded as if they had their fair share of struggles and conflicts, perhaps even more than most, but they all gathered at the end of each year and made ravioli.

I loved that.

This relationship wasn’t destined to last—our timing and needs were disastrously out of kilter. Once I realized this we had an amicable parting, still sending the occasional email hello even now. The only thing that truly saddens me about this story is that by breaking up in November I gave up any chance of being included in the annual Christmas ravioli making session.

I thought of this as I read Laura Schenone’s book The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken. Schenone is descended from Italians, like my friend, but her family no longer gathers around the table at Christmas to make ravioli. They used to, but the family tree had splintered and her branch lost the tradition along the way. It is this quest—a search for her family’s authentic ravioli recipe—that she chronicles in her book.

But a search for authenticity is a funny thing, at least where a recipe is concerned. Schenone reunites with distant family members as she tries to unravel the knots of family and immigration and get to the source, but time and distance change things. The recipe she is given—the authentic ravioli recipe handed down from her great-grandmother who came over from Genoa—calls for two packages of cream cheese, an item that surely was not available back in the day. What then, is authentic? In her quest, she ends up tracing the the ravioli deep to its historical roots, tracking recipes back into the 12th century.

This story, however, is more than a search for a mere recipe. What unfolds in the pages of this wonderful book is a search for meaning—for family and home and a sense of belonging; it is a search for authentic values in a modern world. As the pace of life and work get faster and faster, these are the roots that ground us, if we can find them. It’s a quest I easily identified with.

Her journey takes her back to Italy, to the steep mountains of Liguria that plunge down to the sea. She meets generous Italians who bring her into their kitchens, showing her how to roll out pasta on rolling pins as long as your arm. She finds a place that feels like home to her, and characters like the young woman, high in the mountains, who gave up any hope of city life to continue her family’s production of traditional roasted chestnut flour. I am most certainly not the only reader who wants to follow in her footsteps and take the same trip—if Laura Schenone ever starts leading culinary tours to Italy, I will be the first to sign up.

But this is not one of those move to Tuscany and live the beautiful life sorts of memoirs (thank goodness). Schenone admits how hard it is for her and her family to accommodate this quest—she sometimes doubts what she is doing, questions her motives, and wonders if she is being selfish. This makes the story feel so much more real—more palatable—than other books that often seem divorced from any sense of life responsibilities.

The great pleasure of this book, however, is the beautiful writing. Passages such as this:

This all takes place long ago, during the days when huger was real—the years when children ran without shoes in summer, and when the people came out of the mountains looking thin if the chestnuts bad been poor that season, and plump if they had been good. The chestnut and the people were practically one. And the mountain people not only ate the chestnuts but built walls and tables and floors from chestnut wood. They lived with chestnuts hanging over the fire to smoke in the fall.

Schenone has a knack of weaving place and people and food together in a way that is simply gorgeous. Here she compares her own upbringing to that of her Italian ancestors:

My life was not built amid the dramatic beauty of mountains cascading down to sea. I have no memory of chestnuts and their sweet starchy taste. But I was raised on another different kind of beauty—this intense green all around. Deep green above us on the midsummer trees, lighter green below us on the lawn, old earthy forest green in the yew bushes and overgrown hemlocks that wrap around our home. Green plus red. New Jersey’s big beefsteak tomatoes sliced on the place with salt and pepper, the sweet corn on the cob—and the pungent flavors of fresh bluefish, caught in the Atlantic along the Jersey shore by my uncle, and cooked on the gas grill on the porch by my father, wrapped in foil, the skin sticky and sweet, the dark meat full of ocean.

This book was so entrancing, so lovely and interesting, that for the week I was reading it I tried to get out of social obligations—tried to find reasons to come home early so I could lose myself again in the story and prose. This is exactly the sort of book I want to read—related to food, but connected to a larger context that speaks to our dreams, joys, and struggles as well.

It also made me want to make ravioli.

I’ve tried to make fresh pasta before, back when I lived in Japan. I didn’t have a pasta machine—I didn’t even have a rolling pin—but I did my best using an empty wine bottle and produced something that was probably the best fresh pasta available in my part of rural Japan, but that’s not saying much. It was thick, awkward, and slightly gummy. I tried one other time—inspired by Yvonne’s post on making Tajarin—and used a rolling pin, but it never got thin enough. They say that fresh pasta should be rolled so thin you can read a newspaper through the sheet of dough. I'm sure mine never came close to that.

But the other fantastic part of this book is an entire section—53 pages—of recipes in the back. There are photos as well, with step-by-step instructions. There’s even a section called “Questions I Frequently Asked Myself, and You May Ask Too.” There are many recipes—cheese ravioli, mushroom ravioli, chestnut gnocchi, and a complex but wonderful sounding Christmas ravioli recipe that takes two days to make.

It was around Christmas when I read this book, and I immediately decided to make ravioli for my family. My mother was in town for a few days, on her way back from the island, and I thought my nieces might like ravioli as well. Mostly I loved the idea of the whole family sitting down at the table together. It happens so rarely.

I chose to make the pansotti recipe. As Schenone explains, “Pansotti is a descendant of the ravioli magri—filled with herbs and cheese—for Lent or for lean times…generously filled, corners pinched together and pasta so delicate that the pansotti seemed to flutter on my fork.” Upon first tasting pansotti she says, “I believed I had found the food of my dreams.”

I shopped for the various herbs and greens that make up the filling. I even attempted making the Italian cheese prescinsêua—I say attempted, because apparently rennet is a hard thing to come by on short notice. I ended up substituting ricotta that I had made, smoothed with some crème fraiche. I then started on the dough.

Fresh pasta dough is actually quite fun to make—cracking eggs into a well in the middle of a mound of flour.



Slowly mixing flour in until you have a soupy lake.



Pulling the dough together.



Until it becomes something rough but kneadable.



And kneading it until it’s smooth and supple.



Then it rests, before you roll it out (I don’t remember doing this step in my prior attempts, perhaps that is why they never rolled out very well).

I borrowed a proper pasta roller for the occasion (the great benefit of having food-loving friends such as Molly and Brandon—thanks, guys!). Based on my track record, I had no confidence I would be able to roll the pasta thin enough using a rolling pin. It took a few tries to get the hang of it. Some of the early attempts ended up with shredded dough.



But soon I got the knack of it and was turning out sheets of fresh pasta. Sheets of fresh pasta! In the beginning it was useful to have an extra set of hands, to help feed the sheets in and guide them out of the machine—those sheets get rather long as they are pressed thinner and thinner by repeated passed through the machine on increasingly higher settings. If you have the KitchenAid pasta attachment, or a motor driven pasta roller, you won’t need this, but for the hand crank it’s helpful.



The machine was magic—such a difference from trying to roll it out with a rolling pin (or, ahem, a wine bottle). My pasta grew so thin that, while you might not have been able to read the newspaper through it, you could certainly see the text through the sheets of fresh pasta dough. Success was mine!



But not sooner has I triumphed in the pasta department than I hit a snag. As much as I tried to craft the pansotti, they weren’t coming together smoothly. I’ve never had pansotti and I wasn’t sure I was doing it properly. Mostly I feared that the edges of the little triangles wouldn’t seal well enough and they might split open while cooking and spew their filling. They looked a bit sad and lopsided and were taking quite a long time to hand cut and seal. I decided to shift gears.



I didn't have a ravioli rolling pin, so I placed spoonfuls of the filling (called ripieno, in Italian) on the sheets of pasta and used a small glass to cut the ravioli, this way the pressure would seal the edge and set my mind at ease as to exploding filling. And I cut, and I cut, and I cut. Making ravioli is a fairly time consuming process, particularly when you are hand cutting each one. It was at this point when I happened to flip to the front of Laura Schenone’s book and reread the second paragraph:

You’re not supposed to make Christmas ravioli alone, really. It’s too hard. It takes hours of work. Far better you should have people at your side, probably the women of your family—daughters, mothers, and sisters helping you, nagging you, and bumping into you in the kitchen. The men too—the husbands or fathers who periodically come in to peer over your shoulder and give (tolerated) supervision, or better yet, an extra hard to help press (gently, gently) the dough packets shuts, or lift them to a place where they will dry. All this, plus perhaps some gossip, will help the job go faster.

Yet there I was at home, alone, while the rest of my family was at my brother’s house, hanging out and playing and waiting for me to show up with the dinner I had offered to bring. Note to self: draft family members next year; also, don’t hand cut each ravioli, such would be the path to maddness.

A family's worth of ravioli is a lot of work. But they are oh, so cute. I mean, really. How can you resist?



In the end it took so much time that I rushed over to my brother's at the last possible minute, so we could get the little niecelets fed and into bed on time, calling him from the car to tell him to put a large pot of water on the stove. But the ravioli, with its stuffing of herbs and greens and fresh cheese was a showstopper. Everyone loved them— even my picky-eater niecelet had seconds. I floated out of the house that evening buoyed by my smashing pasta success.



(Actually, I tripped down the stairs while carrying the now-empty baking sheet and glass bowls. I managed to save the glassware but sprained my ankle in the process, a rather inelegant end to the evening.)

Since then I’ve made more ravioli. My favorite so far is a filling of kabocha squash, roasted or steamed and blended smooth with just the tiniest bit of salt and nutmeg. This is the dish that made me break up with butternut squash, when I discovered it’s not nearly as creamy and smooth as kabocha. I like it with a drizzle of olive oil, Maldon salt, and the tiniest bit of Parmesan cheese.



I like my ravioli stuffed as much as possible, so that there is just the barest whisper of pasta encasing the filling. Done this way, with a pure squash filling, you can almost convince yourself that this is a vegetable dish.



I also just like fresh, handmade pasta. The fresh pasta bought in the stores—the kind that comes packaged in plastic—can never compare to what you can make at home. My favorite is a wide cut rustic noodle.



Even when this pasta is then dried and stored—or frozen—it is still head and shoulders above most commercial products. This stuff is dreamy. If I could have one last meal, before departing this dear earth, I think it might have to be fresh pasta.



I’m not going to give you a recipe for ravioli today—there are plenty out there and it’s mostly a lot of technique. If I were you I’d take a look at Laura Schenone’s book, where there are pages of instructions and recipes. You can even watch her make fresh pasta online, in a segment she did for Chow.com.

What I am going to share with you is a recipe for salsa di noci, or walnut pesto. Laura Schenone includes a version of this pasta sauce in the book and it is amazing. I’ve futzed with it a wee bit (I know, so much for authenticity) and I have to say—this is seriously addictive stuff. The only drawback is that it's not the prettiest of sauces—but when something tastes this good it's silly to complain about looks.

If I could tell you anything it would be to go make this sauce. Summer and fresh pesto is still a long way off. This sauce will help you get there in style. Eat it on freshly made pasta, with a drizzle of excellent olive oil, and you might feel like you’ve reached some sort of Italian-sponsored moment of nirvana. I’m not kidding.



And while you’re at it, consider picking up a copy of The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed (I was going to offer to give away my copy to a reader, but it’s so good I’m keeping it). Laura Schenone is a gifted storyteller who weaves history and place and family and food together into something beautiful, beguiling, and delicious.

Buy the book at your local independent bookseller
Buy the book through Powell’s (great, Portland-based, independent bookstore)
Buy the book through Amazon

The Powell’s and Amazon links above are through their affiliate program, so this site will get a few cents of commission if you click directly. I realize many people buy their books online, but I’d be even happier if you sought out your local independent bookstore and supported them by buying there. The top link will help you find one near where you live.



SALSA DI NOCI/ WALNUT PESTO
Adapted from The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken, by Laura Schenone

2 cups walnuts or walnut pieces (good quality walnuts are a must here)
1 tsp salt
1 medium clove garlic
1/4 tsp fresh marjoram leaves
Laura says you can use fresh basil instead, but I like the marjoram version better
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (again, quality is important)
2 tsp olive oil
Hot pasta water, to thin to desired consistency

Soak the walnuts in boiling water for half an hour, to remove bitterness. Drain the walnuts and put them in the bowl of a food processor.

Slice open the garlic clove and remove the green germ (inner, sprouting portion).

Add the garlic, salt, marjoram, and olive oil and process until smooth and slightly creamy. Add the cheese and pulse to mix. I find that I like mine blended to the point of extreme smoothness. If you want a more rustic, chunkier mix, stop sooner.

When you are ready to serve, thin to desired consistency with a few spoonfuls of hot pasta water. I like a soft but still paste-like consistency (something like hummus).

You can keep the sauce in the fridge for about a week (I cover it with a thin film of olive oil) or freeze it for several months. Trust me, it won't last that long.

Serve with fresh pasta and swoon.



Walnut pesto isn’t an entirely new concept (Heidi did a version for Food & Wine; here's a sage walnut pesto; and a NYT recipe for walnut pesto crostini) but I had never made it before. If you're in the same boat, give it a try. I’m entirely addicted at this point, and even my 17-month-old niece will eat it out of the container. She knows a good thing when she tastes it.

Dos and Don'ts, with Potato Almond Soup

If I could tell you anything—if I could be the least bit bossy—I would tell you not to get sick the first really nice and sunny week that finally feels like spring.

And certainly, don’t start to get sick on Saturday morning, thereby ruining the entire weekend.

Don’t get so sick that you actually cannot sleep, your feverish and achy body tossing and turning in the night, too hot one moment, too cold the next.

Don’t get sick in a city where you don’t know too many people—where your brother says he will call to check in on you, but doesn’t for three days.

In three days time you might have died, perhaps he does not realize this.

When you finally stumble down to the kitchen late on day two, realize that your zeal for banning packaged food has left you nothing that can be easily heated and served, no quick comfort food.

(You’ve even gotten rid of the bottled soba sauce; now, in order to throw together your favorite sick cure soba noodles, you are going to have to make the stock from scratch—a process that involves dried seaweed and bonito flakes).

Go back to bed, you aren’t that hungry anyway.

Don’t think about your neighborhood in San Francisco with the shops and restaurants right around the corner where you can get Hot and Sour Soup or Tom Ka Gai delivered to your doorstep. The closest soup to you now is an eighteen-block walk, up a hill. Realize that there are drawbacks to all these lovely parks and everyone having a backyard—it means you are further away from Thai takeout!

Do buy the expensive, softer tissues. They won’t prevent your nose from turning into a scaly, red mess in the end, but it will be a kinder, gentler process. In times like these, you need what comfort you can get.

Do use Manuka honey in your tea—they say it has antibacterial qualities and this might be true, but the bigger truth is that it does a good job of coating your throat. At least until the next body-wracking cough attack.

Do be glad that you have a quart of frozen chicken stock in the freezer. If you can muster the energy to chop a carrot, a potato, and part of an onion, you'll have a simple soup.

(This is a big if.)

Understand that being sick in a house with no TV is not as much fun as being sick in a house that has TV. And that Joseph Campbell DVDs, as interesting as they may be, do not cut it when you’re feeling awful. Where are reruns of Sex and the City when you need them?

Realize that you haven’t been this sick in a long, long time. You’ll be grateful for this, just as soon as you can breathe through your nose (at least one nostril). Until then you’re pretty glum.

When you finally manage to leave the house, days later, notice all the flowers that have sprouted and begun to bloom since you were sick. It no longer feels like early spring anymore, it’s official.

And when you go to get your blood drawn (a whole six vials, thankyouverymuch), make sure to go to the lab with the nice lady, where the walls are covered with colorful postcards sent by patients; where she is so gentle you barely feel a thing; and where she says you can take home the magazine you were reading even though it’s the shiny new April issue just out. It’s a new city, and you’re still feeling crappy, and someone being so nice makes you want to cry. Appreciate it, and maybe think about sending her a postcard.

And when you get home, make this soup that’s been floating around in the back of your head—this potato soup with almonds and garlic, the description of which was so compelling that you haven’t been able to shake it. You’ll have to use chicken broth from a box, because you’ve already used what was in the freezer and you really can’t be fussed to make more from scratch right now. And you might want to skip the ham—because really, your tender tummy is in no shape for anything like that. You know this will mean a somewhat less flavorful soup, but since you can’t taste that much anyway it will be fine.

It will be better than fine, it will be delicious.

Then go back to sleep, you need your rest.

Anya von Bremzen's Potato Soup with Fried Almonds on The Wednesday Chef

Back soon—still trying to manage breathing out of both nostrils, but I have hope.

Spring Brunch (Otherwise Known as Easter)

I bought these tiny egg ornaments shortly after I returned from living in Japan, nearly ten years ago. They reminded me of Tasha Tudor drawings, of old-fashioned spring celebrations. I knew that someday I wanted to host Easter brunches and hang these small eggs from flowering branches in the middle of a table, a tribute to the new spring season. I bought them and tucked them away, wrapped in tissue paper in a white box with a gold seal on. They sat there for a long time, stowed in the back of a closet.

I should preface this by saying that my Easter isn’t a particularly religious sort of celebration. When you grow up with more than one religion in the house, you often end up with limited allegiance to any one path, empathy for all routes. The origins of Easter lie in pagan festivals celebrating the return of spring. I can tell you that, after a dark and dreary winter, I’m very happy to celebrate trees bursting into bloom, robins on the windowsill, daffodils the color of the sunshine I have been so sorely missing.

But mostly the joy of my Easter lies in family, in adorable niecelets in matching dresses (they picked their outfits themselves).



In time spent together, sharing a meal.

This Easter (which we held yesterday—because when you’re less attached to the structure of the holiday, it doesn’t really matter when it takes place), I made Whirligig Buns. This recipe, originally from Nigella Lawson, captured my attention when Luisa, The Wednesday Chef, posted it last fall. I've had the idea tucked in the back of my head ever since, just waiting for the right occasion. The photo alone was enough to make me want to try them.



Buttery dough rolled up around slivered almonds and chocolate chips—oh my. It’s not an every day sort of an indulgence, but it's awfully good. The girls helped sprinkle the almonds and chocolate chips and rolled up the “snake” before cutting it into slices (patting it and kissing it as well). And they definitely helped eating them.



I’ll run the risk of looking like a complete food blog geek and tell you that we also had Molly’s incredibly addictive Sliced Spring Salad, with endive, radishes, cilantro, avocado, and feta. This salad was on the menu last year as well and got rave reviews. And also, the endive comes in Easter-like pastel colors. What’s not to like?



We also had—and this just goes to show you how equal opportunistic (or entirely confused) our family traditions are—matzo brie, which is a Jewish egg and matzo cracker omelet of sorts. I’ve been eating this every spring since I can remember, around March I start to crave it. When I lived in Japan I missed it so much I approximated a version made with saltine crackers (the most goyish matzo brie ever). If you’ve never had it before, you should give it a try. Think of a frittata filled with softened, egg soaked crackers, the Jewish version of Tortilla Espanola (this recipe wins my heart for sheer opinionated goodness).

There were eggs to be hunted.



Chocolate to be eaten.



And the little niecelets helped me hang the tiny egg ornaments on bare spring branches. They’ll be flowering soon, to join the daffodils and hyacinth already in bloom.



And we played, and ate, and the girls spun around to make their dresses twirl out until everyone was tired and happy and we all felt like taking a nap.



Happy Spring, everyone. I hope that however you celebrate it—if you celebrate it—your day is filled with many moments of joy.

Coconut Bread, and a Mystery

Oh friends, I am having one of those weeks. Nothing truly dreadful, I suppose, just a week of too much work, not enough sleep, and half a bottle of Advil. Need I say more? Just today I was in a store that carried little tins of “headache balm” that you rub on your temples. Anyone know if that stuff works? I had images of hiring someone to massage my temples (and, ideally, feed me peeled grapes) while I reclined on a chaise lounge.

(Have I ever mentioned that I have an active imagination?)

But there will be no reclining around here—no peeled grapes either. Yesterday I found out that our family Easter brunch needs to happen on Saturday, rather than Sunday (which means I am going to cook and clean when?).

Again, nothing dreadful, just raaaather inconvenient; there goes any hope of a calm Friday.

I was planning on doing the book post I mentioned today, but that doesn’t look possible at this point. So instead of a recipe for you I have a mystery, perhaps you’ll be able to help me out with it (the book post will go up for Monday).

The mystery has to do with the best coconut bread I’ve ever tasted.



Okay, I'll admit this is the first and only coconut bread I had ever tasted. Have you ever had coconut bread? Ever heard of coconut bread? It was a first for me.

One day, a number of months ago, I was at a café here in Seattle called Cloud City when I heard someone call my name. It was my old neighbor—yes, she of the genius mojito delivery service—who, I am very sad to report, had to move at the end of the summer. She was in the coffee shop picking up some coconut bread for her daughter.

“Have you tried it?” she asked me. “It’s really good.”
I said that I hadn’t—I don’t often eat pastries—and we chatted about other things. When she left, after purchasing her bread, she came back to my table with a little bag. “This is for you,” she said.

Did I mention she’s my favorite neighbor ever?

The coconut bread is wonderful—it's like a tea cake or sweet bread. It’s moist but not sticky, with a pronounced flavor of coconut and shreds throughout (but not too many). There’s a light glaze on top and it’s studded with walnuts. If one could be in love with a sweet bread, I’d have to say that I am in love with this coconut bread. At the very least it's a serious and enduring crush.



My neighbor said she once asked at the café for the recipe but got the brush off. Never one to be discouraged, this week when I was in the neighborhood I popped in and asked—ever so sweetly—where the recipe came from. Was it from a cookbook, perhaps?

“Nah, the owner got it from someone she knows,” the guy behind the counter told me. “She had to trade some recipes for it and promise never, ever to give it to anyone else.”

“She has to take it to the grave with her?” I asked, partially joking but not really.

“Yeah, something like that.”

So there you have it—the coconut bread recipe I will never be able to wheedle.

There is only one thing to do of course, and that is to figure out a version of my own (ideally it would be even better, because I am competitive like that). I want to be able to bake the best coconut bread around, and I am going to give the recipe away to anyone who asks for it. I’m nice like that.

(And, well, my business doesn't depend on bogarting recipes.)

So, help. Where should I start? I’m not much of a sweet baker, so any suggestions are good suggestions. Do you have a coconut bread recipe to share? Do you have a lemon bread recipe that might make the leap (this bread is not as buttery as some tea loaves, a little drier than pound cake, and medium sweet).

Because, really, in the midst of a challenging week, I just want some coconut bread to go along with my Advil.

Please?