Snack Time

Tomorrow is the first day of school.

Wyatt’s backpack is stocked with a new homework folder, some new-ish pencils with only a few dog bites in them, new erasers, and a package of lined paper. His teachers requested these things in the email they sent way back in June. I vaguely remember opening this email and thinking I should remember to reread it in August. I didn’t. Good thing school knows that some of us are laggards and re-sent it last week.

Wyatt also has in his backpack an extra KF-94 mask, hanitizer, a band aid that’s “looks 1,000 years old” but is still sealed in its wrapper and therefore viable, and a tube of sunscreen. We removed his tooth brushing kit because even though his orthodontist wants him to brush his teeth after every meal, brushing his teeth after lunch at school during COVID seems unnecessarily risky to all other parts of his body.

Weighing the pros and cons of tiny decisions like whether it makes sense to brush teeth at school during COVID makes me tired. Have you read this piece? It sums up so well the experience of being a parent of an under-12 child these days. I now get hot and prickly at the mere mention of a future commitment because the past 18 months have taught me that planning, a pillar of my existence for decades, is at best just a starting point and at worst a farce.

Regardless of how the school year ultimately unfolds, Wyatt will need lunches and snacks. He has made clear that both categories of food should be delicious and fast to eat so that they don’t take up precious play yard time. I have made clear that one of his morning jobs is to pack his lunch and snack. He was totally on top of lunch packing by the end of last year, except that he ate his lunch at snack time because maybe there wasn’t a snack, which meant he was consistently hangry after school. But on discussing it this weekend, neither of us could even figure out what a “good” snack would be (see criteria above), so I started looking online for granola bar-type snacks that are seed based (so he can avoid bringing nuts to school). I baked one recipe which was not good, and then made up my own recipe after having read a few more I found. I’m sure this recipe of mine can be refined further, but I’m happy with how our little Seed Bites turned out, and you may be in the same “What? They need a snack, too?” boat as me, so I wanted to share now. Perfectionism is the enemy of progress, right?

Seed Bites

Dry Ingredients

1/2C Raw Pumpkin Seeds

1/2C Raw Sunflower Seeds

1C Large flaked coconut (unsweetened)

1/4C Untoasted Sesame Seeds

1/4C Chia Seeds

1/4C Hemp Seeds

1/4C Ground Golden Flax Seeds

1/2t Kosher salt (or 1/4t sea salt)

1/2t Ground Cardamom

(I also added about 2T ground dried Sea Palm seaweed. I ground the seaweed leaves in our spices-dedicated coffee grinder. It adds to the flavor in a super subtle, wonderful way, and it is very nutritious. But maybe seaweed isn’t your thing? If so, omit.)

*Note: Feel free to mix and match seeds—total volume of seeds is the key, I believe, so if you’re missing one or more, make up the volume with one that you do have. But don’t omit the ground flax seeds, because they help bind everything together. Also, if coconut is a nut that’s not welcome in your community, omit it. Maybe add some additional seeds or some kind of dried fruit.

Wet Ingredients

2T Coconut Sugar (or substitute some other sugar)

3T Coconut Oil (or substitute some other oil)

2 1/2T Sunflower Seed Butter

1/4C Pure Maple Syrup

• Preheat oven to 325.

• Combine all of the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl and stir so everything is mixed-up.

• Warm all of the wet ingredients in a small saucepan and whisk until smooth and pourable.

• Pour the wet ingredients over the mixed-up dry ingredients and fold the mixture over and over with a spatula until it is well combined. You can spread this mixture in an 8”x8” baking pan you have coated with baking spray, or you can do what I did and use a mini-muffin tin instead. The baking spray is key, so be sure to coat everything well. Pack each “muffin” tightly and fill about 3/4 full (mine, pictured below in the pan, were a little bit too full and overflowed a touch when baked). Bake about 20 minutes. You may need a little more or a little less time depending on your oven. You’re looking for a golden brown color overall, a little darker around the edges.

• When baked, remove from the oven and place the pan on a baking rack to cool for about an hour. I was worried mine would stick, so after about 20 minutes, I used a butter knife to slightly loosen each mini-muffin. After an hour, remove from pan and continue to let cool for another couple of hours. At that point, you can slice into bar shapes if you opted for the 8”x8” pan.

I put our mini-muffins in the freezer because I’m betting that the delightfully crispy exterior will become less crispy and more sticky if left on the counter or in the fridge. Because there’s so little water in these, Wyatt will just pull one (or more) from the freezer in the morning and it will be fully thawed by snack time.

New Hustle, a Book & Chiffonade

Well, maybe it isn’t new exactly. But “a revived hustle” sounds like it might be wheezing, and that’s definitely not true. I’m ghostwriting, this time for some really brilliant women who are leaders in their fields. I had forgotten what it was like not to couch everything in friendly examples of things people might want to do, read, cook, or whatever, because who wants to be bossed around by a blog post? The fact is that nobody wants to be bossed around by a blog post EXCEPT WHEN THEY DO. And now I am getting to help experts I admire flex their authority through written work while I take their direction. I love it so much.

And more good news:

Image Courtesy of One More Row Press

My pattern, Continuous, inspired by the work of Ruth Asawa, and an essay of mine about her, is in the new book, I Knit San Francisco. I’m so delighted with this project, and I hope that you’ll pick up a copy for yourself or for your friends who are knitters. If you prefer an e-book, you can get it through Ravelry.

Finally, I am wrangling with a question right now. I’ve been cooking a lot from recipes in books recently, and to date, I have never published on this blog any recipe from a book that wasn’t already published somewhere online, unless I had permission from the author (like I got from David Asher when we were making cheese). I am not sure if this is too ethical a position, or what. I know there are some bloggers who link to cookbooks and also provide the particular recipe, adapted or not. Sometimes, this “sharing” encourages people to actually buy the cookbook, and I think that’s a great thing. My concern, though, lies in what seem to be the downsides of this “sharing” practice, including my giving away on the Internet something that isn’t mine to give (even if I manage technically to comply with copyright law).

Tricky, right? Or maybe not. Regardless, I want to share a terrific Kale Salad with Roasted Persimmons and Citrus Miso Dressing that I made after eating a similar salad at Firefly Restaurant. I was inspired to try to replicate it because it was so delicious and I had never thought of roasting persimmons. We’ve also been eating a lot of the Kale Caesar and Collard Greens salad from in the Six Seasons Cookbook. What can I say—I’m into well-prepared hearty greens.

And when I say well-prepared hearty greens, I mean kale or collards that have been cut into a chiffonade. This cutting technique makes it so enjoyable to eat these kinds of salads, and any other technique just doesn’t give as good a result.

Kale Salad with Roasted Persimmons and Citrus Miso Dressing

Ingredients:

• 3 Fuyu persimmons

• 2 bunches of dino (lacinato) kale

• 2 tablespoons of miso (any kind, but I used a pretty light one)

• The zest and juice of a couple of lemons

• Several tablespoons of toasted sesame seeds

• Olive Oil

• Kosher salt

Instructions:

First, roast the persimmons. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Remove the top and center core area of the persimmons, then chop the fruit into pieces that are close to 1/2” cubes. A little smaller and slightly wedge-shaped is also fine. Toss the pieces with a glug of olive oil and a sprinkle of kosher salt. Spread them on a sheet pan and roast them until they are soft and start to brown, about 20 minutes. Stir them once or twice while you’re roasting them. Remove them from the oven and let them cool.

Take two bunches of dino (lacinato) kale, remove the ribs, and cut all the leaves into a chiffonade (as described in the link above), where each ribbon is only about 1/8” wide. (You can then chop the strips crosswise, into smaller pieces, if you prefer your salad in small pieces.) Put the cut leaves in a large salad bowl, and in a separate small bowl, mix up a dressing that’s based on this really simple 2-ingredient one. Measure your miso, zest the citrus you plan to use, add the zest to the miso, and then add the juice to the mixture. Add 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil and mix well. Taste and adjust flavors as needed. Add the cooled, roasted persimmon pieces to the kale. Pour the dressing over the kale and roasted persimmons, toss well, and sprinkle with a lot of toasted sesame seeds (I used about 3 tablespoons, but see what works for you). Toss again and serve!

Springing into March

This spring has brought inches and inches of rain (or many feet of snow if you are in the mountains; we are not). And with rain, comes fungus! Normally, fungus is not a thing I celebrate. The word is sort of revolting (decay and toenails) as is the word “spore” (especially when you say “spore” with a Northeastern American accent). But a marvelous event called the “Fungus Fair” has begun to to shift my thinking.

Fungus Fairs are a place where fungus fans can get together and share information about . . . fungus. I am told that sometimes, fungus fairs (and fans) can be pretty boring. Like when the only people who show up to the fair are a “bunch of old guys comparing who has the bigger mushroom.” But with some thought, planning, study, face painting, and snacks, you get what we (as regular volunteers) were lucky enough to attend.

With his teachers’ consent, I sprung Wyatt out of school a little early for the first Presidio Fungus Fair. We knew where we were going, but honestly, once we were within a block of the event, we could have just followed the aroma of sauteed mushrooms to find our way. Several interns at the Presidio Trust had been studying fungus, and they were ready to share everything they knew. We learned about fungus life cycles, deliquescence, the best (only?) mushroom to bake into cookies (candy cap), and the wide varieties of fungi that are currently growing in our area. We even made spore prints and got our faces painted! Check out this poster—the person attached to the pointing finger found and photographed every single one of these specimens in Marin during the period of one week!

Springtime brings new growth, but it also means Spring Cleaning, which so far has been way less fun than the fungus fair. It might get more fun? I don’t know. If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you know that we clear things out annually, usually coinciding with Lent. This year we started on March 1 because that felt like a better day than March 6, and because I’m looking to wrap this mess up within the month. It feels strange to be on-trend with clearing out this year (thanks to Marie Kondo’s Netflix series). But it’s also so comforting and nice because now there are so many other people who are also in the midst of this miserable process! For example, our house painter said yesterday when he saw all the bags we had filled, “Spring cleaning! Yep. I watched the first episode of that show, you know, the one with the toddlers and the parents who are always drinking Starbucks? And it really has made me start to question why I keep some of the stuff I keep. Also? My wife asked me if I am planning to hold her to see if she sparks joy . . . .” I love that it’s suddenly normal that my friend texted me a photos of her organized and labeled shoe bins and the inside of a neatly sorted drawer. Basically, I am into the idea that there are a bunch of us digging out of our stuff—physically and mentally—at the same time.

In addition to this community cleaning phenomenon, though, I really like having a model for a system of “Tidying Up.” Forget what I said in earlier blog posts; I have been clearing out mostly wrong. It is so much more effective to make that “mountain” of all your clothes on your bed, like Marie Kondo says, and then decide piece by piece what you’re keeping based on what gives you a little spark of joy. It’s also a way bigger pain in the ass to do it this way, but doing things right is rarely ever easier.

But because I cannot do everything the hard way, I have parted ways with individual little pancakes for awhile. We have become big fans of the Dutch Baby. Such a weird name, but anyway. There are lots of versions of recipes online, including savory ones, but we’ve just been using the one from the Joy of Cooking, which someone has already blogged about here. Technically, this recipe is the “Double Dutch Baby,” so you might want to half it depending on how many people you’re feeding. We cook the double and save the leftovers for reheating, though, so maybe that will work for you. We’ve been substituting Miyoko’s butter, a gluten-free flour blend, coconut sugar, and cashew milk to make a gluten-free, dairy-free, and refined sugar-free version. My point in mentioning all these substitutions is to say that the recipe is incredibly forgiving, so use what works for your dietary needs and it will probably be better than fine. Topping the Dutch Baby is super easy if you’re into jam or marmalade and only slightly harder if you’re not. Last weekend, I thawed a bag of frozen strawberries, added a dash of vanilla extract, a tablespoon of coconut sugar, and freshly ground black pepper to make a truly delightful quick sauce for it. Other weekends, I’ve sectioned grapefruit to put on top. The recipe is super versatile, super easy, and Wyatt is almost cooking it by himself now.

Capable

Do you know the book by George Saunders, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip? The story is terrific, especially if you’re an adult or child who doesn’t mind imaginary things that are a little dark and awfully wonderful. The heroine is named Capable, and lately I’ve been wondering if she was about seven-and-a-half in that story. After all, seven and a half is many things, and sometimes, like I experienced yesterday, it’s just incredible capable.

Yesterday evening, after I brought Wyatt home from his sewing club, he went by our neighbor’s house to drop off a piece of cake, a holiday card, and a holiday gift bag of caramel corn. Then, he assembled our dinner (our version of spring rolls). He remarked I could just make the sauce which shouldn’t take that long, and then I could relax. I happily offered to set the table, too.

Eventually, we sat down to dinner, and about half-way through , Wyatt found he had a lot to say.

Mom. So we’re reading this book and learning about Jane Goodall. She spent TWO WHOLE YEARS watching chimpanzees! And she always wore the same kind of clothes. Tan shorts and a tan t-shirt, to blend in. And she got cut and she didn’t care. And she got scrapes and she didn’t care. She went to this one spot because she was there to dig for fossils, and she was like, ‘I’m going to dig for fossils and watch chimpanzees,’ and then I guess maybe she stopped paying attention to the fossils? I don’t know. But she was the first person to NOTICE that chimpanzees use TOOLS, like a blade of grass to pick out termites and eat them. All these other scientists had gone and looked and been like, ‘Those are chimpanzees doing regular chimpanzee things,’ but they didn’t stay to watch for TWO YEARS like she did, so they never saw them using tools.

Also? She’s still alive. I know you were wondering about that. And we saw two National Geographic videos of her. She’s old, with white hair and wrinkly skin, she always wears a ponytail, but she doesn’t move like an old person AT ALL. She said one time a Japanese woman came running to her with tears streaming down her face saying how much her work inspired her to go observe polar bears, WHICH SHE DID, she WENT and watched polar bears, and it became her work! Someone asked Jane Goodall what advice she’d give to kids, and she said that her mother always told her—haha, she’s British, right? So she says ‘motor car,’ and they didn’t have enough money for one, so they were really poor—her mother always told her if she wanted something she had to work hard for it. She had to read, and do the math, and do all the other things and work hard. She wasn’t even a trained scientist but she did all this work with chimpanzees! Also? When she came back home? SOME STUPID men [with a dismissive hand wave plus eye roll] didn’t believe she saw what she said she did. So she had to come back with some souvenirs to prove it to them. And then those STUPID MEN finally believed her.

She was eight during World War II. Her family knew war was coming so they moved to the countryside, but they still worried about being bombed. That would be so hard, spending all that energy every day worrying you’d be bombed at any time. How do you even LIVE like that? How old is she now? [I checked Wikipedia, and told him 84.] 84? So if she was 8 during World War II, that tells me World War II was . . . 84 minus 10, then add 2 . . . 75, 76 years ago. That was NOT very long ago. Not very long ago at all.

There’s some “progressive education” for you. Feminism, reslience, history, math, empathy, science, scientific methods, patience, and storytelling, to name some of the big concepts that jumped out at me from this glimpse into school on Monday.

I told Wyatt we learned about Jane Goodall when I was in school, too, and I agreed she did some great work. I added that now, scientists go out of their way not to interact with the animals the way Goodall did, because science has taught us we should give the animals their space. He looked at me as if I had mortally wounded his mother, and said, “She wasn’t HURTING them, and she wasn’t feeding them, like CEREAL or something. She was feeding them TERMITES. And the chimpanzees put their arms around HER. She wasn’t chasing them or something.” You know, like, pigeons and squirrels, I guess. I agreed, and I added that one of the best parts of science is that we’re always learning and then we can do even better at things. He changed the subject.

“Mom. I would really like to meet Jane Goodall.”

“I know, right? She’s pretty amazing. What would you want to ask her?”

“I don’t know. Maybe what it felt like to be there with the chimpanzees for TWO YEARS? Really, I’d just like to meet her.”

Just in case one of the important ingredients to having such a fabulous dinner conversation was the food, I’ll share the recipe with you.

The rolls Wyatt assembled were inspired by the recipes on the back of Happy Pho brown rice wrappers. We like the larger size wrappers because we can fit more in them. We used tofu (that I had pan fried, sprinkled with salt and sliced into strips), rice noodles (boil for about 2 minutes then drain and cool under running water), shredded cabbage, chopped mint, chives, and slivered cucumber. The dipping sauce is 1/4 cup each of water, rice vinegar, and soy sauce, 1/2 cup of nut (or sunflower) butter, a garlic clove, and 1/2 tablespoon of fresh ginger. Blitz all the ingredients in a blender until smooth.

Better and Better

Have you heard? I just published a new pattern. It's called the Do Better Beanie. I've been writing all the social media blurbs for it in a super positive light, because, you know, POSITIVITY. And the messages are totally positive, and I do truly mean them that way.

But I've already started joking with friends who are peeved about, say, being ignored, "It sounds like you might need to borrow Listen Up!" Or say, hypothetically, there's a huge school fundraiser this weekend and parents aren't signing up for shifts (even though they know that have to), thinking they can duck responsibility without being noticed. Wouldn't it be nice to slap them with a Show Up hat? Or maybe you know someone who could use their power and influence to make things better for others, but doesn't. Speak Up for that one! Unfortunately, it's way more practical for me to passive aggressively make a totally insincere offer to lend any of these people the appropriate hat than to actually knit them. Scaling craftivism is tricky, obviously.

You can find the link to the Do Better Beanie here on this site under Designs, or just click directly to my Ravelry shop.

How was your Thanksgiving? Ours was great but weird. Marc came down with a beast of a cold on Thursday morning, so Wyatt and I made our second annual Thanksgiving trip to Sebastopol without him. Not only did Wyatt and I miss having Marc there, so many of my relatives were so disappointed not to see him. They had saved up all these great things to tell him since they last talked a year ago! I think that if you have to skip Thanksgiving, the next best thing is to be genuinely and specifically missed.

Here is a Thanksgiving photo along with photos of  some new-to-us junk sculptures by Patrick Amiot.

Finally, if you're looking for a great recipe for brussels sprouts, check this one out. We made it this weekend. It tastes way better and is much less fussy than the one I have tried from Cook's Illustrated where each sprout half must be placed individually and none of them get much color. Whether you use Minimalist Baker's recipe for dipping sauce or your own, don't skip it unless you want to make Wyatt sad.

Little Chicken

"Mom. I showed Jim the yellow chicken I knitted and you know what he said? He said he'd give me five dollars for it. Can you even BELIEVE that? He only offered me five dollars. Why did he do that? I worked on it for SO MANY WEEKS. I wouldn't sell it to him for less than...NINETY dollars."

Ah, the value of craft. It warms my knitter's heart that Wyatt fully grasps that crafts take time and energy, and that makers should be compensated well for their work. We will discuss market forces another time. Meanwhile, our neighbor, Jim, will have to hunt for a bargain chicken elsewhere.

This little yellow chicken was Wyatt's first knitting project at school. I (obviously) wasn't there to document the process, but this knitting project is even easier than the bunny. The steps are: (1) knit a square with yellow yarn, (2) sew the square on two sides to make a triangle., but leave a little space for stuffing, (3) stuff the chicken, (4) close the stuffing hole (5) get brown yarn and make one stitch for each eye, (6) get orange yarn and do three stitches for the beak.

Looking at crafts from a time, materials, and skills perspective with a child who understands how long it takes to make things means we start from the idea that handmade things should actually be expensive and possibly out of our price range. It means that when we see amazing things, like this wooden village with a candle-powered propeller that costs a small fortune, our conversation goes something like, "Wow! This village is amazing. Look at all the careful work that they did and all the details. We can't spend that much money, but it is really beautiful."

Crafts, cost and value reminds me of the trivets from last year. We're not working on anything nearly as complicated or time-consuming this year. I don't actually have a plan for homemade gifts yet, but every week that goes by means whatever we do will be that much more simple. We can always make some more paper lanterns.

Speaking of lanterns, over the weekend, we went to the German International School's Lantern Walk. It was lovely! While we were there, Wyatt made a lantern out of half of a plastic container that had holes punched in the side to attach a mini LED on a pipe cleaner and a beaded pipe cleaner handle. Some Elmer's glue, tissue paper, ribbon, and stickers made a beautiful, sturdy, and portable lantern.

I don't have a new recipe to share this week, but we recently tried two new (to us) products! The first is a gluten-free gochu jang from Sinto Gourmet. I've been looking for a gluten-free gochu jang for over a year, and this one is amazing. I found it in the refrigerated section of Whole Foods.

The second thing we tried was Beyond Meat burgers. Two out of the three of us thought they were amazing. I, however, was not a fan. I thought the burgers smelled weird out of the package, cooking did not improve the smell, and I could only eat half of mine.  Neither Marc nor Wyatt noticed the smell and said they'd eat them all the time. The ingredient list, however, is pretty long and sciencey-processed-sounding, so "sometimes" might be a better call than "all the time."

I prepared the burgers according the the package instructions (down to using a thermometer to confirm they reached at least 165 degrees before I served them). We also really did them up fancy with condiments and toppings.

It's Halloween: Save the Chubby Unicorns

Happy Halloween! As usual, this year's costume has been underway since the summer. But I only had to make the hat this year. Well, the hat and the oxpecker we attached to the hat. Somehow, the elephant suit I made Wyatt two years ago still fits. This fact is astounding--the pajamas that fit him perfectly six months ago are now, well, very much 3/4 length. The elephant-rhino suit is a Halloween miracle, obviously. And because O-Wool is awesome, it was easy for me to get more matching yarn for the hat.

If you follow me on Instagram here, you will have seen my attempt at a slow reveal of the costume.

And today? It's time to show you the whole costume.

The hat is from this book. And the oxpecker (with which we obviously took artistic liberty) is from this book. The poses are all Wyatt.

I wish you the most magnificent Halloween.

And in case you're looking for some fun cooking inspiration after today (dinner is always a disaster at our house on Halloween, and it makes me feel better to think that the same is true at yours), Gluten Free Girl is doing 100 Days of Making Food. Find her recipes every day on Instagram and Facebook. We made the marvelous dairy-free vegetable gratin over the weekend. It didn't hurt that I got an impressive mortar and pestle for my birthday, and who knew, but we already had someone living with us who loves to grind spices! Our gratin included some sweet potatoes and a celery root, in addition to the vegetables GFG suggested And sure enough, the leftovers were terrific in fritters. Here's GFG's recipe, lifted from her Instagram:

I made a gratin, based loosely on one from @reneeerickson's cookbook. It has an unexpected depth, thanks to the time I spent steeping the coconut milk with a couple of pinches of garam masala. Danny took a bite, looked at me, and stared. "Honey, this is really good." A few more bites, and he said, "We are making this for Thanksgiving." I agree.
5 large russet potatoes, peeled, cut lengthwise, then chopped into quarters
5 large carrots, peeled and cut into 4 pieces
1 13.5 ounce can full-fat coconut millk
1/2 teaspoon garam masala (Kelly's Note: I mostly followed this recipe, but added bay leaves and black cardamom, and omitted coriander because coriander is my kryptonite.)
1 bunch green kale, leaves off the stems, chopped
Heat the oven to 400°. Set a large pot of cold water onto a burner. Add enough kosher salt to make the water taste like the ocean. Add the potatoes and carrots. Turn the burner onto high heat. Let the water come to a boil. Allow the vegetables to cook until a knife slides through the potatoes easily, about 20 minutes. Drain the potatoes and carrots immediately.
As the potatoes and carrots are cooking, put the coconut milk into a small skillet set on low heat. Add the garama masala. Let the coconut milk simmer, in slow surges, and stir it occasionally.
Mash the potatoes and carrots. You're not going for a puree here, but a rough mash, with lumps of each vegetable visible. Add the chopped kale and fold it into the potatoes and carrots. Pile it all into a 9x13 pan.
Drizzle the seasoned coconut milk over the gratin and gently tuck it into the vegetables.
Bake until everything is fully hot and the top is beginning to brown, about 30 minutes.
Feeds 8.
Feel like playing? If you can eat dairy, you can butter the pan before putting in the gratin. You could also cover the top of the gratin with a hard cheese like Parmesan or Gruyere.

If you have leftovers the next morning, stir them up with an egg and a handful of gluten-free breadcrumbs. Make golf-ball size pieces, squash them into cakes, and fry them up.
#100daysofmakingfood

Below are my photos. As if I had to tell you that. So much less impressive than GFG's.

Pickled Peaches

Sound weird? They aren't. They're spicy, sweet, and tangy. Pickled peaches are delicious. Honestly. Jam is great, but this pickled fruit thing is really intriguing me.

We made some pickled peaches recently, thanks to Food In Jars' recipe for Gingery Pickled Peaches. (It occurs to me that if you hate ginger, you could substitute another flavor.)

We followed the recipe exactly. Perhaps we followed it too exactly, though, because the peach skins were nowhere close to ready to come off after the allotted time. I recommend that if you try this, you don't cool the hot water until you test-peel a peach slice and it works.

We had left-over pickling liquid. It was so good that I put it in a pot, added some more sugar, and boiled it until it became a thick syrup. It was delicious drizzled on yogurt.

Cherry Jam

Happy Fourth of July!

While I don't have anything to share related to white or blue, I do have something red for you. Cherry jam! (Which reminds me. If you ever pit cherries for jam or anything else, definitely wear something really dark or a full coverage apron.)

The thing about our successful marmalade making experience is that now, when we see lots of seasonal fruit, we think "JAM!"

And so it was with the cherries at the market the other week. But because we know our limits with a paring knife, we held off buying the cherries just long enough to acquire a cherry pitter. Once we had that, we were ready to go. We bought five bags of cherries (each bag was just shy of a pound, I think, but I didn't weigh them).

Wyatt was initially super excited to start pitting. "So, what, I'll have to pit like 100 cherries?" he asked. "Something like that," I responded. Pitting five bags of cherries is a big job. Wyatt did about half the cherries, and I helped when his hands got tired. We also played cherry jam factory, taking turns being the person who pulls off the stems for the person working the pitter. Another trick that helped us get it done was that we spread the pitting out over two days. I stored the pitted cherries in a covered container in the refrigerator until we were ready to start cooking them.

As usual, I did not attempt jam making without the assistance of Marisa McClellan (of Food in Jars). I used this recipe, but because I could only find sweet cherries, (where are sour cherries sold in San Francisco?) that's what we used. And while doubling jam recipes can often end in disappointment, I decided to risk it and do 1.5 times the recipe because that's the amount of cherries we had.

The jam turned out beautifully. And Wyatt is now very good at judging just how much jam will fit in the jar.

I'm also continuing to read, learn, and cook from Salt Fat Acid Heat. The instructions for frittata (Limit yourself to six ingredients, including eggs, oil, and salt. Choose something creamy, something sweet, and something green.) led to one of our best frittatas so far. Wyatt charred and peeled some sweet red peppers peppers, I sliced and pre-cooked new potatoes in oil, and I also chopped and sauteed some greens. I guess technically, we used seven ingredients because of the chive flower garnish, but no matter. It was terrific. Somehow I had gotten in the habit of starting every single frittata with an onion, and it was really nice to get out of that rut.

La Brea...Tar Pits!

"No. I don't want a birthday party. I want to celebrate at school with my friends, but only at school. Let's do something else for my birthday."

This declaration came a couple of months ago. No party? No problem. And honestly, why would we even question such a declaration? Instead, we counted our blessings and then started brainstorming birthday adventures. There were plenty of ho-hum local options, as well as a more far-flung option: Southern California and the La Brea Tar Pits. I asked some truly dear friends in Southern California if we could come for a visit. It's important to know that for Wyatt, there could be no better present than getting to stay with these friends. Ever since our first stay with them about a year and a half ago, Wyatt began announcing regularly that he wished he could stay with them for the rest of his life. Ever the gracious hosts, they were quick to get on board with our proposed plan, and they even provided us with our trip's theme song: Felix Figueroa's Pico and Sepulveda. We sang it for weeks, wondering if, unlike in the song, our dreams might actually come true at the Tar Pits (Tar Pits!).

I am happy to report that our (fossil-related) dreams did come true. It was jaw-dropping to learn about the truly massive creatures that roamed the area we now know as Los Angeles a mere 11,000 years ago. Remains of sloths that could weigh up to seven tons, mastodons, wooly mammoths, saber-tooth tigers, enormous birds, and dire wolves have all been found in those pits. And archaeologists are still finding more and more remains, all preserved by that goopy, stinky tar.

Unlike the creatures, we steered clear of the tar. Good thing, because that meant Wyatt's other birthday dreams could also come true. In addition to going to the Tar Pits, he got to attend his cousin's birthday party at the beach, eat cupcakes and have a fancy seafood dinner out. On his actual birthday, he got to visit with a dozen friends, open presents, swim, eat cookies, cake, go out for ice cream where they had gluten-free cones(!), meet a seeing-eye dog, and then have his dream dinner, Al Bap (a fish roe rice bowl), as prepared by our hosts (who, in addition to their many other enviable traits, are also amazing cooks). I have no recipe to share; photos must suffice.

We had such a good weekend, it was really hard to leave. It was so hard, in fact, that Wyatt, in a fit of sadness and frustration, declared while we waited for our (delayed) flight at LAX that he wasn't ever going to eat anything ever again. I think he thought that vow would perturb Marc and me (it didn't). In case you're curious, he lasted about 2 hours.

I fully empathize with Wyatt's reluctance to leave, short-lived hunger strike and all. It has been more than ten years since I lived in Southern California, and while I have become very fond of San Francisco, I [still] Love L.A. Thanks to our friends, I felt as if I had come home for a weekend, and that feeling is one that's really hard to let go.

Christmas Breakfast

We started planning this year's Christmas breakfast around the time we started planning Thanksgiving dinner.

During one dinner planning conversation, I told Wyatt the story of the year I joined my best friend, Debbie, and her parents in Palm Desert for Thanksgiving. We had such a fun holiday weekend, and I made a peanut butter pie. That pie was so deliciously memorable that for the next several Thanksgivings, when Debbie and I would phone each other to trade "Happy Thanksgiving!" greetings, I would hear her dad's voice call from the background, "Ask her where my peanut butter pie is!" And Debbie would repeat into the phone, "My dad wants to know where his peanut butter pie is."

Wyatt found that story very, very funny. "Where's my peanut butter pie!" he shouted over and over, and then dissolved into giggles. Suddenly, he stopped, and said, "What IS peanut butter pie? It sounds DELICIOUS. I love peanut butter. And pie! I KNOW! We should have peanut butter pie for Christmas breakfast."

I don't remember how the tradition started, but this year will be our fourth Christmas where we have "Whatever We Want" for breakfast. So far, "Whatever We Want" has translated into "Dessert." Dessert for breakfast is basically forbidden, so it's an awfully special annual experience. In addition, there's something spectacularly satisfying about responding to a sullen child who says, "I want candy/cake/pie for breakfast!" on any other day of the year by saying, "Oh dear. Let me check the calendar. Nope! It's not Christmas."

Because we're us, it's not like dessert means a break from cooking or baking. We make all of our Christmas breakfast treats. Last year, we baked gluten-free Florentine cookies and served them with sweet potato ice cream. If you're ever at Mitchell's Ice Cream in San Francisco, try the purple yam ice cream and you'll understand why we went with David Lebovitz's sweet potato ice cream recipe. For the two Christmas breakfasts before that, we made apple crisp and vanilla ice cream.

This year, we are planning on peanut butter pie and ice cream. The ice cream flavor will probably be chocolate. I've found a four-fork-rated peanut butter pie recipe on Epicurious, and I have the already proven Joy of Cooking recipe. Whichever recipe we choose (Joy of Cooking), we will need to make some gluten-free graham crackers so that we can have a graham cracker crust. Wyatt just informed me he cannot wait to smash the crackers into bits with a mallet.

Christmas Eve is slated to be our cooking day. We will make the pie crust and the pie, and prepare the ice cream batter, which we will freeze in the ice cream maker on Christmas morning. We will also make Christmas Eve dinner, which will be latkes, recipe courtesy of Debbie's mom, of course.

Between now and Christmas Eve, we will be busying ourselves with activities, because it is Christmas Break. We're planning to head downtown to ride a cable car and see the giant gingerbread houses at the Fairmont Hotel one day. We've got years of experience building our own little houses thanks to kits and extra candy that Wyatt's grandparents send:

Another day, we'll head to the Exploratorium. And if it's not too rainy, perhaps we can fit in some ice skating at some point.

Just a few days left of the crescendo of Christmas excitement. And then, maybe we can relax? Wishful thinking, I'm sure.