bearing blog

Basque ratatouille, or, never wonder what to do with too many zucchini again.

After having spent a week in the Basque Country with Mark, I immediately came home and bought a cookbook, of course.    I ended up with a beautifully photographed book, The Basque Table by Alexandra Raij (a Minnesotan!) and her Basque husband, Eder Montero.  I probably won’t make many of the seafood recipes, for lack of ingredients, but fortunately the book has many dishes of eggs, meats, vegetables, and desserts.   

The first thing I made was so beautiful that I must share it immediately.  It is pisto, a Basque ratatouille, which I adapted as suggested by the authors to locally available ingredients.  I found guaijillo peppers packed in small plastic boxes in the local upscale grocery store; lacking them, omit them, or you might try a quarter cup or so of puree of roasted red peppers?  

We ate this topped with pan-sauteed fish and sourdough bread.

Also, at the bottom:  how to use the leftovers in delicious scrambled eggs.

Basque Ratatouille (adapted from The Basque Book)

• 0.75 oz dried guajillo peppers, about 4 peppers
• 2 cups diced Vidalia onion
• 1 tsp dried marjoram
• 3/8 tsp cayenne pepper, divided
• Olive oil
• Salt
• 1 cup diced red bell pepper (1/4” dice)
• 1 cup diced green bell pepper (1/4” dice)
• 4 pounds zucchini, cut into 1/4”-thick half moons)
• 1 cup hand-crushed canned whole tomatoes with juices

First, make a pepper puree:

Preheat oven to 350° F (you will raise the temperature later).  Begin to bring a saucepan of lightly salted water to a boil.

Toast the dried peppers until fragrant for 2 to 5 minutes, until fragrant and pliable.  Remove the seeds and stems from the warm peppers.  Put the toasted, seeded peppers in the boiling water, turn off the heat, cover, and let steep 20 minutes.  Puree the hydrated peppers with just enough of the soaking water to make a puree.   Half of this puree will be used in this recipe, and the other half you can reserve for another use.  (The soaking water makes a vegetarian stock.)

While the peppers steep, raise the oven temperature to 500° F.

In a dutch oven or other soup pot with a lid, combine the onion, marjoram, 1/8 tsp cayenne, 3 Tbsp oil, and 1/tsp salt and gently cook the onion over low heat for about 20 min until soft and translucent.

Meanwhile, in a large bowl, toss the red and green peppers and the zucchini with 1.5 tsp salt and 4 Tbsp oil.  Roast the vegetables on two large baking sheets, stirring halfway, for 15 min.

Add the peppers and zucchini to the onion, with a little more oil if necessary, and cook for two minutes.    Turn up the heat to medium; add the tomatoes and half the guajillo pepper puree that you made in the first step.  (Save the rest.)

Stir, cover, and place in a 250° oven for a couple of hours.  

Before serving, check the flavors; the mixture should be dark and sweet, and if it is not qute yet, cook it on the stove top for a few more minutes, stirring.  Add the remainder of the cayenne and serve.

 

Scrambled Eggs For One With Leftover Ratatouille

Warm about a half cup of ratatouille in a small nonstick saucepan with a film of olive oil.  When the ratatouille is warm, lightly beat 2 eggs with a pinch of salt; move the ratatouille to one side of the pan, add another tablespoon of oil to the empty side, and pour the eggs in.  Let set for ten seconds then gently stir, incorporating some of the ratatouille.  Let set again, and continue gently stirring until the eggs are softly scrambled and roughly mixed with the ratatouille.  Turn out and eat — crusty bread is a nice addition.

 

Roast beef for beginners, part II: Boeuf à la mode.

 

Remember last week when I said I was going to learn to make roasts, and I started with the American, 1950s-style, dried-plus-condensed-soups-in foil?  And it was better than I expected?

Yesterday I made the second one, and in an attempt to hit the polar opposite in chicness (but still fairly retro), I went with boeuf à la mode, a classic French pot roast.

How classic, you might ask?  So classic that Samuel Pepys wrote about it:

Against noon we had a coach ready for us, and she and I to White Hall, where I went to see whether Sir G. Carteret was at dinner or no, our design being to make a visit there, and I found them set down, which troubled me, for I would not then go up, but back to the coach to my wife, and she and I homeward again, and in our way bethought ourselves of going alone, she and I, to go to a French house to dinner, and so enquired out Monsieur Robins, my perriwigg-maker, who keeps an ordinary, and in an ugly street in Covent Garden, did find him at the door, and so we in; and in a moment almost had the table covered, and clean glasses, and all in the French manner, and a mess of potage first, and then a couple of pigeons a la esterve, and then a piece of boeuf-a -la-mode, all exceeding well seasoned, and to our great liking; at least it would have been anywhere else but in this bad street, and in a perriwigg-maker’s house; but to see the pleasant and ready attendance that we had, and all things so desirous to please, and ingenious in the people, did take me mightily.

 Well, if it will work anywhere else but in that perriwigg-maker's house on the ugly street in Covent Garden, I trust it will work in mine.

+ + + 

I looked at several different recipes before I settled on a plan.  I had decided to make my roasts on Thursdays, my second-busiest day of the week, in order to force myself to stick only to realistic weeknight roasts.  That decision, along with its corollary (only ordinary grocery-store ingredients) helped me narrow down my choices quickly. 

• One I thought of using purported to be from Cook's Illustrated, which is reliable, but it seemed a little fiddly for a Thursday. 
• Another, from the New York Times, looked beautiful and authentic (it contains a pig's foot and dried porcini mushrooms), and instructs you to salt the beef two days ahead and cook it one  day ahead of serving.  I did momentarily consider cooking it the night before, which certainly would have simplified dinner on the day-of.
• In the end I chose one that was streamlined, but that looked to have preserved the essence of the dish, and I adapted it slightly, both for our tastes and in order to do much of the prep the night before.  This let me add a couple of extra steps, such as salting the meat and letting it rest overnight before cooking, that would tweak the recipe a bit more toward the classic.

If you want to look at a recipe in recipe format, try one of those.   Here, I'm just going to blog.

+ + +

On Wednesday night, I started with a nearly-three-pound chuck roast ("Select," according to Mark, so not even the best chuck), patted it dry with paper towels, and plopped it onto a piece of plastic wrap. 

Then I blended 1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg with 1/2 tsp kosher salt and 1/2 tsp black pepper.  Tip:  to measure nutmeg while you grate it, deposit the same measure of kosher salt into a little pile on the plate, and stop when the nutmeg-pile looks about the same or a little bigger (since it's fluffy).

I rubbed the nutmeg mixture all over the roast, wrapped it up tightly in plastic and a zip-top bag for secondary containment, and chucked it in the fridge.

The next step:  fat-rendering and bacon-crisping.  In the Dutch oven I started 4 ounces of bacon cooking.

(I like to render bacon submerged in water.  It works wonderfully, and is also a good way to make breakfast bacon.  Put your bacon in the pan, cover it with about 1/4" of water, and turn up the heat.  The water comes to a boil and stays there, while the fat slowly and evenly melts out of the bacon; eventually the water boils away, leaving the fat behind, and the bacon begins to crisp.  If not enough fat has come out by the time the water is gone, add a little more.)  

While the bacon cooked, I chopped one onion and peeled the slenderest carrots I could find, cutting thicker ones into pieces that matched.  I guessed on the quantity of carrots, enough to give everyone in the family a handful.   I wrapped the onion and carrots up and stowed them in the fridge.  And I used the time to gather other ingredients, like red wine, tomato paste, and beef broth.

Bacon was removed to paper towels, leaving the grease behind.  

     

The bacon was also stored carefully in the refrigerator, after a stern warning to other family members not to touch it.  And then I put the lid on the pot, warned people equally (though probably not as necessarily) not to wash it, and left the grease till the next day.

+ + +

Thursday in the morning I assembled my ingredients:

After lunch I turned the oven to 300° F.   I reheated the bacon fat in the Dutch oven, unwrapped the roast, and tossed it in along with some extra kosher salt.  I browned it well, about three minutes per side in a quite-hot pan, and held it on its edge with tongs to brown on the sides for good measure.   

       

 

Then I removed the roast to a plate, and sautéed the diced onion in the remaining fat until it was golden.  Next, two tablespoons of tomato paste; finally, deglazed the pan with 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar and 1 cup red wine (a 2011 Bordeaux that I bought at Jungle Jim's over Christmas, probably at a good price because there is at least one more bottle in my pantry).  A cloud of scent:  wine, evaporating alcohol, beef, onion, well-smoked bacon, filled the kitchen.

In went the crisped bacon bits,  the roast, a couple of sprigs of parsley, a bunch of fresh thyme tied up with one of its own stems, and two bay leaves.  

Then I poured in enough beef broth to cover about 3/4 of the roast.

Covered, into the oven it went.  This was at 2:25 p.m.

+ + +

At 4:30 I added the carrots.  I pushed them down under the liquid surface.

 

The lid went back on for another hour. 

(Somewhere during that hour, I put together a spinach salad with blueberries and pine nuts.)

And then it was time to finish the dish.

+ + +

Uncovered, it looked like this:

 

The carrots had acquired that speckled gloss that I associate with the best beef stews.

I moved the roast with tongs and a spoon to a cutting board; this one did not fall completely to pieces, unlike the onion-soup roast.  I covered it with foil to rest while I steamed new potatoes (the kind that come in a microwaveable bag) and fiddled with the sauce.

I strained the liquid, and moved the vegetables and bacon to a deep serving dish, discarding the herbs and stray bits left behind in the colander.  Then I put the liquid back in the pot and turned up the heat to reduce it by half while I sliced the roast.

This time, the roast remained more or less sliceable.  It didn't fall apart like butter or like a school-cafeteria turkey hot shot; it sliced, although it was hard to slice it really thin because it did want to tear.  It wasn't tough.  I could slice it about three-quarters of an inch thick, and at the very ends it did fall apart into shreds.  I arranged it on the platter with the carrots, encircled it with the steamed potatoes, and poured the reduced cooking liquid (not a gravy exactly; it wasn't starch-thickened) over all.

 

 

Even though they had already eaten their salads, everyone was so eager to dig into the beef that I failed to scatter parsley and lemon zest atop it for the photograph.

+ + +

How was it?

I came back to the table after the others had already started, since I was doing things like turning off the oven and softening butter for the bread (whole-wheat challah bought from the natural-foods co-op up the street), and Mark said to me:  "Sit down.  Listen.  Start... with the carrots."

He held up a forkful of carrots.  "This.   This is what I think of when I think of roast beef.  The onions and the carrots underneath.  This."

The carrots were definitely beautiful.  Luscious and melting and savory.

"Can you put more carrots in?"

"Yes," I said, "but I'd have to use a smaller roast or more liquid.  They have to be submerged."

"Do it."

+ + +

Meanwhile, the children (except the four-year-old, who is very into bread and butter) were chowing down, making little grunts of pleasure now and again.

I turned to the beef.

I have to say, the onion-soup beef was more tender than this one; but this one had a more pleasant texture, something that you could chew and savor.  And the flavors were fuller, cleaner, and richer.  Bacon and red wine and beef, all together, is a beautiful combination.  Mark and I drank the remaining Bordeaux with dinner, and it went down very smoothly.  

The thin French pan sauce didn't cling like a gravy (of course, if you wanted it to, it would be a simple matter with a little butter and flour or cornstarch), but it sopped up well with a chunk of challah, and everyone cleaned their plates (except for the four-year-old, who had his plate cleaned by others.)

+ + +

Would I make this one again?  Definitely.  It was not quite as foolproof as the onion-soup roast, and a good deal more fiddly, but not too fiddly for a Thursday night, at least not with some prep the night before.  And the results were company-quality.

I agree with Mark that more carrots (or some other root vegetable, like parsnips) could only have improved the dish; but I'm pretty sure that I should increase all the sauce-components to keep them submerged:  the onion, tomato paste, wine, and broth.   

Potatoes are nicer cooked in the broth, too, but really it was a good deal easier to steam them in the microwave and add them at the last minute.

The bread was a must because of the delicious, thin sauce.  

+ + +

I think next time I am going to try an Italian stracotto with fresh tomatoes and pesto, on top of polenta.  For now, while the spring weather is still relatively cool, I'll continue with the slow-oven method; later I will be searching out the best Instant-Pot recipes to avoid heating up the kitchen.  Stay tuned.

Roast beef for beginners, part I: 1950s style.

I am a good cook, but for some reason I am absurdly bad at a few easy things.  One of these is roasting whole birds or big chunks of meat.

Up till now I have dealt with this by buying birds already reduced to a pile of parts, and meat already reduced to steaks, chops, cubes, and ribs.

Occasionally we would order a quarter-beef for the freezer, and I would gaily tell the processor on the phone, "No roasts please, just steaks and stew beef," and out of the corner of my eye I would see Mark's face fall a bit.  

+ + + 

I have decided that to celebrate 20 years of marriage to my uncomplaining husband, and my acquisition of an Instant Pot two Christmases ago, and also because I have been tired and suspect I could use a little more iton in my diet, I am going to learn how to make roast beef without screwing it up.

I will do this in my usual systematic way, like the time I decided to learn how to be a beer drinker, by experimentation many times.

Today, despite being a decent cook for 35 years, I made the first one.  Come along with me...

+ + +

As soon as I made up my mind to work my way through the world of roast beef, I knew exactly which recipe I was going to start with:  the "Forgotten Roast" from this article which is one of my favorite local foodie articles ever.  In this article, six local uber-hipster food writers get together to cook a dinner-party menu from a 1969 socialite cookbook.  The roast beef in the recipe features onion soup mix and condensed cream of celery soup.  In other words, it is roast beef like Grandma used to make.   

The writers don't know what to make of the roast, about which it is written, "Before serving, you will find it has made its own gravy:"  

I keep referring to this as the “autogenerating gravy.” Everyone was skeptical about the dehydrated soup and cream of celery. These are the key ingredients in the sorts of mediocre casseroles and hot dishes that are said to autogenerate in church basements.

I'm not sure, but I think something very similar also made an appearance in Peg Bracken's I Hate To Cook Book, profiled here by Bon Appétit a few years ago.  (I have a copy of the 50th anniversary edition around here somewhere.)

 + + +

H. was over for the day, so she got to watch me assemble this monstrosity right after lunch.

This is a three-and-a-half pound chuck roast.  You dry it off and place it on a piece of heavy-duty aluminum foil.  You do not brown it.  Instead you sprinkle it all over with a packet of onion soup mix.  

I thought maybe Mark might go all exotic and get the Knorr, but knope, it's Lipton.

Then you open a can of cream of celery soup.  The recipe says "pour," but you can't exactly pour condensed cream of celery soup.  I spooned blobs of soup globs onto the roast.  I couldn't stop myself from saying "Blob" every time I added a spoonful, which made H. laugh.   Then I sort of frosted the roast with it.

I texted a picture of the roast to Mark.

 

"I remember liking roasts" amused both H and me.

Anyway, then you wrap the roast up tightly in the foil and put it inside a roaster, or in my case an enameled cast iron Dutch oven, in which it just barely fit.  I snapped this picture before I put the lid on.

Then it goes in the oven at 275° F for four to five hours.  A convenient recipe for Thursdays, when I am home all day but very busy.

+ + +

After schoolwork was over I made mashed potatoes and added an oiled tray of asparagus to the oven to roast for 30-40 minutes alongside.  When it was time for dinner I pulled the Dutch oven out and called to H., who was getting her coat on, "Do you want to see the big reveal before you go?"

She came over and first I fiddled with my fingertips trying to unfold the foil, then gave up and cut it open with a knife.  Inside was a mottled, soft, brown mass of gravy-pooled beef, here and there dotted with a residual dab of pale from the cream of celery soup.

It did not really look very appetizing.  I put the knife in it to cut it—and discovered that the knife went right into it and sliced it with nearly no resistance.

How do I serve this?  I had expected to turn it out onto a cutting board for slicing.  I burned my fingers trying to lift the foil package out of the pot.  Eventually I just sliced it by poking the knife (like buttah) down into the foil over and over, and then used tongs to extract the slices, which fell apart into tender shreds as I transferred them into a serving dish.  The pale globs melted away and left behind a beautiful brown gravy.  I strained the gravy through a colander (because of the chunks of celery), and poured it, glossy and thick, over the roast beef.

It was... amazing?  I don't know if I would say that exactly, but the children all used that word.  Mark was happy, and extolled the virtues of Midwestern midcentury cooking.  "Not to disparage the wonders of living in the city where we can walk to upscale modern restaurants any time we want," he said, but 
I like roast beef.  I like pancakes.  I like good ordinary food."  

"This is the best," said my daughter.  "Never make any other kind of beef again."  She wrinkled her nose.  "Short ribs are not as good as this."

Here is what the hipsters at The Heavy Table had to say about their own dinner-party roast:

The star of the evening to that point, though, was unquestionably the Forgotten Roast and its autogenerative gravy. True to Mrs. Randolph’s promise, we opened the foil, and there it was – a tender, juicy and altogether perfect roast, lying in a pool of gravy. It is the simplest, most foolproof recipe imaginable. And yet it’s so perfect. A few weeks later, in fact, I tried it again with reverse-engineered fresh ingredients – a cream soup made from scratch with fresh celery in a food processor, and a homemade dry onion soup mix. It was OK, but nowhere near as good as what I got from pouring stuff out of a can and a paper packet. Our grandparents my have been onto something with this one.

Yes, I think so.  

We ate well over half of the three-and-a-half pound roast for dinner.  I will definitely make this again—after I have tried some other techniques for comparison.  Next up... something with (non-dehydrated) onions and carrots in it.  But not until we've finished digesting this one, i.e., sometime in the middle of next week at least.

Quiche au thon, from an American fridge.

I really need to recipeblog more, if for no other reason than it keeps the posts coming (has it really been eleven days?)  Anyway, Lent is coming, and I've got a good meatless recipe for you.  

+ + +

I'm in a very busy time of life.  I know, we're all busy, but I'm convinced that I'm in one of the busiest times of the arc of my entire life as a parent, thanks to lifestyle choices that have me homeschooling a preschooler, a second grader, a sixth grader, an eighth grader, and a high school senior all at once.  Many things that are not just enjoyable, but objectively good for me, have gone by the wayside:  getting to the gym more than once or twice a week; reading novels; cooking dinner.

It turns out that I can get by on planning cooking three and a half dinners a week.  What happened to the other three and a half?

• Saturdays, one of the kids makes dinner.  They take turns.  This week, the 8th-grader got a hankering for sausage ragù, so he announced that he would be making that.  I am not complaining, though I did strongly suggest that he make a very light side dish to go next to it, like fresh grapes, or plain green beans.  Caesar salad--his first choice--would be a bit much.
• Sundays, we have "plate"--or you could call it smörgåsbord--or charcuterie.  Cured meats, cheeses, crackers, maybe a baguette with spreads, veggies and hummus.  Occasionally we swap it out for raclette.  
• Mondays, I'm at H's, and she and I take turns making dinner.  That's the half-dinner.  I am not even sure this should count, as about three-quarters of the time I make the same pot of emergency chili in her crockpot.
• Wednesdays Mark goes to the grocery store, and so Wednesday is Leftover Night.

+ + +

I interpret "leftovers" broadly. 

No one is allowed to open new packages on leftover night, except insofar as is necessary to contribute ingredients to other dishes made out of leftovers.

 If there are enough refrigerated containers of partial meals that weren't entirely eaten to feed our children (plus H.'s children who stop by between choir and climbing practice), then those things go out on the counter and that's that. 

If that isn't quite enough I will conjure a fresh loaf of bread from the bread machine, and set out butter and peanut butter and jam.  Perhaps I'll put out cheese and crackers or vegetables and hummus, if it's already opened.

If that isn't quite enough either, I will make something out of eggs. 

+ + +

Tonight I had only a little bit of soup left over, so I made something out of eggs.  I had a single refrigerated pie crust that's been in the fridge since, I think, Thanksgiving.  I also had an elderly half-jar of sun-dried tomatoes to use.

I took some inspiration from a recipe on a French cooking website that I subscribe to on Facebook, but engaged in some serious substituting--remember, the name of the game was using up leftovers. 

The result was very good--probably more appealing to the children, with the mildness of mozzarella cheese, than the original might have been.

Quiche au Thon aux Restes

• One pie crust or pȃte feuilleté (whatever you have on hand or like to make)
• About 1.5 Tbsp dijon mustard
• One 5-oz can tuna in oil, ideally a better-quality tuna in better-quality oil (mine was Italian wild-caught yellowfin in olive oil)
• About four halves, or the equivalent, from a jar of oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes
• 4 large eggs
• 1 cup cream, or however much cream you have plus whole milk to make a cup.  Sour cream or Greek yogurt will probably also work if thinned with some milk
• Shredded mozzarella cheese, a couple of handfuls
• Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 400° F.   Unroll the pie crust into a pie dish according to package directions or recipe for a single-crust pie.  

Smear the mustard all over the bottom of the pie crust; use enough mustard to cover with a thin layer.  If you really like mustard, go to town, but don't overdo it.

Drain the tuna, flake it with a fork, and cover the pie bottom evenly with tuna flakes.

Use a knife to chop or sliver the sun-dried tomatoes (if they are already in slivers, just use those as-is) and distribute over the tuna.  Again, if you love sun-dried tomatoes, go crazy if you want.  I found that four half-tomatoes was enough.

Sprinkle about a half-handful of the mozzarella over the contents in the pie crust.

Beat the eggs and the cream with salt and pepper, and pour over all.

Then add more mozzarella, until it looks like the pie crust is full-ish.  Really, it doesn't matter how much you add.  It's mozzarella.  It'll be cheesier if you add more, and eggier if you add less.  Don't stress.

(If you have a little parmesan, comté, or gruyère, I'm sure it would be fine also.)

Bake near the top of the oven for... I don't know... twenty minutes?  Twenty-five?  I forgot to set my timer.  It got a little brown.  You should always check a quiche, because sometimes the crust gets too brown before the eggs are fully set; and if that starts to happen, put on a silicone pie guard, or make one out of aluminum foil.

Cool until just a bit warmer than room temperature and enjoy.

With leftovers.

I found that the creamy eggs softened the salty, mustardy tuna and the acid tang from the tomatoes, and made for a balanced dish.  Mozzarella, of course, hardly makes itself noticeable; with tuna, I prefer a cheese that fades into the background, because I think that tuna and cheese often fight with each other except in very specific contexts (e.g. classic American diner tuna melts).  But the Italian olive-oil-packed tuna has an assertive flavor, not the tinny taste of Chicken-of-the-sea, that stands up to it.  Made with heavy cream, it's rich and yet simple, and the mozzarella raises the protein content and holds it together without getting in the way at all.  Puff pastry or a homemade butter crust would make this even better, but a refrigerated rolled pie crust did not noticeably detract (and made the whole thing very quick and easy).

Kuku for asparagus (recipe).

Today Mark came home early, right around lunchtime, to take our oldest to the local university for an afternoon visit at the college of business.  I have some hopes that he and I might go out for a dinner date this evening, so I decided this morning to make the food that had been intended for tonight's dinner for a quick family lunch instead.  I expected the smaller children to eat their fill of peanut butter sandwiches, leaving the tasty vegetables for the rest of us.

First I started bread in the bread machine, then considered a fat bunch of asparagus, probably at least a pound, that I had picked up on sale a couple of days ago.   Then I scrounged around in the pantry and found a jar of roasted red peppers; in the fridge I found half a red onion and some aged white cheddar.   Perfect for finishing off a carton of eggs.   My inspiration here is the Persian frittata known as a kuku, which often contains herbs and spices and feta and huge handfuls of greens—but which can be adapted to contain almost anything you might put in an omelet.  The recipe is very elastic—you can increase the vegetable-to-egg ratio quite a bit, probably by fifty percent or more, and it will still hold together fine.

This recipe is  3-4 servings, sized to fit a seasoned 10" cast-iron skillet.

 If you double it, either use two skillets, or bake the vegetable-egg mixture for a longer time in a well-oiled glass dish (after sautéing the vegetables on the stove top).  You can also bake it in muffin cups.  Baked outside the skillet, I bet, this would be a great dish for a brunch potluck.

Asparagus and Red Pepper Kuku with Rosemary and White Cheddar

• 1 pound (or more) fresh asparagus, trimmed, tips set aside, and tender stalks cut into 1/4" lengths
• 1/2 a large red onion, sliced 1/4" thick
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup roasted red peppers (I used a jar of piquillos), cut into thin strips
• 3 oz extra sharp white cheddar cheese, cut into small dice
• 2 tsp dried rosemary leaves
• Plenty of olive oil (sorry, I don't measure this)
• 6 to 8 eggs
• Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 400° F.  

Heat the skillet dry over medium-high heat.  When it is hot, scatter the onion slices in the dry pan, then cover and cook five minutes to begin caramelizing the onion (following the technique here).  Uncover, add oil and salt, and continue sautéing and stirring the onions until they soften and are nicely caramelized.  Transfer to a bowl.

Add more oil to the pan along with the cut asparagus stalks.  Sauté a few minutes until they begin to brown a bit, then add the rosemary, salt, and pepper.  Add a couple of tablespoons of water to the hot pan, cover, and steam until the water evaporates.  Add the tips and continue to sauté for just a couple more minutes until the asparagus is tender and the tips are crisp-tender.   Transfer to the bowl with the onions; mix in the roasted red peppers.

In a  separate mixing bowl, beat the eggs well.  Fold the vegetables into the beaten eggs, mixing well.  

Return the skillet to medium heat and add oil, coating the bottom and sides of the pan.  Pour the vegetable-egg mixture into the hot skillet and cook for 2-5 minutes (or more if needed), until the edges are set.  Dot the top of the mixture with the diced cheese and transfer the pan to the preheated oven.  Bake until firm, 5–10 minutes in the cast-iron pan.

Allow to cool at least ten minutes before cutting into wedges.   Serve warm, room temperature, or cold.  

I had it ready before Mark got home, and we enjoyed it hastily with warm buttered homemade wheat bread before he had to run off to his appointment with the big boys in tow.  If it weren't eleven o'clock in the morning, a cold witbier or hefeweizen would have been a lovely accompaniment.    And the leftovers will make you a beautiful breakfast.

Co-schooling lunch: why so fancy?

I got a new Instant Pot electric pressure cooker for Christmas.  The first thing I made in it was frijoles negros, which worked beautifully, last week.  

The second thing I am making in it right now is chicken stock -- I hope -- from two rotisserie chickens which I chilled overnight and picked not-quite-clean of meat in the morning.  

The third thing, I will make in it right after the chicken stock is done:  soup with barley, leeks, and carrots, to which I will return some or all of the chicken meat at the end.

+ + +

This soup is for lunch on a co-schooling day, along with a loaf of whole wheat bread from my bread machine and a clementine or two for everyone.  While the pressure cooker I thought I'd stop and write a bit about hot lunches in general for the homeschooling family, and then about hot lunches on co-schooling day.

+ + +

If I could poll a hundred homeschooling families and get a detailed answer out of all of them, I think I'd love to ask this question:  How do you manage lunch?  Not because I can't manage it:  After eleven-plus years of trying to feed children in between their lessons and studies, and especially now that I am out of the nothing-but-small-ones years, we have a system that works pretty well.   (More on that below.)  No, I just am curious to hear about the ways that diverse families have solved the problem.  

And it is a problem, in the sense of a series of questions to answer:  

• How long after breakfast do you have lunch?  
• Must you clear off a schoolwork surface to make room for cooking and eating?
• Is lunch to be a dinner-like occasion, with a set table and everyone at their places on time?
• Does everyone eat the same thing?  Do all the kids eat the same thing but the parent has something different?
• Who makes lunch?  Is it the parent?  A particular child?  Do children take turns?  If children make lunch, may they choose the menu?  Do people make their own lunch from what's available?
• Is lunch-making time a time for the parent to teach food preparation to young children?
• Do you insist on a balanced meal or that children eat their vegetables at lunch time?
• How much time can you take for lunch?
• Do you have a rest time or "recess" afterward?
• Do you decide what to make in advance?
• Do you try to use dinner leftovers in your lunch?
• Do you have a regular rotation of lunches-of-the-day?  Or do you often eat the same thing day after day?
• Who cleans up? Will you completely clean up the lunch before going back to the rest of your day, or will dishes wait till later?

Different families:  different lunches.

+ + +

I keep it relatively simple in my three at-home days.  This year, the regular rotation is sandwiches on Tuesday, pizza (usually from frozen) on Wednesday, and quesadillas on Friday; all with fruit on the side. 

On Thursdays, when I host, there are twelve to fifteen people here for lunch, and the adults have quite a lot to do.  You would think I would want to go even more simple on those days, but in fact I do not.  Here is why.

Point one:  Scale-up.

It turns out that it is not actually simple or quick to prepare most sandwiches, frozen pizzas, or quesadillas for twelve to fifteen people, nor to let those twelve to fifteen people prepare their own sandwiches.  

• Assembling large numbers of sandwiches is a surprisingly fiddly, messy affair.
• You can really only do a couple of frozen pizzas in your oven at once.  That'll feed maybe five children?
• Quesadillas also have the sandwich problem combined with the heat source problem.

No, what you want to feed people simply and easily in your house is probably a couple of deep pans of something you can cut into pieces, or a vat of something scoopable. 

 

Point two.  The co-schooling kids' time is better spent on schoolwork than on lunch.

On our home days, helping me put lunch together is part of my kids' job.   My "simple" lunches for days at home are chosen in part because I need to be able to bark down the stairs, "Elder Teenager!  Please start the quesadillas while I clean up this mess!"  or to be able to ask, "Younger teenager, can you put the pizzas in the oven at eleven-ten so they're ready when I get home from toddler music class?"

But the co-schooling time is short, and we really need all of the kids to be either productively schooling or productively having recess together most of the day.  I'm not going to have them make their own sandwiches by digging through my fridge looking for the fillings they like best (although sometimes in warmer weather I'll set out a tray of meat and cheese and a basket of buns on the table).  Usually there comes a time in the late morning when the students are working independently, and that gives me time to set out lunch trays.

We do assign a pair of children each day to be "servers." It's the servers' job to keep the water pitchers refilled, to fetch second servings, and to retrieve condiments from the fridge (in between bolting down their own lunches).  This little innovation from a few years ago made it a lot easier for  us parent-teachers to sit down and eat.  Servers also have to clear the table so it's ready for schoolwork.  

 

Point three.  Once you've got comfortable with a dish that really works, it's not always all that hard.

Chicken noodle soup from scratch is, on the surface, a bit complicated.  One must immerse the whole chicken in a big pot of cold water, add a few flavoring vegetables, bring to a boil,  and turn down to a simmer.  One must skim the scum that floats to the surface, then an hour or so later remove the chicken and let it cool.  Diced vegetables go into the pot, and that boils again for thirty to sixty minutes; meanwhile the meat must be picked off the bones, and the broth salted and tasted.  Towards the end, in go the noodles, and you must stir so they don't stick.  Once the noodles are all done, the meat goes back in.  If you are frugal, you'll put the bones to boil again in another pot, because there's another pot of broth left in them.

So yes, many steps, spread out throughout a whole morning.  But if I am in the kitchen anyway -- and I teach my co-school students in my kitchen -- I can make chicken noodle soup practically in my sleep.  I have done it so many times that I know exactly when the pot will come to a boil, when to skim, when the chicken will be done, how long the noodles have to go and when to wander back and stir them.  So a vat of chicken noodle soup is something I can make for a co-school day.  It sounds hard.  But because it's one of the things I know how to make work for me -- I make it work for them.

It can be even easier than that.  A perennial favorite is meatballs (read:  from a bag, frozen), heated all morning in my crockpot in a simple tomato sauce (read:  straight from a can -- even plain crushed tomatoes will do because the meatballs flavor them).  I boil spaghetti -- that's the most complicated part -- and serve with buttered rolls and green beans (frozen, steamed in the microwave).  Another is chili (it all goes in the crockpot in the morning) with tortilla chips and a bowl of cheese to pass around.  Mashed potatoes (made in the morning, kept warm in the crockpot) and a tray of oven-baked chicken legs is another.    I also like to do a pot of coconut rice (thanks, rice cooker) with plain poached chicken breasts, steamed broccoli, and pineapple chunks.  Give them a bottle of soy sauce and those are some happy kids.

H. tends more to casseroles than I do, and usually preps them the night before so they can be popped in the oven.  The three things she makes most often are a ridiculously plain and ridiculously delicious salmon loaf (it's so great, you must try feeding it to your kids),  a sort of cheesy noodle bake made with mostly parmesan, and ... hm, I think number three might be little mini meatloaves.  I hope so, because I love mini meatloaves.

These things are not as hard to get on the table as you might think, at least not once you have the routine down.

 

Point four:  You might want to eat something tasty, too.

Let's be real:  although my children are happy to eat it, I do not want frozen pizza for lunch.  Certainly not every week.  I do like quesadillas and eat them sometimes, but not every week.  

On the other hand, I would be perfectly happy to eat H.'s salmon loaf or meatloaves or cheesy noodle bake every week.  They are yummy.  A bag of steamed vegetables on the side of any of those, and I'm very happy.  (Salmon loaf especially makes me happy.  We make a sort of rémoulade of mayonnaise mixed with homemade hot sauce for it, and it's really nice.)

 Likewise, I could eat chicken noodle soup -- my own homemade chicken noodle soup, that is -- every week for the rest of my life, and I would not tire of it, at least if I had copious amounts of saltine crackers and black pepper.  Or mashed potatoes and chicken, or even the spaghetti and meatballs.  

Co-schooling days are very busy, especially traveling to the other's house in the morning -- what with gathering together all the stuff and piling it in the car, fighting morning rush hour traffic, setting up all the stuff again -- and it's nice to have a good meal to look forward to, shared with a friend.

 

Point five:  It's welcoming.

I can get stressed out by the details of hosting everyone, to be sure.    But in the long term, I want my house to be a place that kids remember fondly being a guest in.  Sometimes I get frustrated when I teach.  Sometimes I get irritated picking up after people.  I'm sure the kids see this all the time.  But I do hope they like sitting around my table with their friends scarfing down my chili.  Maybe they'll remember that as a good time, remember a feeling of being welcomed and fed and among friends once or twice a week (between being hounded for their history homework and quizzed on their Latin grammar).    I have to believe that it makes a real difference to them to sit down to (say) a bowl of hot soup with fresh rolls and a piece of fruit.

 

Point six:  You can always order pizza.

Which sounds like a jokey way to end a post, but in fact, it is actually a real point.  Once, maybe eight years ago, H. and I sat down and worked out about how much it cost per serving to feed the kids a home-cooked lunch.  I am sure the price has gone up significantly since then, partly because food prices have risen significantly, and also since we now have some teenagers.  If I remember right, we figured that we spent about $2 per serving back then.

That turned out to be a very useful thing for us to have calculated, because we realized that it didn't actually cost us significantly more to order Domino's pizza for the kids (at $5.99 for a two-topping medium pizza, the lunch special that has been going for years in this area).

We didn't want to order pizza all the  time; we wanted to have balanced meals that would be good for everyone, as much as possible.  But we'd also been assuming that pizza delivery was kind of a luxury, and so we definitely didn't want to order pizza all the time.

Turns out that it's not.  I think it might even be less expensive relative to home-cooked meals now, because the prices of a delivered pizza have not risen as fast as the prices of groceries.  (Although four teenage boys can put away a lot of pizza, it should be noted -- probably more pizza than salmon loaf.)

Anyway, the point of this is that if your home-cooked meal backfires somehow, or if you wake up in the morning and you just can't stand the idea of cooking, you could order pizza (provided you live somewhere that you can get it).  H. and I have given each other carte blanche to resort to pizza whenever that seems necessary.  I think we're both committed to making a good-faith effort to a lunch that is not pizza, for the sake of balance and variety; but we're not fanatics, and sometimes the pizza is the best thing to happen to the day.

Remember to tip the driver, and then make your peace and get back to your school day.

 

A new pan for me, and some pain de mie.

I have added a new bread recipe to my Bread Machine Recipe Spreadsheet!

The last time I updated the spreadsheet (mentioned in the link above), it was 2014.  Almost three years later, I have found a new worthy loaf.

+ + +

The French version of white sandwich bread, which I really encountered for the first time on our family trip to Europe a couple of years ago, is called pain de mie.  The word mie means crumb, or it can mean the inside part of bread (the part that is not the crust); so this is "crumb-bread," bread that is almost all "inside."

It is white and tender, and makes square slices that are not very large.  But even the store-bought kind is (as you would expect) superior to your average American white sandwich bread, even kinds from bakeries.   It is made with milk and lots of butter, and all-purpose flour rather than bread flour, which produces a smooth, unsticky, and easy-to-handle dough.  It is baked in a buttered, lidded pan that confines the oven-spring to make a square, dense loaf with a fine crumb.

I bought a 13" × 4" × 4"  Pullman loaf pan with some Christmas money, especially for learning to make pain de mie.   Here it is on Amazon.  I paid $25 on sale.

And today I set about making my first loaf of pain de mie.  My basic working recipe, for now, is adapted from this recipe at King Arthur Flour, with some attention to various recipes around the net for "Pullman bread."

 

Working Recipe:  Pain de Mie for the Bread Machine

• 1 and 2/3 cups whole milk
• 6 Tbsp salted butter
• 2 and 1/4 tsp salt
• 3 Tbsp sugar
• 4 and 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp bread machine yeast
• Additional butter for greasing the pan

Put all the ingredients in the order listed into the bread machine on the "Dough" cycle, so that it mixes, kneads, and rises twice.   

Preheat the oven to 350° F.  Butter (don't spray) the inside surfaces and inner lid of a 13" × 4" × 4" aluminum Pullman loaf pan.  

Transfer the completed dough to a nonstick cutting board.  Press it gently into a 13" × 8" rectangle, then roll it up from the long end into a log.  Place it seam side down into the loaf pan, with the ends of the log right up against the inside of the pan, and slide the cover almost all the way on.  Allow to rise until the loaf is just below the lip of the pan, and the pan is at least 3/4 full, 45 minutes to an hour  -- or longer in a cool kitchen.  

Close the pan all the way and bake 25 minutes.  Remove the pan from the oven, remove the lid, and allow the bread to bake for an additional 20 minutes or until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center reads 190° F.

Remove from the oven, turn immediately out of the pan onto a rack, and cool completely before slicing.

The bread had a buttery, almost flaky-thin crust that reminded me of a croissant, and sliced easily into thin and sturdy slices.  We spread butter on it and ate it still a little warm -- I admit, our impatience left the center a bit unstable and soft, still steaming -- and it was delicious and dense.  I expect it will make marvelous grilled-cheese sandwiches and buttered toast.  But to find out, we will have to wait for the next loaf.

I'll be tweaking this recipe over the next few weeks, until I settle on a version worthy of a new printed edition of the spreadsheet.  The first thing I may try is increasing the yeast a bit to speed up the rise.  The second thing I may try is leaving the lid on the pan for longer in the hopes of getting a truly square, evenly browned loaf.

Pulled pork from a giant frozen slab.

Earlier this year Mark was offered the opportunity to buy many, many pounds of pork loin at a very reasonable price.  He did not realize when he agreed to purchase said pork loin that it would be delivered frozen in the form of "whole pork loin," which I think is a beast he had never before encountered.

Here is one of the pork loins inside my large deep freezer (baking soda box added for scale):

I'm not actually sure how many pounds this thing weighs, because I would have to take it upstairs and weigh it using the Baby Method, where by you step on the scale holding the frozen pork loin, then hand the frozen pork loin to someone else ("Here, hold my pork loin"), and then perform a subtraction, presumably while your loin-weighing partner is daintily juggling the meat from hand to hand so that it does not conduct enough thermal energy away from his or her skin to generate frostbite.

I do know that it does not fit in my microwave oven, crockpot, or sink.   Had it been delivered unfrozen, I might have cut it and its brother loins (we had something like eight of them) into reasonably sized pieces, wrapped them individually, and then frozen them as roasts and steaks and the like.  As is, I let them sit in my freezer most of the summer as I brooded over the best way to deal with them.  A repentant Mark offered to cut them up with some sort of power tool, but I accepted that, just as bringing home the bacon (so to speak) falls under his sphere of domestic responsibilities, preparation of said bacon mostly belongs in mine.*  

+ + +

Anyway, the frozen pork loin almost fits in my picnic cooler, so (after reading up on related topics, viz. the brining of Thanksgiving turkeys) I jammed it into the long-diagonal dimension of the picnic cooler.  Then I set the picnic cooler on my kitchen counter, with the little drain hole oriented over the sink for safety (but closed), and filled it with water by holding down the trigger of my sink-sprayer-on-a-hose for, like, ever.  I mostly closed it (it wouldn't quite close) and went away.

The first time I did this, I dutifully changed the water surrounding the pork loin, as food-safety experts say you should now and again when you are thawing meat by submerging it in cold water.  This turned out to be more trouble than I expected.  After the drain plug, which is attached with a flexible strip of plastic to the outside wall of the cooler, the rest position of the pluggy bit interrupted the jet of water, deflecting a spray in all directions.  Just as I had had to stand there filling the cooler by holding down the trigger of my sink-sprayer with my aching thumb -- indeed, just as I would have to stand there again to refill the cooler by holding down said trigger -- I had to stand there holding the pluggy bit out of the way so that the water would course down into the sink, tracing a neat ever-diminishing parabola.

A very cold parabola.  After a while I thought to go find a thermometer (after momentarily re-plugging the drain) to discover the temperature of a cooler of water in which a fresh-from-the-deep-freezer, plastic-encapsulated pork loin has been resting for several hours.  I discovered that the temperature was, in fact, colder than my refrigerator, which food-safety experts assure me is a delightful and life-affirming location for thawing meat.  I decided not to bother changing the water again.  By this time the pork loin was squishy enough that I could close the cooler all the way, so I did.

+ + +

I did all that stuff right after breakfast.  The pork loin was thawed enough to cut into pieces by about two in the afternoon.  I cut it into about six pieces.  About a third of it went into my smaller slow cooker (the round one -- I think it's a 3-quart, but I'm not sure -- why the heck didn't Crock-Pot^® print the size on the outside somewhere?), and about two-thirds of it went into my bigger slow cooker (the oval one).  And then I added a carefully researched liquid, divided proportionally to match the proportional division of the pork loin, as follows:

Liquid What I Cooked The Slab O'Pork In

• One liter of Coca-Cola
• 3/4 cup of apple cider vinegar
• 2 Tbsp salt
• 1 Tbsp garlic powder
• 1 Tbsp chili powder
• A whole lot of freshly ground pepper

Oh, and I think the first time there was some pork sticking up out of the liquid, so I put a piece of bacon on that bit.

I put the slow cookers on low, and I cooked it for twenty-four whole hours.  I mean, it was three o'clock by the  time I had it all in the cookers, I couldn't exactly have it ready for dinner.  And I didn't want it for breakfast or lunch.  So, yeah, I cooked it for an entire day.

And then I shredded it and froze it in Ziploc bags with enough liquid to moisten, and I had something like 13 pounds of cooked pulled pork.

+ + +

Most of the time when I try new recipes, I figure out something I should do to tweak them.  None of that here.  The Coca-Cola plus vinegar is just the right blend of sweet and sour, the garlic and chili powder just the right kind of spicy, to be sufficiently neutral for all manner of applications.  

The first day we had the pulled pork on homemade wheat buns with an assortment of bottled barbecue sauces, cole slaw, and applesauce.  

Later I put the meat plain on telera rolls, topped them with sautéed peppers and onions, and melted Provolone cheese on it under the broiler -- sort of a cheesesteak, or rather, a cheesepulledpork.

Another time I made banh mi out of them, on baguette with pickled carrots, cilantro, Braunschweiger standing in for the French pâté, sliced jalapeños, and fish sauce.

Another time I made pork fried rice, with pineapples.

Another time I mixed it with hoisin sauce and we rolled it up in tortillas with gingery cole slaw.

Last week I stuffed it with barbecue sauce into baked potatoes and melted cheese on top -- a Budget Bytes inspiration.  (There are many recipes there that use pre-cooked shredded meat -- this was one.)

Anyway, just about anything that calls for shredded meat, this will work in, from pizza to enchiladas to tacos to stir-fry.  I highly recommend it.  If you are using a smaller piece of a pork loin that fits in one crock pot, use between one-third and two-thirds of the cooking liquid amount that I described.  Or go ahead and invest in a giant slab of frozen meat and a picnic cooler.  You won't be sorry, even if you wind up with an aching thumb.

 

 

_____

*Unless the propane grill is involved, the investigation of the reasons for which is a cultural-anthropology dissertation for another day.

Cabbage with onions and potatoes, Greek-ish style.

This is one of those posts where I blog a recipe just so I won't forget it exists.  My 15yo son loved this side dish that I threw together out of leftover vegetables, and I want to remember to make it again.

I was making what I call "skillet gyros" last night, because it was the day before grocery shopping and I'd found some ground beef and a package of pita bread in the freezer.  "Skillet gyros" means that I brown the ground beef with nothing but salt and oregano, and I serve it with a sauce I make by stirring together yogurt, garlic, dill, and chopped cucumbers.   

Trust me, it works.

Anyway, I also had three-quarters of a green cabbage and some leftover roasted new potatoes, so I googled "Greek cabbage potatoes" to see what turned up.  I wound up with this composite recipe:

Greek-style cabbage and potatoes (empty fridge edition)

• Half to one green cabbage, chopped
• 1 yellow onion, chopped
• 5-6 cooked red potatoes, diced
• Oregano and salt to taste
• 1 six-ounce can tomato paste
• Olive oil

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Sauté onion in olive oil until soft in a medium oven-safe skillet with a lid.  Add cabbage and toss to wilt; cover the pan and let steam for a few minutes.  Stir occasionally to avoid sticking and burning, and continue cooking until cabbage begins to soften.  

Add potatoes, tomato paste, oregano, and salt, and stir to combine.  Cover and transfer to oven and bake about 30 minutes.

If you have less time, sauté a little longer and bake it less (or you can even do the whole thing on the stove top).   If you have more time, let it bake longer.

Works great. 

There was one recipe I found that made me wish I had had bell peppers too.  It was here (although the slightly passive-aggressive language about the blogger's parents turned me off some).   Next time!

On eating while small of stature.

Jenny commented on my last post:

Not to complain too bitterly about being short, but my normal, weight-maintenance meals are already small. If I eat to lose, we are talking child-sized portions which is a drag without significant motivation.

Isn't it a drag, though? I took a minute to write out a 1500-calorie menu that sort of mimics the pattern that is most comfortable for me (fairly light but egg-based breakfast, medium-sized lunch, fairly hearty dinner). This is what I came up with:

A 300-ish calorie Breakfast

• 2 soft-boiled eggs
• 1 slice pumpernickel toast with a pat of butter and optional smear of marmalade (alternatively, scramble the eggs in the butter and leave it off the toast)
• 6 ounce mini can of V-8

A 500-ish calorie Lunch

• A couple of cups of chopped mixed salad greens and raw vegetables
• 5-ounce can of oil-packed tuna
• Half a cup of cooked chickpeas
• Balsamic vinegar to taste (just rely on the tuna for oil)
• 1/4 cup fresh grated parmesan

 

A 700-ish calorie Dinner

 

• 1 roasted, spiced chicken thigh, with skin
• 1/2 cup raita (half yogurt, half chopped vegetables)
• 3/4 cup grated carrot salad with spices and lemon
• Steamed green vegetables -- say, 10 spears asparagus
• 1 cup grain pilaf
• *Allowing for about 1.5 tablespoon of added oil total from the chicken, salad, and pilaf.

+ + +

 

All that is fairly hearty-looking because of lots of vegetables and because it was homemade to my tastes. Nevertheless, it is quite possible to have a depressingly small-looking plate. If you want to stick to 500 calories or so for lunch at your typical sandwich place, you get the sandwich, generally, and nothing else. You might be able to manage a half-sandwich and a cup of soup, depending on the soup. Coleslaw will set you back farther than you think. Fries are most likely right out.

For instance, let me grab some lunch data from a casual chain restaurant that has it online, Chili's. Lunch off the menu that would suit someone my size would be:

• On average, about half a burger or half a burrito. No sides.
• Shrimp fajitas will work and probably taste great, and I would get to eat all the sizzling innards -- but only one tortilla. (Ordering the shrimp option is a good trick for right-sizing meals, incidentally. They never give you much, and the cost will help you appreciate it.)
• Nachos are one of my favorite things, but I have to split them with two friends. And I am done with lunch already!
• A "Fresh Mex" bowl sounds like the sort of thing that I should be able to eat, and looks tasty, but I only get half.
• Kids' meals? Okay, this strategy can work. If I happen to be in the mood to eat a circular burger, the teeny pair of sliders come in under the bar, at least if I stick with fruit on the side. Actually most of the kids' meals would work that way, except the pizzas. This is how I could also get a piece of plain grilled chicken that gives me room for fries and fruit.
• Main-dish salads? I only get part of them. Less than half the buffalo chicken salad, about three-quarters of the Caribbean salad with grilled chicken, a third of the "quesadilla explosion salad." Oh, by the way, that is without any dressing. Fortunately salsa makes an excellent dressing substitute.
• Bowl of soup? Those work. A lone bowl of chicken enchilada soup is just about right.
• Tacos? There are three in an order, and for most varieties, two of them makes your meal.
• Lunch combos! They are supposed to be smaller lunch portions. With salad and the included fries, will any work? The short answer is "No." You could give away your fries... no, wait, still too big. How about if you only eat half the lunch combo? Now we are getting somewhere, as most of these are eligible if you only eat half of it (half a salad, half a portion of fries, half a chicken burrito or whatever).
• What about the "lighter choices?" If I am hellbent on cleaning my plate, I could choose some of these (though not all). They don't look bad, actually. There's a steak, for example, or various grilled chicken meals with pico de gallo and salad or broccoli, even a little rice.

In sum, a not-quite-five-foot-tall woman like me -- fairly physically active -- gets to eat approximately half of the average restaurant meal, without fries, unless she doesn't mind sticking with a simple bowl of soup.

And that is without saving any room for a dessert -- or rather, for a couple of bites of someone else's dessert.

This gets old really fast -- unless you can really internalize the notion that restaurants portion for big, hungry males, and small women are second-class citizens.

...Oh, wait, it still gets old really fast.

Yes, yes, I could think of it as free leftovers that I get to take home in a box. I used to be in the habit of taking an insulated lunch bag with me when I went out for the day, and could probably be induced to do it again. Still -- the only way to avoid feeling like you are stuck with a child's portion (or convincing yourself to overdo it) is to deeply internalize what "right-sized" food looks like. This is possible, I have found, but it takes a lot of practice -- meaning, for me, a lot of deliberately ordered, deliberately half-eaten meals, to disconnect my notion that cleaning my plate is the norm.

 

Posted with Blogsy