When you’re gearing up for the launch of your first cookbook, and trying to work on two blogs while planning a book launch party, weekdays can get a bit hectic. Sit-down lunches start becoming a luxury. Heck, lunch becomes a luxury. Or at least, lunch that doesn’t involve grabbing a slice of pizza on the go.
Last week, after lecturing to myself that I really did need something healthier, I decided to whip up a batch of Provencal chickpea dip that could last for several days. And pair it with olives, sun-dried tomatoes, and pita bread, everything that could be picked up quickly from the neighborhood market. This super easy recipe comes from Anne Willan’s wonderful and beautifully photographed The Country Cooking of France. Poischichade is a Provencal version of hummus and baba ganoush, and has an intense smoky flavor from the roasted red peppers and ground cumin.
It seems like everyone I’ve talked to is just eager to finish up work before taking the rest of the week off. I’ve also been running around doing errands and tying up loose ends with work before the Thanksgiving cooking madness begins. This year I’m visiting a close college friend in Nashville, and she has tasked me with helping her plan the big turkey day feast.
There are some picky eaters in the group, so menu planning is a little tricky, but fortunately we seem to all agree on brussels sprouts. Which is a good thing, because brussels sprouts gets a bad rap from many people who were used to eating them steamed or boiled to mush when they were children, and as adults still have a prejudice against them. I grew up in a Chinese family, so I was spared from eating mushy brussels sprouts as a kid. So when I tried them for the first time in my 20s at a restaurant, roasted with beautiful crispy leaves, I was instantly hooked.
For the past few months I’ve been taking morning walks several times a week in Prospect Park. I am, mind you, not a morning person. I used to habitually set my alarm on weekday mornings with good intentions to go to the gym or yoga class, then proceed to hit snooze 10 times, until it was actually time to get to work. It was a bad habit, to be sure. And a waste of a gym membership.
But in August, my friend Elizabeth and I decided that it’d be much harder to make excuses for not exercising (or keep hitting snooze, in my case) if we had scheduled power walking dates. And so as much as I still hate getting up at 7am, I actually feel much better once I get going and take in some fresh air.
And Prospect Park ain’t a site for sore eyes either. Especially in October, with all this gorgeous foliage:
Prospect Park Foliage
And logically, exercising regularly makes me more aware of eating healthier breakfasts. (As in, no more thrice-weekly croissants from the best bakery in NY.) This week, I’m craving everything pumpkin. So it was only a matter of time before I made a big batch of pumpkin spiced oatmeal.
I had almost everything I needed already in the kitchen, and just had to run out for some pumpkin purée. The recipe uses steel-cut oats, which take longer to cook than rolled oats, but they have more body and a creamy but still toothsome texture, which I like.
Plus, you can store leftovers in the fridge for 3 or 4 days. I made much more than I could eat, but just portioned out the remainders in Mason jars to be reheated over the next few mornings. The next day, it was still delicious, with an even deeper pumpkin flavor.
I changed up the original recipe (from The Essential New York Times Cookbook) a bit, by using both milk and water and doubling the amount of pumpkin puree and cinnamon. This oatmeal is so nice and filling, and you just want to put your face right up to the bowl and inhale the cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice. It’s really the best of autumn in a cereal bowl. I topped off the oatmeal with chopped apples, but you can also use apple sauce, sliced bananas, dried cranberries, cashews, etc. The sky’s the limit!
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Pumpkin Spiced Oatmeal
Makes 4 to 6 servings
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 cups canned pumpkin puree
4 cups water
1 1/2 cups steel-cut oats
1/2 cup whole milk
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 or 2 apples, chopped
In a small skillet, toast the cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg for 30 seconds, just until fragrant.
In a large pot, heat the pumpkin puree over medium-low heat. Stir in the toasted spices and brown sugar. Add the water, raise the heat, and bring to a simmer. Stir in the oats and simmer uncovered over medium-low heat for 20 minutes.
Add the milk and simmer for another 5 minutes, until the oatmeal is tender but not yet mushy. Stir in the salt and adjust the flavor with more brown sugar if desired.
Divide into individual bowls, top with chopped apples, and serve.
In college, about a decade ago, I briefly toyed with the idea of being a French major. I had studied the language for about 7 years and had romantic but vague ideas about moving to Europe and working there. Very vague ideas. Something to do with foreign relations/ journalism/translation/nannying…or really, anything. In reality, I just really wanted to move to Paris and was looking for a way to live there legitimately.
That, of course, never happened. I ended up majoring in art history, working at a book store for a year after graduation, then moving to New York for culinary school. Though I never ended up living in France, I did become very familiar with classical French cooking.
Everyone has a favorite blueberry muffin recipe. This is mine. It's funny. As a fan of sturdy breakfast foods, I'm usually partial to bigger, denser muffins that are more reminiscent of scones. But for blueberry muffins I always come back to this one. Soft and pillowy, it's almost cupcake-like, the opposite of what I usually look for in a muffins. But I guess I'm just partial to the nostalgia behind them.
For those of you not from the Boston area, Jordan Marsh was a department store that sat right smack in the middle of the city's downtown from just after WWII to the 1990s. On ordinary weekends, it was filled with city and suburban moms dragging their kids (including yours truly) through the sale racks. I don't think there was a single weekend when I wasn't there with my mom or aunt, browsing through a maze of women's sweaters and blouses and scarves.
But even then there was something refined about it. Jordan Marsh was from the era of older department stores, when they still wrapped your purchases in pretty white boxes emblazoned with the store's name in a thin elegant font. Yeah, I played with those boxes at home, little 6-year-old me pretending I was a refined lady out on the town shopping for refined things. And later used them to store my Barbie clothes.
You know how everyone has a few dishes in their repertoire that they have made the same way for as long as they can remember? Those dishes that you learned once, thought they tasted pretty good, and so you never wavered from the familiar way you were taught?
For me one of those dishes in potato salad. That old summertime picnic and barbecue standby. Since high school or college, I’ve made it in the exact same manner, tossing boiled potatoes with a mayo and dill dressing, maybe accented with a bit of lemon juice. Classic, comfortable, but not terribly mind-blowing, like that black sheath dress you wear to the office.
Well, I think I’ve found the smoking hot, slinky red dress equivalent of the potato salad. And it involves thickly cut bacon and tangy barbecue sauce.
When it comes to breakfast, I'm a creature of habit. Well, for a short period of time, anyway. I go through periods in which I would eat the same thing every single morning for 3 to 4 months: oatmeal with dried cranberries, toast with raspberry preserves, almond croissants, Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds, Barbara's Puffins. And then move on to the next thing for 3 to 4 months.
My most recent breakfast habit has consisted of combining vanilla yogurt with granola from the Park Slope Co-op. I've tried a lot of their granolas from the bulk bins, mostly settling a very minimalist one with lightly crispy oat clusters and dried blueberries. But then I started seeing a whole bunch of homemade granola recipes on Pinterest. (My fellow food bloggers are very inspiring!) So I decided to try my hand at making granola from scratch.
Recently a branch of People's Pops opened in Park Slope. Pretty much everywhere I walk, I see kids and adults alike happily slurping fruity popsicles as they walk down the street. With the recent heat wave, it has become a strong test of willpower to not stop in when I walk by, which is practically everyday.
I've eaten my fair share of People's Pops this summer, but realized I could easily go broke having as many a day as I'd like. And so I've recently started making a bunch of popsicles at home with yogurt and fresh summer fruit. Plus, a walk to the freezer takes much less time.
