And look at that, I’ve just taken us from May through to the end of summer. Let’s back it up a bit. For the next several weeks, it is still May, and Lee is still across an ocean, and I am still here, trying not to mope, and trying to remember to cook decent meals for myself. “Decent meals” very often end up meaning popcorn. Although I figure if I put some cheese on for protein and pair them with a smoothie (or let’s be honest: wine), that’s basically a balanced meal, right? Right.

Popcorn’s weird for me. I never make it for other people, but when I’m on my own, I tend to feel myself getting a bit peckish in the evenings. Enter: popcorn.

I know it isn’t much of a recipe, but to be honest, before a few months ago, I’d never successfully made it from scratch, with just oil and kernels creating some sort of alchemy in the pan. So I’d like to share two things with you: how to make some nearly perfect popcorn, and that hot sauce on popcorn is delicious.

(I like sriracha.)

Popcorn
1/3 cup popcorn kernels
3 tablespoons coconut oil and/or ghee and/or butter
a pinch of salt
optional: hot sauce, grated cheese, truffle oil

Melt coconut oil or ghee in a medium-sized saucepan. If using butter, don’t add it in yet, as it will burn if heated for this long. Put four or five popcorn kernels and the salt to the pan, and turn the heat to medium-high.

Wait until one of the kernels pops, then remove from heat. Add butter (if using) and the rest of the kernels. Wait thirty seconds with the pan off the heat. (This brings all the kernels to the same temperature.)

Return the pan to medium-high heat, cover, and let sit until the kernels begin to pop. Once they do, move the pan around on the burner to keep the kernels moving and not burning, until the popping has stopped. Remove from heat, quickly add cheese if using.

I’m here visiting Lee, who’s over here getting her Master’s this year. I didn’t move with her (very, very sadly), for a variety of reasons, but I’m getting to visit her for a month, and it’s making me pretty happy, as one might expect.

I brushed up on my Anglophilia before coming, but apparently obsessing on the internet still leaves out a thing or two. I’ve been calling my fries “chips” and my chips “crisps” as a good Brit should, but I’ve been stymied by the shopping carts, which are locked together my a weird little device. After poking, prodding, and trying to surreptitiously watch other people use it (no one came in), I ended up carrying a week’s worth of groceries around in a handbasket. As I was loading them into the bus, someone finally explained to me that you put in a pound. Grocery cart rental. Magic.

There was also my inability to find the potatoes in the farm stand down the road. Confusing, since the English really love their potatoes. After wandering around the entire stand, twice, I finally realized that the reason I hadn’t seen them because they weren’t sold by the potato, or even by the kilogram. The potatoes, you see, were tucked over in the corner, in their 15 kilogram bags, which were not going to be easy to carry back down the road with me.

In honor of England, I have a custard for you. (It’s actually a pot de crème, but shhhhhh.) I told Lee the other day that I think I might be a little bit English, somewhere, somehow, as evidenced by my love of manners, British comedy, and both kinds of puddings: the custard kind, and the soggy bread kind. (Actually, I think that’s much more likely to make me a middle-aged English person. Whoops.)

So, custard:

Vanilla Pots de Crème
From this recipe. Makes 4-6 servings.
A note on the vanilla: you could definitely do like the original recipe and use vanilla beans. If you do this, split them, scrape the seeds into the cream, and heat the cream until steam rises. Let it all steep for 15 minutes, then

2 cups heavy cream or half and half
2 teaspoons vanilla extract or two vanilla beans
6 egg yolks
½ cup sugar

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

If using vanilla beans, cut them in half length-wise and scrape the seeds into the cream. Put the beans in there, as well. Heat the cream until it steams. (Keep a close eye on it. If you over-heat, it will develop that gross milk-skin.) Let it steep/cool for fifteen minutes. After steeping, remove the beans. (Don’t throw them away! Rinse them off and use them in homemade vanilla extract, or vanilla sugar.)

If you’re using the vanilla extract, just heat the cream until it’s warm.

While the cream is cooling, beat the egg yolks and the sugar together until they are light in color (about four minutes by hand). Pour in just a small amount of the cream, and whisk until it’s completely mixed in. Repeat until you’ve used about ¼ of the cream, and then you can start adding more like 1/3 of a cup at a time. If you’re using vanilla extract, whisk it in now.

Divide the custard between 4 or 6 ramekins (or stoneware/porcelain teacups!), depending on how large you want your servings. Cover the ramekins with tinfoil (to prevent a skin from forming), and place ramekins in a larger baking dish with sides. Pour hot water into the baking dish (about halfway up the outside of the ramekins).

Place the baking dish in the oven, and bake for 30-45 minutes. (The original recipe notes that cream sets fastest, and half and half sets slowest.) In order to get perfectly-cooked pots de crème, you want to take them out when the edges are set, but the center is still jiggly.

Chill, then serve, topped with whipped cream, if desired.

Going back to the beginning: I started it out with all these intentions and plans. Write about important issues! Bring attention to politics! Save the world through blogging!

It sounds a little naïve now, to my ear and probably yours, but damn, did I care. And with the five billion cooking blogs out there, who needs five billion and one? Guiltily, though, over the months that came, what I found myself writing about was my experiences with food. The flavors, the remembrances, the process of coming home and chopping methodically until all my other thoughts drop away.

I felt so conflicted about it, and nothing sucks the motivation out of someone like a loss of joy. So I just stopped writing. I had to write for my job eventually, though, and over the summer I developed a love for fiction, but I still felt this crushing guilt about this space. “Am I a bad activist?” I wondered, “a traitor to the cause?”

With time (and fretting) comes wisdom, however, and as I’ve turned my thoughts over and over again these past few months, I’ve come to realize:

Food isn’t fickle. It’s delightful, yes, but it’s also deadly serious. It literally creates the life force in us. It’s nourishment. It links us through history and reminds us of who we are. Writing about it, I’m learning, isn’t a guilty pleasure. It is essential, and it is writing at its very best, pulling together the ultimate human experience into something far-reaching and at the same time, deeply personal.

Who cares if no one else needs a billionth cooking blog? I need it, and I think that’s enough. So hello, again. I’d like to fill this space with some more stories, and some more recipes. Here’s a start.

Spiced Pumpkin Soup with (Turkey) Bacon
Streamlined from this Nigel Slater recipe.

a small pumpkin (about 2 pounds), or 30 ounces of canned pumpkin
1 onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
2 tablespoons coconut oil
2 teapoons ground coriander
1.5 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon chipotle or chili powder (or more if you like things spicier)
1/3 cup coconut milk
salt
12 pieces turkey bacon

If using whole pumpkin, halve it and remove the seeds and stringy bits. Place it in a pan with sides, fill with an inch of water, and roast it at 400 degrees for 30 or so minutes, until a fork goes into the flesh easily. Check periodically to replenish the water if needed. Wait until it’s cool, then remove the outer skin.

Melt the coconut oil and cook the onion and garlic in it until they’re soft and translucent.

Add the coriander, cumin, and chili powder, and cook for a minute or two. Add the pumpkin (either the stuff you roasted, or from the can), and stir well. Cook for a minute or two.

Add the stock. Simmer for twenty minutes. Cool slightly, until you feel like it won’t melt your food processor. Process it in the food processor until it’s smooth. Return it to the pan, and add the coconut milk. Season with salt to taste (I used about two teaspoons).

Return the soup to a near-boil. While you’re doing this, fry the bacon. Serve the soup with pieces of bacon crumbled on top. Nom.

In my mind, they tie together into this thing, this idea of slowing down, and making the most of the life you have, as it is. Truly inhabiting where you live, getting to know your neighbors, and other “medium chill” pursuits. Drinking coffee while staring out your window and getting to know your yard throughout changing seasons. Canning produce from your garden and tucking it away in your pantry, giving it away to loved ones who come for potlucks in the backyard. Enjoying small household tasks, because they’re small household tasks.

I’m disgustingly taken with this overly-romanticized idea, as you might have noticed.

It might have something to do with being a few years out of college, when we start to realize that making friends isn’t as easy as getting to know the cool girl from two dorm doors down. Putting down roots is hard, and community, it turns out, is something you have to nurture, torturously slowly, through years of meeting new people and asking them on awkward friend dates and trading secrets and shared experiences, and finally weaving them together with others into a cohesive group.

I’ve always been a traveler, ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Recently, though, a friend of mine told me about how her parents have a group of friends that’s incredibly tight-knit because they’ve all lived in Boston since their 20s, going to drinks and parties together for decades. That idea appeals to me, and I’ve started to realize that those kinds of strong bonds take time.

So when Lee and I started talking about buying a house, and when we bought one last month***, it didn’t seem terrifying, like settling down forever before I’ve finished exploring, but rather like setting up a framework that I can return to, leaving if we have to for school or jobs, but always returning to see the neighbor kids growing up, the plants I’ve put in get bigger, and to have dinner with friends.

And while we’re on the topic of dinners with friends, and potlucks, and grilling in the backyard: I recently re-created a mainstay of summer potlucks from when I was a kid. My friend Miah’s mother always brought the most amazing pasta salad to dinners, and after some begging, she taught me how to make them. I started thinking about those salads again, after more than a decade, and started to wonder if I could make them without the store-bought “Italian” dressing and processed cheese shreds. Shockingly, I got it on my first try, and unless my memory is failing me, it bears an uncanny resemblance to those Kraft pasta salads of days gone by.

*** Yes, this is an announcement that we have bought a house. Yes, yes, yes.

Non-Kraft Pasta Salad

For the vinaigrette:
¼ c. vinegar
¼ c. olive oil
1 medium clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon honey
pinch of thyme
pinch of celery salt
pinch of dried basil (or a pinch of minced fresh)
½ teaspoon of dried parsley (or 1 teaspoon of minced fresh)
1 teaspoon salt
several grinds of black pepper

For the salad:
1 lb pasta (2 cups dried pasta/8 cups cooked)
2 cups chopped broccoli (I used a combination of florets and peeled stem)
½ cup oven-roasted tomatoes or 1 cup halved cherry tomatoes
¾ cup finely grated parmesan
3.5 tablespoons capers or ½ cup black olives (the basic kind, like the ones you stick on your fingers when you’re five.) (Or twenty-five.)

- If it’s not already cooked, cook pasta until it’s al dente. Drain, and rinse in cool water. Toss with a little olive oil to keep it from sticking, if desired, and set aside.
- Rinse broccoli, and steam it: Bring about an inch of salted water to boil in a medium-sized saucepan. Add broccoli, cover, and reduce the heat to medium. Steam it for about 5-6 minutes, or until it turns a bright green (after this, it will continue cooking until it turns that dark green-brown color of overly cooked, soggy broccoli known in cafeterias the world over). Drain, and rinse with cold water.
- While the broccoli is cooking, make the vinaigrette: whisk all the ingredients together (or put them all in a mason jar with a tight-fitting lid and shake) until the oil and vinegar have emulsified.
- Combine the cooked pasta, cooked broccoli, tomatoes, parmesan, and capers/olives. Mix until they’re all friendly with each other. Add the vinaigrette, and stir until all the salad ingredients are evenly coated.
- Chill and let the flavors mingle for at least an hour or two (preferably four or five, but to be honest, I ate it immediately after finishing it, and it was still good, un-mingled and lukewarm).

I’m not overly fond of the exacting type that require a person to force themselves into unwanted tasks. But the kind that you set to give yourself the space and framework to do something you want is a bit time-machine-esque.

You can set the resolution, and then peer ahead with the awareness that maybe Future You can speak Thai, or bake a perfect soufflé, or apply false eyelashes with the best of them.

I have a list of goals on my wall. They’re not necessarily self-improvement, although some of them are. I wrote it last fall, when I was in a pretty low place, with the intention of knowing what I wanted and working towards it all, even if most of the points seemed utterly impossible.

In a funny way, things started to work out. I started this blog, and then, beating the odds and two years of customer service underemployment, I got a job that I adore. It often feels like getting to do all of my hobbies, except with a small paycheck to show for it.

I figured travel, to Spain and France, was still a far-off dream, but that my goal list was more like a five-year plan. And then Lee got into a fantastic graduate program, one that will probably enable us to travel at least three times next year, quite possibly to old favorites like France and new territory, like Spain.

It still gives me tingles when I think about it. It’s like I finally gave myself permission to ask the world for what I wanted, and the world responded by giving (not everything I wanted, but) everything I needed. I don’t expect that I’ll always get everything I ask for, and it’s not really about that. Having that list of goals posted above my bed works in a powerful way, and I think a lot of it has to do with having a list of the things I really want, in a plain format, so that when I start to feel lost, I can go back to the list and work hard for what I want.

And this is all a tl;dr way of saying that I did some editing, and now “Learn to cook without recipes” is scrawled down there on the bottom. I’ve been cooking for what feels like forever, and now I’m trying to develop dishes, at least twice a month, using only my senses and perhaps my trusty Flavor Bible.

This is my first attempt, taking the classic blondie recipe, browning the butter, upping the salt, and turning it into a bar cookie homage to s’mores, which are my current obsession. All s’mores, all the time.

Salted Brown Butter S’mores Blondies

½ cup butter (1 stick)
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 teaspoons (large-crystal) kosher salt (more like 1 teaspoon if you’re using table salt)
1 cup flour
½ toasted pecans
½ cup chocolate chips
10-15 large marshmallows

-       Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour an 8×8 pan.
-       Brown the butter (link to instructions). Let it cool.
-       Mix together browned butter and brown sugar.
-       Beat in the egg, and then the vanilla.
-       Mix in salt, then flour. The mixture will be thick.
-       Stir in pecans and chocolate chips.
-       Pour the mixture into the prepared pan.
-       Bake for 10 minutes. Remove from oven, and place one marshmallow on every square inch or so. Place back in oven, and bake for another 10-15 minutes, until it’s set in the middle (the marshmallows might make it a little hard to tell, but don’t worry about them being slightly underbaked, they’re gooey and delicious that way). The marshmallows will puff out and melt back over the top of the blondie.
-       It will seem tempting to cut into them hot. They’re ok that way, ignoring the burning-hot marshmallow, but they’re at their most extraordinary after they’ve cooled.

This year, I went in with a plan, and triumphed over the u-pick strawberries. In case you’re still engaged in that battle I know so well, here’s my blueprint for 26 pounds of strawberries.

At least four pounds went into our hands and mouths.

Another four pounds went into jam.

A pound went into strawberry ice cream, and another into strawberry and cream biscuits.

A whole lot, like ten pounds of a lot, got flash-frozen and are now tucked into the freezer for next winter. And the rest went into strawberry daiquiris. Six pounds worth of strawberry daiquiris.

I get that daiquiris might not be the most fashionable drink. Which is a shame, and I wonder if it might have something to do with the fact that these days, they’re often made with sugar syrup and no fruit to speak of.

But these might change your mind.

Strawberry Daiquiris
Makes four or five drinks, depending on your pouring.

4 cups sliced strawberries
1 cup white rum
3 ounces frozen limeade
1 cup crushed ice or 12 ice cubes
whipped cream (optional)

Combine the first four ingredients in a blender, and blend until smooth. Taste, and adjust to your preference. Top with whipped cream if desired.

I’m pretty unclear on why it’s impossible to find a place that 1) costs less than six months’ rent and 2) does not require the rental of a porta potty. Peeing in a box was my dealbreaker, and yet here we are at deadline time, with one place that costs $10,000, and two others without public bathrooms.

So. Portable toilets and a lack of indoor plumbing, here we come. Luckily, we’ve found “The Comfort Trailer.” It has fake wooden floors. It has fake marble walls. It has a sound system.

After all of these adventures in swank bathroom hell, we’re still going to need to feed people, and I refuse to even contemplate what finding catering is going to be like.

As far as I’m concerned, my best plan right now is to make dozens of these cheese croutons, plop them all on salads, and call it good. And it would be great, and anyone who disagreed would be wrong, because these croutons are amazing.

When Deb put this recipe up a few weeks ago, it was like it filled a void in my cooking repertoire I hadn’t known was there. Fried cheese croutons? On spring salad? Of course. Perfect. Out of the past ten dinners we’ve eaten, five of them have been salads with fried cheese croutons.

We’ve been throwing it together with greens, sliced red onion, almonds and a simple vinaigrette made from this chive vinegar (that’s the crazy hot pink stuff below), mustard, honey, and olive oil.  Last night, we tried it with spinach, strawberries, and pecans. Of course, the power of the fried cheese crouton is such that no matter what kind of salad you scrounge up, it’s going to be amazing.

hot pink! chive blossom vinegar!

Fried Cheese Croutons for Salads
Adapted from smitten kitchen
Makes four croutons

This is really more of an idea than a recipe. I measured out in ounces the first time, but in the subsequent rounds, I ended up just eyeballing somewhat equal portions of cheese and then throwing in some extra chèvre. Maybe four parts goat cheese to three parts parmesan. For the breadcrumbs, panko works here, but you can also just toast a couple of slices of bread (I used whole wheat, crusts and all) until they’re hard and browned, and then whir them in a food processor until they’re a consistency that’s slightly coarser than sand. Since you’re  frying, you’d ideally want to pick an oil with a high smoking point, like ghee, avocado or coconut oil. But I’ll admit that I used olive oil since it’s all we had on hand, and taste-wise, it was delicious.

5 oz chèvre (or other soft goat cheese)
4 oz coarsely grated parmesan (or other flavorful hard cheese)
1-2 tablespoons flour
1 egg, beaten
¼ cup panko or other breadcrumbs
several tablespoons of a high-heat appropriate oil (enough to fill the frying pan with about a third of an inch of oil)

-       Mix together the chèvre and the parmesan until they’re completely combined. Divide them into four balls, and then flatten them into patties.
-       Prepare a dredging station by putting the flour into a small dish, the beaten egg into another, and the breadcrumbs into a third. Coat each cheese patty in flour, submerge it in the egg, and finally roll it in breadcrumbs until it’s fully covered. Meanwhile, heat the oil for a minute or so.
-       Fry the patties in the oil for about two minutes on each side, until they’re golden and crispy. Flipping them will be a bit of a challenge, since they’ll be starting to get melty. I took Deb’s advice and used two forks to maneuver, which worked well.
-       Deposit each crouton on to a salad of your choice. Top with several grinds of pepper. Devour.

But what I’ve really been thinking about is the opposite. Food cooked in happiness. Does it taste better? Is it the intent behind it that we savor, or are the good intentions literally baked in?

Lee had surgery a few weeks ago. It was scheduled, and necessary, and in the long run it’s going to be much better for her health, but it was still so, so scary. I thought we were both prepared for it, but when I had to leave the prep room at the very last possible moment before anesthesia, I cried. The anesthesiologist, wise man, joked to Lee, “This will feel like literally no time for you, three hours for me, and three days for your fiancée.” Yes. Maybe four. Or five.

Naïve, I thought I would spend the week cooking, whipping up healthy comfort food and spending my week working from home turning myself into a hipster Martha Stewart. If you’ve experienced major events like surgery, you’re sighing for me right now, because you know that worrying and caretaking are exhausting, and the most carefully-laid plans about cooking nutritious and pre-meal planned meals will become a complete Everest, theoretically possible but not something you’ll actually do any time soon.

Enter: friends with food. Home-cooked tomato ragout, pizza delivery, coconut water for hydration, and a tractor-shaped “get well!” balloon that has been floating around the house like a specter of well-wishes. (We’ve been joking that it’s Farm Bill-themed because why in the world did the store have a tractor-shaped balloon? What holiday is that for?) Last weekend, some old friends cooked a steak dinner completely kosher, after I’d protested that it was too much work, so that we could eat it too. This has been a very thorough reminder of the community that surrounds me, us, ready to bring over the casseroles when times get rough.

This has been a week of food cooked with affection and caring. The kind of amazing food that fills you with love with every bite; not just love for the food, but for the people who prepared it, and emanating from the food itself.

I made this for that steak dinner. I might become hipster Martha Stewart after all. Photo by my lovely friend Katy.

And this weekend, Lee made me eggs. She’d already eaten, so she made them just for me. She’s already been mobile and back in school for days, but watching her whisk and chop and stir, healthy and whole, made me the tiniest bit overwhelmed with emotion.

Herbed Ricotta Scrambled Eggs
The eggs serve one, the ricotta will serve 4-6, depending on how much you use.

These are inspired by Heidi Swandon’s Herb Cream Cheese Scrambled Eggs. We used ricotta because it’s what we had on hand, and were pleasantly surprised. Lee is, shall we say less adventurous with the spices, and didn’t include the tarragon or oregano, both of which I enjoy.

1 cup ricotta
8 green onions (both green and white parts), chopped
1/3 cup chopped chives
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme (or slightly less if dried)
(1+ teaspoon each dried or fresh tarragon or oregano, if desired)
salt and pepper

2 eggs, well whisked
splash of water, splash of milk
butter, for greasing the pan

- Place ricotta in the bowl. Mash the thyme, salt, and pepper (and other herbs) into it, then add the green onions and chives and stir to combine.  Set aside.
- Melt a pat of butter in a frying pan. Whisk water and milk into scrambled eggs, and add to the pan. Cook and scramble until they’re nearly cooked to your taste. Add a heaping tablespoon of the ricotta mixture, stir, and remove from heat after eggs are fully cooked.
- Serve with toast and another dollop of the ricotta mixture on the eggs. (Or smear the toast with ricotta mixture. Delicious.)