Shannon Phillips

Davy started chirping as soon as I brought in that bowl of cherry tomatoes. “This. This one. Mine. Eat. Matoes! Mmmmm!”

So I put them on a plate for him, cut in half and sprinkled with a little fleur de sel (fancy schmancy!), and he promptly ate them all.

The zucchini is destined for tonight’s stir-fry (with tofu, carrots, ginger, and scallions), but I also made a barley salad using some garden herbs:

The bell pepper in the salad was supermarket-bought, as the one pepper plant I bought for the garden was an early casualty of the Squash Wars. At this point the tomatoes, zucchini and kabocha squash have carved up the garden bed amongst themselves, with the parsley, basil, mint and chives sort of hanging out around the edges. Next year the squash and zucchini will be moved to their own bed, and I’ll have another try at peppers, eggplant, and leafy greens.

Barley Salad with Fresh Herbs

Adapted from a Whole Foods recipe

Combine three cups of water, a teaspoon of salt, and one cup of pearled barley in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to simmer until the barley is tender, about 40 minutes. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, toss 1/2 cup chopped green onions, a diced red pepper, 1/4 cup chopped parsley, 1/3 cup chopped fresh basil leaves, and 2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint leaves. In a second, small bowl, whisk together 1/4 cup mild-tasting olive oil, one or two tablespoons of fresh-squeezed lemon juice, and a clove of garlic that’s either minced or put through a garlic press.

When the barley is cooked, drain it and add to the bowl with the herbs. Toss with the dressing and add salt and pepper to taste.

I picked a small bowl of blackberries from our yard today. They were quickly devoured:

For lunch we had spaghetti with olive oil, garlic, parmesan, a fresh tomato, a handful of pine nuts, and some basil from our garden. Imagine me kissing my fingertips here: it was mmmm-mwah!

We also harvested the first zucchini from the garden this week. One of them was normal-sized, and I cooked it in a pot of black beans and rice. But the other was monstrous, bigger than a man’s forearm, and that one I hollowed out last night and stuffed with brown rice, sausage, tomato, and cheese, then roasted in the oven until it was soft and beginning to brown. It was delicious. Even Robin, who is in a strong anti-vegetable phase right now, ate some and said it was good.

There are more mondo zucchini lurking under the leaves. I see them, but they’re still pallid and unripe. It’s possible that they’re actually squash. The squash and zucchini have grown so thickly together that I can’t really tell where one vine ends and the other begins. Meanwhile the tomatoes are still green, but I am casting covetous eyes at them every day.

The best part of any dinner party is the next morning, when you can freely graze among the leftovers. Today I breakfasted on prosciutto with persimmons, smoked almonds, and chèvre—our appetizer from last night.

We had a lovely Thanksgiving, with my mom and Mark and my friend Matt to join us, as is quickly becoming tradition. We got a heritage turkey (they’re really worth the hype, especially if you like dark meat, as I do) and had mashed potatoes, brussels sprouts, cranberry sauce with pear and ginger, and Judy Rodgers’ bread salad in lieu of stuffing. I have a new celebrity crush on Judy Rodgers, the chef at Zuni Café in San Francisco; we ate there for our anniversary dinner last month, and I was so impressed that I bought her cookbook immediately. It is worth it for the introduction alone. I brined and cooked the turkey exactly as she instructed me, and it was delicious—easily my most successful turkey yet.

“I have no idea what’s going on in your life,” my mom said pointedly at some point last evening, “because you never update your blog anymore.” So, there, loyal readers, now you know: I am eating prosciutto in my bathrobe and vaguely thinking about doing the dishes at some point. What are you doing?

We got some bad news recently—J&P Organics, the farmers we’ve been buying our CSA veggie box from, are pulling out of Oakland. I flailed around a little looking for other CSA choices, and settled on Phat Beets—mostly because J&P is one of the farmers they source produce from. I also liked what they say in their FAQ: “Phat Beets Produce and the Beet Box specifically support small minority farmers, and connect them to inner-city communities. This means that we seek to promote the work of farmers who have been historically marginalized, who haven’t used farm subsidy programs, or haven’t had access to local markets.”

We picked up our first “Beet Box” today—it had basil, red onions, sweet potatoes, radishes, kale, a big Purple Cherokee tomato, a watermelon, three green bell peppers, a big hunk of ginger, four peaches, two nectarines, and, yes, beets. It also had a little flyer identifying exactly which farms had contributed the various fruits and veggies: Firme Farms, Vang Family Farm, J&J Farms, and Morning Glory Organic. I was curious enough to look up the first farm, and found a nice little story about who they are. So, thumbs up to Phat Beets!

Tonight we’re eating black-eyed peas with bacon and beet greens, and a side of roasted and mashed sweet potatoes. Robin is dancing around saying “I love black-eyed peas!” It makes me super proud.

We canceled our veggie box order this week because we thought we wouldn’t be able to pick it up—Sam was supposed to have to work on Saturday—but they postponed the big data-center move on account of all the snow.

(There wasn’t actually any snow. Everybody in the Bay Area got super-excited about some weather reports calling for snow—it hasn’t snowed here since 1976—but the weekend dawned bright and clear. Everybody celebrated by driving as if the streets were clogged with a foot of slush, though.)

So this without veggies this week, I’m going a bit wild and buying whatever strikes my fancy: beets, romaine, leeks, red potatoes, kale, basil, bananas, grapes. I’m planning on making pasta puttanesca tonight; tomorrow, roasted lemon chicken and a caesar salad; Tuesday, steaks and a side dish of farro with walnuts and beets; Wednesday, chili mac and Thursday, potato-leek soup. Friday we’ll have leftovers.

This week in our veggie box we got: kale, chard, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, cabbage, six Yukon Gold potatoes, two onions, four zucchini which I have already transmuted into zucchini bread, seven Fuji apples, two pears, two oranges, and two grapefruit.

As always, the fruit will take care of itself; and the kale will go into one of our now-standard bulgur salad lunches. Oh! And I should report! That farro and butternut squash recipe from last week was really good; I think I’ll make it as a side dish next Thanskgiving.

Tonight I’m going to try out a Cook’s Illustrated recipe for pork loin roasted with apples, cabbage, and various spices including thyme, allspice, and juniper berries. (I like cooking with juniper berries; it makes me feel vaguely like a frontierswoman.) And tomorrow we’ll have lamb stew with the potatoes and carrots. I’m certain that both these recipes will produce leftovers, so Wednesday we’ll tackle the leftover pork (maybe in sandwiches) and Thursday we’ll polish off the lamb stew—I’ll make soda bread to keep it exciting. Friday I want to try my friend Wendy’s recipe for Dutch baby, with a broccoli-and-cauliflower cheese dish on the side. And that leaves only the chard, which will probably go into a simple pasta lunch for me and the boys.

This week in our veggie box we got: two bags of baby spinach, a bunch of kale, a bunch of chard, two bunches of varicolored carrots, a bunch of radishes, four zucchini, two onions, four oranges, three pears, two grapefruits, six apples, three sweet potatoes, and six small red potatoes. I also didn’t get around to making the zucchini pizza last week, so we have three more zucchini on hand (and getting shriveled), which I think means it’s zucchini bread time.

The kale will go into a bulgur salad lunch for me and Robin. And the fruit is always gobbled up straight, so I never have to worry about that. As for the rest of it: tonight I think I’ll make polenta with chard, and tomorrow we’ll have roasted chicken and potatoes with a spinach salad. Then on Monday, pork chops smothered with apples and a sweet potato casserole. Tuesday I’ll make soup out of the chicken carcass, and Wednesday I want to try this recipe for farro and roasted butternut squash, probably with maple-glazed carrots as a side dish. Thursday some kind of pasta dish, and Friday, leftovers.

The veggie boxes are back! The veggie boxes are back!

Yesterday we picked up a box full of leafy goodness: chard, kale, cabbage, carrots, onions, six sweet little Fuji apples, four oranges, two grapefruits, three pears, three zucchini, two bell peppers, four sweet potatoes, and a handful of small red potatoes. Then we went out for Chinese.

But! This morning I had a grapefruit for breakfast, and Robin had an apple and an orange, and also a banana, though it wasn’t from the farmer’s market. (Sam, who is not enamored of grapefruit, turned up his nose at our impromptu fruit salad and decided to go pick up some doughnuts.) And tonight we’ll eat rosemary-garlic pork loin roasted with the potatoes. I like to have the leftover pork on sandwiches, topped Philly-style with provolone and garlicky chard (traditionally it’s broccoli rabe that goes on top, but I think chard will be an easy substitution), so we’ll do that tomorrow. Robin and I will also have the kale in one of our usual bulgur salad lunches.

Tuesday I want to try using the onions, carrots, and cabbage in this recipe (I’ll make some dark bread to go with it). Wednesday we’ll have whole wheat spaghetti with pesto—at the farmer’s market I bought a little tub of cilantro/almond pesto that smells amazing. Thursday we’ll have pan-grilled sausages and peppers, and roasted sweet potatoes as a side, and Friday this tasty-looking recipe for whole wheat pizza topped with zucchini, garlic, and cheese.

I was proud of us this morning: after picking up our veggie box at the farmer’s market, we drove straight to the nearby Redwood Regional Park and had a gorgeous hike. It rained a bit this morning—and is raining torrentially as I write this, complete with Gothic lightning and dramatic peals of thunder—but for the two hours we were out, the skies stayed clear. And probably because of the bad weather, we had the trails mostly to ourselves: we wandered through a hushed forest cathedral as yellow leaves drifted down all about us. The forest floor is swathed with primeval ferns, and punctuated by these amazing twisty trees with moss-velvet trunks, and the smell of the redwoods and bay laurels in the new rain was—well, you know, it’s really hard to describe a smell! But it smelled very good.

Then we went home and unpacked our vegetables. We got beets, two pints of strawberries, carrots, kale, cabbage, onions, broccoli, three pears, six apples, four plums, four green peppers, four zukes, two artichokes, and seven small yellow potatoes. JP told me that his family will be on vacation for the next month, so we won’t get another veggie box until January 15. But this week is obviously all about Thanksgiving. Tonight we’re eating…fast-food takeout. It was 2:30 when we got home, we hadn’t had lunch, and the fridge was almost empty, so in a fit of low blood sugar we got a chicken and some sides from Boston Market. I really don’t like buying meat when I don’t know where it’s from or how it was raised: Boston Market chickens are almost certainly battery-farmed, under conditions that I think amount to animal torture, and I know it’s wrong to support that. But this afternoon we did, and we have lots of chicken left over, so I guess we’re having guilt for dinner.

But tomorrow night we’ll have some nice grass-fed steaks with roasted broccoli, and Sam says he’ll make French toast with strawberries for breakfast. Monday we’ll polish off the cabbage, potatoes, and carrots—boiled, and served with butter and salt and crispy bacon. Tuesday, quinoa-stuffed peppers and sauteed zucchini; Wednesday, squash soup and a salad with roasted beets and blue cheese. (Wednesday we’ll also see Nanita and Marqueño!)

THURSDAY…Turkey! Sausage and fennel stuffing! Maybe some gravy depending on how tired I am when it comes time to make gravy! Cranberry-orange sauce! Brussels sprouts! Persimmon-apple pie!

Friday…LEFTOVERS!

Okay, I love living in California. This week in our CSA box we got a pint of strawberries—fresh strawberries! In the last week of October! We also got spinach, lettuce, bok choy, green beans, broccoli, carrots, zucchini, bell peppers, six apples (they’re Fuji, I asked; and last week’s tomatoes were, ironically enough, Early Girl), four plums, six of what look like Red Bliss potatoes, and some more sunchokes.

Tonight we’re having skirt steak and green beans. In fact, just now Davy started crying while I was in the middle of smearing marinade on the steak. Because my hands were full of garlic-rosemary paste I went about finishing what I was doing instead of going immediately to pick up the baby. Then he abruptly stopped crying, and that did bring me running—only to find that Robin was in there with him, kissing his toes and asking “What’s wrong, baby?” What a good big brother! Robin has his weaknesses—we’re still stalled out on potty training—but his strengths are wonderful strengths to have. He’s a friendly, generous, secure and loving boy, and frankly if I were told that I could have all that in a son in exchange for delayed potty training, that’s a trade I’d be happy to make.

I almost added something there about Robin not being very verbal, but actually I’m not at all sure that’s true. Even though he’s talking a lot more now, it’s still not as much as some of the other kids his age—but at the same time he’s extremely interested in written language. He recognizes all the letters of the alphabet and initiates a lot of conversations about letters, the sounds they make, and the words that start with various letters: right now he’ll often come running up saying “C! Cat! Kitty! K!” and then follow that up by going “cuh cuh cuh.” I’m pretty sure he’s working on the problem that different words can refer to the same thing, and different letters can make the same sound, which I think actually puts him a bit ahead of the curve for reading/writing. It’s not something I’m actively working on with him—I mean, we do read books, and when he wants to stop and pay attention to the letters, we do that, but I’m not trying to push him into being an early reader or anything. I’m just making a note to myself not to be too quick to make sweeping assessments of Robin’s strengths and weaknesses, because they may be more granular than I expect, and in any case they’re obviously still developing.

We got Robin on the waiting list for a preschool, by the way, and we’re signed up to take a tour of another preschool (the one that we could walk to) in February. Both schools say they will likely have openings next fall. I would like to get him more opportunities to socialize with kids his own age a little sooner, so we might look into signing him up for a Saturday toddler dance class or something like that. We watched Hello, Dolly! the other night and Robin loved the dance sequences. It was hilarious to watch him doing his best to follow along, twirling and kicking all over the living room.

Anyway, meal planning. Tomorrow night I’m roasting another chicken, along with the potatoes and maybe the sunchokes (unless I decide to just compost them instead). Wednesday night I’ll make a homemade spinach-and-ricotta pizza with whole wheat crust, and Thursday we’ll have grilled sausages, onions, and peppers, with a salad on the side to use up the remaining veggies. Friday will be for leftovers.

Bonus picture: Davy and Nonna!