Shannon Phillips

Back home to some bad news: there’s significant termite infestation in the house we were hoping to buy, and it needs a whole new roof. This will make it impossible to get an ordinary mortgage, and as you can probably imagine, we’re pretty reluctant to go down the 203K route again. We’re just kind of processing the news right now, but I feel pretty crushed. I was trying not to get my hopes up, but I guess somewhere along the way I did. I’m tired. I’m sick of this. I can’t stand looking at another house that will never be mine.

I think we’re going to have to take a break from house-hunting for a while.

Let’s talk about something nice, like dinner. This week in our vegetable box we got six gala apples, a bunch of arugula, some lettuce, some spinach, a bunch of radishes, a head of radicchio, a bag of bok choy, four fuyu persimmons, three eggplants (one big globe and two small skinny ones), and a sugar pie pumpkin.

Tonight we’re having baba ghanoush, homemade pita bread, and a salad of the radicchio and arugula with persimmons, pomegranate seeds, and blue cheese in a balsamic vinaigrette. The recipe is from the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market Cookbook. It’s very colorful—here’s a picture:

Tomorrow Robin and I will have the bok choy for lunch—I’ll braise it with garlic and stir in a pack of cooked ramen noodles. For dinner we’ll have penne with spinach, sausage, and sun-dried tomatoes.

Saturday is D&D and hence a good night for leftovers or delivery; Sunday we’ll have whatever meat is on sale at the butcher counter, and a green salad. I might make a pumpkin pie, if I feel inspired. Monday, beef stroganoff; Tuesday, leftovers. And we’ll eat the apples just as they are.

Oh, I meant to link to this recipe for squash and apple bake, which I made last week. It’s very sweet, but would make a nice side dish for Thanksgiving. I’ll probably make it again, next time we get acorn squash and apples in the same box, but I’ll tone down the sugar and the butter next time.

There were bananas in our veggie box yesterday, which made me do a double take: bananas most certainly aren’t grown locally. I made a call to Capay Farms to see if we’d been switched over their their general-organics box, which I know includes some produce shipped in from out of state. They told me no, the bananas had only been included because we told them we don’t like melons (Sam’s allergic), and the other local boxes were getting honeydews. So all the other produce is still local, which is good: and we buy bananas anyway, so I don’t mind getting them in the box.

Besides the bananas we had lettuce, arugula, three beets, a bunch of leetle carrots, a bunch of radishes, a bag of bok choy, three sweet peppers, six oranges, four small tomatoes, and a sugar pie pumpkin. The oranges are incredibly juicy, and Robin loves them: he ate three last night and by the time he was done he was drenched in orange juice.

We have a special challenge this week, which is to eat all of the produce before we leave on Friday for Baltimore, on a long-awaited trip to see my BFF Nina, her lovely little woman, and their amazing new baby. We’ll be back on Tuesday: it’s a short visit, but with the house sale still in escrow I didn’t want to be out of state for too long. I’m terribly excited about seeing them.

The house deal seems to be proceeding normally, by the way: the bank will resolve the lien, and the inspections will be done on Monday. They were supposed to be done this week, but the power to the house got turned off and we had to wait for PG&E to turn it back on. I do feel for the people who are living there now, underwater on their mortgage and behind on the utilities, to the point that their power just got turned off. It really seems like this sale would be a good thing for everyone. I hope the inspections go well; if they do, we’ll close on November 6th. Send us your good thoughts, please: it’s been a long and tiring process.

Anyway, the easiest way to eat a lot of vegetables at once seems to be in a salad, so we had one last night with the lettuce, radishes, peppers, and carrots, and we’ll do another tonight with the arugula and beets. The bananas are already gone; if there are any oranges left on Friday we’ll bring them on the plane; and the pumpkin can sit around decoratively until it is, at some future date, made into a pie. Robin and I will have lentils with the tomatoes and beet greens for lunch. That leaves only the bok choy, which I guess I’ll braise with garlic, and we’ll eat it with the beet salad. It’s maybe not the most harmonious food pairing in the world, but it’ll do.

I have a very sad story to tell, and here it is: I had planned to make stir-fried okra and tomatoes with Indian spices tonight, served over brown rice, but when I got to the store there was no more okra. Isn’t that the saddest thing you ever heard?

Well, maybe not. All it really means is that summer is truly over, and we’re well into autumn: the season of soups, stews, squashes, and slow-cooked everythings. It’s hard to feel sorry for myself when I put it that way. Still, I didn’t get anywhere near enough okra this year. Next year, with any luck, I’ll grow it myself in my own garden.

Oh, about that: we do have another offer in, and it’s progressing surprisingly well so far. I say “surprisingly” because the property strikes us as being in all ways too good to be true: a beautiful (oh so beautiful) historic bungalow on a nice street, in (apparently) good condition and in our budget. We’ve pretty much accepted that we can have old-fashioned detailing, a nice location, or a home in good condition, but not all three, at least not in our price range. This one is all three so we don’t really believe in it: we just felt that we had to go through the formalities, you know, just in case. It is such a sweet house. We had to try.

Well, we’ve gotten further than we thought we would. It’s a short sale, so we expected this offer would die the same way the last one did: with the bank refusing the sale. Much to our surprise the bank has accepted, and the seller accepted, so we’re now farther along in this process than we ever have been before. There’s two things left that could go wrong: the first is that the inspections could turn up something dreadful, even though the house looks to be in great shape. The second is that there’s another lien on the property (not another mortgage holder, something smaller like utilities or something) and we need the sellers to take care of this before the title can be transferred. Either of these conditions are potentially deal-killing, but we’re not even going to order the inspections until we get some assurance from the sellers that the lien will be dealt with. The lien is definitely the more serious issue. I guess there’s just some part of me that assumes, or hopes, that the sellers and listing agent wouldn’t have even bothered putting this house on the market if there was no way it could be sold anyway. I mean, why would they? That would be dumb and a big waste of everyone’s time and energy.

Anyway. We’re waiting around for our hopes to be dashed, which they almost certainly will be—but like I said, we had to try. This house is better than any other we’ve seen. While we’re waiting, this week in our veggie box we got: lettuce, arugula, chard, beets, radishes, a pint of figs, two grapefruits, two acorn squash, three sweet peppers, and eight slicer tomatoes.

I thought tonight I’d use most of the tomatoes in the okra stir-fry, but like I already told you, that didn’t work out so good. So instead we had a repeat of those “English Mutton Chops” from my Italian cookbooks. To which I can only say, YUM. I don’t know if it’s because the meat is locally raised and grass-fed, or if all mutton is that good, but let me tell you, a pair of lamb or mutton chops sprinkled with salt and pepper, brushed with butter, and broiled for five minutes on a side make for a fantastic dinner. As a side we had creamed chard from this recipe (also delicious).

Tomorrow night we’ll have baked squash with apples (the recipe was tucked in our veggie box, and I’ll post it if it turns out well) and a beet salad. I’ll also make fig bars.

Friday night, a roast chicken and a green salad with the rest of the veggies. I’m really liking the Cook’s Illustrated recipe for avocado ranch dressing: I’ll post that if anyone’s interested.

(As a side note, I always rewrite the recipes I post, so as to respect copyright law. I don’t know if everyone realizes, but recipes, like software algorithms, or all ideas ever, really can’t be copyrighted: they belong to humanity. What can be copyrighted is the specific language or creative expression used to encapsulate the ideas in question. So you can always share recipes as long as you don’t plagiarize the descriptions.)

Right, so. Saturday night, we’ll have pasta with tomato sauce. Sunday I’m playing Dungeons and Dragons with friends, so we’ll have leftovers or sandwiches for dinner. Monday, something simple like pork chops; and Tuesday, baked potatoes with asparagus. So yeah! Despite myriad digressions, that’s the plan.

Look what I found on my hard drive: a picture of a dinner I must have made months ago.

I remember it being yummy as well as pretty. The recipe is from the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market Cookbook, which I use a lot, because it’s structured around the kind of local ingredients that we tend to get in our box. The salmon cakes involved a pound of skinned, deboned salmon, coarsely chopped and mixed with half a cup of chopped fresh cilantro, a fourth of a cup of scallions, a fourth of a cup of fresh bread crumbs, two tablespoons of dijon mustard, and a bit of salt and pepper, patted into shape and fried in a skillet over medium heat with a little bit of olive oil, about five minutes a side. The relish is just onion, corn kernels, tomatoes, and fresh basil, sauteed for a few minutes to soften the onion and corn. If you can get responsibly sourced salmon for a reasonable price, it makes a nice presentation without too much work.

This week we got a bunch of chard, a very small head of red leaf lettuce, a bag of bok choy, a pint of figs, a bunch of radishes, three sweet peppers, three beets, six small tomatoes (assorted kinds), six Gala apples, and a very big squash. The flier in the box says it’s a Kabocha squash, but I don’t think it is: it’s orange and diamond-shaped, and all the pictures of Kabocha squash that I can find are round and dark green. Mom, do you know what kind of squash this is?

Anyway, here’s the meal plan. Last night we had chard soufflé; tonight we’re having arroz con pollo with the tomatoes and peppers. My grandmother was kind enough to send a long a recipe that used to be her mother’s; I’ll post it after I’ve had the chance to try it out.

Friday I’ll roast the squash and make it into soup. I’ll probably make a salad to go alongside. Saturday we’ll have borscht.

There’s always a ton of leftovers from the recipe I use for borscht, so I’m not sure we’ll need much more food to last us through the week, but I did notice that they had local grass-fed “lamb” at the meat counter at Whole Foods. I put lamb in quotes because I think this time of year it must actually be mutton? For some reason in the U.S. they refuse to distinguish between lamb and mutton. Anyway, amusingly enough, my “bible of Italian cooking,” the Silver Spoon cookbook, includes a recipe for English Mutton Chops that seems easy and quick (brush ’em with butter and put ’em under the broiler? Okay!). So on Sunday I will be a Californian using an Italian recipe for English mutton chops. And then I think we’ll have enough leftovers for Monday and Tuesday; if not, some kind of quick pasta is always our friend.

This week our veggie box held: beets, chard, two bunches of lettuce (one romaine and one red leaf), a bag of arugula, a bunch of cilantro, a big bag stuffed with baby bok choy, a pint of cherry tomatoes, six medium red tomatoes, four gypsy peppers, and four Gala apples. We ate the beets first, in a salad, and then last night we had steaks and another salad (with avocado-buttermilk-cilantro dressing; a Cook’s Illustrated recipe and very good). Robin has already eaten all of the apples too!

Tonight we’re having chard quesadillas; the recipes in the box recommended it, and I think it sounds like a great idea. Tomorrow night we’ll have Indian-spiced okra, with the tomatoes, over brown rice. Sunday I’ll roast a chicken, and then Monday I’ll use the carcass to make broth for hot-and-sour soup with the bok choy. Tuesday night, leftovers.

I mentioned that I’ve been tracking my expenditures closely over the past week. We spent $245.54 on groceries last week: that includes lunch and dinner for all of us, cat food for Marlis, a couple bottles of wine, $31.50 for the weekly veggie box and $41.77 on Sunday brunch — but doesn’t include things like diapers and dishwashing detergent. That’s insanely high, right? It seems insanely high. I’d be really interested to know what other people budget for groceries, especially those living in the Bay Area.

One thing we could do to rein in our food costs would obviously be to switch from eating out once a week to once every other week. Another would be to stop shopping at Whole Foods, but since that’s actually a high point of my day, I’m pretty reluctant to give it up. A third thing would be to cut back on the most flagrantly self-indulgent foodie purchases, like, say, the rosemary pheasant paté that I bought at Whole Foods last week. (I was just so charmed by the idea of putting paté in Sam’s bento!) Thrift, it does not come naturally to me. I’ll see if I can do better this week.

In our veggie box this week we got a bunch of radishes, a bunch of chard, a pint of figs, four grapefruits, a bunch of beets, three eggplants, four sweet peppers, four yellow summer squash and three pattypans. Yesterday Robin and I had the squash for lunch, mixed in with some macaroni and cheese from a box, and for dinner we had sauerkraut soup: I love sauerkraut so I was intrigued by the recipe, but although it wasn’t bad I don’t think it’s good enough to make again.

Tonight we’re having baked potatoes with sauteed garlicky chard, and I mean to make this a habit, because I’ve realized that one way to cut down on our grocery costs is to have a baked-potato-and-vegetable night once a week. I spend a lot on groceries, as may be apparent: I like to cook with frou-frou ingredients like fancy cheeses, and I like to buy organic/humanely raised meat and produce, yadda yadda—basically I’m a Whole Foods drone. But also, I’m very aware of how lucky I am to live in a time and a place where so many different delicacies are readily available. The average American today can easily partake of a gourmand diet that surpasses what emperors commanded in past eras; I’m pretty sure Caligula would be jealous of our table. And I want to take full advantage of living in this window in time. If they put She Ate Well on my tombstone, I’d be pretty satisfied with myself. But I know it’s perfectly possible to eat well for much less than what I’m currently spending, so I’m making an effort to rein in our grocery costs.

Having scheduled such a thrifty meal for Friday night, I feel perfectly justified in planning fancy sandwiches for Saturday: I’ll roast the red peppers, grill the eggplant and pattypan squashes with some olive oil and thyme, and we’ll have them sandwiched on a slab of herb bread (I might make my own, or buy some from the bakery if I don’t have the time) spread with goat cheese and tapenade. Suck it, Caligula!

Sunday I’ll make split pea soup and a big salad with roasted beets, blue cheese, and candied walnuts in a balsamic vinaigrette (the recipe for this is in the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market Cookbook, and it’s become my favorite way to have beets). I’ll add in the radishes too. Monday some sort of pasta, and Tuesday, leftovers.

As for the fruit, I’m going to make another tray of fresh fig bars because Robin really loves them, and I’ll eat the grapefruits for breakfast. Robin doesn’t like them; too bitter I guess.

I know it’s a personal question, but if anyone feels comfortable sharing how much of their budget goes each week to food, I’d be really interested in comparing. I’m going to track everything rigorously from tomorrow to next Friday, including restaurant meals and the odd jaunt down to the corner store, and I’ll post our own numbers then.

I found this picture on Sam’s camera: it’s a vegetable torta I made weeks ago. Wasn’t it pretty?

This week seems to be going better than the last one. My cellphone actually revived itself after a few days, and we got our vegetables yesterday. I have to admit I had a pang of sadness when I saw chard in the box. Is summer over already? Not that I don’t like chard&#8212I do—but I know from last year that it’s going to be chard and kale all through the winter.

There were still tomatoes, though, so that’s nice and summery. Our late summer vegetable box included, in full, a bag of grapes, a bundle of thyme, a bunch of chard, a pint of figs, a pint of cherry tomatoes, six heirloom tomatoes, a small eggplant, three zucchinis, four peaches, and five yellow sweet peppers.

Robin has already eaten all the grapes, and we had the cherry tomatoes for lunch yesterday, mixed into a box of macaroni and cheese. For dinner last night I made shrimp-and-sausage gumbo, using the big tomatoes and the sweet peppers (and okra, of course; I’m still craving okra and I guess I’d better start shoveling it in for as long as it’s available).

Pros: The gumbo was delicious. I think I’ll put up the recipe in another post, maybe after I get Sam to take a picture of it.
Cons: There is enough gumbo to last us the rest of the week, if we eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

I think we’ll have it again later this week and then I’ll freeze whatever’s left. Tonight we’re going to have baked potatoes and sauteed chard; I need something quick and easy since we’re going out to look at houses tonight (SIGH). I’ll make fig bars during the day today.

Tomorrow night, leftover gumbo; Saturday, glazed chicken breasts and rice; Sunday, baba ghanoush, pita bread, and dolmades; Monday, a big salad with roasted beets and ears of fresh corn; Tuesday, spaghetti bolognese.

This week in our veggie box we got a pint of figs, a big bag of small red grapes, a pint of cherry tomatoes, three yellow summer squash and two very leetle zucchinis, four medium-sized heirloom tomatoes, four nectarines, a whole bunch of red gypsy peppers, and also what I think are a few smaller chili peppers—although it’s hard to be entirely sure: they could just be very small sweet peppers.

I haven’t made one of these posts in a few weeks, but the box content has been mostly the same, except that we’ve been getting eggplant for the past several weeks, and sometimes pears instead of the figs or peaches. I’ve mostly been making ratatouille or caponata, and one week I made a beautiful vegetable torta—which I took a picture of—but I lost it along with my camera. Instead you can see the lovely whole wheat bread I made to go with the caponata a few weeks ago (I got the picture off my camera before I lost it):

Tonight we’re having halibut baked in foil with squash, zucchini and tomatoes; they had locally-fished halibut at the fish counter, so I got it even though it was more expensive than I usually buy. You’d think that living on the coast we’d get plenty of fresh local fish, but the environmental regulations are so strict around here that you can almost never get local fish. I think it’s short-sighted: shipping our fish in from halfway around the world has a deleterious effect on the global environment, after all. So, I sprang for the local halibut just to be supportive.

Tomorrow I’ll make pasta with cherry tomatoes, arugula, and goat cheese; Friday, I’ll put all of the peppers (sweet or hot as they may be) into a beef chili. I might make cornbread to go alongside. And that will take care of the veggies, so I’m not going to plan out any further than that.

As for the fruit, the nectarines and grapes will be eaten raw, but I found a nice recipe for fresh fig bars that I think I’ll use again this week. For that recipe I get to use the honey that Sam’s father harvests from his own backyard bees! It’s wonderful, wonderful stuff, and Pappy always seems to have another big mason jar full of it waiting for us whenever we run out. You might say that I married into honey. Hee hee hee.

We skipped a week of veggie delivery while we were on our brief vacation, but this week they’ve apparently decided to make up for it with (deep breath): a bunch of grapes, a bunch of basil, an overflowing pint of red and yellow cherry tomatoes, three pounds of mostly golden heirloom tomatoes, a bag of peaches, four “Krimson” pears (they look like this), one really big eggplant, six gypsy peppers, seven pattypan squash, a small bunch of carrots, four funny little round yellow cucumbers (I remember these from last year, they’re tasty), and a partridge in a pear tree. No, I mean, and five pods of okra. I can’t really complain about such overflowing bounty, but I’m going to anyway: what am I supposed to do with such a scant handful of okra? It’s just enough to be tantalizing but not nearly enough to satiate my okra cravings. Next year I am going to grow my own okra in my own back yard, hooray, and I’m going to have scads of it.

Tonight we’re eating green chile caldo, because I’m eager to try some of the recipes from the New Mexican cookbook that Nonna sent our way. But tomorrow I’ll make a start on the vegetables, in the form of homemade veggie pizza (topped with squash, peppers, and goat cheese), accompanied by a cherry tomato salad. Friday we’ll have gazpacho and a green salad (with the carrots), and Saturday I’ll buy a loaf of crusty bread and we’ll eat it with Sicilian caponata.

Sunday I’ll make bhindi masala—I’ll have to buy more okra—and Monday, something with fish. I dunno. I’ll keep you posted.

The fruit that Robin doesn’t devour will go into Sam’s lunches. I like fresh fruit for dessert, too, so I’m glad we got so much of it this week!

Yesterday’s veggie box held: broccoli, carrots, four little eggplants, lots of little sweet peppers, a big bag of grapes, five peaches, three tomatoes (yay!), three zucchini, and two cucumbers.

Robin has already eaten almost all the grapes.

Last night we were lucky enough to see the Anti-Sara and two members of the Phillips extended family we hadn’t yet had the opportunity to meet: Melinda and her lovely daughter Lindsay. We had them over for dinner—I made grilled sausages and peppers, a big salad (using the broccoli, carrots, and cucumbers, with homemade avocado ranch dressing), and a peach cobbler. Everything came out all right but the sausages took forever to grill on our little George Foreman grill, so we had a very long dinner served in several courses. It’s, uh, sophisticated and European? Anyway, it was nice to have all this lovely fresh produce on hand when we were having guests.

Robin, by the way, adores all the relatives but especially Lindsay, who he went really a bit crazy for. He would cackle like the Joker whenever she so much as looked his way. She was sweet enough to spend a lot of time playing with him, but as the night wore on and dinner went past Robin’s bedtime, he got more and more wound up, and eventually bit Lindsay twice in his mania.

The biting thing is worrying. Robin’s been biting Sam lately too. I don’t really get bitten, I think because my presence is soothing rather than exciting, and the biting happens when he’s really wound up. We’re using time-out as a response right now, but the discipline doesn’t seem to really take when he’s in that super-hyper state. I’m just hoping it doesn’t become a huge problem, because from what I’ve read online biting can be a really hard behavior to break. My inclination is mostly to try and keep him from getting into those manic states, but of course sometimes it’s hard to avoid.

Anyway, meal plan. Tonight I’ll make ratatouille over quinoa to finish up the remaining veggies. The weekend’s going to be busy; Saturday is my day with friends, and Sunday I’ve volunteered to help out at my local comic store, which is having a big event starring Neil Gaiman. My job is keep the crowds from trampling Neil in their excitement. There are going to be some big guys around to help with the crowd control if it comes to that: but I was drafted specifically to be “cute and charming” and try to keep the mood pleasant while everyone waits in an orderly fashion to have their books signed. It’s a fun job because I get to hang out near Neil the whole day, but I’m also a little bit nervous because, well, I want to do a good job. And as Brian (the store owner) said, “If someone tries to shoot him, I am sorry to say that you’ll be the one that has to try and stop the bullet with your bracelets.” So that’s a responsibility I take pretty seriously!

Anyway, I’m probably only cooking one of those days, and it’ll have to be something simple like pasta. We have some sausages left over, so maybe I’ll do pasta with sausage and some sort of spicy greens, spinach or broccoli rabe. Then on Monday, something seafood-y: I’ll have to see what they have at the fish counter. Oh, I think salmon is in season? So maybe salmon cakes with arugula or something.