Shannon Phillips

Robin has developed a bathtime ritual. He did it on his own; it took us a while to even notice. He got a set of dolphin-shaped bath toys for his birthday, and he likes to play with them in the tub. When it’s time to get out he’ll often grab a couple to take with him.

Then we noticed that out of a dozen or so plastic dolphins, it’s always the same two that he grabs: the orange and the light red (there’s also a dark red dolphin, but that one he never chooses). And he only holds on to them while we’re drying him off and putting him in his jammies. Once he’s set loose, the first thing he does is run back to the tub and drop the dolphins back in with the others. What purpose does this ritual serve? We have no idea.

He’s definitely gotten into the stage where he likes his routines. I think he mostly likes being able to make predictions about the world. He gets upset when, for instance, we start walking towards a destination he recognizes, like the park or the grocery store, but then veer off to go somewhere else. I think his understanding of the order of things is foggy enough that he really clings to the parts of it he can predict or control. Sometimes we call him the Iron Tyrant, on account of how harshly he protests when his expectations are violated.

At the same time, he is delighted by small acts of transgression. His very favorite reaction to provoke from us is one of surprise or mild disapproval: not anger, he doesn’t like that at all, but the recoil when (say) he runs up and licks us is hilarious to him. He craves our approval, of course, but it also seems that he craves our disapproval: he needs to know where the boundaries are, and he needs to push them just a little.

So that’s a toddler in a nutshell: he likes his routines, he wants a predictable environment, but at the same time he’s always testing and pushing the boundaries. Trying to bring more of the world under his control. Mwah ha hah, says the Iron Tyrant!

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.

So that Hubbard squash turned out to make a fantastic soup. I started with the recipe given here, roasting the squash as they suggest with garlic cloves, a drizzle of honey, and sprigs of fresh thyme:

I scooped out the roasted squash flesh into a food processor, and processed it with a splash of cream until it made a nice even puree.

I didn’t have a ham hock, and I was dubious about the amounts of cream and milk called for in the original recipe (a quart? Really?), so I made some variations. I started by chopping up four pieces of thick-cut bacon into half-inch pieces, and frying them over in the bottom of a stockpot over medium-high heat. When the bacon had darkened in color and released its grease, I added the diced onion and two ribs of diced celery, and sauteed them in the bacon grease (I think I also put in a splash of olive oil, because there wasn’t that much fat in the pan, and I think about half a teaspoon of salt) until the vegetables were soft. Then I peeled the four garlic cloves that had roasted with the squash, mashed them up, and sauteed them with the vegetables and bacon for just a minute, until fragrant. Then I added the squash pulp, stirred everything up, sauteed it all for a few minutes more, and then added the five cups of chicken stock and another sprig of fresh thyme (I didn’t have the savory the recipe called for).

The recipe suggests letting everything simmer for 45 minutes, but I gave it like five because I was hungry, and it already tasted really good. Then I put in a cup of cream (hey, it’s better than a quart!), some more salt, a lot of fresh-ground pepper, and I put it into bowls and we ate it. It was easily the best squash soup I’ve ever had. Sam was enthusiastic about it too, although Robin wouldn’t even try it. He’s getting pickier, unfortunately. Maybe he didn’t like the color?

We had leftovers, but they disappeared quickly too.

I think Robin’s had a growth spurt recently. I’m constantly stunned by how much more mature his face looks. I feel like I can see what the seven- or eight-year-old Robin will look like now.

And the baby in his face has disappeared. I was afraid I would miss that tiny baby when he was gone, but now that I’m here, I really don’t. It seems like Robin is more himself with every month. He’s joining us more fully in the world. It doesn’t feel like a loss. My friend Madeline once said something like, “babies are nice, but I like little kids even better,” and I think I agree.

Of course I can say this because Robin is still small enough to climb in my lap and curl up under my chin, or fling his chubby arms around my neck and sack out on my shoulder. I’m pretty sure I’ll miss that when a monosyllabic teenager has taken his place.

This was supposed to be a fig galette with gorgonzola custard. I was very careful when I made the pastry dough not to overwork the dough; I let it chill in the fridge for a couple of hours and then, again, took great care in rolling it out to the proper thickness; I mounded the figs in the center, folded the dough over, and poured in the custard mixture very slowly, so as not to spill a drop; and then, five minutes before the baking time given in the recipe was up, I smelled the burning.

That was most of an afternoon’s work, completely unsalvagable. I’m posting it here just to show that I have my share of spectacular failures!

My great-grandmother was a remarkable lady. Her name wasn’t actually Tocaya: it was Herlinda, or Linda for short. Tocaya means “namesake” in Spanish, and it was what she asked my aunt Linda to call her when her granddaughter Linda was born. Then all the other grandchildren—and, later, the great-grandchildren—grew up calling her the same thing, because as far as we knew it was just her name.

Tocaya was born and raised in Sinaloa, Mexico; her mother was a descendant of the Spanish nobility there and her father an American surveyor and engineer who became a naturalized citizen of Mexico. She married an American diplomat and traveled extensively engaged in her husband’s work—which apparently included espionage as well as diplomacy—before finally settling down in Texas. She lived to be 100 and left behind a thriving family that multiplied in every generation: I think she had two children, six grandchildren, and twelve great-grandchildren, though I may be forgetting someone. I remember her as a grand and stately lady, always carefully and respectfully attended, presiding benevolently over her brood. She was very proud of her Mexican heritage—although she always referred to herself as Spanish—and kept careful genealogical records that, according to her, went back to Christopher Columbus.

I recently asked my grandmother if she had any of Tocaya’s recipes, and she was kind enough to send me this one. It came typed on an old-fashioned recipe card:

I made it last night and it was delicious. Here it is, with my own notes:

1 chicken, cut up into 8 pieces, neck and back removed
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup rice (I used brown rice, and as you can see it still comes out a lovely golden color)
1 medium onion, diced
1 sweet pepper, diced (the original recipe calls for half a green pepper, but the red/yellow/orange peppers are sweeter, and I don’t see any reason not to use the whole pepper. The original recipe also tells you to mince the onion and pepper, but in a rustic dish like this one I think slightly larger pieces are nicer.)
2 cloves garlic, minced or put through a press (originally called for one, but I’m of the opinion that any time you’re going to use one clove of garlic you might as well use two. I really like garlic.)
1 bay leaf
2 cups water or chicken stock (Tocaya calls for two cups of water and three chicken cubes. It seems to me that since there’s a whole chicken and an onion in there that plain water is fine. It’s going to turn into chicken stock by the time it’s done cooking anyway!)
4 tomatoes, diced
1 cup peas (I didn’t have the peas on hand so I left them out, but I can tell they would be nice if you have them. Frozen is probably fine.)
1/4 teaspoon saffron or tumeric (I used saffron, because I am thrift-challenged as we have already established, and cooking with the most expensive spice in the world gives me a thrill.)
pinch oregano
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Pat the chicken pieces dry and sprinkle both sides with salt and pepper. Pour enough olive oil (the original recipe called for “salad oil,” which I think could mean any kind of light-tasting oil, but olive oil is good for you) into a skillet to coat the bottom and heat the pan over medium-high heat. When oil is shimmering, place chicken pieces in skin-side down (you might have to do this in two batches) and let cook until lightly browned, 3-5 minutes. Turn the chicken and brown on the second side. Set aside.

There should be enough chicken fat left in the pan to cover the bottom; if not, add a bit more olive oil. When it’s up to heat, add your rice and saute, stirring constantly, until the rice turns light brown. (If you’re using brown rice you’ll still be able to see the color change when it’s slightly toasted. Turn the heat down to medium or medium-low if the rice seems in danger of burning.) Add your onion, pepper, and garlic, and saute until the onion is softened and the garlic is fragrant, a few minutes. Add the water or stock along with your tomatoes, saffron, oregano, and about 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper, or to taste. Stir it all up and bring to a simmer over high heat.

Combine the rice mixture and the chicken pieces in a large covered casserole dish (or a large casserole dish which you have covered tightly with aluminum foil!) Try to get the rice submerged in the liquid, because any grains of rice that are left out are in danger of coming out crunchy.

Bake, covered, for 30 minutes. (Tocaya recommends checking and stirring it after 15 minutes.) Then uncover, give it a stir, and bake 40 minutes more, until the rice is nice and fluffy. Dish the rice out into individual servings and place the chicken pieces on top: or if you like you can let the chicken cool first, remove the meat from the bones, and shred it into the rice. Serves 6.

I think you could probably do this in a Dutch oven to make it a one-pot meal, although the chicken would have to sit on top rather than being distributed throughout the rice and liquid, and that might affect the flavor. Also, the chicken-to-rice ratio in this dish is quite high. You could probably double the amount of rice used if you wanted, though of course you might want to boost the seasoning as well if you did that.

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.

Sam snapped this picture of Robin eating a bite of apple last night:

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.