Category Archives: of late

Of late (in our kitchen)

Finally joining in with Heather for her This Week In My Kitchen blog hop. These are, as Heather says, simple everyday photos of what’s happening in our kitchen – a record of what we’ve been cooking and eating, and inspiration for times when we have no idea what to cook. Details are below the photos.

From top to bottom:

Brown rice, always a staple. This week we had it under a chickpea stew with sausage and pesto (one of the last from the stock of freezer meals my parents made for us when our daughter was born) and alongside salmon and broccoli.

Speaking of broccoli … I love it anyway, but it seems I am especially mad for it postpartum. Both times. I could eat it every day. I’m not kidding when I say I buy eight or ten heads at once at the grocery store.

Next up? Hard boiled eggs fore, raw eggs aft. Oh, and my son, who decided with zero prompting from his mother that he wanted to clean both the kitchen island and the fridge that day. Have at it, sweet child!

I cheated on my normal granola this week with Molly’s Granola No. 5. A splurge, with all that maple syrup, but wonderful. That’s what you see in the Pyrex measuring cup, and don’t think for a second I didn’t scrape the dregs out with my finger to slurp down.

Then there’s my steady baking companion, helping me measure out flour for our nearly no-knead bread. I used to make this loaf several times a week but for no good reason I’ve been on a long hiatus. No longer! I’ll try to write up our recipe soon.

Frittatas are absolutely a go-to dinner for us around here. They’re not exactly the non-supper I referenced in my last post – there is chopping and grating and whisking, and we use both the stovetop and the oven. But I make them so often I can nearly do it with my eyes closed, and we use whatever we have on hand, so it is seriously low stress. This week I made one with cubed sweet potatoes, a mess of onions and garlic, a bit of smoked paprika, and whatever cheese we had in the fridge – supermarket mozzarella and some nice Parmesan, I think.

Coffee, everyday.

Usually we eat our broccoli plain (olive oil, salt, garlic) and pretty much always straight from the roasting pan. But this week I made some lemony tahini sauce, from The Oh She Glows Cookbook but via Shutterbean. Had it on top of broccoli a couple times and also on salmon. Very good.

We “blast” our broccoli à la Molly Stevens, which is to say: we toss it with olive oil and salt and roast it at 450°F for about 15 minutes, then throw two or three minced garlic cloves on top and let it go for another three or four minutes. It gets caramelized at the edges but is still tender and sweet inside. It’s broccoli fries really.

Lastly: my kid planted beans because you are not allowed to be 4 without doing that. They’re looking healthy and I hope we’ll be munching on them in a couple months!

Of late (and still not quite wordless)

15 Replies

Last night I was looking through photos from the last week or so. There weren’t a whole lot. Most of them were of my son: digging in the dirt floor of the shed at the farm, or shucking oysters with his dad, or building excavator factories with blocks that are three generations old, or licking an ice cream cone here in the bleak midwinter minutes before his first game of pinball. All were exactly the sort of tiny exquisite moments I hope I’ll remember even a tenth of, but this blog isn’t the place for those images.

It’s okay, I thought. IPhone pictures of my coffee and our food it is then! And truly that would have been fine. We all have to eat, after all. And while there’s not an enormous amount of farm fresh food in our kitchen right now, growing good clean food is how we pay the rent. And these days – the bay winds so cold, and the roads so slick, and me so pregnant – see us in the kitchen quite a lot. Sometimes the boys are making gumbo. Sometimes I’m making something with a bit less chopping but equal amounts of belly warming winter joy (over toasted day-old soda bread, with grated Dubliner and an egg over easy and coarse sea salt). Sometimes I am just peeling a banana and wrestling the lid off a jar of peanut butter. The kitchen is where it’s at, you know? And the dearth of outdoor photos this week is as accurate a marker as any of the season we’re in: it has not been a mild winter, and these late pregnancy hormones make me crave a deep hibernation.

But then! More snow! I confess sighing and grumbling when I looked out the bay window last night and saw the frosted street. But this morning I slept – a little late, while the boys ate breakfast – and then I hoisted myself and this babe we’re so close to meeting from the bed, and the day felt fresh. A little later the boy and I headed out with the dog, and we laughed, a lot, and we ate some snow, and I didn’t slip, and when we got home we saw scores of robins in the holly trees.

Will we meet the baby next week? Next month? Will I ever get to wear sandals again? Will I stop feeling guilty about using Netflix as a babysitter while I ignore the dishes and the laundry and just sit? What will we do for school? How hard will it be for my son to make room in his world for a sibling? How hard will it be for me?

This morning, for a while, I let it all go.

Of late

7 Replies

A new series? Maybe? I’ve always loved other people’s Wordless Wednesdays but something in me bucked at the phrase itself. But perhaps I can still play along. Perhaps some images once a week, or so, can be a gentle way to touch base – with you, and with myself.

I’d like to try.