It feels like forever since the holidays–a lot has changed around here, about which more in a moment–but I guess Christmas was only a month ago. Tom joined us again, and cooked basically every meal while he was here. It was bliss. Among our projects:

Carnitas, per The Homesick Texan, as published by Smitten Kitchen:

After 3.5 hours of braising, during the brown-in-their-own-fat stage

As tacos

The leftovers were a boon for almost a week–we ate lots more tacos as well as a number of quesadillas, and I think Tom scrambled them into eggs a few times. The citrus juice in the recipe made for a brighter flavor than other batches I’ve made. Definitely one to repeat.

For Christmas Eve, Tom made duck confit.

Those three magret legs rendered TWO CUPS of fat. I have so much duck fat, you guys! I need to start roasting potatoes, stat. Unfortunately we were too excited to eat for me to remember to take any decent photos. Oops. This is the feel of the meal (we had roasted potatoes and a sharp salad with the duck):

And then we descended into chaos. We moved, you guys. Mid-January. It was a mad scramble, especially because our babysitter suddenly left us two weeks before. My parents were here for a last-minute visit, and then Ben’s mom came up and saved our butts, and his brother/brother’s girlfriend joined for the day of and were also lifesavers. Man, moving is horrible.

Tuck hated seeing his books packed but he was a very, very, very big fan of the crane that moved the piano:

And now that we’re getting settled in, things like this are happening:

It’s going to be great. And the kitchen is 100% white (not as good as our old one, but better light), so it’s a lot easier to take pictures of, say, the only thing I currently want to eat, that asian-inspired butter lettuce/avocado salad:

Ok, that is a scarily large picture of a grapefruit supreme. But still. You know you wish you were eating that right now.

HOLD THE PHONE, I never wrote up that salad dressing? That will come soon. I promise. It’s too good not to share.

1. Command picture hanging “nails” from 3M
We have plaster walls. Most rooms in the apartment have picture rail, so we can hang art from hooks without putting nails in the walls, but the bedrooms and kitchen are exceptions. Hanging art has generally required putting a screw into the molding, which looks terrible and is a pain. I have been using 3M’s Command Strips–which are like velcro with a sticky backing that supposedly removes from the wall without leaving a mark–to hang small frames in a couple places around the house, but when the time came to rearrange the art in the nursery I had some bigger frames that I wanted to use, and I really didn’t want to punch a bunch more holes in the molding. As I stood in the hardware aisle at Target trying to decide whether I could use the Command Hooks (no, they’re for hanging up…I don’t know, dog leashes? A single scarf? They stick out too far for pictures but only hold 5 pounds.) I noticed these:

Um. This is genius. There are double-stick strips of the removable sticky stuff, and you use that to attach a metal plate with, essentially, a nailhead sticking out of it. The large one holds up to 8 pounds, the small one up to 5; I weighed my frames on the kitchen scale (…I know) and the heaviest was 4.5 pounds because I have plexiglass in the bigger ones instead of glass. They were super-easy to use. (You do need to put them in place and then let them sit for an hour before you hang the art.) And Ta-Da! Perfect for gallery walls.

2. Nail Effects from Sally Hansen
I am terrible at painting my own nails. It’s always a mess. And I hate getting a manicure, because it takes ages and then I ruin it immediately. Anna at DoorSixteen wrote about the nail polish strips a couple times last month and I was intrigued: Strips of actual nail polish (thus, removable at home, unlike a shellack manicure) that are already dry once you put them on (thus, no smudging)? Fascinating. The downside is that there aren’t really any “normal” colors. It’s all crazy patterns or really bright neons or glitter, I guess because they’re about $9/box and who would pay that much to just get nude nails at home? I would. But I’m guessing that’s the reasoning. I got the most muted option, a dull gold, and OMG MY NAILS LOOK GREAT:

There’s a bit of a learning curve, but it was fairly easy to put them on once I figured out how to remove the correct backings in the correct order. Also, I didn’t press the edges down firmly enough on my thumbs. But I was able to use half the package and do both hands, since my nails are short, so I’ll try again once they chip. For $4.50 it’s completely worth it and very fun. I want to try the gold glitter, like Anna did, for the holidays.

I’ve generally been a pretty content person, or at least not a depressive one, so it was really hard for me to figure out how to react to a general sensation of unhappiness that followed me around for a sustained period. Of course there were plenty of individual moments/hours/days that were great, but it was a switch for my baseline to be achingly blue, instead of bumbling along relatively happy. Whatever has caused it, I need to move on now.

The last few weeks brought a lot of joy: T’s first birthday, the birth of a most beloved friend’s gorgeous little girl, a great vacation in New Hampshire with good friends, periods of weather, new boots. Fall is coming–my favorite time for fresh starts–and I’m looking hard at how I move through life and how I can be better and do more. I’m trying to declutter, get organized, etc.

New Hampshire:

Boots!

On the organization front here’s a gross grey cloud with a shiny silver lining: We suffered a horrifying infestation of pantry moths in late August, and while repulsive, the experience forced a very thorough deep-cleaning, organizing, and purging of the pantry. It’s now mostly devoid of food, so as we head into fall I’m going to try to be more thoughtful in what I bring in and how I use it to avoid waste. (Ugh, we threw out so much food. Blargh.)

Beautiful baby new potatoes from the farm:

I brought them to a boil with a couple halved cloves of garlic, then simmered until they were done. Drained, put back in pot (covered) to dry out, and tossed while hot with a vinegary dressing of cider vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper, a little mustard, the mashed up garlic cloves, and a tiny bit of sugar. They were creamy and delicious and I can’t wait to dive into the leftovers for lunch today.

Aside from some hydroponic tomatoes from Maine that I got at Whole Foods (blah), the rest of the meal came from the little Harvard Sq. farmer’s market, which I frequent most Tuesdays. (Mariposa Bakery pretzel rolls!) Yesterday I got local pork sausage and a couple ears of corn; I managed to hold back from the local mozzarella or burrata that I end up splurging on most weeks.

I steamed the corn for about 2 minutes. It was crazy tender and sweet like candy. It reminded me of how my mom used to lecture about proper corn technique: Bring the water to a boil. Go next door to Williams’ Farm (this is in her hometown in Western Mass). Pick the corn and leave your quarters in the can on the doorstep. Shuck the corn, boil briefly, eat. I cooked it once everything else was ready to go, and man was it good.

To drink:

I muddled slices of ginger with gin and let it sit for a few minutes (longer would be better), then shook with ice, limeade, and fresh lime juice.

The corn was a great clue, but the other way I know it’s really summer (aside from the sweltering, repulsive heat) is my iced coffee obsession. Two summers ago, when I had time and energy, I was brewing stovetop espresso, sweetening and chilling it according to my dad’s recipe. I considered it “quick and easy” at the time; now the mere thought of cleaning the Moka makes me cringe. We had breakfast at Clover Harvard Square last week, and I was surprised by how delicious the iced coffee was, since the woman was drip brewing it straight over ice, then adding more ice once it was done. I expected a weak or bitter cup, but it was terrific. I asked what the trick was, and she said espresso-ground beans slow it down enough to make strong coffee that survives the ice. I’ve been doing it at home and it works!

We visited Giverny for two nights–I had longed to go ever since reading Linnea in Monet’s Garden as a little girl–and while Monet’s grounds were beautiful, I preferred the many other amazing gardens all over the town, simply because the crowds overwhelmed me a bit.

Monet’s gardens:

Giverny:

Above, the setting for a dinner al fresco at our wonderful B&B, Le Moulin de Giverny. A lovely evening with guests from all over Europe:

The amazing window in our room:

This was my dinner another night. Yes, it’s a big melted cheese. On some bread. It was amazing.

I have lots more to share–we spent a week in the Loire Valley, and six nights in Paris. All my garden pictures are in a set here, and food pictures are here. The whole kit and caboodle (hundreds) are here. Of course, I have to grab my moments on the computer when I can; there’s a lot of this sort of thing happening here at home:

For Christmas Eve we recreated the dinner from two years ago: steak, celeriac puree, and wilted spinach salad with bacon. I am totally hooked on that purée technique (cube up root vegetables, sauté some garlic in olive oil, add the vegetables and soften a bit, add stock, cover and simmer until soft, purée with a dash of cream and butter if you’re feeling fancy) and have had great success with rutabaga as well as celeriac. Dinner was tasty, though I over-cooked the spinach:

PSA: If you don’t have an immersion blender, do yourself a favor and get one ASAP. Over the last few weeks I used mine to whip cream (whisk attachment), purée things in their pans (blender attachment), and chop up stuff (mini prep). I have this one and it’s the best $40 you can spend on a kitchen gadget.

But somehow we ended up with mountains of the celeriac. I mean, ridiculous leftovers. We ate it with the leftover steak but there was a still a huge bowl sitting around. A few days later I got sick of looking at it, so I popped it all back in a pot with some milk (fine, and a little more cream), heated it up, made grilled cheese, and called it soup. It took a while, because I forgot to turn on the stove. But normally it would have taken about 5 minutes.

Deeeelicious!

Early in Tom’s visit we made potato-leek soup, and we accidentally peeled too many potatoes. Tom diced up the extra and parboiled it, and used some for omelets and things while he was here. We also had two huge bunches of kale from the final winter CSA share, and I cooked it as per usual but we somehow had a ton leftover. Also I had a lot of bacon, since I planned to cook it for Christmas breakfast and we never got around to it thanks to a gift of Zingerman’s cinnamon rolls from Christy. And we’d made a batch of carnitas in the slow cooker, forgotten to uncover it to cook off the liquid, and thus scooped out some of the extra liquid, cooked it down (Tom again, always thinking!) and thrown that in the fridge where it turned into a gorgeous jelly (bone-in pork shoulder). AND Ben made pasta one night and cooked the whole pound, so there was a bunch of cooked rotini in a ziplock.

As you can imagine, all those bits and bobs were rendering the fridge a bit chaotic, and I was pretty much out of storage containers.

Here’s what I did: (This seems so simple, but guys, it was awesome.)

-Cooked some of the bacon as lardons, pulled it out
-Diced up some onion and cooked that along with the potatoes in the bacon fat
-Threw in the pasta to brown up a little bit and get heated up
-Added some of the pork jelly to glaze it all and provide a bit of moisture and sauce
-Mixed in the kale, heated it all up, topped with parmesan.

The potatoes were key here. SO GOOD. In fact, it’s 11 a.m. and if I had any of that in the fridge now I would be eating it. I’m hungry.

To be perfectly honest, for a while there I just wasn’t very inspired to write about food, or to cook, and I have assumed that it would bore you all to tears (if any of you are even around anymore!) if I wrote about….life. Tucker and being a mom and so forth. Especially since I’m covering that at Fit Pregnancy. But then Ben started asking if I ever planned to post here again and I said I wasn’t feeling too sure and he encouraged me to just write about whatever I feel like writing about.

Which may be food (probably mostly food), or the baby, or…well, I don’t know what. Meanwhile, here’s Christmas. It was a relaxing one. My brother tore himself away from his graduate studies and his reign of glory designing gorgeous stuff for Archival Clothing, and joined me and Ben and Tucker for a very laid-back week in Boston. Our kind downstairs neighbors were living it up in Paris and let him crash at their place.

It went like this:

Someone wasn’t quite convinced:

We (I) drank a LOT of eggnog (I’m incredibly fond of almost any dairy product now that I am in fact a human dairy) and ate a lot of cheese and spent a lot of time just hanging out. And only Tom had to travel in the blizzard afterward, so yay!

We cooked, too. I think I’ll post that separately; I’d hate to make my computer explode in shock by doing too much at once! How are you people? I can’t believe it’s 2011 but I have a good feeling about this year.

We’re home from the hospital and getting to know each other at home. He is an escape artist and hates to have his arms swaddled, so we’re working on keeping him asleep! I’ll try to get back here in the relatively near future but I have a feeling I won’t be cooking much for a few weeks…

Thanks for all the well-wishes this weekend and throughout the pregnancy, all.

Also my camera has randomly started acting up. I bought it in April before our trip; suddenly it is really overexposing photos and washing out the colors no matter what I do to the settings. Anyone have a Canon S90 point and shoot and know what I’m talking about/have suggestions? It’s really annoying, especially since the summer produce has such amazing colors but while they show perfectly on the screen, as soon as I push halfway down to focus, they white out. Argh!

Example: This perfectly delicious watermelon from the farm:

I played with this shot a bit in iPhoto, without terrific success:

The color wasn’t deep red, but it was a lot deeper than it appears in the photos. It was also perhaps the best watermelon I’ve ever eaten. It was a mini variety, incredibly juicy and, as Ben described it, perfumey. Even most of the rind was juicy and sweet! I ate all but one piece. Sorry, Honey.

The haul:

-Beets!
-Corn!
-Kale!
-Basil!
-Beans!
-Zucchini/summer squash.

I wasn’t going to get to the basil before it turned black and sad, so I decided to make a compound butter that I could freeze.

I put the ingredients in my new boyfriend, the Vitamix, in roughly the order implied by a compound butter recipe int he binder that came with it. Unfortunately my butter wasn’t actually very softened and I was using totally different ingredients. Um, oops.

It did work eventually, but it took doing. And it was so hard to get the butter out of the bottom of the blender! I think the cuisinart wins on this sort of task.

The butter could have used a little more zip, but I have loads of it in the freezer so I’m going to be positive.

That night I applied it lavishly to the ears of corn we’d received. I’d soaked the ears in water for about 20 minutes, then peeled back the husk and desilked before buttering and closing them back up.

10 minutes on the grill and the corn was just barely cooked, incredibly tender and sweet.

Another night, I plowed through that summer squash, riffing on a suggestion from my mom to roast it and mix it with feta and mint. I added cherry tomatoes and used basil instead, since I still had some.

(I didn’t use the giant one in the end.)

The downside was using a 450 degree oven on a hot day. And I was too eager and put the tray in before the oven was hot enough, so the squash softened before getting really brown. Luckily I have plenty more where that came from to try again!

We ate it with sausage:

I made leftovers into a killer sandwich the next day, btw. And it would also be great tossed with pasta.

—

I had my baby shower this weekend! I am just 2.5 weeks out from my due date, if you can believe it. I don’t think I’ve posted a single photo of myself since I have been showing, so here you go, complete with a giant flower showing where the baby is. Between the hand gestures and the weird talking facial expression this is a very accurate photo of me!

My friends Lauren and Megan hosted in Lauren’s backyard. It was lovely, and I ate QUITE a bit of Megan’s totally ridiculous key lime pie. (She’s promised me the recipe. I will fully make this even with a newborn at home.)

Drool.

And just to be silly, I brought craft-store wood veneer masks as favors, with Crayola markers to color them. Everyone was very sporting about it.