Pizza night, the small version

So we were lucky enough to be connected in with a monthly pizza circle in Richmond recently, and I had the chance to see some truly creative work happening with the pies. Though there were no other kids around, it proved a delightfully kid-friendly event for Buttercup, too. Good times.

Fast-forward a few days to Thursday, a night we'd sworn to go swimming after missing the past few days. Pool night means a good bit of relaxation, but it also means eating later than usual. (We've tried going to Mekong after swimming a couple times, and while it is delicious, the night can sometimes be a bit too indulgent.) In any case, we've lately come to three parameters for dinners: 1. Get dinner ready so we can eat together; 2. Eat before the kid gets too tired and/or cranky; 3. Use what we have so we do a better job of staying within the budget.

L suggested pizza. She could thaw the TJ's dough in the freezer. At ninety-nine cents a pop, Trader Joe's fresh dough is a lifesaver — high quality and easy to use. To make life for later even easier, she divided the dough into two smaller pies and pre-baked the crust.

We got back from swimming just after 8 p.m. and raided the fridge. The kid wanted pepperoni and olives. A good quality salumi was a good pepperoni substitute. Add marinara, some grated mozzarella, some feta and a few kalamata olives, and the kid's pie was ready to go. Ten minutes in the oven, and it was finished. Ours was more of a hodge-podge: the last of the artichokes and roasted peppers, some leftover fresh sage, marinara, blue cheese and mozzarella, olives, and some crushed chili. And this is what the hodge-podge looked like:


Delicious. Cheap. And it was all a matter of what we had in the fridge. What a perfect cheapicurean moment.

Continuing the evolution

A few little items of business...

• Based on my last few posts, you may have deduced that beer-blogging will be returning here. Apparently, besides a general passion for tasting new beers, my refrigerator is an indication that I am also beginning to accumulate and collect interesting beers. Stay tuned for more on this.



• Recent changes in life and budget priorities mean that I will be looking very closely at what we are eating and what we are spending. This probably means fewer restaurant meals — not necessarily a great loss — and more creative ways of making amazing (and cost-effective) meals at home. We have also begun to make more aggressive efforts to plan meals ahead. This week's specials: Taco Night and Bamboo Stir-fry Night.


• Banana was informed last night that she'll be helping cook from time to time. We're all looking forward to this, and I'm quietly thinking about the challenge when she is asked to prepare a whole meal for the three of us.



• Reilly has retired to Ohio. He is quite happy about this as it means he gets more attention and more walks on the golf courses and in the woods. We are sad to miss our greeter — and I keep reminding myself when food drops that there is no longer a dog to help clean it up.


• If all goes well, we will be moving to a new house soon with a much-upgraded kitchen. Please keep your fingers crossed that all goes well.


• Before the move to said-house, there will also be a trip to Italy. Prepare for profuse food blogging before, during, and after.


• Lastly, I'm still playing with the question of whether to rename the whole venture to better reflect the direction this is taking and maybe free me up to start another for writing and photography...

Stay tuned for more, longer, and better posts soon.

Hopfest, pt. deux

So the three of us — L, the kid, and me — stopped by Mekong for a bite of dinner after swimming last night. I expected to enjoy a beer or two, but I didn't expect our beer guru to follow up my last post about hoppy beer comparisons with an even broader array. I shouldn't have been so naive.

Not that I'm complaining. Quite the opposite, in fact.

He starts with pours of four hopfests and then over the course of the meal adds a few more. L meanwhile gets a Dogfish Head Midas — brilliant stuff. Before I go any farther, there should be a quick note about the food. At our last couple of dinner stops, I've let An pick what the menu for the evening. Last time, the result was a delicious spicy pork dish. Last night, he pulled out the stops with flat noodles and seafood with chili for me and sauteed tofu, shrimp and snow peas for L. The kid got Pho Ga and wolfed down a fresh roll before the soup arrived. While I love Richmond's array of Vietnamese noodle shops, Mekong still wins hands-down for quality and freshness of food. As other local food bloggers have noted, it certainly is among the best restaurants in the city.


That's the food. Here's the beer...

Round one: Terrapin Rye Squared, Bell's Hopslam (the control), Stone Ruination IPA

Round two: Full Sail Hop Pursuit, Avery Maharajah (the control)

Round three: Terrapin Big Hoppy Monster Imperial Red (the wild card, aged six months in An's cooler)

And the verdict:
1. Bell's — I put the Hopslam into its own category; with the honey and smooth hop introduction, this is in a class of its own.

2. Terrapin Big Hoppy Monster — I recall not being thrilled about this one when Terrapin hit the Richmond area last year. With some age under its belt, it has settled down and turned into a great hopfest.

3. Terrapin Rye Squared — These guys really are doing some great brewing. This is a hopfest full of malt, rye and other stuff going on in the flavors. Good stuff.

4. Avery Maharajah — This one is working its way back up in my estimation.


5. Stone Ruination — With 100+ IBUs, this packs one of the biggest hop wallops I've tasted. L couldn't even take more than a sip it was so bitter. Good stuff, but I couldn't drink more than one.

6. Full Sail — This was the mildest of the bunch. After the kind of hopfests it was competing against, it barely stood up. It seemed more like a lightly bitter session beer. I'll have to try this one again on its own.

Before all was said and done, An mentioned the Green Flash and a couple of others that had to wait for another round. Stay tuned. The hopfest will continue...

Hop-tastic fun

Last week, my friend Jason (aka RVAFoodie) and I had an interesting tasting session with one of our local beer gurus at Mekong. Jason was drinking a Nugget Nectar and I had a Golden Doom Belgian-style blond. We got to talking about hops and asked our guru An how he would compare the Nugget to the Avery Maharajah. He began to describe DIPAs as roller coasters of hop aroma, and then we asked how he would compare Bell's Hopslam next to them since that little bit of rare gold has set a certain standard for hoppy double IPAs lately. Next thing we know, An pours two glasses of Avery and then pulls a bottle of Hopslam from his secret stash. He added a glass of Nugget Nectar for me, and we each had three glasses lined up. Three hop monsters ready for comparison.

Here's what we found:

1. Bell's Hopslam — While An described most DIPAs as roller coaster rides of flavor and mouthfeel, he told us to watch the way Hopslam carried through the entire sip. And he was right, from the floral bath of aroma to the end of the sip, the Hopslam was a smooth, supple ride. Enough alcohol popped through to let you know that you were at a 10% beer, but it wasn't as overwhelming as it could have been. It was a beer you sat down with after dinner; not one you plowed through a few of in a session. It also had enough malt presence that someone who isn't a hopfiend could still enjoy.

2. Troeg's Nugget Nectar — I've had this beer at the brewery and in bottle and should throw a disclaimer out that I loved it before the tasting session. That said, tasting it after the Hopslam was an excellent hop-to-hop comparison of what different hops will add to the aroma and flavor of a beer. The Nugget hops have a more subtle, nutty flavor, and balance nicely with well-rounded malts making a beer that is smooth with enough hop presence to stay interesting from nose to last sip. Compared to the Hopslam, this is one we agreed could be a perfect everyday beer. It's still a little high on the ABV to be a true session beer, but it was easy to see having another one.

3. Avery Maharajah Double IPA — Jason's first reaction to this was "It burns!" The hop presence here is huge. It hits the nose like a sharp whiff of hop oils and characterizes An's description of a roller coaster. There are intense flavors of hops and alcohol that fall off at the end of a mouthful. I'd call it a perfect example of a double IPA — sharp, strong, big and everything you'd want in a winter beer. Placed in a line with the Bell's and Troeg's, however, this one suffered by the comparison. It's still a good beer, but given the choice, I have to say it's a little over-hopped (if that's possible), and I'd probably choose something else for my next pint.

That's my first take. Check out Jason's.

Easy, delicious gnocchi... thumbs not included.

Because schedules seem busy and complicated lately, I've found myself making dinner for the the kid early and something else for L and I later in the evening. I keep trying to pull things together for all of us to eat at the same time, but it just isn't happening as much as I'd like. In the meantime, though, I've started to simplify what I'm preparing — whether for the the kid or for us. More and more, I find that combining a few really good ingredients and letting the food shine is far more interesting than trying to do full-bore multi-plate meals. This one was one of those pleasant discoveries along the way.

I had a package of Trader Joe's gnocchi — their prepared ingredients often make a good start for my recent creations — and a slew of random ingredients in the fridge. I pulled some bacon out and chopped it into small pieces, slicing off most of the fat. Then I pulled some sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil, a quarter-cup at most, and chopped them up. A couple fresh sweet peppers, a few small heirloom tomatoes, and a handful of spinach rounded out the ingredients. In deference to L's vegetarianism, we cooked the bacon in a separate pan. I sauteed the peppers, tomatoes and spinach in a touch of olive oil added the cooked gnocchi plated a small amount for her, sprinkled with fleur de sel, cracked pepper, a touch of crushed red pepper and parmaggiano. I added the cooked bacon to the pan and finished the saute, adding the salt, pepper and cheese.

In all fairness, I also have to give credit to L on this one. While chopping the sundried tomatoes, I nicked my thumb pretty badly. It was bad enough I had to sit the rest of the prep out and put pressure on the wound. She carried it off well and we plated perfectly.

The result was one of the better and simpler dishes I've done in a while. The flavor of each ingredient came through and they complemented each other beautifully. Served with a decent Barbera, this is definitely a keeper in the recipe list.

The problem with Richmond restaurants...

This weekend, we had a couple of experiences that perfectly explain my issues with so much of the Richmond restaurant scene. On Friday, my mother came into town, and L and I took advantage of the chance to have an adult meal with her while the kid was over at her mom's.

We batted around ideas like Rustica, Can Can and Coast. A few other favorites like Edo's, Balliceaux, and a few others were dropped because of expected crowds. Rustica was dropped for the same reason. The food and service at Rustica are worth a wait, but we didn't want to take the risk of a long wait. When given the choice between Can Can and Coast, my mother chose the latter for a smaller, more intimate experience. We gave a call and were told tables should be clear soon.

When we arrived, there was a party ahead of us at the bar. This wouldn't have been a problem except that Coast is very small, and two parties decided to take their sweet time after they'd paid their checks. We lingered at the bar and had the she-crab soup, which we all declared excellent, and a basket of the fresh bread. My mother and L had glasses of a nice Gruet from New Mexico. I had a Starr Hill IPA. The owner Gary came over and chatted for a bit from behind the bar. The brief wait got longer as the parties continued to linger. When we were finally seated, the owner sent over a plate of calamari to make up for the long wait. He also pulled a nice bottle of Valipolicella Ripasso for us — it wasn't on the wine list, and the price was a very reasonable $32.

When it came to our entrées, the only stumble was that they'd run out of crab cakes. Nonetheless, my mother chose the sea bass and housemade tagliatelle, and L chose the sauteed flounder with tagliatelle instead of potatoes. Both fish were perfectly done and light without being bland. I broke my usual code of not ordering things that I prepare myself and ordered the lamb chops which came a perfect medium rare, with a nice reduction drizzled over the top. For dessert, we opted for a chocolate torta with berries, and it too was right on target.

The overall tab without tip came in at $172. Not cheap, by any means, but it was an "occasion" dinner. The thing is we could easily have spent the same or more at one of Richmond's more central and popular restaurants — and come away far less satisfied. What Coast has going for it includes the quality of ingredients, the simplicity of preparation, and the professionalism of the service. What it loses is location, a problem that the owner's other restaurant solved until it was controversially shut down in November by the new building owner.

This was the high point.

The next day, we decided to do lunch out and dinner at home. After batting around a couple of options, L and I decided we'd try to make our peace with Mezzanine. Unfortunately, Mezzanine apparently changed their hours without changing their website. We decided to try Water Grill — the Richmond Restaurant Group's latest offering. The brunch menu seemed extensive and worth checking out. Once inside, we were seated in the windowed front room — so far, so good. L and I ordered an Allagash White and a Dale's Pale. The server delivered them, declaring confidently that the Dale's was the White and the White was the Pale. When I switched them, she giggled and admitted that she didn't really know the difference between the beers.

We ordered around, the kid getting french toast with sausage on the side, mom getting the crab bisque and an arugula salad, L getting a crab cake Benedict with fruit instead of home fries and an arugula salad to share with me, and a croque madame for me. The soup arrived before anything else, and while it was clear that my mother was being nice about it, the consistency was so thick as to look gelatinous. She didn't finish the bowl. The salads arrived next and were the best part of the meal. The kid's french toast arrived, as did the sausage. She was tired, though, and ate about half of the toast and a couple bites of sausage before declaring herself full. L's crab cake benedict arrived with home fries; thankfully, it tasted good so she ran with it. My croque madame was made with Texas toast that tasted as though it had been in the kitchen a couple days past its freshness date, and the white of the egg was runny when I got to the middle. The kid's sausages were also a little undercooked, which is a pity because they seemed a nice, thick maple sausage. Somewhere in the middle of the meal, the server asked me if I wanted another beer. I told her I might, and to check back with me. About ten minutes later, and as I had decided I wouldn't be getting another beer, a pint arrived.

The tab for this meal: $72. For brunch. This would seem high, even if the meal hadn't been a prime example of Richmond's restaurant mediocrity. As I've experienced with several of the RRG restaurants, not to mention other restaurants around town, the combination of preparation errors and server inexperience made the tab seem like even more of a crime.

The final restaurant experience of the weekend came at Legend Brewery. Now, Legend has struggled for years to balance quality of food and service with the quality of their beer. On the bright side, they've had the advantage of one of the few good outdoor locations in Richmond, and the deck was busy that afternoon. A busy afternoon doesn't excuse bad service, however. I ordered a Hopfest, one of their seasonals, and L asked about a sampler. The server was fidgety and said that she thought they were out of sampler glasses. Again, it was busy, but not that busy. We decided to get my beer, and L would try it to see if she liked it. The kid ordered a quesadilla and a Sprite. This is important because the kid rarely orders without prompting, but the server didn't seem to care about listening to her; she looked at us for the order.

About five minutes later, the hostess arrived with two pints of Hopfest. She looked a little sheepish when we clarified what the order was. Thankfully, L liked the Hopfest, and we were set. The server followed a few minutes later and dropped — literally dropped — the quesadilla between L and me. By this point, we were already saying how much we always wanted to like Legend. The thing is the place was messing up the simplest of things — the beer order was botched, the service was rushed and bad, and the quesadilla came without chips. When we got the server's attention and asked about the chips, she told us that chips didn't come with the quesadilla. L pointed out that the menu said kid's items came with chips, and the server said, "Well I can bring you some, but the quesadilla doesn't come with them." And she turned on her heel. In the end, we left after one beer and a light snack. The server got a $2 tip, and even that seemed too generous.

There is a difference between quick and professional and rude and unwelcoming, and this server crossed that line. Unfortunately, unprofessional and/or uneducated servers are too much the norm around Richmond restaurants. It takes so little to know how to do a job well and how to give people good service that I get more than a little frustrated when someone says a busy day is a good excuse for bad service. There is no reason a server at a restaurant where brunch can run upwards of a hundred dollars should not know which beer she's serving. Likewise, there is no reason a kitchen in such a restaurant should use stale bread and turn out undercooked items. When it comes to Legend, our poor harried server lost out on a decent tip and a higher bill by simply not caring how well she took care of her table. Whether she disliked kids or looked at us and decided we weren't worth the time, I don't know; I just know there's no excuse for such service.

Unfortunately, too often, the norm at Richmond restaurants is weak service and food that doesn't live up to the price. I've complained in the past about the lack of good, moderately-priced neighborhood restaurants where you feel welcomed and can walk away satisfied without breaking the bank. Ultimately, if I could wish one thing for the Richmond restaurant scene, it would be more restaurants like Coast and Rustica rather than more restaurants owned by the same three or four owners or more places that seem to feel like it's okay to be just good enough.

Goat Cheese!

Last week, fellow Richmond food bloggers One Couple's Kitchen wrote about their experiment making homemade goat cheese based on a recipe from Serious Eats. The process sounded remarkably easy and jived with my growing urge to know the chemistry and mechanics behind the making of food. I want to step beyond just cooking and using ingredients and understand how to create my own ingredients. That's really one of the goals for 2010. In this case, I knew Trader Joe's was stocking goat's milk, so it was easy to make a go of it.

All it requires is a quart of goat's milk, lemon, salt, garlic, cheese cloth and a food thermometer, and an hour and a half of your time. That's all.

We came back from Sunday dinner with the neighbors. I poured the milk in a stainless pot and watched until the thermometer hit 180º. The recipe called for a quarter cup of lemon juice, but I was working with whole lemons and seem to have lost (or purged) my juicer. I juiced a lemon and a half through a strainer to curdle the milk and waited for 20 seconds or so while the curdle happened. The curd then went into the cheese cloth — we used about eight layers to be sure that it held the curd — and I drew up the corners. Tie the satchel on a wooden spoon over a large bowl, and then wait.

When it was finished, I mixed it with a crushed clove of garlic and three pinches of good salt and let it stand, covered over night. That's it. So simple.

We tried it with friends the next night, and it was a hit. I would say it was a touch on the lemony side, and I think I'll be tempted to source some milk that is not ultra-pasteurized in the future. That said, this is one that I'll keep coming back to.

Next up: Corned beef, more cheese and returning to making hummus.

Bouillabaisse!

One intersection of my lifehacking and cooking efforts happens with my decision to follow through on things I've long said I will do. In the case of this weekend's Valentine's celebration with L and several friends, this included finally making bouillabaisse. It is something I've said I would do for several years, but every time I almost did it, I backed off. Not this time.

I did my usual recipe digging and found that bouillabaisse, like paella, is one of those dishes that has few rules other than the the base ingredients. In my research, though, I kept coming back to a version of Julia Child's original recipe. It is a simple matter of building the stock and then letting the rest of the ingredients come together as needed and based on what you have available to you. And then, of course, there's the rouille.

Once I'd settled on the recipe, the next step was plotting out the ingredients. Bouillabaisse can be a pricey affair — unless you happen to be family of someone who harvests shellfish and catches fresh fish. Since the numbers from dinner could have ranged from 6 to 12, I had to shoot a little high on the ingredients. Since I also had to aim for convenience and time-efficiency, the source would be Whole Foods. I started with a half pound of mussels, a dozen littleneck clams, a dozen extra large shrimp with the shells on, and two-thirds of a pound of scallops. By and large, the shellfish were in beautiful shape, though I did end up pitching about a quarter of the mussels. For the fish, I opted for tilapia and cod, almost two pounds total. They had the right consistency and flavor and were beautiful cuts without being as expensive as other options.


I made a few other substitutions along the way. For the sake of time and since truly beautiful tomatoes are hard to come by right now, I opted for a large can of diced tomatoes. I also skipped the step when fish skeletons are stewed and used a mix of my own fish stock, a quart of Whole Foods' fish stock, and a quart of water to cut the intensity. The other tweaks I made to the base recipe included a healthy splash of Cointreau and about a quarter cup of Sauvignon Blanc. I also decided to rest the broth off heat between the initial near-boil and bringing it back to heat and adding the seafood a couple hours later.

Bouillabaisse was a muse a while back, but not something I'd ever cooked. As such, I didn't know about rouille — the little side sauce that creates a bit of magic when dolloped in bowls and slathered on fresh, crusty bread. Most recipes use water- and lemon- soaked bread as the base for the paste, but Julia's recipe had a variation using almonds. Since we'd be heavy on the bread anyway, I decided to try the almonds as an alternative. By the time I was working on the rouille, I also had word that the crowd would be 12, and I decided to double the recipe. I roasted two peppers using Alice Waters' oven-roasting technique, added my own dried chili from last summer's market. The puree quickly turned a bright orange — aided by a touch of saffron — and I began adding the olive oil per the recipe. At a taste, the flavors were rich and explosive, but L thought it tasted a bit heavy on the olive oil. It was a perfect opportunity for a little kitchen training for the kid, a chance to explain that you countered the fatty flavor of the oil by adding more lemon, more salt, and a bit more of the chili to sharpen the flavor. Another couple minutes running in the food processor, and the rouille was ready to put aside.

After a quick interlude for Valentine's Day celebrations and a glass of Linden Vineyards excellent 2005 Claret (another story for another time), we migrated the food next door for the actual dinner party. The celebration was kicking in, and it would be another hour or so before I'd go through the final steps. At that point, ti became a game of time — adding the shrimp, then the clams and mussels, then the scallops and finally the fish sliced into inch-wide strips at intervals so the soup could be pulled off the fire and served minutes after the last fish was added. Timing hasn't always been my strong suit, but it worked this time.


At final listing, the menu stacked up as follows: cheese fondue with vegetables and bread, a pear/walnut/gorgonzola salad, the bouillabaisse with bread baked fresh by our host, a champagne rose petal sorbet also made by the host, chocolate fondue, and home-made eclairs. The wine flowed, the kids had their own celebration, and it was declared one of the best (and most decadent) food celebrations any of us could remember.

There's something magical to sharing a meal with people. When done well and in the right company, all sorts of boundaries can drop and time stops for a brief, wonderful period. When you step away with full stomachs and the touch of sweet and bite of savory still lingering on your lips, a light just seems to shine on the rest of life.

Bisque!

I've decided to begin running with new ideas and new recipes for the coming year. I want to learn how to do things like make corned beef. I want to challenge the boundaries of dishes and preparations that I already know. I want to pick out an old food magazine every week and find things to make out of it. I want to — as I outlined a couple posts ago — take a second look at the ingredients in my cupboards or in the market and rethink how we're eating.

Last week, I took a shot at this when L and I were debating what to make for dinner — without wanting to eat out again or do another big grocery run. She had an acorn squash, and I had the muse of making a winter squash bisque. With the quick direction to pick up some sherry and another squash at the store, and a plan to get bread at our local French joint — Can Can — I did a bit of research and came up with a nice recipe to tweak.

Instead of the called-for olive oil, I opted for butter, and on the sauté, I added a healthy dose of smoked Spanish paprika. Beyond that, I followed the recipe to the letter. The result was a hearty, smoky cold-weather meal of soup, bread and salad. Since L is not a fan of all-things-smoked, however, I decided we needed another go at the soup this weekend.

The second round I upped the stock a bit and added more tomatoes, since L would be serving it at her book club. This meant all the spices needed a boost, as did the sherry. In the end, I switched up the smoked paprika for sweet Hungarian paprika, and the result was a very different (and much better) bisque. With a dose of ground chili and thyme at the end, the soup struck the perfect note. With any luck, the women in L's book club will agree.

Regardless, I'll be making this one again for sure. What I love about the soup — besides the taste, of course — is that it is so simple. The recipe only involves a few ingredients and some fairly simple preparations to achieve a result that seems (and tastes) far more complex. The next step will be to jump past the kid's pickiness and get her to try it too. Wish me luck on that one...

snow dreams of food

Richmond is seeing its snowiest winter in recent memory this year. It's almost as though all the jokes about runs on the local grocery stores for milk, eggs, and bread when the word "snow" hits the forecast have finally brought karmic retribution back on us in the form of two good-sized storms. Each has dumped nearly a foot of snow on the area and paralyzed businesses and shut schools. The kids have had a hell of a time, and parents are running out of ways to amuse them. After all, there's only so much you can do when you live in the heart of the city to send your kids out to pasture.

There have been some collateral benefits, however. They include slowing down by necessity and re-acquainting ourselves with the house, and remembering to cook more and use more of the food that stuffs the fridge. Recent adventures have included remembering how to make crépes, gingerbread and biscotti (thanks to L), fondue, chili, and more.

Last night's adventure was more of a culinary break than I've made lately. Facing down dwindling supplies of various staples and specialty items, I knew we had a few hurdles to cross. L is a pescatarian, which means I have to temper my meat-loving tendencies for some meals or find a general balance in others. The Kid has lately gotten even pickier about what she'll eat — a foodie kid losing her omnivorousness is another post for another time. Lastly, I realized feeding us all at the same time wasn't going to work. Solution time...

The kid got pesto pasta. It's not the most creative solution, but some penne with TJ's pesto on it is a sure-fire silver bullet when she's hungry and tired. Add a bit of feta and a few grape tomatoes, and the meal is complete and easy to put together while she hangs out with us.

For L and I, I concocted a wholly different idea. I had lentils that had been around a while, a small stash of grape tomatoes, an onion, garlic, and a well-stocked spice cabinet. A quick check of Saveur brought up an Ethiopian lentil stew. That combined with some savory whole-wheat crépes started to sound a whole lot like an improvised Ethiopian dinner. The lentils took about an hour to cook and come together. It was the right amount of time for mixing up a quick crépe batter and running the crepes. I pulled one of the small zucchinis in the fridge and sliced it into quarter-inch-thick half-moons. These I tossed with a bit of olive oil, cumin, salt and pepper, and put on a baking pan to roast while L was working on biscotti, round 2.

When the crépes were ready, I laid out one on each plate as one might find a bed of injera in an Ethiopian restaurant and then added two more, folded to quarters, to section off the plate. On one side went the zucchini, and on the other a pile of lentils topped with a small dollop of plain yogurt. On a shared plate, I put out The lentils weren't as spicy as I'd hoped, so I'll be looking for some real berbere powder for the next attempt. Nonetheless, the flavors came together wonderfully and both L and I finished the meal with nearly clean plates.

I recommend stepping back and looking back at your cupboards once in a while and thinking about new ways you can use the same old ingredients.

ad satire hilarity meets the way we really should feel about processed food.

Oh, food, why have we forsaken you so?

Eyes on the Prize

So far on this set of lifehacking ideas, I've hit upon:

• Begin with reasonable expectations. If that means finishing one task every day or making sure one part of the house is clean every day, so be it. You've made a start.


• Focus on what you're doing, and make lists that you can actually complete. Use this as a way to clean up the "stuff" in your life.


• Don't obsess. Take the moments where you want to play with an all-eclipsing thought and find a way to bring your focus back to what's important, what needs to be done in the here and now. Beyond that, find a way to take the negative and find the positive. And in all cases, remember the positive.


• Grok things. Don't just hear them. Grok them.

Ultimately one of the things this really comes down to is keeping your eyes on the prize. It's a cliché, I know, but it's a useful one. The prize can be any number of things, whether it's a clean house, finished projects, happy kids, a healthy relationship, saving money, traveling, achieving a professional goal, starting a business, cooking a meal, making yourself and other people happy. It could even be all of those things.

It all comes down to follow-through, whether small or large. I can't emphasize that enough. It's something that I've tried to instill in the kid — every day before school, she feeds the pets and makes her bed. It's small stuff, but making a habit and routine out of it has proved remarkably useful in the larger picture. If you move to the larger picture, it comes down to something I haven't always been good about in the past — committing to a plan. Once you commit to something, you must follow through with it, and any misgivings must be worked out and put aside — much like the obsessions mentioned above.

At a personal level, here's what it comes down to... I've screwed up a lot in my life. There have been a lot of things I haven't owned up to and mistakes I've made. I've made lots of promises without really knowing how to make said-promises happen. I've hinted at things that I knew in the back of my mind wouldn't really happen. I've taken on obligations and then struggled with myself to follow through on the obligation. Certainly, I could get into psychological dig-downs of this stuff, but talk is cheap. It comes down to action.

I don't want my daughter or anyone else in my life to have to pick up the pieces or wonder why I didn't do what I said I was going to do. I don't want to leave unrequited or unresolved hopes because I said I would do something I couldn't. I don't want my daughter to skate over to me at the rink and ask why I look sad any more. (Another story for another time.) The life-hacking I'm doing? Well, it's for me, but it's also to make my world a better place for everyone and anyone in it.

Beer, the road, lessons, and North Carolina

John and I hit the road yesterday for our first beer-only trip. Past trips with his wife and L have been built around a mix of beer and wine, but this one was about getting out of town for a day, seeing some new territory and finding good beer. We batted around everything from a long (5 hrs) trip to Dogfish Head or the Philly/southern NJ area to our usual haunts in the western part of Virginia to North Carolina. The NC breweries won for lack of traffic and pure novelty. Good thing, too.

We hiked off with the MacBook Pro and the iPhone tethered to sort out the final destinations and decided upon initial stops in Chapel Hill. There, we had lunch and a tasting at Carolina Brewery. The food was quite tasty, and the beer was good. Not stellar, but good. The tasting included a kolsch, an amber, an ipa, a winter seasonal schwarzbier, a porter, and a brown. Each brew was solid, but fell off on the finish. Everything was good enough, but nothing really pulled us to buy a growler. The next stop was quite a contrast — Top of the Hill Restaurant and Brewery.

We climbed the stairs to this fourth-floor restaurant/bar, and the vibe was off from the beginning. The place felt like a combination of country-club bar ("The Social Crossroads of Chapel Hill") and dingy hotel restaurant, right down to the staff wearing black shirts with ties. We ordered a tasting, but the sixth was going to be a blend because they'd just run out of their seasonal One can hope that the seasonal was actually good, though, because the other beers certainly weren't. Flavors were off. Body was awful. From the experience, there was literally nothing to recommend the beer. Period.

Our next stop, though, was a brilliant surprise. We hiked over to Durham, to Triangle Brewing Company. We stumbled into a warehouse space on the wrong end of town, but it was full of people tasting the beer, playing ping pong, chatting, hanging out, you name it. On tasting the first beer, it was clear we'd come a lifetime's difference from Chapel Hill. Rick Lyons was producing some truly excellent beers, from an abbey ale to a classic dry stout. He's not bottling much yet and isn't selling much outside of NC, but he really is one to watch. To wit, we had a good long conversation with him, and it was interesting to hear all the tricks he's been putting behind building that business. I look forward to more conversations and tastings with him in the future.

Triangle was followed by Big Boss in Raleigh. These guys are doing some crazy and good beers. Unfortunately, we didn't get to meet the brewers. Fortunately, the tap room was a fun scene. The beers included a really solid brown, a nice belgian-style golden ale, a spicy harvest, a beautifully-done Belgian dark and a few others I've lost in the notes. All were well-done, and I really liked what they were doing with the taproom business model.

The final stop of the day was at the Boylan Bridge Brewpub in Raleigh. Their space is modern and clean, and the beer is good. I'll leave it at that, because nothing stood out enough to warrant a growler purchase. In fact, I would recommend a stop at the place because the food is excellent, but I wouldn't tell a beer geek to go there for the best (fill in the blank) s/he's had. Nonetheless, it was a good end to the trip, and the brisket special really was over-the-moon good.

In between all the major events, there was an intensive conversation, and I finally understand what it means to grok things. An excellent day, really.

It all comes back to focus, and lists.

After thinking further about my last couple entries, I think I've struck on a good way of playing this all out. See, you have to understand that I come from a family of pack rats. My father is the messy sort with everything he's ever owned stashed somewhere in the house he shares with his wife and their adopted daughter. From broken ship models (casualties of a brief foray into cat ownership years ago) to the original patio furniture he had when married to my mother, it's all there. My mother is the neat sort of pack rat, the sort who keeps things for years but who can also get rid of things when she recognizes that it's time — though sometimes the "getting rid" involves sending the box of old childhood trinkets to me.

What this means is that I have lots of stuff and sometimes forget to get rid of or organize stuff. And when you have a kid you acquire more stuff on a regular basis, from new craft kits to school homework. Having so much stuff makes it very hard to focus sometimes. It's easier just to stick your head in the sand and look at something else than clean up that pile in the corner you meant to tackle months and months ago.

Tackling this stuff down the line is one reason I've decided to start small as I said in the last post. But there's a bigger picture here, and that bigger picture is actually about how to tackle the small picture. And it comes down to lists.

I'm not talking about that big honking To-Do list we all tend to make — the grocery list of everything we're supposed to get done. Too often things get dropped off such lists or pushed to other lists, because it's easy to do this. I was recently reminded of something I learned years ago during the emotional havoc of my divorce — make small manageable lists.

When you make a list, only put on the items you know you can accomplish in a give time frame, be it a few hours or two days. Then tick those items off in the order that makes the most sense. I tend to knock off the small ones first and move to the biggest ones last — kind of the snowball method of Getting Things Done. That way, by the time, I get to the biggest items on the list, I don't have small stuff to worry about. I've also usually spent some part of my other productive time thinking about what's coming up — a design project, a blog post, making dinner — so that taking the larger items seems like less of a chore.

If all goes well and I keep making these little lifehacks into real habits, my plan is that I will eventually tackle the big items that keep getting pushed off because I'll actually have made the time to do it.

How do you keep yourself organized and disciplined when it comes to the things that just pile up in life? And, mind you, I'm "speaking" tangibly and metaphorically here.

Reasonable Expectations

I think I will declare 2010 the Year of Reasonable Expectations. It begins with my notes in this post about cleaning the dishes when they are used and goes so much farther. See, for several years now, I've battled this feeling that I was not reaching the success or goals I wanted — even if I wasn't always clear what those goals were. In the end, I'd beat myself up over failing to live up to my own expectations.

It was easy enough to blame circumstances for why things weren't working out. Someone else had let me down or something just wasn't right. There were circumstances beyond my control — even if I could just chalk it up to my own failing, there was still a way to make it beyond my control. The thing is none of it was beyond my control. I was just letting myself fail.

Part of the answer for why I let this happen can be chalked up to my upbringing. Garrison Keillor is right when he makes fun of Lutherans for their low expectations — or rather for their (our) expectation that nothing will ever be as good as you want it to be. Growing up with a good core of midwestern Lutheran values on my father's side, expectations remained low. Just do as you will, don't expect too much and get through life was a common ethos. Add to this the expectation on my mother's side that one simply goes through grad school and finds life in academia, and there simply wasn't much training for me on how to take great ideas and make them happen. As a natural dreamer, my response was to cook up grandiose ideas — say, launching a magazine in NYC in 1994 with no money and no backing — and lose interest in them when I started to run into the real problem of making something happen. It was easy then to slip quietly back to what I'd been doing before. This is exactly what I did when the prospect of working on a book and life collided in 2004.

The problem with these goals and others I have in mind is not that they were unattainable. I just didn't know how to attain them. I didn't grok how to set reasonable expectations so that I could methodically get where I was going. It's akin to trying to beat back the clutter that has taken over our house. Looking at it globally and saying I am going to do this, I practically guarantee my failure. It's just too easy to put off the vague parts of the large goal until they become just one more lost opportunity. If, however, I set reasonable expectations — keeping the dishes clean, for instance — I can move on to the next reasonable task once I've consistently met that goal. Or, for instance, if I'm working on a project, it's fair to know what the big picture is, but I can't spend my time worrying about the big picture as I try meet each small part of the tasks at hand. My discipline is weak, and if I do get caught up in the big picture, the risk of stumbling or making excuses is much greater.

I explained to the kid the other day that it was important for us to finish something before we moved on to the next thing. She wanted to know why. I asked her how many unfinished projects/books/ideas we had around the house, and she looked at me sheepishly. The lesson seemed to stick, though, because a couple days later when I asked her to do something else, she said she needed to finish what she was working on first. Remember? she asked.

I will. And now I have to go tick one more item off the list.

My New Years Present

Fathers Day. Birthday weekend. And now New Years Day. The Kid has managed to lose a tooth on all of these occasions.

The New Year is here, with a burble.

As it has a few times now, the New Year blasted in with a blaze of paella. A friend and I had a throwdown at a neighbors' house. She dove into a seafood rendition while I put together a traditional dish with chicken, chorizo, and a few shellfish for good measure. To boot, I cooked in my tux since we (minus one, sadly) were all headed to a neighbor's house for a black tie party after dinner.


It was a hell of a time, and both paellas came up beautifully. In the past couple years I've discovered a couple of my favorite secrets for a great dish — the right chorizo and smoked pimentin. The chorizo this year was a spicy, coarse-ground variety I located at Whole Foods. It had a delicious earthy character, and just enough spice not to overwhelm the other ingredients. This year, I finished the paella on the grill and finally managed a perfect soccarat. As a nod to some other great paellas I've had, I add asparagus and freshly-roasted peppers. The final trick for the New Years paella is a nod to Southern tradition — black-eyed peas. Buddha knows with the way December went and all the plans on tap for 2010 that I can use all the luck I can get.


Kudos to my neighbors for putting together such a great evening — both parties. In fact, at the dinner house, we concocted a little dinner party for The Kid and four others, complete with a babysitter to manage a slumber party while we trucked off to the party down the street.

That said, it is the new year, following a rather ignominious end to 2009. The hiccups of life and relationships got the best of me, and I spent a good bit of December melancholy and reflective. This past year was full of challenges and tests — and efforts to move into the next phases of my life. As it came to an end, I found myself looking at The Kid and realizing how remarkable she is — and how she will never be seven-and-a-half again. I found myself licking a few wounds and getting perspective on some old ones. John and I brewed a couple stellar batches of beer. All in all, the end of the year was much like the rest, full of contrasts between high points and low points and full of teaching moments.

For the new year, I'm not making many resolutions. In fact, I've really only come up with one so far — to do the dishes whenever I use them. I consider it a small portion of a larger effort to gain control of the chaos that too-often envelopes the house. Forget the pressure of bigger resolutions; I'm sure I will come across other goals to pursue along the way.

Death by Cute

I happened to need a laugh and found this on a friend's Facebook page. It sufficed...

Marketing to kids...

This morning, the kid was playing with Webkinz on the iMac. At one point, I glanced over and realized she was in fact surfing the new products and was watching a video about some sort of deluxe subscription service. My "dad" voice went on and I told her to turn it off or return to playing with the characters. She wondered why, of course, and I started in on an explanation of what was going on — that she was being sold products that she would then want me to buy. I've tackled these issues here before, but today's conversation came on the heels of the biggest lead-up to Christmas yet, or rather the first one where she's putting specific demands out that are coming from commercial influence.

Until recently, I kept a fairly tight cinch on the kinds of TV she could watch — pretty much locking the options down to Boomerang (which does not show commercials and recorded shows where she could skip the ads). And until she moved in with someone recently, her mom didn't have cable at all. At home, she has discovered other channels and begun to watch them when I'm not paying attention. And these channels are jam-packed with ads for all the latest toys every kid needs.

I thought about all this as I approached the Webkinz question this morning — and as I face a Christmas where she will be getting franchise-building things like American Girl and Nintendo DSi. Rather than shutting it all down and eliminating cable (at least not yet), it seemed like a good chance for a teaching moment. We sat in front of the computer, and I asked her why she thought the Webkinz site was showing her all the great products she could get to expand her collection. She said it was so we would go buy them — so far so good.

The next lesson was about need. I asked her why she "needed" the cute koala or yorkie toys, and she said she needed them so the animals she already had would have more friends. I asked her if she really "needed" the toys or just felt like she needed them and really just wanted them. We've discussed the difference between want and need in the past, so she aced this question. I went in for the kill.

The reason they make her "need" them, I explained, was because they know how to make kids want something so badly their parents get it for them. I added that we could get things we wanted when we can afford them, but I wanted her to understand that it really was just a way for the companies to sell more stuff.

Looking back and writing about it now, I wonder how best to keep approaching this lesson without being a thorough killjoy. It's not that I want to isolate her from every venal form of advertising and marketing to kids — I can't — but I do want her to understand when the shiny object they're trying to sell her might not really be all it's cracked up to be.

Friday Fun — a ukulele edition

Not sure why I've been on a little ukulele kick lately, but there you have it. Here are a couple of selections to lighten up your Friday. Feel free to add more in the comments.

Picked up from Boing Boing...


Another good one from Sophie Madeleine...


The requisite adorable kid that makes me smile every time. This boy is brilliant...