Eating Vegetables – Eat Me. Drink Me.

Archive for the ‘Eating Vegetables’ Category

Postcard from my mid-30s:
Parsley & Walnut Pesto

I spent the first three weeks of my thirty-sixth (not my thirty-fifth, as I’ve learned) year of life more or less somewhere on the sick spectrum. The day after my birthday, I woke up with the sore throat of the century, the inside of my mouth a sickening yellow, tongue furred and covered in white spots. I sequestered myself to my bedroom, but I kept working. I had deadlines. The next day, my brain was a lost rowboat floating in fog and my sinuses were denser than a Tolstoy. I stopped working and started watching season one of The Witcher. On day three, it settled its way into my lungs, seeding its territory with cotton balls and occasionally sending out expeditionary forces of phlegm. I finished season two of The Witcher.

The next day, my brain was a lost rowboat floating in fog and my sinuses were denser than a Tolstoy.

In my lungs it stayed, lingering long past days four and five, accompanied by staccato bouts of coughing. Was it corona*? My acupuncturist seems to think so, in spite of every negative test I took.

Yes, I have an acupuncturist. I also have masseuses (plural), a bodywork therapist, an osteopath, an energy healer, a Shakti mat, subscriptions to Headspace and Essentrics (quite technically, it’s Mom’s subscription to Essentrics), regularly visit the sauna, take hot herbal baths every Sunday, drink two liters of water a day, and try to do some kind of fitness regimen every morning (with so-so success).

Still, the sole of my left foot is strained, my back and shoulders constantly ache, my hips are tight, I have an iron deficiency and hormonal insomnia and a stubborn patch of eczema, my eyesight has deteriorated rapidly over the last year, and I’ve strained some ligaments in my wrist that hurt more or less depending on how many jars I’ve opened lately or how stale the loaf of bread I’m trying to slice for breakfast is. » Continue reading this post...

Adultish:
Pumpkin & Chestnut Gnocchi
with Walnut Sage Sauce

The other day I was lying in bed, the cat curled up somewhere under the blankets beside me. It was around noon and I was working, laptop perched on my legs, coffee within reach, a whole, peeled kohlrabi I was eating like an apple lobbed into the side of my mouth. I was wearing my loose cotton overalls, ridiculous fuzzed socks that look like cat’s paws, my hair piled in a mess somewhere at the back of my head. I am a grownup, I thought. And I was filled with wonder at the thought.

A few mornings ago, between a high-intensity ab workout and a run through the park, I baked a cake. I took a nap with the cat. I ate the cake. I was the master of my destiny. By evening, I was slumped on the couch, talking about feelings and feeling about as mature as a pubescent teen clutching a stuffed animal and struggling with eye contact. Funny, how a day can go.

I think a lot about being a grownup and what counts as being one. Is it paying your own bills? Having a job? Owning a house? Or is it more the emotional work of remembering to call people on their birthdays without needing to be nagged, sending a bouquet of flowers to a sick friend, bringing someone a meal? Is it an age you reach, the moment you move into your own apartment, the minute you become a parent?

Is it an age you reach, the moment you move into your own apartment, the minute you become a parent?

Sometimes, when I confess these thoughts to friends, they look at me as if I’ve just said something very silly. “Of course you’re an adult,” they say. “Of course,” I say. “I know that.”

But most of the time, I feel neither adult nor not; I feel like I’m simply living my life, putting one day after the other, just doing the things. » Continue reading this post...

A Weekend in the Uckermark:
Breakfast Salad

Breakfast salad is a revelation. A weird one, perhaps. One of which I was incredibly skeptical, in fact. While I was eating it, actually. But like other things you’re not quite sure about while you’re in the middle of eating them – for me: kombucha, mango pickle, preserved lemons, fermented radish – once you’ve stopped eating them, all you can think about is eating them again.

I came to breakfast salad this past weekend, on a retreat in the Uckermark, a district in Brandenburg just an hour’s train ride north of Berlin. It was a spontaneous-ish trip with two of my dearest friends. For months, we’d been meaning to go somewhere together, and had even, after a long and wine-replete dinner, set a date in our calendars which we promptly forgot about until the week before we were set to go. Should we postpone again?, we wondered. Would we even find anything on such short notice?

For months, we’d been meaning to go somewhere together, and had even, after a long and wine-replete dinner, set a date in our calendars which we promptly forgot about until the week before we were set to go.

But in a fortuitous and last-minute turn of events, Taylor remembered that the boyfriend of her boyfriend’s friend’s friend runs a farm and guesthouse in the countryside, and he just happened to have an open weekend slot. So we wasted no time in booking train tickets to Angermünde, and met on the Hauptbahnhof platform in Berlin Friday evening laden with groceries – a basket of chanterelles and roast chestnuts for risotto, bulgur and feta and cherry tomatoes for a grain salad, sourdough starter and flour for pancakes, and an assortment of vegetable odds and ends – said Charlotte – for breakfast salad.

Odd, I thought, but did not comment. » Continue reading this post...

The Quarantine Diaries:
Classic Sauerkraut
with Caraway and Juniper

This morning, I managed to drink coffee without having heart palpitations afterwards. In these times of unpredictable anxiety attacks and unwanted solitude, it feels like a win. I seem to be on an every-other-day kind of rotation. One day will be unmanageable. I’ll feel short of breath and unable to concentrate. I can’t read, I can’t write, I can’t answer emails. The next will feel motivational. I’ll think about how to make the best of a bad hand and tackle projects with gusto that I’d normally let linger.

The trick, I’ve found, is to have an extensive grab bag of possible activities, which at any one time might help squelch the threatening upwell of panic. The other trick is that there’s really no trick. It’s a free-for-all of emotional management.

When things get really bad, the only thing I’m capable of doing is paint by numbers. A while ago, a friend sent me a link to a company that had a 50-50 chance of being an internet scam, but which I paid anyway to transform a photo I took into a paint by numbers. It took a solid three months for my canvas to arrive, at which point I was out of the temporary apartment (I thought it would be a good post-fire activity) and busy with settling back into the old apartment. I forgot about it until Corona Quarantine, but oh man, has the mind-numbing minutiae of applying tiny little brushstrokes of paint inside itty-bitty outlined blobs saved my mind from scarpering into an apocalyptic landscape.

The other trick is that there’s really no trick. It’s a free-for-all of emotional management.

When the paint by numbers has me breathing at a relatively regular rate again, I put on my headphones and have a free-flailing dance party in the living room, keeping my fingers crossed that my neighbors aren’t currently enjoying their balcony (which has a pretty clear view through my living room windows). » Continue reading this post...

The Year of Doing:
A Tarte Tatin for Winter

Winter vegetable tarte tatin (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

I landed in Berlin on New Year’s Eve. I hadn’t been in the city to see an old year out for the last five years, and didn’t have particularly fond memories of the one time I’d been here; the air had been heavy with smoke and grit, and shards of cracked bottles and spent confetti covered the sidewalks like a deadly shag carpet. Wanton firecrackers were constantly exploding underfoot. People threw them at cars, in trash cans, at other people, dropped them from buildings, lobbed them out of alleys. I remembered being afraid for my limbs, my eyes, any unprotected stretch of skin.

So I had avoided ever spending New Year’s in Berlin. It’s never been my favorite holiday anyway. There’s always so much expectation, and the party never does live up. The fireworks are too far away or hidden behind a building or a big tree and brittle in the cold. The ball is dropped to fanfare and applause, but when the party buzzers bleat their last, the new year feels just like the old and you haven’t magically morphed into a better version of yourself.

Honey glaze and herbs (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

This year, I’d planned to go to a dinner party with a friend. Something quiet and inside and away from the chaos on the streets would be safe, I thought; no need for spectacle, and I could avoid the raucous revelers bombarding the streets with lights and loud bangs. I’d have just enough time after landing in the afternoon to unpack a little, to shower and change and catch the train north. But when I got to my apartment, the heater was out, which meant the floorboards were like planks of Arctic ice and the shower water glacial. But I set about unpacking anyway, dressed in heavy layers of wool and double-thick socks, at one point realizing it was warmer outside than in and heating up the room by opening the windows to let in brisk December. » Continue reading this post...

A Premonition of Winter: Grilled Jerusalem Artichoke Salad with Red Onion and Olives

Jerusalem artichoke salad (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

For me, there is not much more seductive than unwrapping a thick piece of smoked fish from fat-stained wax paper. I don’t know what that says about me, or about what I find seductive, but there you have it. Grease-flecked paper makes me swoon.

Maybe it’s the nostalgia of it, how it recalls a time when we went to the butcher for meat, the fishmonger for fish, the cheesemonger for cheese – and a piece of something would be picked out just for you, weighed on a scale, and wrapped up by hand.

Grilled Jerusalem artichokes (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

Lemons for vinaigrette (eat Me. Drink Me.)

This week, I finally made it back to the Winterfeldt Market, a Saturday-only affair I keep skipping because I’m tired or otherwise engaged or am once again lured by the Turkish market’s ludicrously cheap prices on crates of perfectly decent vegetables and fruits.

The Winterfeldt Market is classier, with the price tag to prove it. Most of the sellers are from small organic farms, there are beekeepers with jars of local honey and riotous bouquets of flowers, there’s the guy selling hand-sharpened knives and olive wood cutting boards, the craft vermouth stand, the truck that sells fresh whole fish grilled on the spot, and the tiramisu counter that’s always crammed with people slinging back espressos and digging into pillowy piles of dessert.

Jerusalem artichokes (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

I don’t go to the market often, but when I do, I’m reassured to find my favorites in the same place, with the same good wares to sell. I always start my market tour with a raclette. I like to watch the big rinds of pungent alpine cheese bubble and brown under the hot metal grill, and the aproned woman working the contraption as she swipes the oozy top layer with a big wooden paddle and spreads it on a piece of crusty white bread, sprinkles it with paprika and parsley. » Continue reading this post...

A Little Literature: Mint & Dill Sweet Pea Dip

Mint and dill sweet pea dip (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

For the first time since I moved to Berlin, I’ve missed my favorite social event of the year: SAND’s new issue launch party. Yes, sure, you might say I was gallivanting around Colombia, eating fried mojarra and drinking fresh-pressed juices, so what did I want with one evening of readings, of dancing, of congratulatory back-clapping? But for those of us who’ve spent six months putting it together, the launch party is our first chance to hold the new issue in our hands – this beautiful physical object we produce in an age where “print is dead.”

It’s been an interesting issue for me in any case, my first as retired editor in chief. It’s an odd feeling, somehow, to have worked my way from copy editor to managing editor to poetry editor to editor in chief and then to suddenly find myself with an honorary senior editorship and the hoary post of keeper of old history. I know the intricacies of the journal inside and out – after six years, you become something of an expert. But it’s more than just having knowledge. I feel like I’ve helped SAND grow from a small and maybe slightly ramshackle passion project to a fixture in the Berlin literary community and beyond. It’s well-organized and structured, the team is so so dedicated and talented, and the journal is ready to blow up. Which is ultimately why I decided to step down as editor in chief.

Like any empty-nester, I had plenty of projects lined up for when the birdie flew. There’s The Wolf & Peter, a food venture the very talented Anna of Anna’s Kitchen and I are launching, where we host supper clubs and workshops and kitchen takeovers. And I’ve been writing a cookbook that is slowly but surely nearing completion. » Continue reading this post...

Lunch Club: Mango Red Curry with Tofu and Squash

Squash and mango curry (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

The first rule of Lunch Club is: You don’t talk about Lunch Club. The second rule of Lunch Club is: Ignore the first rule and tell everyone you know about how great Lunch Club is because it’s really pretty awesome.

Lunch Club is what we’ve come to call lunch hour at the subtitling and translation company where I spend three days per week slinging snappy two-liners up on a screen. Everyone at the office is responsible for cooking lunch for the rest of the office once a week. It’s a tradition started long ago when there were only two of us, and has continued to this day, when sometimes, there are four or five of us busily typing away as we slurp up cup after cup of French press.

Tableaux with black futsu pumpkin (Eat Me. Drink Me.)

We each have our gold standards – meals we like to keep on regular rotation and meals that continually get requests. One of my favorites is a Syrian fattoush – a softly warm salad of roasted eggplant, parsley, pomegranate, garlic, and cherry tomatoes served with buttery toasted pita chips. But when winter hits, Shaun puts in his request for hearty bowls of gumbo with chicken, shrimp, and okra I have to scrounge out of the deep-freeze bin at the Asian grocery store. Germany is not an okra-eating nation.

Won-ton soup is another of our favorites, a dish whose parts we often divvy up. Shaun makes the broth, clear and flavorful and dotted with mushrooms, julienned carrots, and baby bok choy. I make the won-tons stuffed with pork and scallions, and seasoned with dark soy sauce and brown sugar.

At one point during a summer in which we were obsessed with low-carb lunches, we even invented oat-crust pizza. We ground oats into a fine flour, mixed it with a little water and salt, spread it out on a baking tray, and baked it into a crisp crust, then topped it with tomato sauce, cheese, arugula, bacon, and peppers. » Continue reading this post...