Summer fare

I know there are some people out there who like to map out their dinner schedules ahead of time: They know they’re making grilled salmon salad on Tuesday, homemade pizzas on Friday and stovetop macaroni and cheese over the weekend. I am not one of those types of meal planners. Though I meticulously plan my shopping (always have dark chocolate, fruit, Greek yogurt, goat cheese and a variety of sausages for pizzas on hand) my meal planning is much more spontaneous.

Inspiration most often comes from what I catch in bits and pieces from the Food Network and read in newspapers, food magazines and on food blogs. If I see a recipe that looks good, I can’t stop thinking about it until I make it.

Here are a few great recipes I have come across recently. I’ve made all of them at least once, and I recommend them without reservations:

Crostini with sun-dried tomato jam from Giada DeLaurentiis
I made the jam a day ahead of time and bought my baguette from La Chatelaine.

Spicy, Garlicky Cashew Chicken by Melissa Clark in the New York Times.
The recipe suggests grilling the chicken but we used the broiler since we were out of propane. It still turned out great.

Rhubarb-Sour Cream Snack Cake with Walnut Streusel from Cooking Light.
My dad likes to say that people like rhubarb because it’s simply a vehicle for sugar. This recipe is one of many that support his premise. When I made this for my book club I garnished the cake with whipped cream and a sprig of mint and it looked very cute.

Eating on the road

One of my favorite things to do before a trip is to scout out good places to eat in our destination city. I usually do pretty well, but I had an especially good track record on our recent trip to Burlington, Vermont. (We were there for a friend’s wedding.)

First stop: Penny Cluse Café
Even at 9:00am on a Friday morning there was a 20-minute wait at this bustling breakfast joint, which I took to be a very good sign. Ordering off the menu was tough — there were so many good choices. I was especially intrigued by the zydeco breakfast — two eggs any style with black beans, andouille sausage and corn muffins — and the gingerbread pancakes. However, the day’s special sounded so good that it trumped all the other choices: coconut bread French toast with tangerine curd. How I wish that I could recreate this at home — it was one of the best breakfasts I have had in a long time. The coconut bread was thick and hearty, and even tasted like it may have been made with whole wheat flour.

Not only did the French toast taste fabulous, it also provided plenty of fuel for our 18-mile bike ride along Lake Champlain.

Afternoon snack: Skinny Pancake
Sweet and savory crepes are the specialty at this waterfront spot. We locked up our bikes and tucked into the coconut curried potato crepe (Caribbean-style curried sweet and Russet potatoes over rice) and the crepadilla (homemade salsa, avocados, and Cabot cheddar cheese folded into a scallion crepe). I have no desire to attempt crepes at home (too intricate and fragile) but I certainly was happy to enjoy the fruits of someone else’s expertise.

My only regret is that we didn’t have time for any more meals in Burlington. Sigh. I love a city that knows how to eat.

Recap: North Market Apron Gala

My companion and I attended our first-ever North Market Apron Gala last night. Though we've lived here almost five years we've never gone, and we decided this was the year.

We both donned our aprons before getting into the car. My companion already owned one but I did have to purchase one for the occasion. I didn't want to spend a lot of money, so I settled on this one from Bed, Bath and Beyond (though I only paid $19 for mine). I thought it was cute enough, but nothing special. As it turns out, however, someone else wore the same one and even entered herself in the apron contest, eventually winning third place. I guess it was a little bit more eye-catching than I thought. Further proof: My companion and I had our picture taken by a reporter from Columbus Alive! Stay tuned to see if we make it in the paper on Thursday. We did smile our very best.

As we drove into the parking garage and watched gala-goers stream inside, we noticed rather quickly that no one was wearing aprons. We looked at each other: Should we ditch them? Were we making some kind of classic newbie mistake? We decided in the end to keep them on, and I'm glad we did. As it turns out, about 1/3 of the gala-goers do wear aprons, many of them very entertaining (my favorite one said "one flew over the couscous nest" on the front). Plus, since you're walking around eating all kinds of finger foods, it's nice to have apron pockets to stash away your program, napkins and forks.

Speaking of the food, I loved the format for the evening. The gala runs from 7pm-10pm, and the type of food served changes every hour: appetizers from 7-8, main tastes from 8-9 and desserts from 9-10. It's great fun -- you just keep taking laps around the market, chatting with people and sampling whatever little bites intrigue you.

Here were my favorite tastes of the night:
1)Appetizers:
-Freshly squeezed mimosa from Bubbles Tea and Juice Co. The juice had been squeezed an hour ago!
-Ham balls and smoked pork Cajun andouille sausage from Bluescreek Farm Meats.

2)Main tastes:
-Pulled pork soft tacos from CaJohn's Flavor and Fire
-A little cup of Pho from Lac Viet Market
-Mushroom-bleu cheese flatbread from Omega Artisan Baking

3)Desserts:
-Coconut bread pudding with creme anglaise from Pastaria Seconda
-Cherry lambic sorbet from Jeni's
-Petit fours from Mozart's

All in all, the night was delightful. I didn't feel like this was an event I need to attend every year, but I will say that it reminded me how lucky we are to have the North Market and all its vendors here in Columbus.

Wednesday food news (a day late)

I’m finally catching up on my Wednesday food section reading. Here are some things I plan to try:


Milk chocolate-banana pudding in the New York Times.

The pope’s risotto in the NYT (originally made for Benedict XVI by Lidia Bastianich.)


I have been intrigued by the new 200-calorie offerings at Au Bon Pain. Yes, yes, I know it’s a chain, but I work right near the downtown location and often need an afternoon snack. Brie with grapes and crackers or sliced turkey rolls filled with asparagus, cranberry chutney and gorgonzola beat a trip to the vending machine any day.

What I’ve been up to

I was out of town most of last week, which is my primary excuse for not blogging and cooking. My excuse for not doing either of these things in the weeks prior to that is that I was steeped in preparation for the aforementioned out-of-town trips.

So here’s where I was: As many of you know, I wrote a book that was published wayyy back in September 2003. Since that time, Getting a Life has worked its way into the hands of many college students, twentysomethings and their mentors, and I have gotten a number of speaking invitations during the past four-and-a-half years as a result of GAL.

Last Wednesday I gave a keynote address at a symposium on youth and young adult ministry that was organized by one of the people I admire most in the contemporary Catholic world: Fr. Ronald Rolheiser. I have long been a fan of his writing (especially The Holy Longing) so I was thrilled to be able to be a part of something he had a hand in. The symposium was held in San Antonio at the Oblate School of Theology, where Fr. Ron is president. It was a delightful gathering and I even got to squeeze in a fun dinner on the Riverwalk as well as a visit to the Alamo.

On Sunday I spoke in East Lansing, Michigan at St. John Student Parish, which is the Catholic community that’s affiliated with Michigan State University. I believe that St. John’s has one of the largest, if not the largest, Catholic campus ministry programs in the country. I was so impressed with the place, as well as with the student interns I met with before I gave my talk.
These two trips were great, but I’ll be glad to get some r & r this weekend, finally unpack my suitcases and enjoy the tulips and grape hyacinths in full bloom in my yard.

I’ll be back in the kitchen again soon, sharing my culinary adventures as soon as I can. Until then, keeping up with the spiritual theme of this post, here’s a quote that I included in my talk in San Antonio. Speaking it aloud to a roomful of people has kept it in the forefront of my mind:

“There is something way down deep that's eternal about every human being."
~Thornton Wilder, Our Town (Act III)

Food news

Fresh ricotta desserts in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Includes good shopping tips on which brands to buy for which recipes.

Buying a good popcorn popper at Slate.

Growing blueberry bushes in the New York Times.
This is already on my summer to-do list.

Homemade lemon curd in the Chicago Tribune.

Honey desserts from the Los Angeles Times.

Perfect picnic guide at Mighty Goods.

And here’s one fun non-food-related story:
Learning to play the Irish tin whistle from the Wall Street Journal.

Homemade sandwich bread

I’ve lived in Columbus for four-and-a-half years, and during that time I’ve been unable to find a bakery that makes good sandwich bread. To be sure, it’s not that there isn’t any good bread around: The batards from La Chatelaine make excellent crostini and the rustic round loaves from Tasi/Eleni-Christina are welcome at my dinner table anytime. But for my sandwiches I’m looking for something entirely different: a whole grain loaf that’s hearty, yet still slightly soft. And a bakery with an electric slicing machine is an added bonus. (As a writer I prize precision, so I derive some satisfaction from a uniformly sliced loaf.)

Sadly, this bakeshop trifecta is not available within an acceptable driving distance of my house. On most of my trips home to Michigan I’ve loaded up on loaves of oatmeal bread from Sarkozy’s and Scottish struan bread from Mackenzie’s, but if too much time elapses between these trips, my supply runs out.

I found myself in such a situation over Easter weekend, so I decided to try my hand at baking my own. I found a promising recipe for easy multigrain bread in an old Cook’s Illustrated, and I swung into action. The whole process was incredibly satisfying and easy. It was a most-of-the-day affair because of the time required for repeated rising, but the hands-on time totaled only about 30 minutes. The only mistake I made was using quick-rise yeast rather than the instant yeast that the recipe called for. (Are they the same thing? I'm still not sure.) My two loaves didn’t puff up as much as they should have, but the results were still wonderful. I cut my first slice when the bread was still hot from the oven and slathered it with butter. The result? Bread that tasted exactly like what I had been looking for.

“Don’t plan your day around your bread, but plan your bread around your day,” say bread-baking experts. The upshot of that advice is, if you’ll plan on being home most of the day working on other things, you probably have time to make homemade bread.