Simple pasta with lots of pepper

Pam got this recipe from Lidia Mattichio Bastianich's TV show and two hours later was making it. It's simple: spaghetti with romano cheese, some of the pasta water, and lots of coarsely ground black pepper. We had it with some leftover lentil soup, and I was in charge of the broccoli and salad. An excellent dinner.

The video has Pam narrating the recipe, and from the sounds of it she was just saying what she heard Lidia say a bit earlier.

Strawberry Muffins

I made these muffins this morning with fresh Plant City strawberries. Plant City, FL, which is about 15 miles east of Tampa, is known and the winter strawberry capital of the world, and according to Wiki, is named for its flora (vegetables, fruits, and tropical plants). This recipe was adapted from one I found online, that specifically called for Florida strawberries.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/2 cups chopped fresh strawberries
• 1/2 cup turbinado sugar
  
• 1/4 cup turbinado sugar
• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 3/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour
  
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• a few extra sliced strawberries for garnish
  

DIRECTIONS

1. In a small bowl, combine the strawberries and 1/2 cup sugar. Set aside for about 1 hour. Drain, reserving liquid and berries separately.
2. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). Grease a 12 cup muffin tin, or line with paper liners.
3. In a medium bowl, cream together the butter and 1/4 cup sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, salt and nutmeg; stir into the creamed mixture alternately with the juice from the berries. Gently stir in the berries. Spoon batter into the prepared muffin cups.
4. Garnish muffin tops with sliced strawberries
   
5. Bake for 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the tops spring back when lightly touched. Cool in the pan on a wire rack.

A nice bowl of (soupy) oatmeal

I know there are a lot of oatmeal fans out there: John, a year-round oatmeal man who fortifies his with a big spoonful of peanut butter; Kevin, who makes it as a snack any time of day or night; Mike, a steel-cut oats purist; and Pam, who sits next to me at the winter table eating something hot and made of oats, but quite different than my oatmeal.

I like mine real soupy, with lots of nuts and fruit. (So soupy that certain family members make fun of it.)

I start with whatever piece of fruit Pam has cut in half, usually a pear or apple because it's winter, sometimes a banana or peach. Chop that up, then break up a good half handful of walnuts or pecans or mixed nuts, and for extra flavor add in some chopped dried fruit, like the excellent apricots and plums that Brian gave me for Christmas.

And of course the oats, just under a half-cup of quick oats from the cardboard tube.

I add enough water mixed half and half with soy milk or dairy milk to almost fill the bowl, and give it four minutes in our underpowered microwave. If it comes out thick, I add some more water before sitting down to read the papers and take in a fine well-balanced meal. That's good eating!

Working up an appetite

High winds didn't keep us from going out on the Intercoastal Waterway to test out the new inflatable kayak, which is named Telomerase after the enzyme that is expressed in cells that live forever. So the boat suggests immortality, but alas, the enzyme can also be an indicator of cancer cells, which survive and grow because of this very feature, according to noted researcher Janet Barry, from the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa.

We struggled south against the wind to a landing where we could walk across to the beach and the Gulf of Mexico.While eating our sandwiches we were joined by some royal terns, which look like gulls but have broader beaks and black crowns on their head. Also we saw pelicans swooping low over the water, looking for fish. On the way back we had a minor problem, when both kayaks grounded on a sandbar, but we were able to free them by getting out and pushing.

Later we made Indian food -- samosas and a (sort-of) Gujarati dish that included two of Freddy's beautiful balcony-grown eggplant.

Sandwich Wars, Part Three (Airplane Food)

When you're making sandwiches, you have to work with what you have, and when Pam went into the mostly empty fridge the other morning, to make sandwiches for the plane ride to Sarasota, FL, the ingredient that made the difference was boiled beets. She sliced them up along with some green onions (the long way), lettuce and green peppers, added a slice of pepper jack cheese and a light coating of French red pepper mustard (thanks Carolyn, for leaving it behind), and put it all between darkly toasted bread to keep things from getting soggy. We ate 'em somewhere over Tennessee, I reckon. They filled us up a bit more than that tiny bag of "gourmet" pretzels.

And then today Pam went into Janet and Freddy's fridge (they'd gone off to work) and found some bottled roasted peppers, hot giardiniera and cheese, plus good whole-grain bread, and added a handful of fresh greens mix (arugula) from the balcony garden. We ate that out at Myakka River State Park, where the birds of the day were black vultures, scores of them that had converged on the park to pick clean the invader species tilapia that had died off during the recent 26-degree cold snap. It smelled pretty bad along the water's edge, where the carcasses were washed up by the dozens, but a volunteer ranger told us that it smelled a lot worse a few days ago, before the vultures provided their ecological services.

Tomorrow or Sunday we'll probably go kayaking, with Pam and me in a rented boat and Janet and Freddy in their new inflatable kayak, below. Yes, that's Doctor Lepore wearing his dress white shirt pumping up the thing; it arrived the day we did and he couldn't wait to see what it looked like. It's a very impressive piece of engineering, complete with "military style" valves that must be what the Navy Seals can manipulate with their teeth even when under heavy fire and pulling a few fallen comrades to the boat through 10-foot waves.

Sandwich Wars Part Two

Mozzarella, tomatoes, olives, parsley, red pepper on a whole wheat bun. And a big old marinated artichoke on the side.

Going to get some grapefruit

Pam is a fiend for grapefruit, as long as it isn't too sour, so to celebrate our 28th wedding anniversary this morning we split one of those big Florida numbers and it tasted real fine. Actually, we have grapefruit just about every morning during the high season in winter, which is now, and they've been especially good this year, so juicy that when Pam scrapes out the last juicy morsels (yes, she is a scraper, while I'm more of a squeezer), the juice leaves spatters on the kitchen windows.

But sometimes we think the experience would be even better if we ate the grapefruit closer to the trees from which they come.

So on Thursday we're heading down to Sarasota to visit Janet and Freddy and we're sure hoping (hint hint) that they'll have some grapefruit in the house. We'll do some kayaking and bird-watching while we're there, and maybe cook up something as a team that we can post on the blog.

Maybe we'll even bring a sack of grapefruit home for next week.

Sandwich Wars

In light of our busy schedules, Janet and I decided to pass on the macadamia encrusted Mahi Mahi and construct one of our Eggplant Dagwoods. I doubt Mr. Bumstead would make his with Kalamata tampenade or salt from the frigid waters of the Bering Sea, but we're sure he would still enjoy this little piece of heaven crafted from fresh baked Cuban bread. We also threw in some greens from our garden as well as the date breakers on top... garlic stuffed olives. We just hope that the two of us can down this puppy ourselves. Nos Vemos!

Holding off a food rut

Work for both of us started off with a bang on Jan. 2 and shows no signs of letting up for months to come, so it would be understandable if our culinary ambitions trailed off from the high points of the recent holiday.

But we have to keep our strength up, so Pam is making sure we eat our vegetables.

Last night, she put together a couple of dishes from the new cookbook that Kevin got us for Christmas, The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking. The first was Aloo Sak, or potatoes and spinach, and the other was Baigan Simla Mirch Tarkari, sauteed eggplant and bell peppers.

A couple of surprises here.

The eggplant dish involved steaming the eggplant first, then combining with a giant mound of peppers (three large ones, sliced thin) that were sauteed with mustard seeds until they were blistered and shrunk down to little shreds of their former selves. Add freshly mixed garam masala according to Lord Krishna's recipe, and you have a remarkably dense and flavorful dish that is served with yogurt and cilantro.

Potatoes and spinach? That one you start by making French Fries! Once nicely browned in a thin layer of oil, you pull out the potatoes, dump a hot red spice mix into the oil, sizzle away the moisture, add the spinach and a bit later add the potatoes back in. Squeeze on some lemon and eat with some garlic nan (from the frozen food case at the wildly popular Fresh Farms International Market, 2626 W. Devon), and you have yourself a decent meal.

To keep the momentum going, Pam made some toasted mango, avocado and mozzarella sandwiches for brunch today with Granny and Carolyn. The sandwiches were marvelously light and clean-tasting, almost bland, but the side dish of fiery chipotle potatoes balanced things out.

We'll see how long we can keep this up before falling into the inevitable food rut.

An excellent vacation

Pam and I didn't have to work last week so the Christmas festivities continued without interruption: long mornings reading the newspapers, an outing or two, long afternoons browsing the internet or reading some more, and plenty of freshly prepared lunches and dinners, with Kevin and Carolyn when they were around.

I talked to Michael the other day and he asked if I was "buffaloing away" at my house projects. Actually, no. Just sitting around, eating well, sleeping late. I've probably gained a few pounds, which for a slim fellow like me is a good thing.

And then the tide turned. For the last three days I've been pounding on the house projects: routing coaxial cable on three floors and hooking it to the attic antenna (six or seven holes in the walls, as yet unfixed), mounting the new under-cabinet TV in the kitchen, and combining and trimming out the two glass-doored cabinets for the dining room. Pam, meanwhile, took over shoveling all the snow, helped clean up the demolition messes and kept me well fed.

The T-shirt below was a present from Janet and it seems appropriate after all this eating and digesting.

Happy New Year.