Category: (it's all about the) food

Buon Natale

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, italian, local fun, tweens
Izzy at Buon Natale

I took my daughter to Buon Natale, the Italian Christmas bazaar at St. Peter’s Church on Federal St. in Portland. This was something my Italian grandmother always took me to when I was growing  up, and it remains a happy childhood memory for me to this day. I wanted to share this with my daughter.

It was at the same site as the Italian Feast was in the summer. It was held inside the church, which usually would be a good thing, since November in Portland is often a cruel month.

Not today though; it was 64 degrees when we arrived about 12 noon. It easily could have been held outdoors. Inside, we were greeted by a nice lady that said, “Did you park in the Rite Aid parking lot? They’ll tow you if you did!” We assured her that we had not, and thanked her for her concern.

There was a “garage sale” room, with tables set up that had been well picked over by the time we arrived. The doors opened at 8am, so it was well more than half over. We browsed a bit in the craft show section, but then we got down to the real business of visiting any Italian venue: the food.

They had a similar menu to what was offered at the feast in the summer. Ziti with meatballs, meatball subs, Sicilian style pizza, eggplant parmigiana sub, and pasta fagioli were the main entrees. After much discussion (and viewing of what other people were ordering) we settled on the pasta fagioli to split.

For three bucks, we got a bowl big enough to fill us both up for lunch. It was the best pasta fagioli ever. 🙂

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

For dessert? What else would these two Italian girls get?  Tiramisu, of course! We split that as well, but afterward, we second guessed that choice. “We should have both got one!” my girl pointed out. Note to self for next time: to each her own tiramisu. 🙂

Date night: Maine Diner and a Movie

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, local fun, movies, restaurants

Date night last night was short, but great. We unexpectedly had a babysitter when I unexpectedly got out of work early, so we made the most of it. This date night consisted of dinner and a movie.

Because with me it’s all about the food, even though we had barely an hour before the show started we still had to go somewhere to eat first.

It was my husband’s turn to pick, and he chose The Maine Diner, on route one in Wells. Even on an off-season Wednesday night, it was pretty full and we got the last table on the periphery (I hate sitting in those little two-seater tables in the center aisle of the restaurant).

We split the buffalo tenders and the seafood sampler (made up of fried shrimp, whole clams, and scallops), which was excellent. We had just enough time after it arrived to eat it and get to the theater for the 7:05PM show start time.

We saw this particular movie (thanks, Bill!) because I have had a thing for Robert Downey Jr for years.The movie was great, even though there was some violence (some of which had implicit jokes  that I didn’t get, but my husband did). It wasn’t the horrific, bloody-guts-and-death kind of violence though, so it’s all good. It reminded me of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles from (OMG) 1987.  Not quite as good as that movie, but definitely worth seeing.

Last, we went to the ocean. There was someone beach combing in the dark with a flashlight and a white bucket…what was that about? We never did find out. There actually were a lot of people (at least four others that we could see)  out running around in the surf in the dark…guess I missed the memo on that field trip. Since it was so crowded, we headed down to the other parking lot, which was empty, to…er…to watch the submarine races.

I didn’t notice who won. 🙂

Five foods for which I am thankful this year

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food
Cranberry Kitchen Pumpkin Whoopie Pie

In this month’s issue, Cooking Light magazine’s editor asks, “What in the food world are you thankful for?” This got me thinking about how I would answer this question.

I had heard in the past that people’s tastes change as they get older, but I had never believed it. In reflecting on this question, however, I realized that my tastes actually have changed in the past couple of years or so.  Is this true for any of you?

So, here’s my top 5 foods for which I am very thankful this year.

  1. Bread. Specifically, the Micucci’s baker Stephen Lanzalotta’s Lunar bread. I have the recipe now and I make it almost every week. It’s a little more labor intensive than the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, but not much.
  2. Whoopie Pies. Prior to this year, I didn’t even like whoopie pies that much. I could take them or leave them. Now, however, I find myself happily walking a mile round trip to buy a whoopie pie from the masters at Two Fat Cats Bakery in Portland. I also have the Making Whoopies cookbook and have baked a couple of the recipes from it. And I just discovered that whoopies freeze like a dream!
  3. Eggs. Farm fresh eggs: blue, brown, speckled, pink…the eggs from my chickens look like the ones Martha Stewart used to keep in a bowl on her TV show kitchen counter (does she still do this??) but they are so much better. Lately I love to make quick omelets from them, but a breakfast sandwich is also great for any meal.
  4. Sausages. I never liked sausages, and now I love them. My new favorite pizza is Italian sausage pizza, but I also love them grilled with peppers and onions, in soup, whatever.
  5. Fish. The only fish that I could bring myself to eat was canned tuna and on occasion, fried clam strips. Then I moved to Maine. A Mainer that doesn’t eat fish? Not wanting to be a human oxymoron, I started off slowly, but now I love many kinds of fish, prepared in ways other than fried. (Okay, fried clams are still my favorite, but I’ll eat the whole clam now, instead of picking off the bellies and making my husband eat those).

Okay, so this is my short list. What’s in your top five “grateful” foods this year?

Conscious eating, Part 3

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, fitness, restaurants

So, now that more weeks have passed and I have totally not given the Women, Food, and God  (by Geneen Roth) approach a passing thought until today, I decided to recommit to some of the strategies I have learned along the weight loss way.

  1. Drink 16 oz of water before every meal. This can be excessive, and at times make you feel like tossing your cookies before you even get to eat them, so modify accordingly. If you can only choke down a half a cup, go for it! It’s better than nothing. The theory is that it will make you feel fuller sooner, thereby displacing some of the food that you presumably would have consumed if not for the presence of the water in your gut. Seems like it’s worth a shot.
  2. Green tea. I am down to only a cup per day, two at most. Green tea is tricky because it has caffeine, and blood thinning properties (just to mention, there are other side effects as well)… it may interact with aspirin, the NSAIDs, coumadin, and so forth. . . but just in case it does contribute to weight loss, a little may be better than none.
  3. Throw out the first bite of your cookie/cupcake/whoopie pie/muffin/miscellaneous baked good of your choice. This is from One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way by Robert Maurer. I’m definitely still trying to work up the courage to try this one.
  4. Check online before you go out to eat to scope out the menu; get tips from WebMD or Weight Watchers on healthy (or at least less bad) choices.
  5. Oh, yeah: that smaller plate thing. Ever hear the saying that “work expands to fill the allotted time”? Well, I think that this rule applies to food too: the amount of food you (think it’s reasonable to) consume will expand to fill the allotted plate/bowl size.

Question to ponder: Does doing the Happy Dance (a la Snoopy) burn off the equivalent of whoopie pie that I just ate?

Book Club at Mekong Thai

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, friends, quest for the best, restaurants

This month’s meeting was at Mekong Thai in Wells. The six of us met there at 6pm and were given a nice table by the windows, which they opened to give us some fresh air (a 65 degree evening in Maine in late October? Booyah!).

Susan is a quick study!

The wait staff was lovely, solicitous, and helpful. Lemon for your water? Sure! Another piece of lemon? No problem! A straw? Okay, at this point even I was getting annoyed with me, but not the waitress…she cheerfully went back to get me another straw.
And not only did she produce the straw, but when some of us expressed interest in the decorative way the straw was presented, she came back to the table with a fresh straw, paper intact, and taught us how to make one ourselves! My friend Susan was actually able to reproduce the effect, so our waitress was a good teacher, having transferred the skill to another in less than 5 minutes.

The great service was evident in other small ways as well, like when I was given a small container of peanut sauce (instead of scraping what remained of my used condiment in the bowl on my plate) to go with my leftovers that I had doggie bagged.

The food was great too. I had checked online for healthy Thai food choices (when eating out) beforehand, and easily found plenty of choices within this framework. I chose the Tom Yum soup with chicken, which was excellent, as was the chicken satay with peanut sauce. The free salad was a nice bonus; it had a mildly spicy peach colored dressing that was great.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Why am I talking so much about the food, and so little about the book? Well, you may have guessed this: the book was…distressing. None of us liked it much. What was interesting though is that (as Shannon pointed out), we seem to have a much better, involved discussion about books that we don’t like than about books that we do like.

When we met to talk about The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, we didn’t have much to say, other than that it was a good book.  When we met to discuss Lowboy by John Wray, we were all talking over each other, interrupting each other, and in general making a big commotion in the small, otherwise pretty quiet, restaurant.

Hmmm, maybe this should be a go-to destination for book clubs?

Midlife crisis, part one: losing my mind

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, Midlife Crisis, tweens

I was standing in the kitchen talking to my husband last week, and he told me he was irritated because of something I’d told him earlier in the week that turned out not to be true. 

What was it? I sure don’t know. I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now. He remembered the (alleged) conversation in great detail. As I stood there listening to him recount what I said, I thought, “One of us must be crazy (and it’s not me)”!

I am quite sure that this conversation never happened. He is quite sure that it did. So, we sensibly backed off and let it go, nervous about where this particular road might take us, should we choose to pursue it.

Then today, I got to the parking garage at work and started to gather up my multitude of bags: bag with paperwork and reading material, check. Oversized insulated bag with my breakfast, lunch, and dinner, check. Pocketbook….pocketbook…with calendar, money, scissors, teabags, special cloth to clean eyeglasses, other miscellaneous detritus…NOT HERE!

I think back, retrace my morning steps. I am sure I carried my pocketbook and old navy plastic bag (with extra miscellaneous stuff) to the car this morning, as I stepped over my tween daughter who was sitting on the floor (in full tween drama mode) blocking my exit to flee the house.

Breathe. Breathe.

I call my husband, to share the insanity. I tell him that I can’t find my pocketbook. He says, “It’s right here, hanging on the back of the kitchen chair…next to an Old Navy bag”.

HOW could this be true? Yet I was faced with the undisputable evidence that what I thought I did this morning in no way resembled what I actually did do.

Plus, now I’m worried that my husband was indeed right in the first example above, and I was wrong. Oh-oh.

At this point, instead of “I told you so!”  he then said, kindly: “Why don’t you sit in your car and meditate for  a few minutes?” I did have time to do this now, since I’d come to Portland early to shop at the farmers market, but my farmers market money was home in my pocketbook.

Breathe. So Hum. Contemplate being unconscious in my own life.

Emergency food stash

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, friends, shopping

In keeping with one of my goals this year of Food Security (well, full disclosure: it’s my goal every year, but this year it’s an official, written down type of goal), I thought I’d write a little about different food “emergencies” that a person might experience and how I prepare for them. Here are 5 food emergencies that often come up in everyday life:

  1. Work day lunches (and breakfasts, and suppers, too, depending on the hours that you work). Disclaimer: assumes presence of water and microwave at your place of employment. Here’s what to keep in your pantry…er, desk drawer for days that you just don’t have time to pack up a meal (or meals) before you leave for work: single serving 3 oz cans of tuna, peanut butter (of course), granola bars (good luck finding ones without HFCS), packets of oatmeal, cups of instant minute brown rice, cans of nuts.
  2. Last minute playdate for tween, the timing of which will undoubtedly span a meal time (and possibly a winter storm in which you’d prefer not to drive). Keep a box of mac and cheese on hand, but hidden so that no one eats it when you aren’t around. This is a meal option that no tween has ever turned his/her nose up at. I make this statement with full confidence since I’ve had to rely on it on many occasions for both the boy-child and the girl-child over the years and it has never failed to please.
  3. Last minute invitation (or you actually remembered the invitation at the last minute) to a potluck (work, family party, book club). An antipasto platter is the way to go. You can keep everything you need in the pantry so all you have to do is open the jars and dump on the platter (this step can even be done at your destination, so all that prep would involve is bagging up the jars before you leave). If you have any lettuce in the fridge, that would be a bonus, but it’s not necessary. *Note: pay attention to spouse’s anxiety level due to over-stuffed pantry, fridge, freezer…he may not take kindly to a bonk on the head from your stockpile. Also, try to ignore it when he mumbles about ‘hoarding behavior’ under his breath.
  4. And speaking of weather (see #2 above) that you don’t want to drive in…there will probably be plenty of occasions of that in the next couple of months…this is Maine, with winter approaching, after all. Keep a box of the macaroni of your choice (capellini and rotini are my go-to’s) in the pantry, a block of parmesan in the fridge, and a bottle of olive oil on the counter, and you will never starve (garlic, red pepper flakes, and parsley are welcome bonuses to the above dish if you have ’em). . . well, unless the power goes out and you are generator-less.
  5. Chocolate emergency. I keep a few (okay, many, many, many) pieces of dark chocolate around for when I just have to have it. There really is no substitute that works in this case. Buy a bag of dark chocolate Hershey’s Kisses. Split the bag between your hiding place…um, cabinet at home and (the back of ) your desk (drawer) at work. You’re welcome.

That’ s my short list of food ’emergencies’ for today. Do you have any of your own to add to the list?

Life in the cube

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, fitness, health, movies, yoga

I was sitting in my cube at work (hour 10), checking out Mayo Clinic’s website for anything new. I found a video of people working at treadmill desks.

I do not have a treadmill desk. Currently, I sit in my cube (to borrow a line from Sandra Bullock in the movie While You Were Sleeping) for 10.5 hours a day  “like a veal”. I am not burning the 10% more calories that people who are blessed with bad backs and get notes from the company’s contracted physical pherapy associates and are awarded “sit-stand” stations. So I sit, not stand.

I recently attended a yoga workshop led by Judith Hanson Lasater. I learned many things from listening to Judith, including that the optimal angle for the hips while sitting in a chair is 120 degrees. I am currently sitting in a chair at my job that gives me about a 45 degree angle of hipness. Not good.

I attempted to remedy this. I rolled up a blanket and put it on my desk chair which afforded me a hip angle that more closely approximated the goal. I was feeling smug about having saved about $50 on a new cushion for about an hour, when I started noticing that my right shoulder (which was now clearly at an untherapeutic angle) was killing me, thereby proving once again the theory that “the thigh bone’s connected to the shoulder bone”.

Darn! I guess I also need to attend a workshop about shoulders. Or ergonomics. Back to square one.

Girls’ Night

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, family, friends, local fun, restaurants, tweens

On the (rare) days when the male members of the family are off at work, but the females have the day off, we have a Girls’ Night. Today, Girls’ Nights started early, at 7:24AM. The men were out for the day so the females were left to  our own pursuits. This is what my daughter and I did today:

  1. Breakfast: Cream of wheat for Izzy and egg white omelet with spinach, mushrooms, and roasted red peppers for me. OJ and coffee, respectively.
  2. Met up with friends at Cafe Perfecto in Kennebunk. We split a gingerbread muffin. We ate it too quickly to photograph it. It was goooooooooooooooooooooooooood. 🙂
  3. Next, browsing at Kennebooks. We bought some cards, some books, and a really cool mushroom shaped eraser with the sharpener built right in. 

    Coolest mushroom eraser/sharpener ever!
  4. Home for lunch: PB&H on homemade bread for me; grilled cheese and bacon on whole wheat bread for Iz. Then she caught up with a friend on the phone, while I caught up on the laundry, chicken tasks, and dishes. Yay.
  5. Next, North Berwick Farmers Market. My friend Rebecca was there so we got to visit a bit. Lucky for us, it was the day of their Pie Contest, and we got to try a piece of the winning pie, baked by a 9 year old girl; very impressive. Besides pie, we got some fudge, some granola, herbs to mix with oil for bread-dipping, oatmeal coconut cookies…hmmm, seems like something is missing. What is it? Oh! The (token healthy food that was the excuse for going to the farmers market) apple! I ate that at the next stop.
  6. Izzy had a riding lesson and I spent the time in the car catching up on the last 2 days of newspapers that I hadn’t gotten to yet.
  7. At 6Pm, lesson over, we headed to Johnson’s Seafood and Steak. This is our new favorite restaurant, partly because it’s right on the way home after riding, but mostly because of the pumpkin cheesecake. OMG. It’s worth going just for that.
  8. Finally, home for a movie night. We watched The Clique. Izzy had seen it before and wanted to watch it again with me. Great mother-daughter movie.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

That’s it.  She’s gone to bed; I’m getting ready to. We had a great day. 🙂

The garden’s last gasp

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, gardening, raising chickens

So I went out to see what was left in the garden, and was surprised to find that there actually was something left. A

October garden harvest

handful of cherry tomatoes, a japanese eggplant, and the sole orange bell pepper that was produced by that plant. There is also some basil, beets, carrots…lettuce and spinach coming up that was replanted last month. There are a few apples, but they have black marks on them, souvenirs from the hail. They taste great, but their eye appeal is zilch.

What else? Oh, yes…3 raspberries! There is also a cherry tomato vine that is kicking butt, covered with green tomatoes that showed up as a volunteer in the raspberry bed, a covert stowaway in the compost, I presume. I don’t think the tomatoes will ripen before the frost, but who knows? They won’t go to waste anyway. Chickens love tomatoes as much as they love pumpkins!

The herb garden is going strong still: a few different oreganos, probably a half a dozen varieties of thyme, rosemary, bay, lavender, lemon verbena, the sages. Will be bringing the rosemary and bay plants inside to (hopefully) live through the winter.

Even though the “pickin’s is slim”, there is still a lot to do in the garden, like: getting it ready for winter. How to do this? Not sure! Have to check with my husband…has something to do with compost, I think. And getting dirty. 🙂