How to Get Over Jet Lag

Our flight landed at Heathrow Airport at about 8 a.m. Anyone who has ever flown overnight from the U.S. to Europe knows how brutal that can be. Breakfast is served about an hour before landing, which is really the middle of the night. But outside, the sun is coming up. And so begins a seemingly endless day of avoiding sleep and staying up as late as possible.

The secret, as I learned, was to stay active and eat a lot.

We arrived at Ali and Dan's place about mid-morning. Ali already had the entire day planned for us. We'd walk about 40 minutes from their place in Islington to experience one of her favorite pastimes since moving to London almost two years earlier - the Borough Market.

By the time we arrived, it was packed with people who were inching their way from stall to stall, snacking on the wide array of foodstuffs, and trying to avoid the crush of people.

This did not deter us.

We grazed on a bulgur salad.

I discovered my latest addiction here - salty and smoked almonds.

We browsed through fresh produce (we'd go on to eat a lot of potato and leek soup later on in Wales).

We wondered what ostrich tasted like.

And gawked back at this guy.

We watched this guy scrape cheese to make the Swiss/French/German dish raclette (a toasted cheese sandwich)

Then we ate raclette.

And drank some of this.

The next morning, we were good as new.

Soup of the Day

When I was little and hated all vegetables except for carrots and green beans, I still had to eat the occasional spoonful of peas. The stakes were high, but the thought of biting into those little balls of green mush filled me with dread. So I did what any child would do when dessert was on the line.

I swallowed them whole.

That's pretty much the last thing I remember about eating peas until adulthood, when I discovered the error of my ways. Now I freely eat snow peas, snap peas, even those once detested green peas. I actually chew them too.

In fact my love of peas grew even more during our recent trip to the UK. It was late afternoon, and we had just arrived in the coastal town of Fishguard in Wales after about five days in London with our friends Ali and Dan. We were strolling down a narrow sidewalk when we happened upon a little cafe. Feeling hungry from our long day's journey, we popped in for a bite.

The soup of the day was written on a chalkboard behind the counter. Pea and mint. That's all it said. Pea and mint. For some reason, that combination enticed me. The earthy, almost nutty, taste of the peas mixed with the fresh blast of mint. Two foods with intense flavors came together in the most subtle way. I was hooked.

Surprising to us, this delicious bowl of soup typified how we found the food in Wales. We had not expected much more than fish and chips, but every menu advertised the use of local and organic ingredients, often with vegetarian and vegan options. Sure I had my fill of chips, but we ate much better than I thought, which served us well as we walked for miles up and down the windswept Pembrokeshire Coast.

Pea and Mint Soup (adapted from Waitrose.com)

Knob of butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion
4 cups water
2 cups split peas (next time, I'm going to try fresh or frozen)
Salt and freshly ground pepper
A bunch of mint, leaves only, roughly chopped
4 tbsp low-fat yogurt, to serve

Melt the butter with the oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Add the onion, season with salt and pepper, cover and sweat very gently for 15 minutes or until completely soft.

Add the stock and bring to a gentle simmer, then add the peas and simmer for 10 minutes until the peas are soft. (*Since we used dry split peas, we let them simmer for about 25 minutes until soft.) Remove from the heat, add the chopped mint, and purée. Push through a sieve if you want a very smooth finish. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Serve in small bowls, hot or chilled, garnished with a swirl of cream or yogurt, a sprig of mint and lots of black pepper. Serve with pumpernickel bread.

Ups and Downs

This was the photo I planned to post weeks ago, shortly after Christmas when Ryan made stock from the turkey carcass.

My kitchen did not look this clean and orderly, I assure you.

In fact, I was going to show more of the meat tearing, bean soaking, and carrot peeling - more of the mess, really - because I had the rare luxury of photographing food during daylight and documented the entire process from soup to nuts. Or bones to soup, in this case.

But somewhere in between taking these pictures and writing a blog post, Ryan asked me to marry him, and my focus vanished. We celebrated with dinners in restaurants and a trip out of town, and suddenly I found myself on the outs with my kitchen.

And then, as we coasted on the outpouring of love and plans and happiness, it became painfully clear that I needed to see my grandfather, whose fragile health had just become more so.

The family gathered by his bedside, and we kissed him and held his hand, but nothing that we did could save him.

A few days before he passed, I wandered into the orange grove next to his house to contemplate. It was a familiar place to me, where I had spent many school vacations throughout my childhood.

The oranges dangled patiently off the branches, waiting to be picked and eaten, as they had for years and years. There, the oranges reminded me that life goes on and even during dark days, that life is still sweet.

The Meaning of Christmas

Merry Christmas!

After sleeping late and getting a lovely visit from Santa (a new bike to replace my stolen one - thank you, Santa), we kicked off Christmas morning with a batch of wild huckleberry pancakes courtesy of Ali, who visited Chicago from Montana a few weeks ago.

This was a perfect Christmas breakfast for many reasons, the first one being that the pancake mix came in the most adorable package. And what is Christmas without pretty packages!

Another reason why this was the ideal choice to make today is that I knew they would taste so good, and they did - fluffy, sweet, and drizzled with syrup. And what is Christmas without delicious food!

The final reason why I decided to make these pancakes today is that Ali is a dear friend. And what is Christmas without friends and family!

That pretty much sums up the meaning of Christmas to me. I hope you and yours have a wonderful holiday surrounded by pretty packages, delicious food, and most importantly, friends and family.

Happy Thanksgiving

What I've Learned

Growing up I always made a big deal about my birthday, mostly because I was a year younger than most of my friends and always felt behind.

I saw my birthday as a day to catch up, and everyone knew it. Exactly three months prior, I would start to self promote so by the time the big day rolled around, anyone who forgot incurred my wrath. Then my friends turned a year older, and that longing to be the same age started all over again.

That all changed once I turned 30 and no longer felt so eager to catch up.

So that may explain why nine days ago, a very important birthday of sorts slipped by without me even realizing it: my two-year blogiversary! But really, it was two years ago that I subscribed to a CSA and changed my eating and cooking habits. (Technically I didn't receive my first box of produce until November 16, so I suppose I have some time yet.)

When I started this CSA experiment, I wasn't sure if I would really take the time to find recipes, cook, and manage to eat the stuff too. But it has become a new way of life for me.

I went from buying the same boring foods at the grocery store to getting unidentifiable veggies that I had to figure out how to make.

I went from coming home from work, ordering takeout, and planting myself on the couch in front of the tv all night to chopping onions and garlic, sauteing with spices and veggies, and going straight to bed after eating and cleaning up. (Except when Lost is on. Two more months!)

Along the way I have collected some favorite recipes: strawberry and feta salad; chicken tajine; rhubarb crisp bars; pasta with butternut squash and sage, and so many others that I was just plain lazy to blog about.

I have learned important lessons about cooking: always make at least one test batch when baking pumpkin pie for a holiday dinner; always put a lid on the pan when popping popcorn on the stovetop; and food left out too long or stored incorrectly will rot (and when this happens, I will feel sad).

I also have made many discoveries about food and my own tastes and habits: I don't like a vegetables that rhyme with arse-snips; potatoes come in different colors; and grating beets is tiring, turns my hands magenta, and inspires bad, punny dialogue between me and Ryan (Me: I'm beat. Ryan: You're doing great, Hon.) I never wrote a blog post about this, so you'll have to take my word for it.

I now know what sunchokes, rutabega, celeriac, salsify, and rhubarb look like.

I think some foods taste best when eaten raw: raspberries, grape tomatoes, carrots, and strawberries.

I would be nothing without onions and garlic.

But most of all I have gained tremendous appreciation for the farmers, who deliver fresh and delicious produce week after week. I have learned that no matter how hard they work, sometimes the weather has other plans. Like last summer too much rain destroyed crops, and my CSA decided to delay deliveries for a few weeks to let the farmers catch up.

I know the feeling of wanting to catch up. But as long as they're growing food, I'm eating it, I hope, for many years to come.

Local Flavors

Happy Halloween! While people of all ages dressed up, went trick-or-treating, and ate candy, I dressed up in many layers, went canoeing and bird watching, and ate fried pickles. But I'll get to that part in a little bit.


This is the last trip of the season for Ryan's canoe and kayak rental business, and it's one of my favorites. The put in is in English Lake, Indiana, on the Kankakee, about 1.5 hours drive from Chicago. It was cold and windy, but the sun stayed out most of the time.


About 8 miles later, we took out at Dunn's Bridge and hightailed it before sunset to the Jasper-Pulaski Fish & Wildlife Area, where thousands of sandhill cranes gather for a few months in late summer and fall on their way south.



Every day around this time of year, these social birds fly into a massive swampy field at dawn and dusk, where they hang out, gets some drinks (of water), and go dancing - they perform a courtship ritual that involves bowing, jumping, calling, and flinging grass - as deer graze on the outskirts of the wetlands. For the rest of the day and night, the cranes leave the field to scavenge for such local delicacies as corn and insects.

The sights and sounds are awesome. As the cranes fly in they drop their skinny legs like airplanes lowering their wheels while the air vibrates with trilling calls. Ryan recently heard that The Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum, who grew up in the area, modeled the call of the flying monkeys after the cranes. Even if it's not true, that's a good depiction of what the birds sound like.

By the time the sun dips behind the trees and the sky clears of cranes, we are ready to experience our own local delicacy - fried pickles from the Kniman Tap! Except for pizza, almost every item on the menu is fried, from jalapenos to perch to my favorite, curly fries.

Since I've gone on this trip a few times, I have learned a thing or two about eating fried pickles, so allow me to dispense some of my wisdom...

...Exercise extreme caution when biting into a fried pickle, because it's easy to inadvertently pull the pickle out of its fried outer layer with your teeth, leaving nothing but a hollow shell. So make sure to bite all the way through so you can experience the satisfying flavor combination that is fried and pickle.

...It is easy to show up ravenous after a day on the river and crane watching and consume numerous fried pickles in one sitting. I had three myself, in addition to some fried cauliflower, a fried mushroom, and a fried mozzarella stick before my hamburger and curly fries showed up. This isn't necessarily a bad thing at the time, but it can make for an uncomfortable drive home if you overdo it (which I did).

If fried everything isn't the sort of local flavor that you like, there are other options.

In fact Ryan came home after yesterday's trip with a dozen eggs, a bag of onions and potatoes, a jar of honey, and some pumpkins from a local farm. He saw a sign that advertised eggs and pulled over. It was easy as that to get a taste of the local flavors.