More Food that Matches My House: Zucchini Michoacan Style

Before I get into this tasty recipe adapted from My Mexico by Diana Kennedy, I have a confession. My name is Leslie and I have a virulent form of Contrary Maryness.

When free of outside influences, I am fairly agnostic about most things, able to see multiple points of view. But put me in close proximity to someone with a strongly-held opinion, or worse, several people strongly holding the same opinion, and I reflexively swing to the opposite side.

It’s so automatic that it almost feels physical, as though trying to pry my mouth open and utter the words, “I agree...” would be like trying to ask my DNA to re-arrange itself on the spot.

It’s annoying and obnoxious and I know it. But at this point, I just have to accept it about myself, and at best, try my damnedest to keep my mouth shut instead of always acting on my contrary impulses.

So right now the contrary impulse I am trying to suppress is Machismo in the Face of Tweeness.

I love Seattle, I love it so much I have two entire sites dedicated to it. But it is a different culture than I am used to. It’s very...gentle. Gentle sensibilities, gentle senses of humor, gentle language. It's like a J.Jill ad in the form of a metropolis.

It’s a town where things are not “good” or “great!” or “delicious” but rather they are “lovely.” Lovely lovely lovely. When you enter the city limits, they make you surrender all other positive adjectives and give you a laminated card that says “LOVELY.” And everyone just waves them around all the livelong day.

Okay, not really, but that’s sometimes what it feels like. And what’s so wrong with that? Nothing. It’s nice. It’s, yes, lovely.What kind of grumpy buzzkill with two thumbs could possibly have a problem with that? This guy. Cuz when you suffer from Contrary Maryness, the gentle loveliness just makes every foul-mouthed stevedore impulse you already have throb like a tension headache.

But then I started noticing that this gentleness was actually not just limited to Seattle. This kind of twee softness seems to be becoming an actual Thing, like a lifestyle that is being marketed to. Example: this Prius ad:

That thing is so goddamn twee I have sprained muscles trying to hit the mute button on my remote to avoid having that cutesy-poo infection of a sound take over my brains.

Once I started noticing it, it seems that in general grown adults are being marketed to as though they are...toddlers. Rounded edges, pastel colors, tweedly-dee music.The ubiquity of it arouses every Contrary Mary impulse and makesme want to get a motorcycle and run over a stuffed animal with it.

Anyway, this big preamble is mainly to establish that I am currently feeling very anti-cutesy-poo. This makes it even more shameful to admit that my entire house is color-coordinated like I’m some sort of six-year old. It's just tremendously not macho. Look at it.

I mean, it looks like the home of the target audience for that Prius ad.

But I just really like green. It reminds me of trees and I like trees. And I happened to be moving in and buying stuff right during the heyday of what this New Yorker article called “wasabi green.”

And so that’s bad enough, twee enough, if it weren’t for the artificial insertion of an extra recipe below, but this would be the third post in a row where the pictures of my food match my house, as though my cutesy-poo little commitment to a color theme continues into my mouth and down into my digestive tract.

But I promise that it’s all just a coincidence. I mainly am posting this zucchini recipe because Saturday is “Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Day”. So it’s really just a public service in case you are on the receiving end of some sneakiness. Or, if you are the sneaker, not the sneakee, why not print out a copy of the recipe and include it. It’s the least you could do.

I made this dish for my Mexican Memorial Day party and it was a big hit. I’ve made it again since then and it continued to satisfy. It’s an excellent way to use up a lot of zucchini, and keeps fairly well for a few days. I eat it over long-grain brown rice, but it's also tasty on its own.

And, as mentioned, just for a little accent color, I’m going to also include a recipe below adapted from the same book: Botana de Papas Locas which translates to “Crazy Potato Snack.” They'd make a good little vegetarian meal together.

Zucchini Michoacan Style via Diana Kennedy

Adapted from My Mexico by Diana Kennedy.

• 2 Tbl olive oil
• 2 lbs zucchini, trimmed and diced
• ½ cup water
• 1 medium white onion, chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1/3 cup chopped cilantro (stems okay)
• 3 poblano chiles OR 1 jalapeno+1 green bell pepper, charred (can do this under broiled or over flame on as stove), peeled, deveined, seeded and roughly chopped
• 1 cup sour cream
• ½ cup queso anejo OR queso fresco, but queso anejo strongly preferred
• S&P to taste

1. Heat oil in large dutch oven, add zucchini and sprinkle with salt. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally for about five minutes. Should be cooked but not soft.
2. Blend together the water, onion, garlic, cilantro and peppers. Blend until smooth.
3. Add liquid to pan, stirring well. Cover and cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add more water if it seems dry, but Kennedy cautions it should be “moist, but not too juicy.”
4. Stir in sour cream, simmer for 5 minutes more. Taste/season, sprinkle with queso, serve.

The Best Dessert I've Ever Made: Chipotle Gingerbread, Caramel Ice Cream & Coffee Sauce

(Hey check out the Summer Ice Cream Social Poll over to the left there. I'm trying to whittle down some ice cream choices. Help me out and you will be rewarded with the warm glow of self-satisfaction!)

Elizabeth Falkner was on Top Chef Masters tonight.  She lost on the episode, but she is still a winner in my book, because one of her recipes is the base for the dish that won me the most praise of anything I've ever made.

I was involved this guy for a while who had a habit of making a lot of backhanded critical comments that I was too naive to understand were backhanded critical comments.  (The naivete, incidentally, also explains the "for a while" part of why I continued hanging around someone who liked to make backhanded critical comments to me about me.)

One time, we were talking about a meal we were eating (it was, in fact, one of the first times I had Pad Kee Mao, the Thai dish I'm still obsessed with), and he said, pointedly, "I'm not one of these people who's always saying 'This is the best thing I've ever had' but this is seriously one of the best things I've ever had."

It was about three months later, when I was no longer hanging out with him, that it hit me in one of those apropos-of-nothing waves of epiphany that you have after climbing your way out of a confusing whirlpool of a situation: he was talking about me.  Because I AM one of those people who is always saying something is the "best thing I've ever had."

And whatever, man.  I'm trying to come to grips and accept the fact that I am hyper and overenthusiastic. I'm constantly simmering over with too much too-muchness no matter how much I try to rein myself in.  I'm not cool or reserved. 

But imagine for a minute that I am.  I am a cool customer, rarely moved to effusive exuberance, to hyperbolic excess.  And imagine it is that person, that phlegmatic, calm, impassive person who is exclaiming to you: "This is the best dessert I've ever made."

  

Remember this dessert?  Of course you do, because who doesn't have an encyclopedic recall of this blog?

This is the Chipotle Gingerbread with Cinnamon-Vanilla Ice Cream and Dulce deLeche that I made for Thanksgiving last year.  And at the time, I thought, it was pretty awesome.  But I made another version of it for my Memorial Day party and you know what it was? Awesomer.

What I did this time was the Chipotle Gingerbread + Caramel Ice Cream + Coffee Sauce (So just imagine the above picture, but with a dark brown sauce.)

I didn't make up the recipes, I just made them and put them together.  But I did think of the combination all by myself, so look what I can do!

It was a huge hit. I mean HUGE. People are usually very forgiving of desserts, and sweets usually please most folks. I am used to bringing an ice cream or cake to a party and people being excited.

But I feel like there was some real genuine amazement at just how well these three flavors worked together.  My friend Jan also said it was one of the best desserts she's ever had.  Even a real live food professional, Becky of the great blog, Chef Reinvented, liked enough to tweet about it.  (Yeah, I linked to her tweet. That just happened. I did that. I can't unbecome becoming a person who linked to a complimentary tweet about herself. The slippery slope has slipped. Hemingway-esque unassuming stoic machismo is off the table as an option.)

Anyway, the great thing is, although this is a multiple recipe dish, it really isn't that hard, and totally worthwhile to consider making if you are entertaining and want a crowd-pleasing dessert.

Here are the recipes and a few other tips.

• Chipotle Gingerbread.  I do NOT use the crystallized ginger called for in the recipe.  This recipe fit into 2 12-mini muffin tins.  It is very very quick and easy, and could be made in advance. The actual cupcakes I used were, in fact, leftover from last Thanksgiving (!) that Will and Carolyn had in their deep freezer. 
• The Caramel Ice Cream could be swapped out with storebrought if you don't have a maker. 
• The Coffee Sauce is probably the only "challenging" part, just because it involved the scary caramelizing of sugar, but other than that, it's very fast to prepare.

Scallion Pancake Dipping Sauce aka Condiment Crank

From a recent episode of A&E's Intervention.  This is a woman named Dawn.  She is high on meth and talking about voodoo and bad things that happen in jars.

I watched this episode right as I started on my third batch of Scallion Pancake Dipping Sauce, the previous batch having been compulsively and quickly eaten, and I looked at the sauce in alarm:

Scallion Pancake Dipping Sauce is also made in a jar.

(The darkness of the sauce gives you a clue as to the abyss into which you are about to be sunk)

Well, okay, that's just some narrative tidiness, actually I make it in a bowl or a big measuring cup and STORE it in a jar, but you know, me and Dawn, we're really just taking some poetic license to communicate something about some substances we have some strong feelings about.  What we're just trying to say is IT WILL OWN YOUR SOUL.

Or maybe not.  Maybe the combo of pungent soy sauce and rice vinegar, the pingy tang of the scallions, the kick of the red pepper flakes, the brightness of the ginger and the subtle nuttiness of the toasted sesame seed won't be perceived, by your brain, to be a heady and addictive elixir.  

I mean, to each his own, but I'll just say this: most of the time, I'm writing about ice cream or dessert here.  Does it seem in character for someone like me to be saying regularly: "Hey, let's have some brown rice and broccoli for breakfast?"  Or, how about that on one of the rare opportunities I have to cook for people, the thing I always want to do, I'm glad my friend has to leave early because that means more Dipping Sauce for me?

People's behavior changes when they get into the hard stuff.

And it's not like there weren't signs of trouble before.  Here's my quick history with the stuff, a la Intervention's usual montage:

When I lived in NYC, I was a casual Scallion Pancake and Dipping Sauce user.  They were cheap, they were vegan or so the restaurant staff liked to reassure me.  

I think one of my first attempts to figure out how to reverse engineer a recipe was that sauce.  I am baffled now by what I must have done to try to figure it out.  There were no foodies around then, no google searching.  I probably attempted to ask and got no info from the staff and back then, it never would have occurred to me to endlessly pester random cooking people info like I have no shame about now.  But I tried, I failed, and it added to my underlying belief that irresistible tastiness is something you leave the house for.

Then I moved back to Phoenix, which was not only a geographic desert, but also a Scallion Pancake desert! None to be seen anywhere that I could find.  Maybe not enough Mandarin-cooking folk had yet settled there to start a restaurant.   So my desire went dormant.

Moved to Seattle, found Snappy Dragon, I returned to being a casual user.  The expense and logistical challenges of getting it kept it from turning into a big habit.

Then we had a Chinese-themed book club, and while we were ordering from SD, I figured, hey, why not attempt my own Scallion Pancakes and Dipping Sauce while we wait for it to get here.

My pancakes, not so good, but my sauce I was pretty pleased with.  Some of the gals mentioned they liked it better than Judy Fu's, but I thought, well, you know, they might have just been being polite.

I wanted to try the pancakes again, so I did, realizing SD has a Scallion Pancake recipe on their website (and here's my version below with pics of the method). This second batch of pancakes were more successful.  

I tweaked the Dipping Sauce just a bit, and had a bunch left over after the pancakes were done, and so I tried some on brown rice.

And that's where the trouble started.  Now I can't stop. I can't stop.  I mean, I guess all it does is encourage me to eat a simple meal of steamed broccoli, brown rice and a generous glug of the Dipping Sauce.  

And, I guess it's better than eating fried dough, which, I've realized, isn't even the best part of the Scallion Pancake and Dipping Sauce.  Nevertheless, I must caution you strongly.

Please note: part of its addictive quality for me is the perfect amount of burn of the red pepper flakes.  If you are not wired to feel a happy glow when you eat spicy stuff, go with the lower end of the range for that ingredient.

Scallion Pancake Dipping Sauce

• 8 tbls soy sauce
  
• 3 tbls Chiangking black rice vinegar (I've seen a couple recommendations to select this specific brand for this ingredient, so I am sticking with it)
  
• 1 tbl white rice vinegar
  
• 1 tbls finely grated ginger
  
• ¼ cup scallions
  
• ½ to 2 tsp red pepper flakes
  
• ½ tbl sesame oil
  
• 1 tbls mirin 

1. Whisk all the ingredients together.  Blammo, you’re done.  Store it, and your soul, in a jar in the fridge.  If it goes bad before you use it up, well, I don't know what to say.   Count your blessings, I guess, for your admirable restraint.

Chipotle Gingerbread with Cinnamon-Vanilla Ice Cream and Dulce de Leche

I spent most of my adolescence and early adult years thinking I wanted to be a filmmaker. I went to NYU, made some student films, spent a lot of money on an independent short after I graduated, and then...moved back to Phoenix, AZ and did a whole lot of nothing about it.

I still thought about it, I still made vague attempts to write, even finished another short script and starting putting together the production team before that all sort of petered out.

I wasn’t doing a whole lot of anything beside being a working stiff during those years anyway, so even if it truly was My Calling, who knows if I would have been able to drag myself out of the general stupor I was in to actually make anything happen.

But here’s what my current theory is: I just couldn’t get past that it’s just so...frivolous.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad other people still do it. (Although, other than David Lynch and documentarians, I’m not generally that excited by anyone still doing it since the ripple effect of Jaws and Star Wars put an end to the Golden Years of Films by and for Grown-Ups - aka the ‘70’s).

For me, personally, though, I was just never able to quite recover from my horror at the amount of resources used in the re-creation of reality. The decadence!

That’s what I like about cooking. While it’s a stretch to think of my ice cream experimentation as anything approaching utilitarian, the idea of using my creativity to result in something people can actually eat appeals to the my more pragmatic side.  I like to aim low on Maslow's Hierarchy.

And, as another person who transferred her interest in film to food pointed out, food is also a hell of a lot more instantly gratifying. Not just for the eatin’, mind you, but also for the audience response. Elizabeth Falkner’s background in film is all over her book Demolition Dessert...

...and it's reflected in the name of her restaurants Citizen Cake and Orson.  She speaks in the below about why she loves desserts and why she made the transition from film to food.

I’ve been eyeing a lot of different recipes in her book, but the one that was jumping out at me loudest as I planned the Thanksgiving Dessertaganza was the Chipotle Gingerbread (full recipe in link) component in her Gingerbread Bauhaus. I didn’t want to do the whole composed dessert from the book, which involves pear sorbet, shards of royal icing and pomegranate gel.

But I thought the gingerbread, baked into mini-muffin tins, might make a nice tiny composed dessert topped with a little bit of something like that cinnamon-caramel ice cream we had at Poppy.

I experimented by trying to caramelize the some cinnamon sticks in the sugar in this Chow.com Caramel Ice Cream recipe. I don’t know if I actually caramelized the cinnamon, but I know I didn’t caramelize the sugar itself. Paranoid after too many caramels that went from just right to burnt in some nanosecond lost to A.D.D., I removed the cooked sugar too soon. It tasted sweet, not caramel-y.

Luckily, though, the cinnamon flavor was present, and the addition of a scraped-vanilla bean meant that a tasty cinnamon-vanilla ice cream resulted even if caramel continues to be a wild mustang I am unable to tame.

You know what I can tame, Caramel? You know who plays nice and isn’t a occasionally injurious jerk? Dulce de Leche. That’s right, I am taking advantage of NAFTA and going south of the border for my tasty light brown dessert sauce.

What do you have to do to make Dulce de Leche?

OPEN A CAN. Open a can of sweetened condensed milk, pour it into a baking dish, cover it tightly with foil, set that baking dish into a larger one filled with water, and cook it at 425 for about an hour or until it’s the color of MISBEHAVING CARAMEL.

You can also do it in a slow cooker or go the daredevil route – boil it in the can, risking explosion. (Oh.  Well, I guess this sauce is also occasionally injurious.  Hmm.  Why is making dessert sauce so high risk?)

Okay, so my composed dessert results from these three doesn’t look as good as something Elizabeth Falkner would create...

...but this is the one dessert that blew past my usual underwhelmed response to “New Favorite Thing.”

The Chipotle Gingerbread – which, incidentally, is quite quick to make – doesn't have too much heat, it’s just like a tiny extra kick to the usual spice of gingerbread. The Cinnamon-Vanilla Ice Cream is rich while not being excessive sweet, and then the smidge of Dulce de Leche adds that final bit of caramelized but not cloying sweetness that brings it all together.

And I hate to second guess myself, but you know what might even be better than Dulce de Leche with this? This Five Star Holy-Crap Coffee Dessert Sauce from Chow that I've made before, although it does require the basic caramel sauce process, so it's nowhere near as easy as the DdL.

If you’re not an ice cream maker, I would still recommend trying this. Again, the gingerbread is pretty quick to make, and the Dulce de Leche is effortless. Buy a pint of cinnamon ice cream (if you can find it) or caramel or just the best vanilla you can get and give it a whirl.

Pumpkin Pecan Pie and Sweet Bay Ice Cream

This dish was based on a misunderstanding.

A few weeks ago, I was brainstorming some seasonal ice cream flavors while cooking at Carolyn and Will’s. Will suggested using a bay and pumpkin combo, which he had seen in a recipe for a savory pumpkin tart infused with bay leaf in Jerry Traunfeld’s The Herbfarm Cookbook.

A couple weeks later, we all had the chance to try that very flavor combination in the sweet form at Traunfeld’s Poppy.

So when Will asked me to bring a dessert to Thanksgiving, and referenced The Herbfarm recipe again, my brain latched on to that. I missed that he was actually suggesting I go with a sage-pumpkin combo.

Oops. Well, I certainly aim to please, so was sorry I missed that tidbit. I think what I wound up doing, though, turned out well enough to make up for it.

So first, the pie. I did a lot of searching on Epicurious and finally decided on this recipe for Pumpkin Pecan Pie with Whiskey Sauce. It got a lot of really great reviews, and I liked the way the pie, made in an 8-inch springform pan, looked in the picture that accompanied the recipe. (With all the cooking frenzy, I didn't get to the Whiskey Sauce part, but the reviews mainly really recommend it as well.)

Carolyn and Will have been chastising me for using canned pumpkin. Since I am easily peer-pressured into making my cooking as complicated as possible, I decided I better start the pumpkin puree from scratch.

This turned out to be a LOT of effort for not a whole heck of a lot of pumpkin. I had to still use a couple of tablespoons of canned puree, risking (and, when I admitted it, eventually receiving) further chastisement.

I had some slight concerns when making the pie filling, as the pumpkin mixture seemed exceptionally sweet. I dialed back the sweeteners in and added a little extra salt to the pecan topping in order to try to mitigate the sweetness, but the finished syrup was still also pretty darn sweet. I started to get a little nervous as I poured everything into the shell.

Now, I could have used this pie-making opportunity as a chance to improve my pastry dough technique but I didn’t. When it comes to pie dough, I just can’t be bothered, which is odd, because I can otherwise always be bothered.

Canned pumpkin aside (which was really just because it hadn’t yet risen to conscious thought that the home cook can start from a whole pumpkin), I am normally eager to do as much from scratch as possible in every recipe.

Someday, I imagine I’ll be part of some snobbish cooking sect that’s all like “You cook with whole molecules? I guess if you like processed food. I only use fresh quarks.”

But there’s still a good chance I’ll be piling those quarks into a Trader Joe’s Pie Crust like I did with this pie because...eh. Can’t be bothered.

So it all went into a storebought crust, and into the oven...for...almost...two...hours...

(Cat also waiting patiently for pie.  Or maybe warming himself by the oven, it's really a mystery that can't ever be solved.)

Despite the storebought crust, two tablespoons of canned pumpkin puree, and slightly-worrying uncooked filling sweetness, the end result was one deeeeeee-licious pie.

(Purty!)

I am realizing I am a contrast lover in my favorite foods. Mixing pecan and pumpkin pie makes you realize how much better each pie’s natural texture is contrasted against the other. Honestly, after eating this, the custardy-ness of a regular pumpkin pie probably won’t do it for me anymore. That was a gateway pie, but now I’ve moved onto this pie equivalent of a speedball.

And as to the Sweet Bay Ice Cream I served with it...Even though it was her dessert at Poppy that used a similar flavor combo, I actually didn’t set out to use a Dana Cree recipe. But as I was google searching for The Herbfarm recipe Will mentioned, I happened upon this recipe of hers on her old blog, so figured I’d give it a shot.

There is a gospel of fresh herbs with many chefs, so I was surprised that she used dry bay leaves. Once I tried the results, I realized ice cream might be one dish that is better served by dry, at least for my tastes.

I’ve made a fresh mint and fresh thyme ice cream, and both of them wound up tasting vegetal. I got more of the note of the fresh leaves breaking down than the actual essential flavor oils they released.

Whereas when the moisture has already been removed with a dry herb, then that cooked-green taste (which, let’s face it, can taste a little rotted) isn’t an issue. I think I might re-do the thyme ice cream with dried and see if that tastes more pleasant.

And while I love to make weird ice creams, my dirty secret is that I usually just like to eat pretty...um...I guess you could say vanilla flavors. I’m more of a freak-in-the-streets, lady-with-my-own-eats kinda ice cream gal. So usually when I make something unusual like this Sweet Bay Ice Cream, I’ll have a couple of bites, but not love it.

But I really loved it with the pie. I’m feeling really challenged trying to explain how bay comes across in a sweet recipe. I keep feeling like imagine the flavor of a eucalyptus cough drop, but take away all the harsh and menthol elements, and then add that to the clean, straight-line taste of a good dairy ice cream. On top of the rich and sweet pie, it was just a lovely combo.

So all in all, while this dish came across because I am a bad listener, ultimately I feel it’s a winner winner, turkey dinner.

If Helen of Troy was reincarnated as a chipotle pepper...

...she would be have to be one of these:

 
My incredibly indulgent friend Sarah recently accompanied me on a daylong jaunt to all the Hispanic groceries I could track down online.  We programmed them into my new Garmin GPS (aka My Surrogate Boyfriend) and tooled around looking for ingredients I would need to make some recipes from Diana Kennedy's My Mexico.  At that time, I was planning to have a Mexican-themed partay to celebrate my less-job-havin' (although that's since been scrapped due to complications from...um...job-havin').
 
It was kind of a bust until Sarah spotted Guadalupe Market as we left White Center.  The store has a tortilleria and what appeared to me to be a serious bakery section, but what really caught my attention was in the produce section.
 
Now, I don't really know that much about dried chili peppers - e.g., what to look for, what constitutes good quality, etc. - so I can't say with any authority that what they have there is better than or different from what is found at other stores.  But what I can say is that the peppers I found in Guadalupe Market's produce section - which were mainly bagged in simple gallon plastic bags with the variety written on it in sharpie - smelled amazing, with each being obviously distinct and unique from the other. This is not something I would generally be able to say about what I've seen in commercial packaging, even at better grocery stores.
 
Faced with the slightly overwhelming selection, unsure about my actual menu plans and entering into a midday blood sugar slump, I found myself having a total ADD fit and told Sarah that I was satisfied that we had found the place but I couldn't possibly muster up the mental wherewithal to actually make any purchases that day.
 
That was until we smelled the chipotle peppers.
 
I've bought dried chipotle peppers before and they always looked essentially like most other dried chili peppers I was familiar with: dark, slightly glossy. I hadn't ever seen any all cracked, matte and beige.  I'd enjoyed the smell of the dried peppers I'd bought before, but the aroma had never previously made me want to fall on the floor in some kind of pepper-huffing binge.
 
I made Sarah smell them and it was clear we could not leave without buying them.  We bought a bag to take home and split, and then made everyone we saw that evening smell them as well.  They too all seemed to get a little glassy-eyed at how good the aroma was.  Chipotle pepper huffing: it's what all the kids are doing.
 
I just made my first batch of closed-pot, in-the-oven Russ Parson's beans with them and HOLY MOSES.  You might not think that the humble black bean, salt, water and a withered, molted-looking dried up pod thing could result in something transcendent, but I am here to tell you that they can, and they did.  Yes, I know, I have a tendency to wax enthusiastic to a degree that makes it hard to take it all seriously, but I guarantee this is the real deal.
 
If you find yourself in Burien, program this address into your Surrogate Boyfriend and picked up a bag of your own for huffing and/or cooking.  They also have fresh epazote there, which, while not as huffable, could also make a nice addition to your pot of black beans.
 
Guadalupe Market
(206) 901-1529
1111 SW 128th St
Burien, WA 98146

Fourth of July Cook-a-Thon

It’s hard to top last year’s Fourth of July, in which I dragged the President and First Guy of the Debate Club to and thru a park in the pitch dark attempting to find a vantage point from which to view the fireworks. 

We saw, actually, three sets, tiny and off in the distance, as we sat on bleachers and tried to not be spotted by the police car patrolling the area and kicking out all of the folks parked in their cars.  (The First Couple were well-dressed for this high school-style adventure, camouflaged as they were in black hoodies.  I was wearing a bright white shirt, putting the whole operation at risk of being sighted.) 

We then walked back the short, but steep way, inducing a near asthma attack in the Pres.  I like to show people a good time. 

Despite that high bar being set, book clubber and babycake recipient Amy, and her husband, Owen, managed to surpass it with their Fourth of July party this year. 

Each year their Fourth party includes an obstacle course.  This year, with Amy at eight-months pregnant, the theme of the course was Conception, Gestation and Birth.  I don’t want to give away any trade secrets, so I’ll just say this: adults were swaddled and balloons were popped suggestively. 

Pick-up lines were also involved, and initially thinking I wasn’t going to compete, I gave mine* away to Sarah’s partner Doggie.  I was disappointed that it was abandoned in favor of “Nice shoes.  Wanna f***?” but, as a Hemingway fan, I had to admire the line’s brevity and economy.

I, of course, took the opportunity of a party to have a cook-a-thon. 

(Some things didn't  get made.)

I made several dishes, most of which were somewhat disappointing to me, but weren’t total disasters.  Here are the recipe results and one recipe I made up all by myself! (Sticks thumbs in suspenders.) 

Roasted Green Bean Salad – I don’t have the recipe to repost, but essentially, roast green beans and garlic (both tossed in a little olive oil and S&P) until the beans are brown and crackly.  Toss the cooked beans and garlic with halved cherry tomatoes, basil, a little Dijon mustard and balsamic and maybe some more olive oil.  I also added some toasted pine nuts.  If you, like me, are still battling with Chronic Vegetable Ambivalence, this might not sound very exciting, but done right, it is deeee-licious.  It was not done right for the Fourth but it was serviceable.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake from Epicurious (minus the cardamom listed in the recipe) – The recipe itself worked out fine, but not being a Pineapple Upside-Down Cake aficionado, I am really not sure how good it was.  It seemed tasty enough but not transcendent.  It was a happy surprise to learn that this kind of cake is a favorite of both Amy and Alice, partner of another book clubber, Haydn.  Knowing that two friends are fans makes me feel ambitious to find a transcendent Pineapple Upside-Down Cake recipe, but so far, none of the ones I’ve researched look much different from Epicurious.  But I like a challenge and looking forward to experimenting.

Five-Star Holy-Crap Lime-Yogurt Sherbet – I know I keep talking about this, but people consistently love this dessert.  I mean really, vocally, love it.  As mentioned in the past, I up the zest to about a tablespoon.  This time I chopped it super fine and it stayed more evenly distributed in the final product.  If you have an ice cream maker, make this sherbet.  You and the people around you will be glad you did.  Use Greek Goddess plain whole-milk yogurt if you can.

Berry Pound Cake from Martha Stewart – Made this solely to fulfill the patriotic color scheme for the holiday.  I found the cake dry and disappointing, would not recommend this recipe.  I've reconsidered.  For one, I am realizing I might be a smidge overcritical of my own stuff.  For another, I heard back (unsolicited!) from another guest, Dana, that she liked it.  If I think about it, I think if it was dry, that was an oven, not recipe issue (I think my oven somehow tends to dry things out before the inside is fully cooked).  So maybe it is worth a try, just have some moistening toppings (like, say, Five-Star Holy-Crap Lime-Yogurt Sherbet) or lots of whipped cream just in case.

(Mine did not look like this.)

Watermelon Lemonade – I didn't care for this, but some people did.  I think maybe the watermelon was not ripe enough, and for this, I've decided to point the finger at chef Captain Ahab.  He happened to be at the grocery store when I was shopping for the event.  Because I have no shame, and despite the fact he clearly had better things to do, I forced him to assess my produce (I can't possibly be expected to go to the grocery store to buy a pineapple actually prepared with the knowledge of how you know if the pineapple is ripe).  So any shortcomings I’m just going to say are his fault.  I am blameless. 

Now for the dish I myself made up.  All by myself!  Like a big girl!  Lentil-Orzo Salad.  As usual, I was underwhelmed by the end result, but people seemed to like it okay and I was actually asked to write it down, so I have.

Lentil-Orzo Salad

• 1 cup of dried French green lentils, preferably lentilles de Puy
• 3 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 1 lb. orzo
• ¼  cup finely chopped fresh dill
• ½ cup thinly sliced fresh basil
• 1 ½ cup of cherry tomatoes, halved
• 8 oz. of crumbled fresh goat cheese
• 3 Tbls. of red wine vinegar (or more, to taste)
• 3 Tbls. of olive oil (or more, to taste)
• Finely-grated zest of about 1.5 large lemons (or more, to taste)
• Kosher salt and freshly-ground paper to taste

Rinse and pick over lentils.  Place in 2-quart saucepan with garlic, 4 cups of water and a couple pinches of kosher salt.  Cook until lentils are tender.  This seems to vary widely, from 20-50 minutes, so I recommend testing fairly often for tenderness and seasoning, adding more salt during the cooking if necessary.   Once tender, drain well in a sieve and allow to cool.

Cook the pasta in salted water to al dente stage, drain and rinse with cool water.

Toss pasta, lentils, and other ingredients together in a large bowl.  Taste and adjust seasoning.  Serve cold or room temperature.

*My pick-up line: Obviously, I didn’t make this up, but I can confirm it’s a Never-Fail.  Okay, it’s a Never-Fail because it’s a Never-Tried, but it’s so clever I am glad I have it in my back pocket, and now you, too, have the power.

Lick your finger and apply moistened finger to article of clothing worn by object of pick-up.  Say: “Now let’s get you out of those wet clothes.”