stop staring at my grapefruit

I swore to myself that I wasn't going to complain on this bl*g anymore about the weather, but so far this morning it has snowed, sleeted, and freezing rained. I guess I should be grateful there are no locusts falling from the sky, but it's early yet.

What I am grateful for are the 21 grapefruit that I ordered online because my mother-in-law convinced me they are better than the ones at the grocery store (she's right). And I convinced myself that this winter citrus grown in West Texas is a sign of spring in Vermont.

What they are is a delusion of spring. A juicy, delicious, shockingly sweet delusion, but a delusion nonetheless. In other news, it's 11:15 a.m., and there's not a locust in sight.

melocoton

It's like riding a bike: no matter how long it's been, you'll remember exactly.

which do you want first?

The bad news: The honey crisp apples are all gone, and I haven't hoarded a single one.

The good news: Satsuma mandarins are here!

The bad news: Satsuma mandarins are only here for, like, a month.

The good news: Bacon. In a scone. Who knew?

The bad news: I was supposed to be saving that bacon scone for the yachtsman.

The good news: The yachtsman's love for me is unconditional.

The bad news: I'm pretty sure he would have felt the same way about the bacon scone.

fool me ... can't get fooled again

Last year at this time I was auditioning apples. This year I'm hoarding them.


I currently have 23 honeycrisps in my fridge, and if all goes according to my master plan I will squirrel away enough to get me through to local berry season, skipping those pesky grapefruit altogether.

It's an evil master plan, obviously.

leftovers, part deux

Or should I say, part dos? Because I'm about to describe a delicious little shizzle that relies on a specialty ingredient from Spain. This is not a recipe, it's an idea, and a very good one.

Start with an Asian pear or two.


Peel and core the pears, then slice them into bite-sized wedges or chunks. Drizzle the chunks with the juice from one or two Meyer lemons and some olive oil (I used orange-scented oil), then sprinkle with a little bit of salt and the specialty ingredient, pimentón de la Vera. Toss the pears in this dressing and serve atop some arugula or watercress.

Or not. I had a few pieces of pear left over from Saturday night, which I ate on Sunday without any greens, and then I bought another pear, dressed it, and ate it for lunch this week, again without any greens.


When I made this on Saturday I got all of the ingredients, except for the salt and Meyer lemons, from my Greek stepmother (I'd first had the dish at her house, of course). But it was so good, I'm going to invest in my own pimentón and orange-scented olive oil.

Pimentón, or Spanish paprika, is ground from peppers that are smoked over oak fires while flamenco dancers with flowers in their hair twirl around the flames and handsome bullfighters watch from the shadows. The orange-scented olive oil my Greek stepmother says she purchased at HomeGoods. But I found both products online at Market Hall Foods. Wherever you do your shopping, be sure to buy pimentón "de la Vera," and I used agridulce, which is of medium spiciness. When you have your pimentón in hand, you could also try my boyfriend Mark Bittman's recipe for Grilled Fish With Pimentón Aioli or this Smoky Spanish Tomato Soup.

Part of what made the pears magical, versus just delicious, was the smokiness of the pimentón, but I tried a few bites as I went along, and Asian pears drizzled with Meyer lemon juice alone are delicious. I can't recommend other kinds of pears, since other kinds of pears are inevitably mealy, while Asian pears are almost always crisp.

Adios, amigos.

holiday dessert wishlist item #5: satsuma mandarins 4-eva

Did you think the holidays were over, darlings? Well they may be for you, but I won't be dragging myself over the holiday-season finish line until this weekend. So I thought I'd tell you about the little fruit that has kept me company over the past several weeks. No, I'm not talking about the yachstman; the little fruit I'm referring to is called a satsuma mandarin.


I should begin by noting that, as a rule, fruit does not qualify as dessert unless it has been doctored, for example baked in a buckle, muddled with sugar and served between the halves of warm shortcake, or topped with honey-sweetened Greek yogurt. But these little shizzles are special, and over the past month or so I've eaten them for breakfast, brunch, elevenses, lunch, post-nap snack, tea, supper, dinner, dessert, and midnight snack, among the other meals I consume daily.

I had my first satsuma mandarin a few weeks ago at my Greek stepmother's. I was assigned to peel them for a salad she was making, and for every section that went into the salad, four or five landed in my mouth. On my way home that night I stopped at the market and bought a few. Dozen. I bought a few dozen, OK?

The next time I went to the store I bought a few (dozen) more. Because who knew how long they'd be in season? And I was sure that as soon as word spread about how delicious they are, a Walmart-style stampede into the store would ensue, shoppers crushing each other underfoot to get the last of the satsuma mandarins while I was safe at home, hiding under my bed, eating tiny oranges. (Tiny oranges that taste like candy! And don't have seeds!)


This compulsive purchasing of oranges went on until we left town for the holidays, at which point I packed my hoard into a cooler and took them on a little tour of the Eastern Seaboard. I ate numerous satsuma mandarins on our sixteen-hour drive to North Carolina. Satsuma mandarins were there for me during the Christmas Day ice storm that left us without power or heat or running water. And I ate satsuma mandarins as we fled North Carolina in search of a place with a working toilet, namely the Shus in Maryland.


Satsuma mandarins saved me from scurvy when we arrived in Maryland and, too exhausted/lazy to move from my chair next to the fireplace, I relied for days on yachtsman-prepared meals of pizza, biscuits, and popcorn (the yachtsman didn't actually pop the corn, but he did open the bag). And when we ran out of hot chocolate to mix with the rum on our New Year's Eve boat ride, someone came up with the brilliant idea of soaking sections of fruit in a mug of liquor and eating those (god forbid we just stop drinking; another wizard put a stick of gum in his mouth, took a swig of rum, and called it a mojito, but that's a story for another bl*g post entirely).


I savored the last few of my satsuma mandarins on our drive back to Vermont, peeling back the thin skin and feeding sections to the yachtsman as he steered us through the blizzard that dumped nearly three feet of snow in Burlington. And the next day when we waded through the knee-deep snow to the store for supplies, I was surprised to see...satsuma mandarins. They were a little wizened and on sale, but, shockingly, still available.

Let the hoarding begin again.

living the good li(f)e

I was grumpy yesterday. Unbelievably grumpy. Dangerously grumpy. I was so grumpy, I convinced myself that all the times in my life when I thought I was happy were a lie: I'd actually been grumpy and deluded myself into thinking I was happy.

And then I went to my two-hours-a-month grocery-bagging job (i.e., I did my monthly member work at the co-op we belong to), which I was pretty sure would put me over the edge. I decided ahead of time that my strategy would be this: To the average person I would pretend I didn't speak English; I would yell at anyone who looked at me funny and start a fist fight with anyone who was outwardly rude; cheerful, happy people would get a lecture on how they were not actually cheerful and happy, they were miserable and living a lie.

But it turns out that I love bagging groceries. One minute at the end of that checkout lane and I'd gone from Grump Factor 6 to Grump Factor 3. A couple of customers later and I was happy again, or at least living the lie of happiness.

Shoppers and (most) cashiers are grateful and kind to the non-English speaker bagging their goods. And I felt like an anthropologist studying the fascinating, complex grocery-buying habits of another culture: I had to stop myself from asking every single person one of the following questions: "What is that?" "How are you going to prepare that?" "What aisle is that in?"

Because our co-op is both a natural foods store and the local grocery store for a diverse community, there are many different kinds of shoppers. There's the tiny lady with tan, muscular arms and a French accent who spent hundreds of dollars on figs and greens and peaches and cherries, pastas and grains and nuts and spices, creme fraiche and cream in glass bottles, nice fish and fancy meat, bakery breads and pretty little teacakes, and six bottles of wine. And then there's the guy who trudged through to buy a can of soup, a can of Folgers, and a box of Shurfine-brand pinwheel cookies. There are the Bantu ladies, with their sassy teenage daughters and adorable babies, who buy bags of grains and bottles of Coke. There are the hippies (kombucha) and the college students (multiple boxes of mac-n-cheese) and the college student hippies (multiple boxes of mac-n-cheese and kombucha).

I shopped before I left, inspired by everything I'd seen, and when I arrived home (with peaches and cherries and pinwheel cookies) to face my messy house and deskful of work, I lamented the fact that I can't bag groceries whenever I'm grumpy. But then I realized I probably can. I'm pretty sure no one would notice if I showed up, put on a Member Worker button, and started bagging. And if they did, I'd just pretend I didn't speak English.

I tried to take a photo of my cherries but ended up with a picture of the flowers.

today's midmorning-snack replacement

It's delicious and all, but this bitch is a little high maintenance, what with the peeling and the pith removal. (I could cut it in half and eat it with a sharp-toothed spoon, but that reeks of diet to me, and I. Do. Not. Diet.) I need to be able to get up from my desk, walk to the kitchen, grab my midmorning snack, and return to my desk.

Because I'm a busy woman: I have The Thing to procrastinate writing, and hours and hours of aimless internet surfing to do EVERY DAY. Who has time to peel a grapefruit?

wwjd?

It's been a busy weekend, o bl*g readers. There was some old-biddie-style fun on Friday afternoon...


...followed by an evening of dance-related activities (watching others, doing it ourselves) with my friend LE, and a family birthday party at our house last night.

While I was joking when I said I gave up shame for Lent (shame has never been a problem for me; it's the lack of it that gets me in trouble), several of my family members are actually not eating desserts or drinking in celebration of Jesus's death. (Or in preparation for it? All those years of catechism and still I don't know how or why those kooky Catholics do what they do.)

So instead of birthday cake we had a platter of birthday pineapple and mango:


The fruit was good and all, but when I turn, um, nineteen next January, I will be eating chocolate cake, preferably made by either the Mister Who Won't Watch Gossip Girl or Q_Monroe (whose cake bl*g is partially responsible for the fact that I didn't get any work done on Friday).

For dinner I made prosciutto-wrapped fish, inspired by the fact that in his video Mark Bittman cooks it with one hand literally tied behind his back. If he can do it with one hand, surely I can do it with two. Right?

But do you think Mark Bittman called his stepmom four times while he was cooking? Because that's how often I called mine while I shopped for and cooked this meal (please note that stalker and stepdaughter almost rhyme), and this isn't even the first time I've made this fish.

Served with garlic mashed purple potatoes and asparagus.


Crawf supplied the fancy salad...


...and the photos are courtesy of my pop, who looks much cooler than I do holding toilet paper over his camera flash. (No, Dad, I swear, it's totally hip. Just like those Jesus sandals you wore in the '70s.)

Roast Prosciutto-Wrapped Fish
1/2 cup fresh parsley leaves
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup pine nuts
2 tablespoons olive oil, more or less
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 4- to 6-ounce thick fillets of halibut, cod or other white-fleshed fish
2 or 3 ounces thinly sliced prosciutto
2 tablespoons butter, or more oil.

1. Heat oven to 450 degrees. In a small food processor, combine herbs with pine nuts, enough olive oil to make a thick paste, and salt and pepper. (Alternatively, chop everything fine and combine in a bowl.)

2. Season fillets with salt and pepper. Lay two slices of prosciutto on a board, slightly overlapping like fish scales. Smear prosciutto with a layer of herb mixture, then lay fish in center and wrap it up.

3. Heat a large ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat for about 2 minutes; add butter. When foam subsides, cook fish for a minute on each side, then roast until tender, 5 to 10 minutes depending on thickness. Fillets are done when a thin-bladed knife will pass through their thickest point with little resistance. Serve.

Yield: 4 servings.

That's the recipe as it appeared in the Times; here are a few of my notes (my god, who are we kidding? These are my stepmother's notes): As is, the flavor of the dish is delicate; the pesto doesn't have cheese and the fish (especially if you use cod) is very mild. To make it a little more savory I (or my stepmother) might marinate the fish in lime juice and cilantro; salt and pepper the fish more; use just basil in and perhaps add a little cheese to the pesto; use a black olive tapenade in addition to the pesto. Those of you who've made/eaten this before (CT, CT's mister, Mojie, stepmother...) should feel free to post other ideas in the comments...

after the fall

I was auditioning apples the other day at work, but the talent was seriously lacking. Braeburn? Poop. Gala? Poop. Pink lady? Pink poop.


Until last year I thought that apples were disgusting, due to the fact that I grew up eating Macintoshes (mealy, nasty) and Granny Smiths (crisp but too sour). But about the same time I started going steady with peanut butter toast I discovered Honeycrisps, and since then I’ve eaten one as a midmorning snack nearly every day (between the toast and the apples you might think me boring, but I’m actually a real slut starting at lunchtime).

I was horrified to discover the other day that City Market is out of Honeycrisp apples. As the nice man in produce explained, the apples I’ve been eating all winter were from cold storage, and there are no more Honeycrisp apples in cold storage.

I resisted the urge to grab the nice man in produce by the shoulders and scream, "Why are you doing this to me?" Instead I bought a Braeburn, a Gala, and a Pink Lady, which all turned out to be inedible (see above). Now I have no idea what I’m going to eat midmorning; today I made do with some potato chips, but that solution is untenable over the long term, namely because when Chris comes home from Colorado he will surely re-hide the potato chips (they were hidden when he left, but just try and stop me when I'm starving at midmorning apple time).

I am so screwed.