Putting Thought on the Table

When I say that I cook at home all but a few times a month, people ask, "How do you find the time?" They usually go on to ask about when I am able to shop, prepare, plan, etc. because I work full time and I do have a social life. At first I had to think about it because it never really occurred to me that there wouldn't BE time to plan and prepare meals. I grew up in a household where my Mother had to plan meals because she usually put hours into their preparation. She slow roasted chickens, braised venison etc. long before they were doing it on Top Chef. My mother planned meals for our family months in advance because she and my father grew much of what we ate and all of the food needed to be canned or frozen. Slow food? Sure, you can call it that now, but when I was a kid it was just food.

We all have to eat, right? Some thought must go into planning to eat because meals doesn't just magically appear. For some, that thought is looking through the take out menu's and coming up with an order. For some that thought is stopping by the store on the way home for deli items. I place no judgements. I too have ordered take out on line!

For my husband and I, thought means taking a small amount of time on the weekend to leaf through a few magazines or cookbooks to see what we might want to eat during the week. From there, we come up with a farmers market and/or grocery list, grab a cup of coffee, and go gather. Right now we're lucky to be picking most of our produce from our own garden. Meal planning has become a ritual for us. Sure, I do the cooking, (because I love it, not because my husband is some kind of Don Draper) but it's important to me that we both decide what's going on the table that week.


Here are a few meal planning tricks that work for us:

Schedule time over the weekend to sit down together for 30 minutes and leaf through some magazines or cookbooks, and browse Web sites like Food Gawker, looking for food that you might want to eat. Be realistic! If you've got a busy week ahead, look for recipes with quick prep, cook, and clean up time.

Make a list of the ingredients you need for the recipes you've chosen so you know exactly what you're after when you get to the farmers market or the store.

Collect recipes! We tear out pages from magazines, print out recipes from web sites, and ask friends and family for recipes often. We're lucky that our mothers both enjoy cooking because we've been able to collect some pretty good recipes that have been handed down from generation to generation.

Make food ahead of time for the week. Salads made with grains (our faves are farro an quinoa) make excellent lunches, and casseroles, soups, curries, and even meat dishes can be cooked ahead of time and heated for dinner during the week.

our binder of collected recipes over the last 6 years












Saturday morning bounty from the farmers market and our own garden. I love my reusable produce bags!











my Mother's old recipe box from when I was a kid contains instructions on everything from canning pickles to making a perfect roast












Housewife Hint - Having trouble getting enough fruits and veggies into your shopping cart? Take 10-12 reusable produce bags to the store or farmers market with you and use each of them. This way you're getting plenty of fruit and veggies and, there's enough variety to avoid boredom.

Fettuccine with Lemon Cheese Sauce

Vegetarian Times is featuring a recipe this month called Linguine in Lemon Cream Sauce. It's also the photo on the cover this month so when the magazine first arrived I said, "oh! That looks so cozy, I'll have to make that this winter!" Well, last night it felt like winter in the San Francisco bay area so, I decided to make the dish for dinner. Of course, I did some recipe tweaking.

I started with three tablespoons of cream cheese on low heat in a pan. About 10 minutes was just enough time to melt the cheese















While the cheese was melting, I juiced one lemon and saved the zest.















In the interest of adding some vegetable element to the dish, I prepared two cups of spinach and boiled some fetuccini (I like this shape more than linguine), saving 1/2 cup of the pasta water.















With a whisk, I added the pasta water and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice to the melted cream cheese until it became a smooth sauce.















While the sauce was bubbling, I added the fettuccine and using salad tongs, coated the pasta well.















Then, I did the same thing with the spinach. The dish was hot enough to wilt the spinach nicely into the dish.















Then, I served the pasta and garnished it with a little lemon zest. Voila! Dinner was delicious. I would change a few things next time. I would add 3/4 c water rather than the 1/2 cup the recipe calls for because I like a slightly thinner sauce. I would also try just 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and then taste to see if I wanted to add more because that much lemon with the cream cheese was teetering on cheesecake to me. Also, the Vegetarian Times recipe calls for 1/2 cup chopped parsley which I substituted with 2 cups of spinach.

This is definitely a recipe I will make again. I think it would be very nice for a dinner party with some pan roasted chicken and a tomato salad.















Fettuccine with Lemon Cheese Sauce

3 tbsp cream cheese

2 c spinach (loose chiffonade)

1 tbsp lemon juice

3/4 c pasta water

lemon zest to garnish

salt and pepper to taste

Bring a pot of salted water (should taste like the sea) to a boil and add enough Fettuccine for three servings.

Melt the cream cheese in a small pan on very low heat. This should take about 10 minutes. While you're melting the cheese, juice one lemon, zest the rhind, and loosely chiffonade 2 cups of spinach.

When the cheese is melted, whisk in 1 tbsp of lemon juice and 3/4 c water until you have a nice smooth, cheese sauce consistency. If the amount of water was too much for the thickness you desire, let the sauce bubble a little longer. If you want more lemon flavor, add a few more dashes of lemon juice. Salt and pepper to taste.

Once you have the sauce just how you like it, add the hot, cooked pasta and using a salad tongs, coat it with the cheese. Then, while it's still bubbling, add the spinach. The heat will be just enough to wilt it.

Serve immediately and garnish with lemon zest to taste. Enjoy!


Housewife Hint - Choose the right pasta for the job!
Certain sauces stick to some pastas better than others because of their shape. Have a peek at the National Pasta Association's Pasta Shapes Library! It's very interesting (for those of us who are into such things) and lists just about every shape I've ever seen and many I've never heard of, as well as the type of sauce or dish they will compliment best.

Phởny Phở

See, that's a little play on words.... "funny" or "phony" depending on your pronunciation.
















I was looking at my photos from Vietnam the other day and starting thinking about the fragrant bowls of phở I had there. I wanted to make a bowl but spending 6-8 hours on proper broth wasn't in the cards so, I decided to see if I could speed things up a bit using mushrooms. Mushrooms make excellent broth and give a lot of flavor without a lot of simmering and condensing.


mist the mushroom box twice a day and enjoy oyster mushrooms for weeks on end












I put some of the mushrooms we are growing at home from our BTTR mushroom box to good use making the broth and it turned out pretty decent. Here is a rough recipe:

Phởny Phở
1 c mushrooms (I used oyster and shitake)
1/4 c green onions
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tbsp olive or canola oil
juice of 1 lime

Sauté the mushrooms, onions, garlic together, squeeze the juice of one lime over the saute, salt to taste, then simmer for 1 minute. Add 3 cups water to the sauté and cover. Simmer very slowly for 30 minutes.

Place a handful of spinach into a bowl - set aside.

Check on the broth - if you've lost some liquid, add a bit more water. This is also a good place to check on your seasoning. Add dried udon noodles and allow them to simmer in the brother for about 5 minutes. Watch them closely so they don't turn to mush.

Pour the broth/udon mixture over the bowl and spinach. Add sriracha and more lime or fresh green onions to taste.

Housewife Hint: The BTTR mushroom box is only $20 and supplies clusters of mushrooms for weeks at a time. There is about a 7 day time period in between new growth. As long as you keep your mushroom box misted, it WILL produce! I keep my two boxes on the kitchen counter next to the sink. I've had mine for a few months and they're just now starting to slow down. Might be time to get some new ones!

Shellin' peas

Shellin' peas

I was in Colorado for the weekend but while I was there, my garden was attacked by the bamboo next door! Part of the neighbors fence finally fell over under the force of his bamboo and smashed some rhubarb... this weekend I'm going to try killing the bamboo rhizomes with vinegar (and old and hopefully true old wives tale). No one messes with my rhubarb! I also noticed some huge bamboo stalks popping up behind the grapes and a few bottom leaves of the grape vines turning yellow. This can't be good.

I think the peas in the garden are almost done. Some of them completely dried up over the weekend and most of the pods are starting to get sun spots. So, it's time to choose something else to grow in it's place over the summer. I'm thinking another radish variety.

We got about 4 pounds of peas from the garden this year. It's not the yield I was hoping for but, it's better than nothing!