I have never really been a hugger. The reasons run pretty deep and aren’t really necessary to discuss here, but suffice it to say that there are just a few people in this world (up to now) that I let into my personal dance space.
This seems to be changing, and I am not sure why.
Turns out, though, that there are actually TONS of people I want to hug. This urge sneaks up on me when I am feeling some sort of overwhelming gratitude and that seems like the best, most authentic way to express it. Sometimes it is because I have experienced something profound because of a person, and sometimes it’s just because they are exactly who they are in that particular moment.
And I don’t just want to give a polite, back-patting, upper-body hug. I want a full-on bear hug. I want to feel the whole of a person. Not in a creepy, back-to-the-motel kind of way. In a connected way.
#TheresADifference
I feel this way towards strangers sometimes, even. Weird.
The more I think about it, though, this impulse is not actually so strange. Turns out, a hug is a gift, of sorts. And I LOVE giving people stuff.
More than getting stuff, even.
If I have a “business model” for Charm City Edibles (or my old private school, HoneyFern) it would be to give away as much stuff as humanly possible – actual stuff but also time and expertise.
Give money. Give attention. Give back. Pay forward.
I have always bought coffee for the person behind me (and orders of food in drive-thrus, back when I actually ate food from a drive thru). I paid for tolls.
Sometimes I give away too much, and I have a hard time paying for things for myself.
And then I get a phone call with a new opportunity or a new idea.
I find the more I give away, the more I get back. The best part is that even if I don’t get back, I still feel better. Giving feels good.
So on that note, I have a giveaway. And not for any reason, except maybe it’s my birthday month, and I think it’s especially important to give to those around you as you celebrate another year on the planet. And maybe it has been a rough time in this country on a number of different levels, and giving changes the tone of things, just a little.
Or maybe this is just like a big hug from me to you, stranger on the interwebs.
In fact, this giveaway was prompted by a stranger (not anymore!) on the interwebs. I have (mostly) abandoned The Facebook for a variety of reasons and spent more of my attention on Instagram. One day I came across a post by the lovely Flavor and Soul (I’m going to keep her name a secret in case it is), highlighting a shirt she designed in the shape of Baltimore City with all of the foods that make us famous.
I got in touch (well, maybe I pestered her a little, but that’s semantics), and there it is: I got myself a new shirt and want to give you one, too, just for being you.
So what do you do? Subscribe to the blog (or tell me you are already subscribed in the comments below!), and visit me on Facebook and Instagram. If you already follow me on instagram, tag a friend in the post for this giveaway for another entry. One winner will be randomly chosen, and the winner will be contacted (and hopefully send me a pic in their new shirt!).
You spend the first little while – six months, maybe – trying to be impressive as hell, your sparklingly best version of yourself. Even if you are a real, down-to-earth, no artifice kind of person, this is just how humans roll. We want to be loved and accepted for who we are, but it’s much easier to reveal the best parts first, the parts that are easy to love.
You and your new particular friend may do new and interesting things.
Maybe you try exciting new hobbies or go on long walks or eat at interesting places you have always wanted to try. Maybe you sit through the boring lecture or sporting event because it lights them up. Maybe they do the same for you.
Whatever happens, you don’t fart out loud, and if you fart at all you keep a dog handy.
#KeepinItReal
And then, somewhere around the six month or one-year mark, things begin to shift.
Contrary to popular cultural belief, this is where things start to get good.
Because it’s not the new adventures and the new food and the no-farting that make human relationships deep and wonderful (although all of those things definitely enhance life together).
It’s that part where you can exist in a space with another human and just be 100% who you are, the best and worst parts of yourself all at once without any effort or any need to go or do or be anything.
It’s when you allow yourself to relax enough to read at opposite ends of the couch together, and that’s the night without guilt or remorse or a shred of FOMO, even on Fridays and Saturdays where you start to feel hella old if you are in jammies by 9 but are secretly proud you made it even that late because you really wanted to put jammies back on around 5.
It’s sitting on the back porch in unseasonably warm weather, watching the earth spin as a planet moves across the sky. And that’s it.
It’s all of those nights where there is no pressure, no plan, a weekend off from running from thing to thing, a night in after being pulled in a million different directions, dealing with the slings and arrows of this mortal coil.
Maybe not every night. You don’t want things to get boring.
But just enough nights so that you can see how spending more time with your particular friend might just unwind into a whole new lifetime of love and adventure, even on nights when there is not much happening.
And this realization needs an appropriate snack: tater tot pizza.
You heard me: Tater. Motherfucking. Tot. Pizza.
I am not scared of salty language, but I will tell you that I am holding myself back from unleashing a torrent of curse words.
This Saturday night, after a long walk and some bad news about a car (not mine, but still), this is the kind of easy, early night in food we needed.
Full disclosure: we ate the entire cast iron pan full of it. Zero scraps left.
And even more full disclosure: I won’t say this recipe is perfected as a pizza.
In fact, it’s still just a little bit messy and not quite the same all three times we have made it. The tots aren’t quite accepting of their role as a crust, and sometimes when you can’t wait for it to cool it ends up looking nothing like pizza and more like a bowl of deliciously crispy bits of potatoes slathered in tomato sauce and dripping with fresh mozzarella.
It’s kind of like how real life is with a new person after the new starts to wear off, just a bit if you’re lucky: comforting and warm, infinitely adaptable, and pretty good no matter how things turn out.
Tater Tot Pizza
Ingredients
One bag of tots
One jar of pizza sauce
8 ounces of fresh mozzarella
Whateverthefuck you like, toppings-wise
Method
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. You can use a cast iron skillet, a pizza stone, or a baking sheet – stick that in the oven while it’s preheating.
Meanwhile, shred your cheese and get your toppings ready. No rush, and you’ll see why.
When the oven is hot, take out whatever you are heating (it will cool a little; that’s okay) and dump about 1/2 a bag of tots to cover the bottom. Get fancy, or don’t, but make one even layer. If you are using a pizza stone, allow a two-inch gap between tots and the edge of the stone.
Pop back in the oven and cook for about 10 minutes.
Pull the pan out and smash the tots into an even layer that climbs a bit up the sides of the pan or reaches out to the edge of the pizza stone.
Place back in the oven and cook until the tots are done and crispy on the top and sides.
When Khristian makes it on a pizza stone, he uses the edge of a spatula to press the tots towards the center, forming a sauce-containing structure.
Add your toppings, and put back in the oven until the cheese is bubbly and brown and delicious-looking.
Here’s the dumb part: after you take your pizza out of the oven you have to wait for at least ten minutes, probably more like 20.
It SUCKS. Truly. I am one of the least patient people, especially when it comes to tater tots and/or pizza.
However, waiting allows everything to firm up a bit and allows you at least the chance of picking this up like a pizza.
For me, I don’t give a crap if it looks like a pizza or not. At this point, I will put it in a bowl and be perfectly happy. When Khristian made it last night, though, it was more pizza-like than any of my creations, and he cooked for me, which made it taste EVEN BETTER.
However it turns out, it’s pretty much the most delicious thing ever.
Recipe Notes
Tater tot “crowns” by Ore Ida may work better for a pizza stone (no rolling), and all Ore Ida fries are gluten-free.
Why they give you two full cups of pizza sauce when you only need less than 1/4 cup for most pizza-making endeavors is beyond me. I portion the leftover out into 1/4-cup servings in ziplocs and freeze them flat until I need them.
Until this recent political debacle, I didn’t realize how much I missed reading.
Growing up, I was a voracious reader of all types of printed materials – comics, cereal boxes, advertisements, poetry, novels – whatever was available. I read myself sick in the car and nearly blind in the dim light of the evening when I should have been sleeping (true story. I have been wearing glasses since second grade, with seriously and rapidly deteriorating eyesight in the years that followed. As I enter my dotage – mid-40s – insult has been unceremoniously added to injury in the form of readers, a new necessity for reading. But I digress).
One of my favorite ways to spend an afternoon was in the stacks of Wonder Books, a small used bookstore in Frederick, Maryland. My brother, father, and I would spend Sunday afternoons reading in our separate corners among the dusty comics and paperbacks. Sometimes we’d buy one; sometimes we would just read there and go home empty-handed. I imagine this was a break for my mom, but I can vividly recall the warmth and comfort of those days spent hunched in the aisle, reading. When it came time to apply for my first job, that’s where I went (only it was Wonder Book and Video by then).
I like the smell and feel of a book, new or used, in my hands. Recognizing that it’s difficult to travel light with a library of well over 2,000 books, I attempted to use a digital book for a time but quickly abandoned that. There is no sensory beauty for me in a digital book.
When Dane died in 2013, a switch flipped, and I found no comfort in books. I quickly realized that fiction was dead to me in many ways (with notable exceptions made for my favorite author, TC Boyle, and a new favorite, Jhumpa Lahiri); there was nothing that seemed to hold my attention. Magazines were okay, but they were quickly read and then just became dust-catchers.
The Facebook stepped in to fill the void.
For several years now, I have been ritually (compulsively?) reading Facebook, many times a day. What started as an interesting place to catch up with people and see pictures of family or look at cat videos quickly became fraught with arguments. I whittled my friends and family down, blocking or unfriending those who were racist, xenophobic, or homophobic. I saw Facebook as the digital equivalent of going out for coffee with a friend, and who wants to spend that time deflecting racial slurs and arguing about immigration? Not me.
But I have noticed something in the past few years. Facebook and Twitter and Instagram have become more of an addiction than a minor passing interesting that I can dip in and out of. When I felt lonely or needed a connection, I spent more time online, which seems to be the story of most everyone’s life these days.
In addition, the pace of news delivered through these sites has become so frenetic that a person can hear about events nearly the instant they happen (or instantly, as with live-streaming Facebook video that has captured everything from birth to beatings to suicide, all in front of unsuspecting viewers who maybe just logged on to see a cat in a shark costume on a Roomba.).
The past 18 months in politics have been particularly brutal. The depth of ignorance and hate being spewed and the constant hammering of executive orders that seemed aimed at delivering us back to Nazi Germany has been overwhelming to me. My anxiety, already challenging during this particular time of year, has been through the roof.
Even the dog is having anxiety attacks, and he is medicated (and to be honest, which I always try to be, as am I at times. It has not helped).
So two days ago I did the logical thing: I pulled the plug on Facebook.
I didn’t give up my Charm City Edibles page (go join! It’s awesome!), and I am still on Instagram, which seems much more innocuous and for me features only food and the occasional travel picture, but I have completely checked out of Facebook for the near future.
I have also stopped listening to NPR and watching news. In essence, I have imposed upon myself a near-total media blackout.
Yes, news still trickles in, but it’s a trickle instead of drinking from a firehose.
This media blackout has left me with considerable free time, time I have begun to fill with books. In January I read seven books, and three days into February I am finishing up my first book, with one on the way in the mail and two more on hold at the library.
I have spent long, leisurely afternoons on the couch, listening to the wind howl outside my window and the dogs snoring on the floor beside me as I read.
I have stuck mainly to non-fiction trending towards cookbooks and food writing, but at the library a copy of The Tin Drum and The Yearling are waiting for me.
Maybe it’s the slower pace of reading and allowing myself to settle in for a few hours instead of reading in 140 characters or skimming the first sentence of a TL:DR article on The Facebook. Maybe it’s the fact that I am not constantly reminded of how badly we are fucking up this country right now and how powerless it seems we are to stop it.
Whatever it is, it’s lovely. It’s lovely to come back to the sensual pleasures of language and reading and cozy blankets and sleeping dogs and maybe a nap that happens later in the afternoon.
Or quite possibly it’s the snacks.
Reading requires a beverage and a snack; it’s very easy to get hungry and dehydrated doing nothing. #GiveItATry #YoullLoveIt
I could eat my weight in salt and vinegar potato chips and chocolate candy, but those snacks when combined with lounging are not conducive to overall good health. So moderation is required, and this means something nibbly but not too much of any one thing – nothing too sweet, too fatty, too salty, etc.
These olives are perfect for that. They don’t directly fulfill a sweet-tooth craving, but the lingering lemon and rosemary somehow seem to attend to it enough so that more snacks aren’t necessary.
You also need a snack that doesn’t require utensils. This fits that bill neatly as well.
I use the rosemary that continues to cling to life in a pot on my back porch (so luxurious!) and organic lemon.
Warm Olives With Rosemary And Lemon
Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 six- to eight-ounce jar of mixed olives in brine, drained
1 teaspoon minced garlic
zest from one lemon
1 or 3 sprigs of rosemary
Freshly cracked black pepper to taste
Optional: red pepper flakes
Method
Heat olive oil gently over medium-low heat. Add garlic and cook for a couple minutes until it releases its fragrance. Add the lemon and rosemary and cook for about 30 seconds, keeping the heat medium-low and stirring as you cook.
Add the olives and cook until warmed through (not hot). Remove from heat and add freshly ground black pepper to taste. For a little heat, add some red pepper flakes.
Recipe notes:
Pitted olives are easiest, but feel free to use whichever olives you prefer.
I love rosemary and like to cook it a little bit longer to release its flavor, but this is a personal preference.
You could also use orange zest to add a touch more sweetness.
Get up. Pee. Brush teeth. Drink water, take supplements.
Go downstairs. Start coffee. Let dogs out. Let cat in. Sip coffee. Let dogs in. Feed dogs. Sit down to the computer.
Sip coffee. Check email. Sip coffee. Check work email. Sip coffee. Visit The Facebook. Make more coffee. Get down to writing/recipe research/yoga class design/etc.
It takes a lot to get us out of our routines. From dogs to children to adults, we are all of us creatures of habit. When I was a horse owner, even the horses knew what to do and when; it got so that I didn’t have to put halters on to move them from pasture to pasture, and they stood in the same spot every day for dinner.
The dog knows when it is 5 p.m. just as if he had a watch strapped to his wrist. And could tell time. And had any understanding of the concept of “time.”
But I digress.
Routines provide a sense of structure that can be comforting and predictable. “Predictable” is often used as an epithet, but predictability is what our lives are based on. This keeps the trains running and makes sure that the grocery store has enough toilet paper on any given day (or your own personal bathroom at home, which is why most people in the U.S. go shopping every week).
Sometimes, though, routines call to be busted up. Routine-busting can be because you are compelled to do something differently because whatever is going on forces you to make a change.
And you know it’s bad if an introvert comes off the couch. #HearMeRoar
If something is gone awry, it might be because whatever routine we have fallen into no longer works, or our routine is suddenly disrupted. We might call it something else, but it’s that transition period between the old and the new – not the the old or the new itself – that causes us such turmoil. Once that period of transition is over, we fall into a new routine until the next thing happens.
This transition is both full of promise and scary as hell, simultaneously. Parents know that the first night with a new baby is joyful and nerve-wracking. Travelers know that coming into a new country for the first time is anxiety-producing and thrilling, often in equal measure.
On a daily, more microcosmic level, this idea of routine versus no routine (or a shook-up routine) is the difference between cooking and making dinner.
Making dinner is that thing that happens between 5 and 7 p.m. every night where you have the gaping maws of your family staring at you, opening and closing like baby birds who have forgotten that they possess opposable thumbs and can get their own damn snack before dinner.
Making dinner is why there is food in boxes that you add milk and butter to in order to get something resembling macaroni and cheese. It’s why there are rotisserie chicken soldiers, hot and ready, when you walk into the store at 5 pm, desperate because it’s Monday and you know everybody at home is hangry and you just need to shove something in their face so there is no arguing.
Cooking is something altogether different.
Cooking is wandering through the farmer’s market and seeing what looks good.
Cooking shops for each meal separately, not all at once, once a week.
Cooking has a sip of wine and is often alone with music playing and maybe a snoring dog (because it’s not necessarily 5 pm yet so the dog isn’t drooling and staring at you).
This recipe is in between making dinner and cooking. There is some leisure to it, but it doesn’t actually require much hands-on attention. There is only one ingredient in this that might require a leisurely trip to a store, but everything else can be thrown into the cart with all of the other groceries.
Leftovers are just as good as the day before and so make excellent brown-bag lunches that will make all of your co-workers drool. I imagine you could also make a ridiculous sandwich with this on some crusty bread with arugula.
Harissa And Orange Spiced Pork Shoulder
Just the delicious beginning.
Full disclosure: as much as I would like to say it’s mine, this idea is taken from another recipe and adapted with amounts added. The other recipe is a video and doesn’t really specify anything but cooking times, so I made some adjustments to that and also the ingredients based on what was available.
Optional: lime wedges and fresh flat-leaf parsley, rough chopped
Method
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Combine harissa, tomato paste, vinegar, agave, and garlic in a small bowl. Season pork shoulder with salt and pepper, then rub the harissa mixture all over the pork shoulder (hands work best here). At this point, you could let the pork shoulder sit for a few hours (or overnight), or you can proceed.
Place pork shoulder fat-side-up in a Dutch oven or similar oven-safe, heavy cooking pan with a lid. Pour orange juice around the pork shoulder and throw in the thyme.
Cover pork shoulder and let it roast, covered, for 2 1/2 hours (or so).
Increase heat to 400 degrees and add cannellini beans to the pot. Cover and return to the oven for another 45 minutes to an hour.
When ready to serve, remove pork shoulder and slice. Return pork shoulder to the pot, or arrange on a platter and serve with sauce poured over.
If desired, squeeze fresh lime over the pork shoulder and garnish with fresh chopped flat-leaf parsley.
Less impossible than you might think – easy as pie!
This morning I had grand plans to get all sorts of things done. Normally I teach yoga mid-day on this day, but that was cancelled, freeing up a huge chunk of time between now and when I need to go teach small children to be the best version of themselves (kids’ yoga at an after-school program).
I even thought I’d get dressed instead of working in my jammies all day.
Instead, I spent two hours on the phone with the Maryland Health Exchange, trying to get them to understand that there is no way I would have scheduled a $1,200 physical for my healthy child when I could have gone to a clinic and had it done for less than $200 (or free, thanks to Planned Parenthood).
Full disclosure: I am a HUGE supporter of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). My insurance costs less, has a lower deductible, and covers more than the insurance I have had since 1998 (when I was a teacher in the Seattle Public School system and my entire pregnancy and delivery cost $10). I know it has issues, but let’s take a look at those, shall we?
The physical for my healthy child cost ONE THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS. That’s what the insurance company charged for a doctor to take temperature, feel pulse, ask some questions, and test reflexes. There was some blood drawn, and she had one shot (all of this was to study abroad).
Let me reiterate: the insurance company charged $1,200 for a routine physical that lasted less than 45 minutes.
Not to get all political, but the problem with ACA is NOT the bill or the color of the president’s skin. The problem is with the idea that a routine physical should cost as much as a scooter. Or a junky but functional used car. Or a mortgage payment.
The insurance company blamed the Maryland Health Exchange. The Maryland Health Exchange blamed the insurance company. I tried to get the guy on the phone to understand that as a single parent freelance writer and cook, there is no way in hell I would have taken my kid to a fancy-pants doctor without active insurance when I could walk down the street to a clinic and get the same end result (“Your kid is healthy.”) for a tenth of the cost.
There are some things that seem impossible:
Convincing the insurance company that they made a mistake.
Convincing MD Health Exchange that they made a mistake.
Getting the two parties to work together without placing blame – just fix it.
This pie.
Weird segue, I know, but guess what? Some days, most days these days, pie is necessary but a total PITA. Yes, I know some people feel that rolling crust is very therapeutic, but for me crust has never been easy or fun. I have a few excellent crust recipes, but some days (most days these days) easy and fast are key.
I found this pie online and thought that there was no way in hell it would work. Basically you stir everything together in one big bowl and then it all magically separates as it bakes into crust, custard, and topping. It makes no sense, and it sounds like it would turn out to be like a gross sweet egg mess.
But guess what? The Impossible Pie worked, and it was delicious.
Impossible Pie With Lime And Coconut
Mad props to the original recipe, but I made a few changes. I had no lemons, so I subbed lime and upped the zest. I also cut the sugar and used my gluten-free all-purpose flour. I can’t hardly believe it worked.
Butter and flour a deep-dish 9-inch pie pan. I used cooking spray because I am lazy AF. Just make sure you butter/spray and flour well or the pie will stick.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment or with a hand mixer, beat the eggs and sugar together until they become pale yellow. This may take five or so minutes. The mixture should flow off the beater in a pale ribbony stream.
Add melted butter and milk and mix, then add vanilla, lime juice, and lime zest. Mix to combine, then add flour and mix until combined (no lumps).
Add coconut and gently mix into batter.
Pour mixture into prepared pie pan and bake for 45 minutes or until the center is set but still wobbly.
Cool on the counter, then chill in the ‘fridge for at least two hours (better to cool overnight) before serving.
Recipe notes
You can use sweetened or unsweetened coconut flakes. I used sweetened because I cut the sugar and it’s what I had, but you could use unsweetened with very little difference.
Regular flour works here, too.
The original recipe talks about eliminating the coconut, but I can’t get behind that. If you don’t like coconut, make another pie, ya feel me?
