Just Ten More Strokes – Truly Citrony Lemon Bars

 

lemon tart gluten-free
“See, Red? When life hands you lemons, you know what you gotta do?” “Wow,” Lauren said. “Yes, Mr. Cliché, I know what I have to do. I make lemonade.” “No,” he said. “You scream, ‘Fuck you, lemons!” “And then you throw those goddamn lemons into oncoming traffic, and you go do what you want to do.” ― Priscilla Glenn, Back to You

I cook when I am sad.

I cook when I am happy.

I cook to comfort people.

I have, at times, and much to my chagrin and embarrassment at my passive aggression, not cooked when someone made me angry.

I cook when I have no thoughts in my head.

I cook when there are so many thoughts in my head that my ears are ringing to the beat of my heart and my jaw is tense and I wake myself up in the night, grinding my teeth flat.

I cook when I don’t want to write and also when I do and also when I have things to write that I cannot put down on paper just in case I die and someone goes through my papers and it’s not something that anyone should be reading.

The only time I don’t cook is when I am can’t figure out who to cook for and making anything would waste food.

Except for the only other time that I don’t cook, which is when despair sets in.

Despair is a big word, like “disappointment.” I try to use my words carefully; I am critical in my head (and sometimes out of my mouth) when people toss words around in cavalier fashion. They matter, words do, even in this age of grunting and listicles and pictures.

So. Despair.

The dictionary defines it as “the complete loss or absence of hope.”

On all but my worst days, it’s possible for me to avoid this word. There is always something to reach for. Or even just to pin my mind to, just for a little while until the feeling passes.

My dad told me the story once of a guy who swam the English Channel. He (my dad) said the guy was interviewed, and one of the questions was, “How did you make it across?” Which is a really DUMB QUESTION, but many of my father’s stories and jokes featured dumb shit prominently.

The swimmer replied, “I just told myself to swim ten more strokes. And after I swam ten strokes, I thought, well, I can just swim ten more. So I swam across the Channel, ten strokes at a time.”

Frankly, this story is so neat and tidy and fits his long-forgotten point so well that I am pretty sure my dad made it up. Which was also part of his M.O.

But it works for many different aspects of my life.

On this day, I am trying to keep the English Channel in mind. There have been three deaths in and around my life in the past four weeks: two friends of my daughter’s and yesterday, my uncle. I don’t feel much like baking today, and despite the unutterably gorgeous weather of the past two days, I don’t feel much like going outside. But today I will force myself out of the bed. I will wash some laundry, and then some dogs, and maybe I will write for money and drag myself out for a little walk.

And I will definitely dig out my mother’s recipe for Truly Citrony Lemon Bars, which I will turn into a tart and bring to a friend who maybe might appreciate them. This uses plain, simple ingredients that you have lying around, which makes it easy because there is very little actual effort involved.

It’s the whole when life hands you lemons thing. Ten more strokes.

Truly Citrony Lemon Tart

Ingredients

1 stick butter, softened

1/4 cup powdered sugar (plus more for dusting)

1 cup gluten-free all-purpose flour (regular works here, too)

1 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup lemon juice (I used three lemons, but they were very juicy)

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 heaping tablespoons gluten-free all-purpose flour (regular works here, too)

Method

Preheat oven to 350.

Cream butter and sugar together, then add flour. Continue to beat until mixture clumps like dough.

Press dough on the bottom and slightly up the sides of a round tart pan (or 9×9″ glass baking dish).

Bake for 15 minutes.

While the crust is baking, mix together all remaining ingredients.

Pour filling over hot crust and bake again for 30 minutes.

Remove from oven and cool completely. Dust with powdered sugar to serve.

Advice To A Child Upon Her Graduation. Plus, Summer Pasta

The Child graduates tomorrow. Specifically, this child:

Baby Sis, couldn’t be more than three here.

She was born two weeks late, big blue eyes wide open. She had a full mop of black hair that she never lost, and from the moment she was born I was utterly in love. I  had no idea.

She is a badass, a sensitive soul with an iron will. She is funny and gorgeous and loving and kind and sometimes a total PITA.

A whole lifetime ago as Yogi, with a pop-to-pop of less than three seconds at the end of her career. She knows what that means.

She procrastinates like her mother and is stubborn like her father. She is loyal and compassionate and a very good friend to her friends.

Their last Father’s Day in 2012. She had $12, so she paid for three $1 tickets to take the family to see the Orioles beat the Atlanta Braves in Atlanta, with enough left over to buy her dad a beer.

She loved her father and was devoted to him. This is the first major milestone he will miss, and I can’t say too much about that because it’s too hard already and I have to finish this very important post.

Sicily and I have been joking about it, though, saying she is a first-generation high school graduate, which is technically true because both her father and I could not quite make it across the stage. This ridiculous joke lightens things up a bit.

Because this child loves to laugh. She is a joyful human being.

France, avec le chien.

So on this, the week of her high school graduation, I have compiled some advice. Sicily and I have an odd relationship in that when I offer her advice, sometimes she takes it.

Shocking, but true. #SmartGirl

I don’t expect this trend to continue; I fully expect her to blaze a path of her own mistakes, hopefully learning as she goes.

Some of this advice is practical; some is philosophical.

(side note: much of this applies to adults who have been out of high school for a long time. #TheMoreYouKnow)

Like to hear it? Here it go. 

Take up space

You deserve to be here. Don’t hide your light under a bushel. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. You have been humble about your achievements, quietly going about building a tiny house, giving two TEDTalks, and living abroad in your junior year. These are the experiences that make you who you are. Own them.

Also, own your shit.

You will mess many, many things up for the whole of your life. Take responsibility. Don’t make excuses about why you fucked it up – apologize, see if you can make it right, do what you can, and try hard not to make the same mistake again. Be humble and truly apologetic, then make amends and move on.

Allow yourself to be vulnerable

You have already experienced breathtaking, devastating pain with the death of your father. It will not be the last time. This is just how things go in this one life we know about. It is a raging cliché to say that the pain is worth it, but my goodness. It totally is. Show your true self to the people who deserve to see it to get at the equally achingly beautiful parts of life.

Work hard

It’s not enough to envision your life. Go get it. Work for what you want. Yeah, sometimes it’s nice to get things handed to you, but there is value in hard, effort-filled, productive work. One of the best times of my life was working for a tree service in Colorado in August. I spent eight hours a day in 95+-degree weather, bucking downed trees and shoving them into the chipper. Every day I left the job with a salt ring at my hairline, and every night I left the bathtub with a dirt ring around the rim. Some days you have to put your head down and do it. Be grateful in your work – that you have it, and that you have the body and will to do it.

Design your own life

There is no rule that you have to buy a house, get married, have a dog, have babies, keep a full-time office job. This fits for a lot of people, but it’s not the law. You do not have to squeeze yourself into anyone’s idea of your life, not even mine. Life is crazy in that you have all the time in the world and none at all, concurrently, so make every effort to figure out what it is you want this journey to be like, then move towards that as you can. It will probably not be a straight line, and it certainly won’t be easy, but it will, in the end, be all yours. Enjoy the search – the terror, the joy, the struggle, the triumph, the failure – just as much as the finding.

Brush your goddamn teeth.

You will regret it if you don’t.

Know your worth

You deserve people who appreciate you and understand your value. I know you have that little voice in your head that sometimes says you aren’t worth it or you’re not good enough or who cares what you think. That voice has no idea what it’s talking about. Remind it, and yourself, that you are worthy, as many times as you need to, to get that voice to STFU.

Always have some cash

Speaking of worth, make sure you always have a little cash. It needn’t be much. Twenty bucks in various bills is usually good for most anything – tipping, helping someone out, getting yourself out of a place you don’t want to be, buying a meal for someone who needs it, buying a cup of lemonade from a sidewalk stand.

ALWAYS buy a cup of lemonade from a sidewalk stand

No matter how much it costs.

Get sweaty every day

I can’t believe I actually agree with Matthew McConaughey. He advocates breaking a sweat every day. Not a nervous poodle type of way, but as a move-your-body-daily type of way. This is rock solid advice from someone who may be a little more than slightly off his rocker (#Shirtless Bongos). Exercise also falls into the excellent advice provided by another slightly crazy creative person:

“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea. – Isak Dinesen”

Movement helps nearly everything that hurts.

Don’t be The Giving Tree

You know that book about the tree that gives everything to that selfish little boy who just takes and takes and never gives anything back? Yeah, don’t be that tree. That tree is loving and gives every scrap of itself to a person who has no respect and no boundaries for the tree and its basic needs for survival. Every time I read it I keep hoping in the end that the little boy/old man has some revelation about what a selfish jackass he has been, but it never happens. Giving selflessly is a beautiful thing – giving foolishly is not. Learn the difference.

Stay in touch with the people you love, even if they don’t stay in touch with you

Letters are a lost art. Send one every now and then, even if you know you won’t get one in return. Get a small pack of blank notes, and send one out to someone when the urge strikes. You would be surprised at how good this makes people feel.

Send thank you notes

Even to people who interview you for a job. Really. Take five minutes to acknowledge a gift, a small effort, someone’s time. Emails and texts don’t cut it. Just use the blank cards you bought and be sincere. We don’t express gratitude nearly enough. Make this the hill you die on – being grateful.

Have one impressive meal you can serve in a pinch

Well, it is a food blog, after all, so there has to be at least one food-related piece of advice. Feeding people should not be crazy-making. Sometimes you want to make something effortless that every single person will love, something that is so delicious that people request it when they visit. This week Aunt Karlene is in town for graduation, and she has requested “that tomato pasta” for the night they arrive.

I wish this was my recipe, but it totally is not. “That tomato pasta” comes from the original Silver Palate Cookbook, and it is my rock-solid, company’s-coming summer go-to. You mix basil, brie, olive oil, and tomatoes in a big serving bowl in the morning, and then when it’s dinner time you boil up a mess of linguine and mix them in with the basil, brie, olive oil, and tomatoes. The cheese melts, the tomatoes warm, and the basil releases its beautiful fragrance over the whole table. I use gluten-free noodles for myself, and if I am feeling ambitious I might make a gluten-free baguette. Add a huge green salad and dinner is served.

My sweetest girl, on this Monday before you move into the next phase of life: I love you. I am proud of you. Congratulations.

Linguine With Tomatoes And Basil

Ingredients
4 large ripe tomatoes, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1 pound Brie, rind removed, torn into irregular pieces
1 cup fresh basil leaves, rinsed, patted dry, and cut into strips
3 garlic cloves, peeled and finely minced
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon best-quality olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt, plus additional to taste
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 pounds linguine

Method
1. At least 2 hours before serving, combine the tomatoes, Brie, basil, garlic, the 1 cup olive oil, and 1/2 teaspoon each salt and pepper in a large bowl.
2. Bring 6 quarts salted water to a boil in a large pot. Add 1 tablespoon olive oil and the linguine, and boil until tender but still firm, 8-10 minutes.
3. Drain the pasta and immediately toss with the tomato sauce. Serve at once, passing the pepper mill, and the grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese if you like.

What advice do you wish you had received as a high school graduate?

Roy Choi’s Instant Ramen, Tarted Up

Seriously? Don’t hate. This. Is. AMAZING.

It’s hot, and I just made Roy Choi’s instant ramen anyway.

Yes, that is a pat of butter in the top left.

Yes, that is two slices of American cheese.

Yes, I used GF ramen and organic American cheese. Pretty sure that doesn’t matter.

This bowl is LYFE, people.

Get the recipe here and get this ramen in your life.

Thank you, Roy Choi. I am forever in your debt.

It’s The End Of The World: Sugar Snap Pea Spring Cocktail

Stay thirsty. Or don’t. We are all going to die anyway.

One way or another, it’s the apocalypse.

Whether it’s lava in Hawaii, nuclear war with Iran, or civil war here in the good ‘ol U.S.of A, it seems like the end is nigh.

But meanwhile, here in Baltimore, the city is spring blooming with new life that temporarily hides the trash and rats and decay and hopelessness that normally decorates Charm City. For this one week or even possibly this one month before the whispering gloom of humidity descends, Baltimore on the eve of the apocalypse is beautiful.

Either way – hopeful and blooming or despondent and withering under the heat of the certain destruction – you need a [seasonal] drink.

Enter the Sugar Snap Pea Spring Cocktail.

Leave me alone about the name. I’m bad at drink names and blog post titles. It’s about the drink.

Start with a sugar snap pea simple syrup and go from there. My particular friend and I tested it three ways; below are all of them. Seriously? You can’t go wrong with any of them.

Sugar Snap Pea Spring Cocktail

Start with the sugar snap pea simple syrup, then proceed to the variations below. 

Sugar Snap Pea Simple Syrup

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

1 cup rough chopped fresh sugar snap peas

Method

Bring water and sugar to a boil in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Add snap peas and let boil for one minute. Turn off heat and let cool completely. Use a mesh strainer to remove the sugar snap pea bits.  Keeps in the ‘fridge for a week.

Variations

For all of these, fill a highball glass with ice (we used whole cubes but crushed would be fine). Add ingredients in order and use a barspoon to combine. Squeeze that fruit in the cocktail. It’s not just for decoration. Jeez.

Prettiest of All

1.5 oz. Empress Hotel PURPLE GIN*

1 oz. sugar snap pea simple syrup

Tonic of your choice (we used good old Seagram’s but you could surely get fancy AF with artisanal bullshit if you must. That makes it more about your tonic water than the syrup, but hey. That’s on you.)

Lemon wedge

Prettiest of All, Variation

1.5 oz Empress Hotel PURPLE GIN*

1 oz. sugar snap pea simple syrup

Lemon seltzer

Lemon wedge

Most Sugar Snap Pea Flavor (my personal favorite, even though it’s not the prettiest)

2 oz. Tito’s vodka

1.5 oz. sugar snap pea simple syrup

Lemon seltzer

*Be very, very jealous that you do not have a good artist friend in Vancouver, Corey Hardeman, who is not only incredibly talented but is also incredibly generous and thoughtful and who sends you beautiful paintings of grumpy owls and paint-thumbprinted bottles of purple gin that just are not available anywhere else so you can drink elegant and beautiful cocktails whenever you like.

Life Doesn’t Stand Up To Thinking: Roasted Beet Dip With Feta And Aleppo Pepper Crackers

“Life doesn’t stand up to thinking. Smell the air out there; there are wonders.”

Are You Here with Owen Wilson and Zach Galifianakis is an unexpectedly serious movie that tricked me into thinking it would be a light-hearted bromance when really it was a meditation on the uselessness of life.

Welcome to blog, first-time readers. #KeepComingBack

Galifianakis’s character is a bipolar paranoid schizophrenic who inherits everything after his father’s death but is too crazy to know what to do with it. When a troubled Amish boy who hears voices from God tells Galifianakis that God wants him to take his medicine, Galifianakis does. He realizes, quickly, that life is filled with no purpose and is pointless. His stepmother consoles him:

“Life doesn’t stand up to thinking. Smell the air out there; there are wonders.”

And that’s just how things go, right? There is really no point. Anyone who says they have figured out life isn’t thinking too hard. Mostly they are going along with what everyone else is doing and are reasonably satisfied with their life and just sort of sink into the idea that their life is what The Purpose of Life is.

Except that’s kind of bullshit.

There is no purpose. There are diversions, to be sure, and good things to get into, just like there are tragedies and overwhelming sadness and horrible people in the world.

There is no point. Life doesn’t just stand up to thinking.

If you can get from birth to death without hurting people on purpose while also voting every two years (and in special elections) and loving some people real good and maybe making something beautiful once or twice, then that’s pretty much it.

But still, this gives you no license to waste it. When the biology of schizophrenia begins to clear, Galifianakis says of his approach to life, “I wasted so much. I gobbled it all down without tasting it.”

It’s hard to know what “wasting” your life means, really. If you choose to not pursue money or status too lustily and to instead count the grains of sand on a beach or write or paint or work temp jobs or travel your whole life, many in the U.S. would call that “wasting your life.”

Add to the list of life-wasting things (at least in the culture of the U.S.):

  • Not going to college
  • Not having children
  • Not paying into retirement
  • Not buying a house
  • Not having a “career”
  • Not donating money or volunteering regularly

I am sure you can add some of your own. Anything that doesn’t fit the mold is often considered by someone as a “wasted” life. But consider, as one always should, Mary Oliver:

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean–
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

~The Summer Day~’

Indeed. Everything dies at last, and too soon.

Everything, from the bees to the flowers to the humans, will wilt, wither, and die in the sunshine or the snow. We are all of us just passing through.

This is, to me, a horribly debilitating and incredibly liberating understanding, all at once. We only get the one life that we know of, so there’s a ton of pressure to NOT FUCK IT UP.

But what the hell does that mean? And truly, who is keeping score? Who is the person who gets to tell us we are fucking it all up?

So there’s this idea, the liberated side of the Pointlessness of Life: do what you like.

Seriously.

Of course, not to the exclusion of caring for the children you foolishly brought into the world or hurting other people or otherwise being a douche.

But otherwise, why the hell not? Why not do what you like? You can’t take anything with you – even the memory of you will fade.

Spoiler alert: NO ONE WILL REMEMBER YOU, EVENTUALLY. And really? That’s just fine. Whatever mark we think we make will be erased in the unrelenting pressure of geologic time.

Life doesn’t stand up to thinking or reason, so just get out into the world and see what there is to see. And actually spend some time paying attention. It’s not about ticking boxes off a bucket list. It’s more about being present wherever you happen to be, placing yourself in the way of beauty and discovering what it feels like to experience awe.

Give it a shot. What the hell. We are all on our way out anyway.

You will, of course, need snacks.

This summer I am committed to the idea of what Sicily refers to as a “French Nibbler.” (TM) I have no idea where this name came from but it’s hilarious so I am using it and since this blog is in no way monetized and I have just given her credit I think we are all okay.

French Nibblers consist of finger-foodish things for dinner, set out on an appropriately beautiful, bespoke, foraged wooden board with period-authentic utensils for spreads and such.

That’s the Instagram bullshit. I am thinking more along the lines of whatever comes in the CSA, some homemade crackers, a few dips, some cured meats for the carnivores, and a couple cheeses. Serve with canned wine from Old Westminster Winery and snack on dinner as the sun goes down. Nothing to clean up, really, and no need to turn on the stove. You could pack all of it up and take it on a picnic, too. Something simple that doesn’t really require a ton of thought and satisfies all different types of people.

As with life, don’t gobble this down without tasting it.

Roasted Beet Dip With Feta And Aleppo Pepper Crackers

This recipe is the first of a series of dips. Adding this luscious, earthy, subtle, and complex spread to any French Nibbler gets you a double-plus Life Bonus. #SpendYourPointsWisely

Beet Dip Ingredients

4 beets (about the size of baseballs)

Pickling liquid: 1 cup water, 2/3 cup sugar, 1/3 cup vinegar

Peppercorns, a smattering (that’s a measurement)

4-6 sprigs thyme

2 whole cloves garlic, smashed to peel and left that way

1/2 cup toasted pecans

Cracked black pepper

4 ounces Feta cheese (plus more for serving)

2 tsp. champagne vinegar

Olive oil, good quality (Don’t. Skimp.)

Salt

Aleppo Pepper Crackers Ingredients

Everyday Crackers

ADD-INS: 1 tsp Aleppo pepper, 2 tsp sumac

Method

Okay, I lied. You do need to turn the oven on and use the stove, but just once. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Place two beets (washed but unpeeled), two smashed garlic cloves, and one sprig of thyme in aluminum foil. Drizzle with olive oil. Loosely close foil and place on baking sheet. Roast in oven until a fork easily pierces the beets (about 60 minutes). Remove from oven and cool.

Toast pecans using the residual heat from the oven. Place pecans on a baking sheet and place in hot, turned off oven. Check periodically and remove when they taste delicious (this time will vary, but it’s not rocket science. If they taste good, they are done).

While beets are roasting, peel remaining two beets and cut into matchsticks.

For god’s sake, use gloves. #YouWereWarned

Pack beets, peppercorns, and one sprig of thyme into a Mason jar.

In a saucepan over medium heat, bring pickling liquid ingredients to a boil. Pour over beets and let beets cool on the counter. Refrigerate.

Once roasted beets are cool, use a paper towel to rub the skin off the beet. Give up after a while and use a paring knife to peel the rest of the skin off. Cut into large chunks and place into a food processor. Add one (or both) cloves of roasted garlic, roasted pecans, 1 teaspoon of fresh thyme, 4 ounces of feta, and champagne vinegar. Process until smooth-ish. Add some best-quality olive oil to help it along. It need not be baby-food smooth.

Add salt and fresh cracked black pepper to taste, and adjust to your taste. Beets are not all the same, so they may need more or less sweetness or acid, a pinch or two more or less salt.

Remember your quick-pickled beets? Grab a handful of those and chop them roughly. Stir into your beet dip and also serve on the side. Top with more feta and maybe some chopped pecans if you have any left.

Make a batch of Everyday Crackers, using the Aleppo pepper and sumac as add-ins, or just buy some damn crackers. It’s not a contest. You will be fine.

Recipe notes

  • Substitutions: yellow beets or carrots even would work here. Rough carrots may benefit from the addition of honey.
  • You will be able to taste the olive oil, so really, use the best you can find/afford/have in your cabinet.
  • Whip up a batch of Toasted Cashew Hummus and be done with it (and really, the hero to all of your friends or whoever is joining you for dinner).
  • Use your leftover pickled beets as part of the French Nibbler or drape over burgers with goat cheese or in salads with chickpeas.

Tell me: what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?