I don’t know about you, but I love recommendations from online friends. The world is crammed full of “recommendation engines” so it’s nice to come across the favorites of non-machines. Here are six things I’ve really enjoyed lately: books, a TV series, a movie and as a change, two cooking websites.

One

I’m guessing many of you have read James, by Percival Everett? A retelling of Huck Finn, from the point of view of the enslaved man known as Jim in Mark Twain’s story. I’m not going to tell you much more than that, because so much of the novel’s brilliance stems from a choice of narrative imagination the author makes. If it is possible to be delighted and horrified at once, in one fraction of a second, that’s what the book accomplishes. I read it in a very short time, even staying up past 11pm one night, entranced. Unheard of.

Two

I guessing very few of you will have read Syllables of the Briny World, by Georgina Key. Yet. It’s only recently published, the story of Hurricane Ike and the devastation wrought on a small community in Texas on the Bolivar Peninsula. Several points of view, a story in the compressed timeframe of the disaster, oh, and including the spirit of a dead child, living like an underwater Peter Pan, called to (and by) his mother. Beautifully written, I read this before publication was assured and knew immediately we’d see it in the world.

Three

Because brilliance comes in many forms, some tragic, some poetic, and some ridiculous and heartening, I will now recommend to you the series Girls5Eva, on Netflix. I am not even sure why I started watching, because it looked stupid, but I loved it. Not remotely stupid. I can do no better than Wikipedia to describe its premise: “A 1990s girl group that managed to score only one hit gets an unexpected chance at a comeback when their song is sampled by an up-and-coming rapper.” I mean, it doesn’t sound great. But it turns out to be a show about women, and friendship, and art, and selfhood, that’s also supremely funny.

Four

Sometimes brilliant is just that. Even better when played by brilliant actors. American Fiction, now playing on Amazon, is the story of a Black novelist, a highly intellectual college professor (Geoffrey Wright) who writes a satire of what he perceives to be the limited world of Black fiction, absent fathers, abuse, guns, death and all. The satire pitched just because to an editor under a pseudonym, sells. However, the movie is not a big farce of mistakes, it’s a small, beautifully observed family story, and the publishing drama is essentially a counterpoint.

Five

Change of pace. I have been cooking Chinese food for 40 years. I started with Western-style stirfries Chinese only in their use of a wok, progressed to China Moon’s Barbara Tropp’s insistence that I make my own chili oil, lived from China Express when my kids were young, and now take my inspiration from two websites. The first, Woks of Life, is written by a family and I’ve found the recipes highly reliable. Have you ever wondered how to make that light and delicious steamed fish you’ve had in your favorite restaurant? Here you go! Then just the other day I happened on Red Spice House, and at my age and level of interest (read: lack of) in “kitchening” of any sort (cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping) I appreciate their Easy section.

Anything you’ve read, watched or eaten likely that has stuck with you? In a good way? Ribs or heart or mind?

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

The post Five Discoveries, Or, Saturday Morning at 8:42am appeared first on Privilege.

With any luck you’ve also stocked up on canned tomatoes, frozen peas, and maybe some pasta. Frozen shrimp. Onions, garlic, root vegetables. Oh, and you’re well-provided with books and movies; the people you love are nearby.

Now we wait and hope that our medical infrastructure and the remarkably optimistic and persistent American people can carry us forward into stability.

I wish you all well, and that your personal society remains comforting even in distance.

Someone on Twitter recommended we write journals, in case this does truly become an historic event and we want to remember our unique personal reactions. Well, what ho, this is a blog! Here’s my little time capsule. I cannot remain wholly lugubrious.

• Who keeps buying all the dried beans! I had already changed out my diet, don’t I get some kind of legume loyalty points?
• Why do I now own frozen strawberries?
• I miss my father. On the other hand, my stepmother got him set up with FaceTime and he’s still super cute on video.
• It’s very quiet here in the Bay Area. Automobiles, usually roaring in the background, today barely even rumble.
• My thoughts are with my daughter, at one of the epicenters of the disease, keeping her head down and doing her job as a surgical resident.
• My thoughts are with my son. I hope what he creates from what he observes buoys him.
• My thoughts are with all my siblings, especially my youngest sister, who runs a school in Southern California. All those families sorting out how to cope.

My thoughts are also with all of you. I hope you and your loved ones and your communities (for we do not love everyone we know but we cannot wish them harm) are well. Shall we pretend I’m making you a strawberry smoothie? Because what else I’m going to do with those little fruits I cannot imagine.

Have a very safe weekend my dear friends.

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Sandra Salin however, did ask me a few weeks ago, “Could you write about how you stay so slim, please?” Kelly then speculated that I’d beaten middle-age middle-bulge. So here goes.

Oh, wait, first, here’s an unvarnished photo that I took this week, in the mirror at the tailor.

With that in mind, here goes for real.

1. Get a mirror that narrows you, like the ones here.
2. Wear tops that float away from your midriff. Do not wear black low-cut yoga pants and a light-weight white top, see above. If you have a short waist, probably you’ll want a loose tunic over tighter pants or leggings; if a long waist, I highly recommend loose cropped tops over high-waisted jeans.
3. Stand sideways and twist your body.

But wait, you say, I’m being disingenuous? We want to talk about actual slenderality, not the illusion?

Ah.

1. Get born into a family that doesn’t flesh out, natively.
2. Get born to a mother who dedicates much of her life to making sure you eat so many vegetables and not so much fat and sugar.
3. Get born to a family who lives in a place where this kind of eating is both accessible and part of the culture.

But wait, you say, these things are history and regret serves no one.

Ah.

All I can say is that I try to move around. I aim for five times/week, either a 45-minute walk, or a swim if it’s hot, or yoga, or strenuous cleaning of the house or yanking weeds out of the garden. And I keep trying to step it up, as my Achilles tendon heals. I know I should do more.

That’s not all I can say. Food and drink, drink and food.

Plainly and simply I work at it. I have narrowed my drinking down to 1-2 glasses of wine three nights/week. To be honest, way more often 2 than 1. I eat the same breakfast every day, La Brea Whole Grain bread with almond butter and a little chocolate hazelnut butter and Five Mountains Organic Puerh Tea with milk. My favorite lunches are large, an entire meal of roast chicken and sauteed spinach and brown rice, for example, left over from a previous dinner. Or a ginormous Chipotle chicken burrito. I snack on almonds, apples, sometimes a sourdough baguette dipped in olive oil. I don’t eat a lot of dinner unless I’m out, as I’m happy with a small bit of lean protein (tofu, chicken, fish) and as many vegetables as I can be bothered to shop for and prepare. My husband will eat more, and eats red meat, but we’ve worked out a system of dual dinners.

I have a couple of squares of dark chocolate along with a couple of squares of milk chocolate for sweet. Usually after lunch but sometimes twice a day. I never ever bake desserts.

I try to focus on what I am eating, rather than on what I am not. I ask myself, did I get all my vegetables and healthy fats and proteins and whole grains, rather than how many teaspoons of sugar did I not consume?

And I suppose, in the end, the term plainly and simply is disingenuous too. Because I’ve been paying attention to what I eat since I was 19. At first, as I’ve said before, in an eating disordered way. But by the time I turned 23 eating well and managing my weight reasonably sanely had become a life project.

Most of the time it’s not too hard, enjoyable even. I use the scale to make sure I am within range, every couple of days. And every decade I let the range move up. When I was 19 and disordered I weighed 117.5 pounds, at 5′ 5 3/4″. At 63 I aim for 125-127 and I’m a little shorter. You know how that goes. But I don’t think about my weight during the day, only about eating well.

The process did get more difficult when my cholesterol levels rose dangerously, a couple of years ago, and I chose to hone my diet further rather than take statins. I don’t miss red meat very much, I do miss cheese and butter, a lot. Sometimes right around 3:30pm when it’s a no-alcohol day, when I’m at the top of my weight range, it takes a lot of focus to stay on this path, even a gritting of the teeth. Time for a cup of soup, some herbal tea, or an early dinner.

I make a lot of beans in my Instant Pot.

And there you have it. I wish I could be more helpful to anyone who struggles. All I can say is that I probably fail at things you find quite easy. I manage my weight, but I don’t knit, play golf, or do crossword puzzles. We’ve all got a tricky thing that rewards us for our efforts, this is mine.

I have talked about this before, here, and here if any of you are still reading along and haven’t thrown your screen aside in search of more entertaining pursuits.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend, in your body, which I hope feels like a gift.

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First I cut back on alcohol. Here, here, and here. Next to go, thanks to rising cholesterol levels, saturated fat. Finally, everyone got worried about sugar, no more than 25 grams/day, hasta la vista whole bags of M&Ms of an afternoon. But then a funny thing happened. If I cut back on sugar I wanted more alcohol, if I constrained my alcohol I wanted saturated fat, if I gave up fat, well, you get the idea.

Then I had a routine colonoscopy. Short story: prep is horrid, procedure is fine. Longer story: I had a polyp that needed removal; I have to go back in 6 years rather than the standard 10. So I looked up the dietary recommendations for colon cancer only to remember that I’ve reached my limits on self-denial. I can’t subtract anything else, I’ve tried, I’ve failed, no point wailing over limitations. Now what?

I can add to my diet. MOAR VEGETABLES PLEASE. Actually I’m writing this post because I was so pleased with myself for baking spiced ground chicken in a butternut squash and calling it dinner. But let’s pretend I have more to offer than simple self-congratulation.

How to get those moar vegetables? You could of course become vegetarian or vegan, but here’s a middle way. Let’s call it food physics, and it’s all about nutritional geolocation.

1. Put your usual food on top of vegetables
   1. The aforementioned spiced chicken. First cut your squash in half and bake it until soft, maybe 20 minutes? Scoop out the seeds. Then chop up and sauté half an onion and some garlic, add some fennel seeds, add ground chicken, sage, salt, maybe some red pepper flakes. Put this into the hole in your squash and put it back into the over for 10 minutes or so. Dinnah!
   2. Lots of people have made “noodles” out of vegetables. I have not.
2. Put more vegetables next to that usual food
   1. Say you’re going to make a stirfy, maybe, beef with broccoli. Switch. Make broccoli with beef instead. Also although I am uncertain whether tofu counts as a vegetable if you know how to treat it you will be rewarded. The trick is to marinate super firm tofu in soy sauce and chili paste, then sear it in your wok and dump it into a colander. Then stir fry your vegetables, then add the tofu back in with some more liquid – soy sauce, broth, rice wine. Alternatively, use super soft tofu sliced into 2×2 squares that are half an inch thick, in a braise. (Those measurements are terrible physics, but, hey.)
   2. On the plate where you planned to put a chicken breast, some pasta, and a salad, instead put half a chicken breast, some pasta, a salad, and a roast beet! Or a portobello mushroom baked with a little olive oil.
3. Put more vegetables in your usual food
   1. Make your sauces with more vegetables. My favorite is chimichurri – essentially a vinaigrette in which parsley slush has a glamor moment. Yum. But you can also add carrots and spinach to tomato sauce. Essentially we are treating ourselves like recalcitrant toddlers.
4. Just eat more of whatever vegetables you were eating in the first place
   1. Instead of a small box of Whole Foods salad, eat a big one. Yes it’s a lot of chewing but I guess that’s why we have teeth.
   2. Make four servings of spinach for two people. I like mine in a pan with olive oil, red pepper flakes, sliced garlic, and a dash of balsamic vinegar. Make sure the plastic top of your vinegar bottle doesn’t fall off into your spinach. You’re welcome.

This all probably sounds ridiculously simple. I am not Einstein. I need to deconstruct hard things. I also know that you guys will have really good go-to recipes for vegetable consumption and I am all ears. Ears on a body that is now eating more vegetables.

Have a wonderful weekend of squash, broccoli, arugula, red peppers, garlic, and possibly some lettuce. Love to all.

The post 4 Non-Einsteinian Ways To Eat More Vegetables, Or, Saturday Morning at 8:28am appeared first on Privilege.

I may love my local pho place as much as the weather. Pho, as I’m guessing you know, is a Vietnamese noodle soup and it is pronounced, “Fuh.” The restaurant is owned by a woman who looks to be in her early 30s. I have to point out that she’s beautiful because the place is very small and her presence felt, but I should also tell you she is on top of every detail and not afraid to run the show. She makes sure we are all seated as quickly as possible.

She often brings her little boy with her, and her mom, or maybe an auntie, will feed him lunch. He now looks to be almost two, a boy as beautiful as his mother, who shows his feelings – joy at the space, annoyance at his food, comfort in his mama.

We patrons are a varied bunch.

Recently:

A table of five, high tech workers from the way they talked. The man who appears to be their manager sounds like he’s Brasilian. He wears his salt and pepper hair combed back in waves. However, I really don’t know where he comes from, and it’s important not to make assumptions. I trust my assessment that he’s the boss more than any other guess I make.

Another table, of two. A tall distinguished woman with a dark bob, still wearing her wool trapeze jacket, eats with a younger woman who looks to be her adult daughter. The young woman has longer hair. They are both Caucasian.

A third table of three young men, all of whom look to be Asian. Again, don’t assume, because people from certain parts of Latin America often have the look we Anglo-Americans often think of as Asian.

Note how often I have to use a qualifying “often.”

Yet another table of five workers. These guys have jobs that require them to wear bright yellow and orange vests. They might also have hard hats in their car, which might be a truck. They wear badges. Two are African-American, but maybe from Haiti, so, I’m not sure what descriptor they’d like me to use. I’ll keep my labels to myself, transparent, ready to change. I don’t think it’s realistic to expect human beings not to generate labels for what we see, it appears to be a fundamental part of our process for language and meaning. But it has to be possible that we all remember we are making assumptions only as a step in understanding, and we are therefore happy to adjust as we learn more.

Obviously that’s really what I’m trying to say here.

The men are all talking about the Golden State Warriors, our championship basketball team who play in Oakland, on the other side of San Francisco Bay. We don’t call ourselves the “Bay Area” for nothing.

The little boy will saunter around every now and then. His head isn’t yet as high as our plates. Everybody says hello.

The owner sits down at a table, sometimes, for meetings. Seems she has made such a success of the pho place that she’s investing in commercial real estate. I find myself borrowing pride in her success, although our weekly bowls of chicken and beef pho, fewer noodles, extra meat (maybe a shrimp spring roll, fried imperial rolls if I’m feeling reckless), are teeny in the scheme of her accomplishment.

I should definitely point out that the pho is really good here. There are pho restaurants up and down the Peninsula, which is what we call this side of the Bay, but this one is one of the best we’ve found. You just have to make sure to get there before 1:30pm because occasionally they have been known to water down the broth a bit if they start to run out. It takes hours to make, so, can’t just re-up on short notice.

When people talk about America, this is mine. Lunch-based, with an oval maroon-rimmed plate of jalapeños, basil, and bean sprouts.

Have a happy weekend everyone. Also soup.

The post What Is Your Neighborhood Soup Place? Or, Saturday Morning at 9:22am appeared first on Privilege.

So I am perhaps more focused on streamlining, on finding calm, than many people my age. Or maybe it’s universal in our 60s? I don’t know?

Anyway, white roses and butterflies are pretty good for transcendent joy but for Zen give me a nifty appliance any day. I never expected to become a late night commercial but here we are.

First, my Instant Pot. For all the hype, Mr. Pot is just an electric pressure cooker. Why do I love him so?

A pressure cooker locks and you cannot open it. Enforced cooking zen. No, you can’t raise the heat just a little. No, you can’t stir one more time. No, you can’t add a just pinch of salt. At least not until it’s finished. After years of intentional multi-step cooking I find the process quite peaceful.

Here’s a recipe for vegan split pea soup, modified from this one on Fat Free Vegan.

Ingredients To Serve Two With Leftovers

• 1 onion, chopped, smallish
• 2 carrots, diced smallish
• 2 celery ribs, diced smallish
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 1 tsp some sort of seasoning blend, I used “Chicken” but “Italian” will do
• 1/2 tsp dried sage
• a little white wine
• a little vegetable broth (optional)
• 1 cup of dried split peas
• 4-5 cups water
• 1-2 tsp Liquid Smoke flavoring
• Salt and pepper to taste

What To Do

• Turn on Instant Pot Saute function
• Dry sauté the onions stirring a lot until they get soft
• Add the celery, stir for a minute
• Add the carrots, stir for a minute
• Add the spices, stir once or twice
• Deglaze the vegetables with a little white wine, scraping up brown bits
• Add a couple of tablespoons of vegetable broth if you happen to have it
• Taste, maybe add some salt if you feel like it, or a little more spice
• Turn off the Instant Pot
• Add the split peas
• Add water, stir
• Close and lock the Instant Pot, press Manual/High, set for 8 minutes
• Natural pressure release, then use an immersion blender to blend a little bit on the side
• Add salt and pepper and Liquid Smoke before serving

Eat with french baguette. If someone in your house is an unreformed carnivore, add chunks of ham before serving.

Second, my steam mop. I have told you before that I hate house cleaning. Nothing has changed. But certain aspects I hate more than others – mopping floors, for example. So. Much. Water. First there’s the splashing and the squeezing of the water application device – a mop, I suppose – then there is the Too Much Water On The Floor And It Never Dries aftermath.

With the steam cleaner the water can’t splash, since it’s in a reservoir on the chassis, no squeezing required, because, steam, and it leaves very little moisture behind, so, floors are quick to dry. Thank you Rachel.

Righty-ho. The first rose has bloomed. Off to fill the part of my mind emptied by Zen Pea Soup with Soaring Joy For The Year’s First White Rose. Life in the age of time to oneself is all about thoughtful tradeoffs.

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You asked me to report back with findings about how to cook for two, in retirement. OK then! Cooking isn’t my usual writing realm, but I do love a high level analysis of a carefully observed process.

To optimize anything, one must first understand both the desired outcomes and the constraints.

Desired Outcomes, AKA What We Like In This House

• One of us prefers a main dish + sides model, the other would rather multiple smalls
• One enjoys meat fat, the other does not, both try to avoid it for the most part
• One of us wants to reduce meat consumption to save the planet
• One insists on green, orange, and every color vegetables, the other would be happy living on onions, mushrooms, cabbage and tomatoes
• Both have a metabolic need for a lot of protein
• Both care about weight management
• One of us needs sauce in a meal, the other, not so much
• One really likes soup, the other, not so much
• Both of us like Italian and Asian foods, neither of us care overly for Tex-Mex or French
• One of us would love to learn how to cook Peruvian food but never has

Process constraints, AKA, Life Is Not A Bowl Of Cherries, Per Se

• One of us works long and demanding hours, one has a flexible schedule of blogging, consulting, and volunteering
• One of us likes to cook, nobody likes to clean up (AKA I do almost all the cleanup, it is my job)
  
• The kitchen is part of of the living room. Ain’t no closing up that kitchen and forgetting about it.

High-Level Takeaways

• Here’s what I can sustain: I cook 2 nights/week multiple dishes for a really good dinner; 3 nights/week something to add to leftovers or make a basic meal; once a week we eat out; once a week we take home, often from Whole Foods. I can’t “cook” more than that, at least not with equanimity.
• I like to start the prep in the early afternoon whenever possible. Somehow just making sure my kitchen is clean and the pots are ready soothes my soul. I also take anything that should be at room temperature for cooking out of the fridge.
• (Cleaning the kitchen in the morning, BTW, is my new thing. Thanks guys. Never could do stand to do it after complex dinner prep.)
• Time spent finding good and repeatable new recipes is useful: so is time spent learning basic skills and cooking truths. In other words, read or watch YouTube videos on things like how to roast low and slow, or how to get a good wok sear. The more technique you understand, the less you then have to rely on recipes. That is obvious to those of you who have been a daily home cook for a long time. Since I was a good dinner party cook who relied on a sensitive nose to choose recipes, and fast reading to execute them, I’m still learning.
• You can use up almost every bit of food you buy.
• Cook soy sauce and chili paste on the wok, not on the food. It tastes better.
• I flirt with non-refrigeration and reboiling for soups and stews. Not recommended, per se, but it does reduce the amount of pot washing.
• If you are halving a recipe with a lot of fractional quantities, write down the new measures. Math over a hot stove is tricky.
• You don’t have to plan every meal of the month, or even week, to find your own rhythm.
• Great tools are a great help.

An Archetypal Week Of Cooking And Kitchening In This New World – Spring Weather Version

1. Saturday. Grocery shop with my husband. Buy ingredients for 2-3 dinners, without a recipe in mind. Meat, dark greens, grillable vegetables, bones for soup. That night, grill some meat and asparagus with mustard vinaigrette, make rice noodles with a dipping soy/vinegar/mustard sauce, add a can of chopped tomatoes to the beef bone broth with meatballs that is sitting in a pot on the stove from yesterday.
2. Sunday. Simple stir-fry of chicken breast cut into 1/2 inch cubes, cooked fast in a wok with soy sauce or chili paste, chicken removed to a colander, some kind of vegetables thrown into the same wok, reheated, chicken added back, then a dash of black vinegar or soy. Steamed rice. Final serve of beef soup.
3. Monday. Flank steak with chimichurri sauce (I use more oil than they say, and an immersion blender), seared in a cast iron skillet on the stove and finished in the oven. Steamed broccoli or a salad. Pasta with simple sauce of carmelized onions, oregano, wine, and canned chopped tomatoes.
4. Tuesday. Stop by the fishmonger’s after yoga. Madhur Jeffrey’s fish curry, sauteed spinach, basmati rice. A smidgen of leftover steak.
5. Wednesday. Out to dinner.
6. Thursday. Another Whole Foods run. Baked chicken breasts (best juicy chicken breasts ever), fried leftover rice with leftover vegetables and maybe some added leftover sausage or ham from last weekend if I have it, stir-fried celery with soy sauce. Because there’s always celery.
7. Friday. Take out from the local Hawaiian barbecue place, plus leftovers, plus a bowl of pasta with frozen peas, garlic, and parsley from the chimichurri. Foraging, in other words.
8. Imaginary Day: An actual week might be a little less optimal than this imaginary calendar. I’m now trying to build in more capacity for meal change and improvisation, to compensate for how little I enjoy planning a full week.

Speaking Of Tools In My Kitchen, Old And New, Stuff So Useful It Inspires Affection

• Rice cooker. I want to get a new one with a stainless steel insert. Non-toxic, don’t you know.
• Large cleaver by Global Knives.
• Flat bottomed wok from the Wok Shop. A 14-inch wok is a great size for 2 people. Big enough to sear, small enough to fit on your burners
• Medium paring knife from Global Knives
• Instant read thermometer
• iGrill meat thermometer. With associated app. Your phone, or your Apple Watch, tells you when the meat is done.
• Earlywood large flat saute. I also want this Earlywood ladle, it will treat my Le Creuset ever so gently.
• Rocker garlic press
• Le Creuset Dutch ovens in several sizes and colors
• All-Clad saute pan with straight sides and a lid (for Indian and Italian saucy foods)
• Lodge cast-iron frying pan (for pan-searing and oven-finishing)

Cookbooks And Blogs In Rotation

• Nina Simonds, “China Express” and “Classic Chinese Cuisine“
• “Growing Up In A Korean Kitchen” by Hi Soo Shin Hepinstall
• Nigel Slater, “Appetite,” for meat techniques and Nigel’s delicious writing
• Still don’t have a go-to Italian cookbook, thinking about this one
• Online resources I tend to trust : Mark Bittman in the New York Times, The Kitchn, Steamy Kitchen, Korean Bapsang. And in our blogosphere, Sam’s Carolina Kitchen.

A Recipe For Galbijjim Optimized To Dirty As Few Pots As Humanly Possible (Adapted from Korean Bapsang and “Growing Up In A Korean Kitchen”)

Marinade Ingredients

• 1 Asian pear, peeled and grated, or, half a green apple, half a Western pear, and a little lemon juice
• 4 tablespoons of soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons corn syrup or 1 tablespoon sugar
• 3 green onions, white and pale green part only, minced
• 2 cloves minced or pressed garlic
• 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
• 8 toasted walnuts, crushed
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper (freshly ground)

Other Ingredients

• 3 lbs lean beef ribs cut into 2-inch chunks
• Vegetable oil
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 carrot in 3 pieces
• Bay leaf
• Peppercorns (10? 20?)
• 1/2 sweet potato, diced 1/2 inch
• 1/2 daikon radish, diced 1/2 inch
• 1/2 yellow onion, diced 1/2 inch

Cooking

• Soak ribs for 1 hour in ice and cold water in medium-large heavy stockpot or Dutch oven. This removes the blood and impurities. Rinse ribs, wipe out pot
• To make stock, cover ribs in water in same pot and boil for 1/2 hour, adding a bay leaf, 12 peppercorns, 2 squashed garlic cloves, 1 long carrot, ~ 3 tablespoons, one long piece of kelp or 1 oz rehydrated dried shiitake mushrooms
• Take ribs out, rinse, put in bowl covered in plastic wrap
• Get rid of vegetables etc. in stock, cool it in a bowl in fridge for a couple of hours, then skim off the fat (if you do this overnight, pour the stock over the ribs and let them cool together, so the ribs don’t dry out)
• Use 2 ribs to render some beef fat in that same stockpot, take them back out
• Cook in the rendered beef fat 1/2  sweet potato in 1/2 inch dice and 1/2  yellow onion in a 1/2 inch dice
• Make marinade
• Add ribs to the pot
• Add marinade
• Add 3 cups defatted stock
• Simmer for 1 1/2 hours
• Add radish, and cooked sweet potatoes and onions, simmer for additional 1/2 hour uncovered to reduce sauce

Serve with steamed rice, and some kind of sauteed greens. This recipe has all kinds of flexibility. You can use anything from cabbage to dates, yes, dates, in place of sweet potatoes and radishes. The key is to play with levels of umami and sweetness, so the dish becomes your own.

I hope I get better at cooking daily, but, if not, we’ve reached Good Enough. Helpful tips always welcome.

The post Everything I Now Believe About The Long-Term Project Of Cooking For Two People appeared first on Privilege.

After a way too busy holiday season, life is finally settling back to normal. The house painters have left – they’ll come back later for a few final touches. And yes, the front door is unfinished but I have decided 1.) I don’t care right now 2.) maybe I’ll just get a new door. Mid-century modern, perhaps.

While the painting pause fills my to-do list with all kinds of new stuff, I’m exercising strategic option #1 again, i.e. Just Don’t Care At Least Right Now. The best part of retirement is choice.

And not caring means that this morning, as we speak, I’m sitting at my kitchen counter watching a just-about-to-simmer pot of bone broth. Also known as: 4.5 pounds of oxtails from pastured-raised cattle; 2 carrots; 1.5 onions (1 yellow and charred, half a red one because I ran out of yellow); a bay leaf; some peppercorns; one big stem of charred ginger; a whole lot of filtered water; 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar.

Fancy punctuation for a very simple foodstuff.

The pot’s going to be sitting on my stove all day long. Maybe into tomorrow or the day after. I’ve never made bone broth, but it’s all the rage. Usually that doesn’t motivate me terribly – I’ve never cooked anything Moroccan, for example – but I’ve got my reasons.

For example? I’d like nothing more than to tell you. What better than to chat while ignoring one’s to-do list?

First, the broth is ostensibly good for your joints and I’m prone to aches. Second, if that turns out to be quackery, which I can well imagine, I believe that as a meat-eater I ought to consume as many parts of the animals as possible. Waste is bad. Third, I should use my resources to encourage pasture-raising. Commitment is good.

And finally, because pleasure moves me more than virtue, because doing good is something I require of myself and delicious comes naturally, what better than a large pot of completely homemade soup?

I’ve always loved to cook. I remember the first time I made a recipe beyond Nestle’s Tollhouse. Something with crab and avocado, from Craig Claibourne. The sense of accomplishment, of adulthood. In my late 30s and early 40s I hosted small dinner parties all the time. My food was very good, my short-term memory at its peak, I moved quickly and accurately carrying the numbers of teaspoons in my mind.

These days my food is probably worse but I don’t care. I enjoy myself so much.

The bone broth, which is still coming to a simmer, by the way, I have triangulated out of a few recipes. This one, for the basics, this one for oxtail pho, and this one for Hawaiian oxtail soup. By triangulated, I mean I read them all and then decided I knew enough to proceed. Oh, and by another way, I’ve moved to the sofa. Best place for a chat.

The decades, while they’ve denatured my capabilities, have compensated with knowledge, habit, and confidence. Not always true with skills as we age, but wholly so in the kitchen. So I parboiled the oxtails for 5 minutes, following the bone broth recipe, added charred ginger and onions from the pho inspiration, and used more water than anyone said just because Significant Husband loves a not-too-strong broth.

It might turn out badly. In which case, I will probably feel annoyed, but will exercise our valuable strategy one more time, and Just Not Care, At Least Right Now.

Life is good, my friends, life is good. Have a wonderful weekend. I hope you have time for broth or its equivalent.

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I have been asked several times, recently, for a post on how I maintain my shape. I’ve written about it before, tongue-in-cheek, in 11 Sneaky Tricks Of The High WASP Diet, and here, earnestly, in the Building Attractive series from last year. But maybe I haven’t yet answered the question usefully enough, so here’s another try.

In brief, I both count my lucky stars and work at it.

Water Under The Bridge, Or, What We Are Given

First of all, we’ve all got baseline genetics. Muscularity runs in my family. I think it’s easier to stay lean if you build muscle easily. (Downside is, I build muscle on my calves so well that running gives me terrible shin splints and if chased by wolves I will just have to hope for trees. Tall trees or small wolves.) In other genetic news, I’m long-waisted. I think that allows a lot of space for middle-aged chub to hide. Finally, I’m neither gluten nor dairy-intolerant, so I’ve got great choice in foodstuffs.

Then, of course, there’s privilege. I am sure that early diet has enormous effect on late-in-life weight, and I was extremely fortunate. My mother fed us lots of fish and vegetables, and fruit. She cooked our every meal, except when she and my father were out, leaving us TV dinners with the babysitter. (That I loved Salisbury Steak is only one more data point proving the theorem, Children Are Crazy.)

I am also sure that childhood activity levels have an impact. We always lived in places with room to move. While we didn’t have sports at school – Title IX hadn’t happened yet – we did have a mother whose primary strategy for dealing with 4 young children was to slide open the glass door and say, “Go outside!”

I am very grateful for all this healthy infrastructure. That said, I think that getting on track with nutrition and exercise is sort of like re-parenting ourselves, and much can be done by adult intent.

The Things To Which We Can All Pay Attention

There is nothing new here. No unknown diet, no secret exercise program. It’s just about finding a way to make what you already know work for you without exhausting your precious will power. I need my will power for virtue, writing responsibly, and paying bills. I do not want to use it up on calorie management. Onward.

A Relationship With Food & Its Consumption

1. I don’t like fast food, so I don’t eat it. McDonald’s doesn’t have to be part of your life; for nomadic lunches a turkey sandwich will do. If delis squeeze your budget, make a sandwich at home. Or turkey rolls – slices of roast turkey rolled around gherkins or cheese.
2. I don’t like fat, so I don’t eat it in quantity. Fatty meat doesn’t appeal, and I banish potato chips and their sneaky buddies from the pantry, saving my fat indulgence for good cheeses, nut butters and an occasional pat of the dairy stuff. Oh, and the heaven that is avocado.
3. I like whole wheat. When you find the right product, in my case the La Brea Whole Grain bread sold at Whole Foods, whole grain is a joy, not a chore.
4. I’ve internalized “sparse eating.” I don’t like the way stuffing myself feels. The only way to get here is practice. Practice eating slowly, and stopping exactly at satiation. Pay attention.
5. Speaking of which, I’ve narrowed down the trigger to satiation for me. It is a BIG LUNCH, with protein, vegetables, fruit, chocolate, and carbs. If I don’t experience that click of satiation before about 12:30pm my entire day will spiral into snacking and crankiness. Your biological clock is your own, research it thoroughly.
6. Turns out satiation is aided by psychology. Yet another reason to sort yours out.
7. I’ve directed my splurges to reasonable foods, i.e. a whole wheat tortillas warmed in the microwave for 30 seconds, or two squares of dark chocolate paired with two of milk.
8. I’ve even defined, and thus limited, debauchery – If I need the emotional charge of throwing all caution to the wind I will cut some of this chocolate cake, drink 3 glasses of red wine, and eat a lot of popcorn. But I throw the cake I don’t want in the trash. And the extra wine puts me to sleep. I can’t eat any more when I’m asleep, I’ve found.
9. I love the food I eat, and I eat the food I love.
10. In order to make the above statement true, I focus on the quality of my food purchases; i.e. grass-fed, free-range, wild-caught meats, poultry and fish, organic canned beans, mandarins in season, organic chocolate, etc.
11. I also grow a teeny little patch of herbs and vegetables in my front yard. I like to plant from seeds, sow too thickly, and then thin the rows by eating the sprouts as they grow. It turns out radish sprouts are peppery and delicious.
12. I cook, as well as I can, without using anything containing ingredients I don’t recognize.
13. I bake chicken, not desserts. Why present myself with that untamed sensory input?
14. To keep myself honest, I weigh often, and allow myself a 4 pound fluctuation. Over a certain weight and I eat very carefully for the next 3-4 days. Under a certain weight, I eat big.
15. Finally, I do not suffer. Never do I feel that eating like this is a burden, a difficult No said to life. It feels instead like a Yes to my body, to purity, and to the savoring of foodstuffs.

Tricks To Eat Less When It’s Called For

On those days after I’ve hit my high point – let’s say after a wedding, for example, or the holidays, or a weekend trip to Napa – I have a few tricks to bump myself back down.

1. Hot liquids. Drink tea or coffee, eat soup. You’ll feel fuller.
2. Lean protein. Try to address your hunger head on. On lean days I will often eat a can of tuna with oil and vinegar dressing for lunch, atop a head of lettuce. Have a power bar if necessary. I never need more than 3 lean days in a row.
   
3. Speaking of lettuce, consume fruit and vegetables by the bushel. Especially vegetables.

Exercise In Its Easy Incarnation

The secret is to incorporate exercise into your life. This thought is nothing new, but just in case you had any ideas I am an athlete, um, no. I am however a perpetual mover-arounder.

1. I do some exercise now and I have always.
2. I don’t do very much, or anything very hard.
3. Over the years I’ve tried a variety of formal exercise – dance classes, gym workouts with weights, personal trainers, yoga.
4. I’ve done even more informal exercise – walking, chasing children, walking, gardening, and walking again.
5. Life is always sweetest and general creakiness best managed when I back up regular moderate cardio with strength training and stretching of one sort or another. Twice a week with some free weights, or a yoga class, either work for me.
6. These days I go to my personal trainer, a true luxury, twice a week. We work on rehabilitating my shoulder – the rotator cuff strain has been reluctant to play nice – and on overall strength and flexibility. If budget doesn’t allow for a trainer, I recommend resistance and weight training at home. A set of bands, or free weights, are easy to come by.
7. I still do a fair amount of walking. To the gym, on city expeditions, and suburban errands whenever possible. We balked at carrying a large space heater in a backpack to UPS, but have become quite adept at schlepping home groceries, drugstore plunder, and shoes from Neiman Marcus, for that matter.

The primary goal of both nutrition and movement, now, in my mind, is building an infrastructure for aging. I used to work out once or twice a week, just to maintain a reasonable natural fitness. I think aging, and the 2 years in an office, has put me in a fitness hole. To feel the way I want to in the world I need to be fitter than my body is inclined, if that makes sense. This is not to say I don’t enjoy a slender appearance, but it’s not my current motivation.

Being female in America, and perhaps Europe and Australia, means both enormous pressure to be one shape, and too many opportunities to eat and sit oneself into another. There’s a lot of what we might call Myth For Pay out there, and we probably need to band together and fight back.

To that end I’m going to thank Mater for pointing me to this lentils recipe, and Miss Whistle for this incredible fish. (Note: I used halibut instead of cod.) Both Indian recipes, very high in flavor, and super easy to make. There are plenty of other things in life that demand effort and distress, eating and moving should use less willpower, and give more joy.

Edited to add this link to a fascinating New Yorker article, via @jane|simplepretty.

Mouse over the photo up top. It should show you info, I used a new tool. Let me know if it’s broken:(. No affiliate links included. However Whole Foods does offer coupons.

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However, give us something useful, we’re yours. If it’s also sweet, soft, sensual? Were yours for life. So how to transmute Valentine’s dross into red glitter? To whit.

1. Chocolate. Given the gourmetization of bar chocolate, i.e. hot pepper, ginger, and bacon flavors lining grocery shelves, one does not perhaps need boxed chocolates. However, Sturdy Gals know that one of the best ways to keep their waistlines in, well, line, is to deceive the cravings for cake and brownies with hot chocolate in 1% milk. And that Dagoba makes incredible cocoa powder. A tin of Dagoba, and a new mug, now that could warm the Sturdy February heart.

2. Flowers. I confess. If I am Grande anywhere, it’s with flowers. Significant Husband has sent me 3-Dozen-Red-Roses-No-Filler on Valentine’s Day, via 1-800-Flowers, for the last several years. The extravagance might be because I said anything less than 3 dozen wasn’t worth the effort. Unless that was some other diva talking.

3. Underwear. What’s with the giving of uncomfortable underpinnings? The usually tractable Sturdy is apt to stomp around when presented with scratchy anything. Stabby underwires add injury to insult. But a pair of Swiss cotton somethings? As in, from Hanro? They last 5 times as long as Fruit of the Loom from Big Chain Store. Trust me.

All right then! And shipping with Amazon Prime is both practical and gratifying.

4. Silk pajamas? No again. Sturdy Gals wear pajamas to get the mail, take out the garbage, and, occasionally, deadhead rose bushes in the wee morning hours. Give us flannel. We will pay deference to the holiday by forsaking a matching top for a stretch cotton-blend camisole. We’ll even pink ourselves up something fierce.

5. Bedding. For the ultimate in practical Valentine’s Day presents, why not just buy us a whole new bed? That’s where this is all going, right? Sturdy Gals can occasionally be blunt. How about organic cotton sheets, and a reclaimed wood headboard? More pink, courtesy of the house. Via Coyuchi.

6. And finally, because High WASPs have extraordinary powers to convince themselves that jewelry is useful, let’s pause for a reminder that Beladora’s code, New Year, for $150 off any purchase of $750 and over, is good until the 14th. A sapphire heart for $1450. Raw and fancy, both. Or, because pretending is often as good as the real thing, an emerald by Asprey & Garrard for $18,850.

Or, I say, go kiss somebody. Surprise them. Sturdy Gals love to say that’s a perfectly sufficient present, in and of itself.

The post 6 Ways To Win A Sturdy Gal’s Valentine Heart appeared first on Privilege.

Pretend he wants to give it away to his readers. Humor me.

In that situation, he will have just found himself watching a live video stream. Humor me.

The cameras will be turned on, at first, so he can see the preparations. But he won’t hear anything. Then a guy with a mohawk will walk by. Clearly no one is thinking about the video stream.

A bunch of more guys with cameras will crowd in and start shooting. He won’t be able to see who it is. Hunter has limited patience.

The cameras will swing around, and he will see a bar. With people in it. None of them famous. Hunter likes bars, so he waits. Besides, he’s been roaring with laughter ever since the mohawk. This is clearly random backstage goings on.

Finally, the Sodastream CEO will stand up and introduce someone famous. It will be Scarlett Johansson. Hunter will think, “Oh god those cheekbones. I didn’t know she also had cheekbones…”

He may make the inevitable bad joke about how her message won’t be Lost In Translation, although I advise against it. He will probably get a little giddy, because celebrities like that are in fact more beautiful than regular people, and she’s impossible to resist. Yes, even for Hunter.

Then the event will end. He will be left staring at your computer, thinking, “Who am I? What have I become?” If you’re really Hunter S. Thompson, you proceed to get wildly drunk. Carouse through Manhattan. But if you’re only a midlife style blogger, of course, you have a glass of aged cabernet on your sofa , and think about fizzy water, sodas made with juice, and the value of reusable bottles.

And if you’re me, you will feel the need to explain that your father has a Sodastream, and the glass bottles in which the soda water lives are things of beauty. You also will hope that your irreverent post still warrants the sending of the promised Sodastream that you plan to give away to your readers.

But in Hunter S. Thompson’s universe, nothing is certain.

No compensation except the hope of a Sodastream for you guys.

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