On change

"I'm also the girl who took the same lunch to school every single day for the first fourteen years of her life. Every single day. The contents of the brown bag were as follows: carrot sticks, two cookies, and Peter Pan creamy peanut butter on whole wheat bread. There was no jam, no jelly, no crunchy peanut butter, no natural peanut butter, no white bread, no seeded bread, and no change.

"Sometimes I think my taste buds may be the eighth wonder of the world. How they survived such monotony is one of the great mysteries of our time...

"I am happy to report, though, that in recent years, I've been working on getting friendlier with change, and with its cousin, flexibility. Growing up has helped a lot... It's a lot more fun this way. No one ever got laid because they wrote it into their day planner.

"Which, I guess, brings me to a larger, more serious point: that it's hard to love someone, I've found, when you're preoccupied with holding your entire world firmly in place. Loving someone requires a certain amount of malleability, a willingness to be pulled along, at least occasionally, by another person's will..."

Molly Wizenberg in "A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table"

For keeps

"Cooking should be fun, empowering even, at least some of the time. 

"Put on your favorite music, pour a glass of wine, admire how a sharp knife slices through a ripe tomato, savor the aroma of a roasting chicken, congratulate yourself on how evenly you seared the salmon, dip some bread into simmering tomato sauce. 

"When you start to enjoy the process of cooking, not just the result, everything else gets easier, too."

Kathy Brennan and Caroline Campion in "Keepers: Two Home Cooks Share Their Tried-and-True Weeknight Recipes and the Secrets to Happiness in the Kitchen"

Piece of cake

If only it was that easy...

Curly corn

Fusilli with Corn Sauce

from Joe Yonan's "Eat Your Vegetables: Bold Recipes for the Single Cook"

3 ounces whole wheat fusilli, farfalle or other curly pasta
2 ears fresh corn
1 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 large onion, chopped (about 3/4 cup)
1 clove garlic, thinly sliced
2 Tbsp. freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese
salt
freshly ground black pepper
4 fresh basil leaves, stacked, rolled and thinly sliced

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook the pasta until it is al dente.

While the pasta is cooking, shuck the corn and rinse it under running water, removing as many of the silks as you can with your hands. Rub one of the ears over a coarse grater set over a bowl to catch the milk and pulp. Cut the kernels off the other cob with a knife; keep the whole kernels separate from the milk and pulp.

Pour the oil into a large skillet set over medium heat. When the oil starts to shimmer, add the onion and garlic and saute until tender. Add the corn kernels and saute for just a few minutes, until the corn softens slightly and brightens in color. Stir in the corn milk and pulp and turn off the heat. Cover to keep warm.

When the pasta is al dente, drain it (reserving 1/2 cup of the pasta water) and add it to the skillet with the corn sauce. Toss to combine, adding a little pasta water if the sauce needs loosening. Stir in the cheese, then taste and add salt as needed and grind in plenty of fresh black pepper. Stir in the basil, scoop everything into a bowl, and eat. Makes 1 serving.

Just because

Besides, it is too pretty to not photograph.

Apron strings

Back in the day, cooks at home — my mother among them — wore aprons.

She wore one in the kitchen when she peeled and chopped vegetables, prepped fish in the sink, and stir-fried meats in a well-seasoned wok, the ventilation fan whirling overhead. She wore one outside the kitchen when she brought plates of food to the dining table and cleared the dishes afterward.

My mother put on an apron automatically, like a second layer of clothing. She picked up a knife or a spatula with one hand, an apron with the other. She protected her dresses from spills and splatters. She alternated among four or five aprons and washed them in the machine with the rest of our laundry.

She wore floral prints in reds and yellows, and styles with flat fronts and decorative hems. In the pockets, my mother stashed Kleenex. She sewed her own aprons, customizing them to suit her small frame. (Back in the day, people at home sewed.)

These days, it seems, cooks at home seldom wear aprons. Not the ladies on the Food Network. Not when they chop onions on a board or grill meats on the stovetop. In front of cameras, under the lights, they hardly worry about spills or splatters.

Sandra Lee, Ingrid Hoffmann and the incessantly perky Rachael Ray tend to wear form-fitting V-neck or scoop-neck tops and tees in their television kitchens. They never get flour in their impeccably styled hair. They never spill a thing on their undeniably fashionable outfits. It is, of course, make-believe.

In my local newspaper a short while back, I learn of a great-grandmother in an Oakland suburb with a remarkable collection of more than 200 aprons.

The oldest, the reporter noted, is a flour-sack apron from a century ago. (I'm not sure what that is, really, but it doesn't sound entirely flattering.) One of the newest is a full-length barbecue apron with large pockets and the words "Sexy Senior Citizen."

"Put on an apron and tie it," the collector told the reporter, as gently and sweetly as a great-grandmother would. "The tighter you tie it, the bigger the hug."

But the article doesn't tell me everything. I do not know, for instance, how the woman acquires her aprons. Does she shop actively for them or receive them as presents? (Both perhaps.) Where does she keep them? How does she sort them? By color? Fabric? Which ones does she actually wear? Most of all, what does she cook?

Aprons, I realize, have long been synonymous with domesticity. They have been linked inevitably to physical work on farms and in kitchens.

"Homesteading alongside the men," Ellyn Anne Geisel writes in "The Apron Book: Making, Wearing and Sharing a Bit of Cloth and Comfort," "women tucked their dresses into apron waistbands to clear and plow the fields, then unfurled the aprons to carry grain to the chickens, gather eggs and harvest vegetables from the garden."

In the years following World War II, the garments grew increasingly popular among middle-class housewives, Geisel notes. The designs at that time reflected "their aspirations to be modern, social and stylish. Fabrics were bold with color, and adornments became more playful."

Eventually, there were theme aprons and holiday aprons, and aprons that matched potholders or tablecloths. There were aprons that sported cartoon graphics or witty phrases. There were casual aprons made of cotton and fancy aprons made of silk, organza or taffeta. There were practical aprons, like my mother's, and not-so-practical aprons.

Most home cooks these days, I suspect, prefer function to form. They would do without trims or ruffles, selecting comfortable, straightforward bib aprons in a range of colors.

I take an informal poll among friends my age. Some have aprons, others don't. Some wear aprons, others don't.

Sunah, for example, bought a cute apron a short while ago, but seldom uses it. She doesn't want to get it dirty, she says. I laugh. It is black and white with illustrations of fish, fruits and condiments. The creases of the original folds are still visible.

Cynthia owns a couple of aprons. On a trip to Italy last fall, she says, she bought another one as a souvenir. It has different breads across the front. But alas, she seldom wears any of them.

(This from a woman who collects recipes and cookbooks religiously, who has been known to make cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning, and rugelach, brownies and chocolate-chip cookies for various potlucks — from scratch. Surely, she must put on an apron then, right?)

Jamie, for his part, says he doesn't wear a thing when he, ahem, cooks in the kitchen. He's got a wicked sense of humor, I remind myself. He tries to take the conversation to a whole other place. But I don't let him.

Do many my age eschew aprons? I wonder. Is it an either/or? Do we pride ourselves on not wearing aprons, occasionally not even owning one, as if domesticity was something to be frowned upon? As if our education and experience ought to keep us away from the stove?

Our hectic lives take us inside courtrooms and conference rooms. They chain us to our desks and chairs. They make us stay in front of our computers. Work we do now is often unlike work our mothers did, and work our grandmothers and great-grandmothers did before them.

Perhaps we don't need aprons in the kitchen if we're simply taking delivery pizzas out of cardboard boxes and putting them onto plates. We don't need them if we're moving plastic containers from freezers into microwaves. We don't need them if we're eating cereal for supper.

I, for one, like to think I can have it both ways.

Like my friends, I spend decent chunks of time at a computer, reading, researching, writing and editing, working. My mind is often preoccupied. I can't be bothered with food.

On the other hand, I am like my mother. Is this what I have secretly feared? In the kitchen, when I make it there, I do my best to not be wasteful. I reuse pieces of aluminum foil if I can and takeout containers when possible.

In front of the stove, at the chopping board, I wear an apron. Always. Not the floral prints or decorative hems my mother favored, but the simple patterns and solid colors I prefer. I reach for an apron on Wednesday nights, for instance, when I carve out time to try new recipes. I rinse my hands quickly and wipe them on my hips. I turn on the radio for company.

I pull one on over my pajamas bright and early Sunday mornings, before I've even washed the sleep from my eyes or brushed my teeth, to measure flour and sugar for cobbler or coffeecake. The anticipation builds. I reward myself at the end of a busy week and the beginning of another.

I make a mess on the counter without making a mess on myself. I tie the apron tight.

(A version of this essay appeared originally at www.culinate.com.)

On breakfast

The hobbits had it right all along, Heather Arndt Anderson says. Their lives in the shire afforded them six meals a day, "three of which (occurred) before lunch: breakfast, second breakfast, and elevenses..." J.R.R. Tolkien was onto something. 

In her literary paean to the morning meal, "Breakfast: A History," Anderson provides historical, social and cultural perspectives on breakfast consumption. She occasionally references foods traditionally eaten in other countries, looking at jook (rice porridge) in China, for example, and platters of "fresh-baked flatbread with spreadable yogurt cheese called labneh or crumbly feta cheese, olives, figs and cucumbers" in the Middle East.

For the most part, however, the author focuses on matutinal meals in the United States and by extension England. 

She gives beverages such as coffee, tea and orange juice their due. Coffee "as it is known today," for example, became popular in "Europe and the Americas by the mid-17th century."

She provides significant background on the cold-cereal industry and major players like Kellogg and Post, and describes many of the ways people like to eat their eggs in the morning, whether scrambled, fried or soft-boiled...

Further talk of where people actually have their breakfasts sometimes – in B&Bs, for example, coffeehouses, diners, mess halls and school cafeterias – enliven the narrative as well. They help to round out her well-researched but not overwhelming discussion, a nice addition to the ever-growing food-studies field.

(A version of this review appeared originally at Publishers Weekly.) 

Peachy keen

Usually a ripe peach in and of itself is perfect enough. Sometimes, though, a little dressing-up is equally fine.

One-Peach Crisp with Cardamom and Honey

from Joe Yonan's "Eat Your Vegetables: Bold Recipes for the Single Cook"

1 large ripe peach, halved and pitted
1 to 2 tsp. honey
1/8 tsp. ground cardamom
1/3 cup granola, preferably one with nuts and dried fruit
ice cream

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Put the peach halves, cut sides up, in a small baking dish. Drizzle with 1 teaspoon of the honey and sprinkle with the cardamom.

If the granola includes dried fruit, pick out the fruit pieces and reserve them. Pack the granola onto the peach halves. If your granola isn't on the sweet side, feel free to drizzle on the remaining 1 teaspoon of honey.

Bake the peach until it is soft when you pierce it with a fork, about 20 to 25 minutes. Remove from the oven, let cool for a few minutes, then sprinkle with the dried fruit reserved from the granola. Add the scoop of ice cream and eat it while it's warm. Makes 1 serving. 

Plum perfect

It is a plum polenta upside-down cake from Sweet Bar Bakery. It is sweet indeed. Plum perfect.

Love and pasta

"I'd heard that snacking and small dishes called meze were a big part of Turkish cuisine, but I hadn't expected the diversity. 

"Bites of seafood ranged from fried mussels bathed in a sauce of lemon, bread crumbs and ground walnuts to pickled herring stuffed with olives and bell peppers.

"The intense sweets included fried balls of dough basted in thick honey to chewy squares of Turkish delight dusted with powdered sugar and infused with different fruits or exotic flavorings, such as mastic, a tree sap that tasted like earthy spearmint. 

"And there were heavenly slices of flaky baklava crammed with pistachios and drenched in syrup, in a shop that smelled of warm butter."

Jen Lin-Liu in "On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome with Love and Pasta"

Summer pie

There is nothing like hours of Garrison Keillor live on stage to inspire strawberry and rhubarb pie days later. And so strawberry and rhubarb pie it is.

Food positive

Food blogger and neuroscientist Darya Pino Rose maintains her weight, she says proudly and sheepishly, by eating whatever she wants. And what she wants is "healthy food most of the time." She seldom craves sweets. 

In her food-positive self-help volume "Foodist: Using Real Food and Real Science to Lose Weight Without Dieting," Rose rejects deprivation: "Shouldn't there be more to life than constantly denying yourself the things you enjoy?" She bemoans regimens such as Atkins and Weight Watchers. 

Instead, in addition to what we eat, she encourages readers to pay attention to how and why we eat. These elements can significantly impact long-term health. 

She coins cringe-worthy terms like "foodist" and "healthstyle." Her discussion can get awkward amid amateurish writing. And she pulls quotes from random places (Yoda, for one).

For the most part, however, Rose does a decent job laying out a good-food plan. She offers advice on shopping and cooking, provides workable lists for well-stocked pantries and gathers key points into occasional sidebars: "Nine Surefire Ways to Sabotage Your Weight Loss," "The Top 10 Most Underrated Health Foods," "Forty-Two Code Words for Sugar." 

Although nothing in Rose's book is earth-shattering news, the enthusiasm with which she delivers it remains accessible and encouraging. 

(A version of this review appeared originally at Publishers Weekly.)

Summer corn

Corn Soup with Summer Vegetables

from Michelle Obama's "American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America"

4 to 6 ears of fresh corn, shucked and silk removed
2 sprigs fresh thyme
juice of 1/2 lemon (about 1 Tbsp.)
salt
olive oil
grilled vegetables of your choice: zucchini, summer squash, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, mushrooms

Cut the corn off the cobs and set aside.

Place the cobs in a large pot and just barely cover with water. Bring to a boil; then lower the heat and simmer for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the stock has a rich corn flavor. Strain the stock and set aside.

Reserve 3/4 cup of the corn kernels and place the remaining corn in a blender. Blend, starting on low speed and increasing the speed as the corn purees. You can add a little of the corn stock to get the corn started. Blend on high for 45 seconds to a minute.

Pour the pureed corn into a medium saucepan through a fine-mesh strainer to remove the bits of skin. Add the thyme and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently. You do not want the soup to boil.

As the soup heats, the natural starch will begin to thicken the soup. Once the soup has thickened, add the lemon juice and the reserved corn stock little by little until the soup reaches the desired thickness. You should have 4 to 6 cups of soup. Add salt to taste.

Heat a small frying pan over medium heat; add enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan. When the oil begins to smoke, add the reserved corn kernels and do not stir until the corn has a nice brown color. Stir the corn and then remove it from the heat.

Add the seared corn and any other grilled vegetable of your choice on top of the soup and serve. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Pineapple popsicles

"All day long I can look forward to a popsicle.

"The persistent anxiety that fills the rest of my life is calmed for as long as I have the flavor of something good in my mouth.

"And though it's true that when the flavor is finished the anxiety returns, we do not have so many reliable sources of pleasure in this life as to turn our nose up at one that is so readily available, especially here in America.

"A pineapple popsicle. Even the great anxiety of writing can be stilled for the eight minutes it takes to eat a pineapple popsicle."

Zadie Smith in "Joy" from The New York Review of Books

Peach fever

"We catch it. It invades our logic, overriding rational thought, disrupting our best-laid plans. It spreads and settles in our psyche, our emotions swell, the heart races. We call it peach fever, a love of our work and the land that burdens us with a sense of responsibility and caring. Peach fever curses us, especially when weather disasters challenge our spirit and bad prices inject a cold reality into our love affair. Peach fever can destroy and transform and lives on our farm throughout the year."

David Mas Masumoto in "The Perfect Peach: Recipes and Stories from the Masumoto Family Farm"

Blue on blue

It is blueberry and peach sour cream cobbler, courtesy of Nigel Slater and "The Kitchen Diaries." It is the epitome of summer.

Coffeecake

The addition of instant Folgers, Nescafe or some such makes this a different kind of coffeecake. It is a recipe for something promising. 

Mocha Loaf
from Donna Egan's "Ice Cream Sandwiches: 65 Recipes for Incredibly Cool Treats"

1 Tbsp. instant coffee powder
1/4 cup boiling water
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for the pan
1/4 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 cup butter, at room temperature, plus extra for greasing
3/4 cup granulated white sugar
2 extra-large eggs
1/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
scant 2/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour an 8 1/2- by 4 1/2- by 2 1/2-inch loaf pan.

Add the coffee powder to the boiling water and stir until dissolved. Let cool. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder, and set aside.

With an electric mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar until creamy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add one-third of the flour mixture, mixing on low speed just until combined. Add half the milk, half the coffee and all of the vanilla extract, mixing until combined. Repeat with the flour, milk and coffee, ending with the last third of the flour mixture. Stir in the chocolate chips and pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan.

Bake for 50 to 55 minutes, until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes before removing and allowing to cool fully. Use as required or store in an airtight container. Makes 10 servings.

The art of health

When Art Smith "tipped the scales at 325 pounds" several years ago, he signed on with a health coach who got him "walking, biking and eating right." The man "made me sweat, made me curb my out-of-control appetite, and taught me the value of a healthful lifestyle."

In his self-help-cookbook hybrid "Art Smith's Healthy Comfort: How America's Favorite Celebrity Chef Got It Together, Lost Weight, and Reclaimed His Health," the slimmed-down restaurateur describes recent shifts in his personal diet. 

He reminds us to eat "foods as close to their whole and most natural states" as possible, offering ideas and recipes for dishes that are delicious and nutritious.

Breakfast might mean steel-cut oats with Greek yogurt and blueberries, for example, or soft-poached eggs with a root vegetable hash. Lunch could be a bowl of yellow tomato gazpacho, three-bean turkey chili or miso corn chowder. Salads and seafood feature prominently among his choices as well.

Smith ("Back to the Table: The Reunion of Food and Family") includes brief sections on everyday habits, too, giving common-sense advice on cooking oils and such.

And though name-dropping in the narrative (Oprah Winfrey is a client, President Obama is a neighbor in Chicago) occasionally gets annoying, it detracts little from Smith's overall goal: to provide a practical framework for good, healthful eating. 

(A version of this review appeared originally at Publishers Weekly.)

Bliss

Fruit bliss.

Rhubarb love

Rhubarb. In any language, in any farmers market, it is a personal favorite.