Plateworthy: Eco-Friendly Eats

It was Earth Day earlier this week, and perhaps the best way to spend Earth Day is reflecting on and learning more about the impact your lifestyle has on the planet and the 6.8 billion people who call it home. One place to start is your pantry.

An easy way to be greener is to eat local food where you can find it, less meat, and less animal products (as raising lifestock uses far more resources than farming plants and grains). This also means you'll be eating healthier food. Bonus! (Aside: if you've never heard of Michael Pollan, check out his captivating talk at a recent TED conference.) If, like me, this appeals to you but you're not ready to take the plunge and go vegan, try eating a vegan meal as often as possible. Start small and work your way up. (The benefits of cutting back on your weekly meat intake is the subject of Mark Bittman's related TED talk).

If "vegan food" makes you think "protein deprivation," "I'll starve to death," or—worst of all—"hippie food," then you've never heard of Isa Moskowitz and Terry Romero's Post Punk Kitchen. Just reading the ingredient list of these recipes can make a die-hard steak lover's mouth water.

This recipe is from Veganomicon, one of their many cookbooks (and who doesn't love their names for these things?). If you can't find Israeli couscous, you could substitute ordinary couscous, small pasta, or even pasta broken into bits (couscous is pasta, after all), though the texture would of course be quite different, and I would avoid whole wheat pastas for this recipe. If you really want flavor, double the recipe for everything but the couscous.

Israeli Couscous with Pistachios and Apricots
Time: 40 min.
Serve: 4

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups Israeli couscous
2½ cups water
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon ground cumin
¼ teaspoon ground cardamom
Several pinches freshly ground black pepper
½ teaspoon salt
Zest from 1 lime
Juice from ½ lime
½ cup dried apricots, chopped to the size of raisins
½ cup shelled pistachios
¼ cup chopped fresh mint

• Pour the oil into a large, heavy-bottomed skilled over medium-low heat. When heated, add the garlic and sauté for 1 minute.
• Add the couscous and raise the heat to medium. Stir constantly for 4 or 5 minutes, toasting the couscous until it’s a shade or two darker.
• Add the water, cinnamon stick, cumin, cardamom, pepper, salt, and lime zest. Raise the heat and bring to a boil. Once the mixture is boiling, lower the heat again to as low as possible and cover. The water should be mostly (but not completely) absorbed after 10 minutes.
• When the water is mostly absorbed, add the apricots, pistachios, lime juice, and 2 tablespoons of the mint. Stir, cover again, and cook for 5 more minutes (by which time the water should be fully absorbed).
• Remove the cinnamon stick, fluff the couscous with a fork, garnish with the remaining mint, and serve.

[Note: From here on out, Plateworthy will be a bi-weekly, Friday morning thing. See you again on May 8!]

You Oughtta Be In Pictures

Tara Whitney is my hero. Some day, we will have to make a Beverly Hillbillies trip from Kentucky to Californ-I-A to have her photograph our family. I adore her work and vision. She has recently paired talents with Michel Sandy to create these mini movies.
They are so inspiring.
I aspire to be as cool as these moms.

Plateworthy: Xec, Mate

This week has been a hectic one, and I haven't cooked as much as a usually do. But one thing I have cooked (several times) in the past two weeks is this recipe from Mark Bittman's "The Minimalist" column in the New York Times. Like so many Minimalist recipes, this one has few ingredients, few steps, takes little time, and is so, so good.

Go to Bittman's video demonstration here to watch him prepare xec ("check"), a citrus salsa from South America. You'll love it on fish, but will soon be asking yourself how it sounds with any number of other things. Enjoy!



Maya Citrus Salsa (Xec) With Red Snapper Time: 15 minutes

1 orange

1 small grapefruit

1 large lemon

1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves

1/2 habanero or other chili, seeded and minced, or to taste

Salt to taste

2 tablespoons oil

4 red snapper fillets, 4 to 6 ounces each, preferably skin on (and scaled).

1. Heat oven to 450 degrees. Cut orange in half horizontally and section it as you would a grapefruit; do this over a bowl to capture all its juice. Remove seeds and combine flesh and juice in bowl. Repeat with grapefruit and lemon. Stir in cilantro, habanero and salt.

2. Put oil in a nonstick or cast-iron skillet over medium high heat. A minute later, add fish, skin side down; season top with salt. Cook until skin begins to crisp, 3 or 4 minutes, then transfer to oven. Cook another 3 or 4 minutes, or until a thin-bladed knife meets little resistance when inserted into thickest part of fish. Serve fish with xec, immediately.

Yield: 4 servings.

Facebook Schizophrenia

At long last, a new post for Skirt!

Plateworthy II: Honolulu Anyone?

Another recipe post from my husband.

Honolulu Skillet Beans



Serves: 4
Time: 25 min.

This recipe, adapted from the Moosewood Collective, is particularly nice at this time of year, when some days the weather promises summer is approaching, but the cold isn’t quite gone either.

If you’re not familiar with the magic that is hoisin sauce, prepare thyself for sweet-and-sour heaven. If it's not near the soy sauce at your grocery store (and it probably is), it is worth schlepping down to a nearby Asian food market (which will have more varieties than the grocery anyway).

1 teaspoon vegetable oil
1 clove garlic, minced
2 (16oz.) cans of pinto beans (or red, kidney, or cannellini beans), drained and rinsed
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
2 tablespoons ketchup (or tomato paste)
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon soy sauce
½ pineapple, peeled, cored, and diced (or 16 oz. can, diced)

1. Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat. In the meantime, stir the hoisin sauce, ketchup, mustard, and soy sauce together in a large bowl.
2. When the oil is hot, sauté the garlic for about a minute. Then add the beans and pineapple, stirring for about a minute, and finally add the sauce from the bowl.
3. Turn the heat down to low, cover for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent beans from sticking to the bottom of the pan.

Shop Around The Corner

If you are ever in the Lexington area (which now is the perfect time because the ponies are running at Keeneland ) people may tell you to check out Joseph-Beth Booksellers, the large independently owned bookstore/cafe. And, it is great. But the real jewel for bibliophiles is the lesser-known Morris Bookshop on Southland Drive. Just like a good writer, the owner has made thoughtful choices about what to feature and the children's section is my favorite in the world. It's hard to get out of there without spending money.


On today's visit, I picked up the Pollan and Leibovitz books photographed here. The other book, a memoir called A Homemade Life, was a gift from my dear friend Jen. I am really enjoying all three.

The author of A Homemade Life is a year younger than me which makes me want to get in gear and write that book I've always thought I would have written by now. I can't summarize it any better than the book flap which says that she, "recounts a life with the kitchen at its center. From her mother's pound cake, a staple of summer picnics during her childhood in Oklahoma, to the eggs she cooked for her father during the weeks before his death, food and memories are intimately intertwined."
Lovely and savory, it even includes recipes.

A Place of My Own, by Michael Pollan {of Omnivore's Dilemma fame} is about his quest to build a room of his own where he can go to create. The cover image is the work space he built. I can't wait to dive in. I am most interested in his discussion of how a space makes us feel differently about ourselves and our possibilities.

The Annie Leibovitz book At Work is so great. I love reading how she troubleshoots technical problems, like shooting against those pesky windows in the oval office or working with fans, just as much as I love the details she shares about what she was feeling when taking iconic images. I've been reading {her partner and literary giant} Susan Sontag's journal that I checked out from the library too and it's nice to look at them together, such different artists. I have a lot of trouble relating to anything Sontag says, but Leibovitz I can hear.

This is my favorite quote in At Work so far from the chapter titled "Being There":

"As much as I love pictures that have been set up, and as important as those pictures are to me, I'd rather photograph something that occurs on its own. The tension between those two kinds of photographs is at the heart of what I do. It's not a conflict, but sometimes it's useful to remember that things are happening right in front of you. You just need your mind and your eye."

It's hard not to gulp down this book, but I'm trying to slow down and sip one chapter at a time, to let it settle in and think about each story.

Morris Bookshop had all of the delighful Charley Harper ABC/123 books and games today and I wanted to take them all home. They don't look the same online or on television as they do in person. They really are beautiful and interesting on the printed page.

I settled instead on two children's books by M. Sasek, This is Paris and This is New York, which I really bought for me under the guise of getting them for my girl. There's an entire series featuring different cities.





Every page is like that moment with the curtain goes up after intermission and the stage has morphed into a new scene. There are stories within stories.


From This is Paris:
"You find these bookstalls on the embankment of the Seine. You can buy old maps and pictures here as well as second-hand books."

I love this page. Perhaps I'll make cropped note cards from it.

I think this drawing was done via time-travel and that is me standing there on my first date with my husband, looking for the collected poems of W.H. Auden. Most definitely.


Also from This is Paris: "This is the Jardin du Luxembourg. Jardin means Gardens. Here you can hire your own toy sailing boat."


From This is New York. The page reads: "Harlem is uptown. The police close many streets in New York so that children can play there."


From This is New York: "People walk uptown or downtown - dresses travel uptown or downtown and buses too."


From This is New York about skyscrapers. "New Yorkers adore to watch them grow." A page much more powerful now than it was when this book was published.

I hope your weekend is filled with things that inspire you.
Happy Easter. Happy Passover. Happy Spring.

Plateworthy: The Salad Days

From my husband. We'll just call him Plateworthy. He is quite a dish.


Pineapple, Spinach, and Avocado Salad
Serves: 4
Time: 10 min.

Refreshing, light, packed with vitamins, this makes a perfect springtime salad. Using fresh pineapple here means an extra five minutes peeling, coring, and chopping it yourself, but if you’re used to the canned yellow-white stuff, the sweetness and soft texture of fresh pineapple will be worth your while. If your supermarket sells freshly chopped pineapples in the produce section and you’re willing to shell out a little extra, all the better.

For the salad:
3 oz. spinach, loosely packed
1 avocado, peeled, seeded, and cut into large dice
1 1-inch ring pineapple, chopped (about ¾ cup)
1 carrot, peeled then shaved with peeler
2 handfuls crushed walnuts
2 oz. grated farmer’s cheese (or Swiss) (optional)

For the dressing:
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 teaspoon soy sauce

Combine all the salad ingredients in a large bowl. In a separate small bowl, whisk the dressing ingredients together. Taste for seasoning before adding to the salad.

Thirty-Two Candles

Today is my birthday.

I have already had a few amazing gifts this morning:
-A birthday wish and cuddle from my one and only girl.
-A thoughtful date-plan from my guy.
-A contested hearing and travel no longer needed because of my amazing staff and our hard work.
-A lovely coffee run with friends who are patient with my lack of interest with the Kentucky basketball changing-of-the-guard-hoopla.
-Kind messages from friends and family.

I hope you are having a day where you find joy.

On my inspiration egg hunt, I found these three posts that are shiny, pastel glimmering candles for the day...

This post from Stephmodo makes me want to hop on a plane with my little family to retrace Madeline's steps...or Remy's.

This post by Superhero called
What is Real is exactly what I have been feeling and wondering these days. Every once in a while I think that I should pull back my online presence in order to have more presence in my real life...that in all of the blogging etc., it can feel a bit vacuous and unrecipricated at times. But my hope is still there, that I make more connections with writing here. Superhero writes:

"In the wake of my clearing, I had the sense that my energy was too far-flung, dispersed in too many directions, that I had been tending too many things I couldn't touch and that I was out of balance in some fundamental way. I realized I needed to bring my focus in closer and tend things much nearer to home. And when I say this, I mean really close to home, like my actual home, my family, my neighbors, my body, my heart, my community right here in Berkeley. I had to look hard at what’s most real and true in my life.

And of course, how do you reconcile being a blogger, surfing Facebook, emailing, texting, phoning, twittering when you are on a quest to ground yourself in what is real in your life? How do these things fit in? and what am I giving up by spending countless hours checking email and blogs and weather reports and celebrity gossip columns? What am I not creating in my life as a result of all of the life force I give to my "friends" in cyberspace?"

She explains that she is now noticing how neighbors linger to talk, how more connected she feels to her community since she has been focusing on what is real to her. I think this is an interesting question. In the late-night hours and isolation of parenting and insomnia, I have been saved many times by words that someone dared to write and value the friendships I have made, maintained or rekindled with technology. That is how I got here to this place. But I do wonder if it is all too much online and not enough in person.

This post from Soule Mama is so moving and honest. I love so many things about this piece but this is my favorite:

"I write for me, but I hit 'publish' each day in the hopes that somehow - someway - these little ramblings of mine could inspire you to look for, to follow, to perhaps even create a moment of joy and beauty in your own day." -Amanda Blake Soule

I am so blessed to have you as readers and friends and please let's have tea together someday.... in person.