Long Weekends

Thank God that today is a short day before a long weekend. There’s something about a free day off from work that makes me giddy. In the past, I’ve crammed my trips into three day weekends, often taking an extra day off to stretch it out. With all of the traveling of last year, I’ve been grounded in Los Angeles since Christmas. I haven’t stayed in Los Angeles this long since I moved here, which is how I’ve survive in the big city.

I like to make my weekends slow-paced and local. We rarely drive on the weekend unless we are going hiking or shopping, and usually we skip both of those. We are lucky enough to live within walking distance to the beach, two great shopping/restaurant districts and the Sunday farmer’s market in Santa Monica. It isn’t the best one, but it has lots of stuff and I know who has the best strawberries. (Wednesday’s Santa Monica is amazing. The Palisades Sunday also boasts some great growers.)

I love to spend the weekend making up for all the junk I eat during the week. I usually wake up before Pete (I’m a morning person, he’s a night person – great for the baby!), so I wander out to the kitchen and dream up some concoction to make. Some mornings I make eggs with fresh peas and soft, creamy avocado. Other days, eggs with asparagus and swiss cheese, or eggs with whatever leftover I have in the fridge. I usually add a tortilla, or if we happen to have a fresh loaf of bread, I’ll toast that it put it on the side. Occasionally, I decide to make pancakes or waffles that I pour maple syrup on and Pete smears with jam or Nutella. Apparently, maple syrup is very American and slightly too sweet for my German husband.

While Pete catches up on work or sports or sleep, I mix up banana bread or try a new spread. (Barefoot Contessa has a good sun-dried tomato one. I use less mayo than she suggests.) I might marinade some chicken or form meatballs. (Lidia has the best ones, but unfortunately, looks like she took the recipe down.) Luckily, Pete is the most open and accepting person I’ve ever cooked for. I’ve had a few misses, but we take them in stride.

This weekend, I am inspired to make cornmeal waffles for breakfast tomorrow. We might have people over on Sunday for a cook-out. I think teriyaki chicken would be great with a green salad – the one I wanted to make last weekend but we didn’t have lettuce. Apricots, carrots, sunflower seeds with a light vinaigrette. I’ll have to figure out the other sides – maybe some rice or whatever other vegetables look good at the market on Sunday. I’m just excited to have time to cook and relax.

Martha Knows Her Eggs

I’m not a huge Martha fan, but I love flipping through her magazine and seeing the luscious images of immaculate cupboards, perfectly iced cakes and all of the floral arrangements. So, when one of her magazines falls in my lap, I always appreciate it.

Pregnancy carries with it an obvious need for added nutrition. I’ve been told everything from 65 to 100 grams of protein a day. This, my friends, is no easy task – especially when you only crave carbs. I’ve taken a bit of a laissez-faire attitude to eating this first trimester since my mother survived on peanut butter crackers with my brother, and my brother’s really smart. I figure when I feel better, I’ll eat better. (Please let that day be soon!) In the mean time, I eat a lot of scrambled eggs.

So, when I was flipping through Martha’s Spring egg edition (don’t recall the month – maybe March?), and there was a whole section on cooking eggs, I read it. First rule, never use a non-stick pan. Um, I always use a non-stick pan (I know, chemical party, but it’s easier). Use butter to coat the pan. Hmmm… I use a little olive oil.

This weekend, when I made eggs, I decided to put the rules to the test. I buttered up our All-Clad fry pan (it’s good to get married), scrambled my eggs and poured them in. I did everything exactly the same as the non-stick pan except for using the stick pan. And wow! Those eggs were the best eggs I’ve had in a long, long time. Fluffy, light, tasty. I can’t explain it. I can’t imagine a non-stick pan makes that much of a difference, but apparently it does.

I am spreading the gospel of sticky-pan eggs. (If you use enough butter they aren’t supposed to stick. I couldn’t do that. It just seemed wrong.) After putting the eggs on my plate, I immediately soaked the pan in the sink, and you know what? It wasn’t that hard to clean. Plus, the elbow grease was worth the better tasting eggs.

Dad's Weekend

A few weeks ago, my dad came for a quick weekend visit. My parents, unlike most, are completely fearful of over staying their welcome. I think my dad even quoted that old saying about how you want to leave before the stink of fish starts So, my dad did a Superman-like visit. He flew in from the east coast on Saturday morning, and out on the Sunday red-eye. I’m a hard-core traveler, and have been known to fly in for birthday parties and baby showers, but even I stay longer than a night (at least 2!). I think we convinced him that we truly do like him, and we would LOVE for him to stay longer. Only time will tell….

Anyway, we had a great time despite the rain, cold and grey that permeated the weekend (he planned very poorly as the following weekend LA broke heat records with temperatures soaring into the mid-80s). After a fabulous lunch of German fare at 3 Square, a favorite local eatery, I dragged him to the Japanese market to buy ingredients for sukiyaki, which he taught me how to make on Sunday.

The market excursion, for me, was incredible. I love going to the Japanese market and buying random things to try like yam noodles, but most things I have no idea how use or even what they are since most of the packaging is in Japanese. Enter Dad. Not only could he tell me what most stuff was, he could tell me what to do with it. I was picking up all kinds of things and demanding to know how I could use it.

After the exciting trip to the market, we squeezed in a walk by the beach before heading off to a Mardi Gras party where we all ate way too much gumbo (soooo good!!!). Unfortunately, we didn’t take any photos because Pete showed up in his Christmas tree costume and I ended up with a Mardi Gras thong on over my jeans. I wonder what we would have done if Dad wasn’t in town….

Sunday was an ode to food. We started the day at the farmers’ market (I swear my dad likes the markets), then headed home to figure out how to spend the rainy day. We were at a complete loss since rain isn’t very common in the Southland. Luckily, Pete decided it was a good time to make spaetzle for us with our new spaetzle maker. Just as our bellies were expanding from the spaetlze, the rain gave us a reprieve so we headed out for a walk on the beach.

The temperature wasn’t that bad, but the winds were blowing hard and the sand was whipping us in the face. Unfortunately, I left the camera at home yet again because the light was magnificent that afternoon. The stormy grey clouds had bursts of sunshine streaming through and the winds made interesting piles of sand.

After walking home INTO the wind, we were all exhausted and passed out in front of the Super Bowl. It ended just in time for my sukiyaki lesson and dinner before taking Dad back to LAX to catch the red-eye home.



He said when he retired, he wouldn’t mind coming out to cook Japanese food for us for a week (pretty please!!). His only requirement was that he have his own room, which is just a little more incentive to buy a house. If only the housing market could crash back to reality.

Back to the Kitchen

Weight has never been an issue for me. The only time I’ve ever been significantly larger than I am now (and I’ve been this size give or take 10 pounds since high school) was one summer during college that I spent in Nantucket. We didn’t have a car so we biked or walked everywhere, which would lead one to believe I would be the thinnest I ever was. I wasn’t. I was fit and fairly lean, but I packed on the pounds. I ate Ben & Jerry’s every afternoon, and washed it down with beer in the evening. Upon arriving back at the apartment in a drunken haze at night, I would make myself toast from locally made bread slathered with jam and butter. It was fantastic. And by August, I was the largest I’ve ever been. The pictures don’t really show it, but the clothes I wore were all 3 sizes larger than the ones I wore at the beginning of the summer. And still, by American standards, I was average – even trim. For reference, size 12 Gap pants fit. Snugly.

I was, for me, huge and a size 12. The irony is that today, because of all of the additives, high fructose corn syrup and cheap fast food, this is average for America. I’d even venture to say on the small side. Two-thirds of America is over weight. Recently, I saw photos of the rural poor in the United States. The thing that most struck me was the roundness of people’s faces. The soft double-chin that the husband and wife shared. The plumpness of their child. These photos contrasted dramatically in my mind with the ones Dorthea Lange took in the 30s. Her subjects had thin chests. Gaunt faces.

As recently as the 1970s, poverty was marked by thinness. Bones jutting out. Pronounced chins. Belts tightening the waists of too-large pants. Poverty today is plump. It’s fat. It’s filled with corn and corn by-products that people unknowingly eat all day. The meat we eat is fed corn even though cows can’t digest corn unless it is altered for their systems. All of the soft drinks we drink are filled with corn syrup. Ketchup, cereal, crackers. It’s hard to find a pre-made food that doesn’t have a corn derivative in it. Xanthum gum? Made from corn. And all of this corn and food processing are making people fat. It’s cheap now, but at what cost later?

I read books and articles on this plight, and no one has a solution that seems like it will work. The problem is that we are all used to the ease with which we obtain a completed meal. Changing our diets as a country means changing the way we live.

Recently, I decided that I needed to cook dinner every night except Friday and Saturday when we tend to go out. It is hard. I am exhausted from work, and usually just want to watch television with a bowl of cereal. The other night, I arrived home with a menu in mind. I turned on some music and started cooking. Twenty minutes later, when the tacos hit the table, I was relaxed, happy and hungry. My husband and I happily ate the healthy version of Mexican. We talked. We connected. I felt nourished.