Health

Fast away the old year passes. The excitement with which we welcome the new is resoundingly optimistic. What is it about stepping into the future that fills us with such hope? Meanwhile, the older I get the quicker the time goes. It's like it has a new momentum, a special determination to slip away from me. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. I will not be daunted. I will grab each moment and ride it, bucking and swaying, into the golden sunset. I can scarcely believe that it's been two years since I launched this blog, a true labor of love. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support. As I humbly say, without you, I'm nothing. For 2012, I am resolving to remain curious. To keep learning and evolving. To welcome new people, places and things. To eat, drink and be merry. To stay fit. To cultivate strength, resilience and endurance. To cherish what I have. To be patient and kind (with myself and others). And, to echo one of Woody Guthrie's 1942 resolutions, to "dream good."I hope this weekend brings you further opportunity to chill, space out, hang and unwind. Here are some links to help you while away a few idle hours. I wish you a celebratory New Year's Eve and a very delicious 2012.
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I'm very into tea. I've never been into coffee (although I do like the occasional cup, especially with lots of cream and sugar) but I really enjoy the ritual of gripping a steaming mug of something first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I bring G a cup in bed around 7:30am and he brings me one at around 10pm. We favor herbal teas, though my repertoire includes some green and black teas as well. The latter I will often drink with a splash of milk, and a spoonful of local honey goes into almost all of them. In the winter, I will sometimes sip tea all day long. As I write this, I am wondering if this is why my teeth are starting to look yellow. Hmmm. Well, anyway, it's better than red wine. Or coffee. Or just as good. Here are some of my favorites, in no particular order.

Mariage Frères teas are expensive, so you know I love them. They are French and very voluptous with fabulously romantic names like Marco Polo and Wedding Imperial and Black Orchid and Eros. They are of course very hard to find unless you are in Paris, but try here or here.
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The time between when the turkey goes in the oven and when you actually sit down to eat it stretches before you like a yawning chasm of temptation. It's virtually impossible not to ruin your appetite with all the snacks there just to "tide you over." A crudité platter with some sort of dip doesn't have to be a vain attempt to steer people away from the cheese (this is a great option), as anything that crunches tends to appeal greatly. That said, you might want to offer a big, healthy and very satisfying bowl of kale chips that even the kids and your very picky father-in-law will enjoy. And a recent post on this lovely blog reminded me of the joys of popcorn, especially when spiced with something as intriguing as shichimi togarashi, the piquant Japanese spice blend. You can find it in Asian markets and sometimes Whole Foods, and here's a recipe for making your own. Of course you can season your popcorn any way you like: sea salt and malt vinegar; rosemary and lemon zest; chile salt; cinnamon sugar; cumin and coriander, etc etc. The point is it's quick, easy and cheap but still quite delicious and it won't weigh you down (unless you wind up eating the whole bowl).
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The season of eating is here. Not that we don't eat all year long, duh, but you know what I mean. The holiday lunches, the cocktail hours, the office parties, the extended family feasts—all lined up in a sticky, fatty, calorie-laden row stretching out until New Year's Eve, when it comes to a close with one final champagne-fueled blow-out. And then? Remorse and penance. Juice fasts. Salad. Guilt-induced exercise binges. More salad. And still, visions of sugarplums dance in your head. We know that moderation is an option. We've all read those "how to handle the holidays without packing on the pounds" articles. Stick with wine spritzers and vodka on the rocks. Choose the celery sticks over the chips. We know the drill. These are truly first world problems. So let me present you with one first world solution. A dessert so beautiful and festive it's worthy of your fanciest dinner table, yet so low in fat and calories you can enjoy it without a second thought. Because between stressing over whether the roast is overdone and wondering if your sister is going to kill her husband right then and there, you've got enough on your mind without having to worry about a case of gout, right?
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Don't get your knickers in a twist, I'm not giving you a recipe to prepare strange and frightening innards. Not that I wouldn't! But no, this is considerably more tame. Although I hope it make take you out of your comfort zone as far as baked goods go. Why? Because it's made with a lot of buckwheat flour and that can have scary health-food store connotations. Trust me, you don't need to be wearing Birkenstocks to go for this delicious cake. It's actually inspired by an incredible muffin from Peels that I've enjoyed on several occasions. The pastry chef there, Shuna Fish Lydon, really rocks, as you can see by her blog, not to mention her addictive graham crackers, brown butter rice krispie cubes and other tweaked-homestyle treats. I've lauded her skills before.
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This year, I hope to bring you with me a little more often into the world of South Asian cooking. Having traveled in India, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Indonesia, I've been fortunate to experience many of these flavors in their countries of origin, but my real culinary knowledge of them I owe to Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, authors of two seminal—and well-thumbed—volumes: Hot Sour Salty Sweet and Mangoes & Curry Leaves. They track their recipes to the source, often cooking in humble homes alongside matriarchs of the region, and they really believe in simple authentic dishes. Mangoes & Curry Leaves features the cuisine of the Subcontinent—Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives—so you can imagine the rich variety. I'm sharing a recipe for dhokla, a Gujarati specialty that's essentially a steamed bread. The recipe looks long, but it's really a very simple process, and the result is light and delicious (and gluten-free). So you don't become discouraged about trying these recipes, please find a source for South Asian ingredients. A market in Little India? An online resource? It's exciting to try something new, and a great way to vary both your diet and your repertoire.
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Use it up. Wear it out. Make it do. Do without.Eleanor Roosevelt said that, probably during the Depression or some wartime crunch. But I love its sentiment: the idea that what we have is enough. "Making do" is not really something you see advertised alongside Big Gulps and $35,000 handbags. Last weekend in the Times' opinion section, I saw this piece about a divorced Brooklyn mother of two who fell on hard times and resorted to starting a victory garden and baking her own bread to get by. (A former Bergdorf Goodman shopper and unwilling to give up perfume, she now makes her own from fragrant herbs!) It was very inspiring, and it gave me serious pause when I went to write "mint tea" on the grocery list that's posted on the door of our fridge. Instead, I went out to the garden and harvested huge armfuls of fresh mint. I had cut the unruly plants back a month ago—and frozen and preserved some leaves then—but they had grown in more vigorously than ever. While I was out there, I also snipped lots of other things to dry and use over the coming winter months.
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Mark Bittman posted one of his great roundups of recipes in the Times Magazine this weekend, featuring less-expected ways to eat apples. I'm particularly taken with the cheesy apple fritters and that apple tempura! I'm prone to tossing diced apple into lots of salads—with oil-cured tuna, with walnuts and blue cheese, with all kinds of herbs. And when I make oatmeal, I always grate an apple into the pot. This really supports good digestion. We have a big old apple tree on our property at the lake, and it's covered with mottled green fruit that looks dubious but tastes great. Our friend Julia up the road has an orchard of craggy old trees that produce a lot of fruit, including some of the most flavorful red apples ever and a few pears, too. I've already eaten some super-crunchy and juicy Honey Crisps this year, and I'm a big fan of the Pink Lady with its wonderfully tangy sweetness. There are so many things to be made with all these apples, from pies, crumbles, betties and cakes to butter, fritters, cider...and, pedestrian as it may sound, applesauce.
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Indian summer. We bandy that phrase around quite a bit at this time of year, hoping to conjure up those crisp, sunny days. The expression has been used for more than three centuries, first described in 1778 by John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, a French-American writer in rural New York: "A severe frost prepares it to receive the voluminous coat of snow which is soon to follow; though it is often preceded by a short interval of smoke and mildness, called the Indian Summer." Its etymology is debated. In Colonial New England, Indian Summer referred only to a January thaw, when Native American raiding parties could be expected in the western and northern areas; the ground had briefly lost its snow cover so tracking the raiders back to their winter camps was much more difficult for the Colonials. Or perhaps it's because this was the traditional period during which early Native Americans harvested their crops of squash and corn. The modern use of the term refers to a period when the weather is sunny, clear and above 70º, after there has been a sharp frost; a period normally associated with late-October to mid-November. It's also used metaphorically to refer to a late blooming of something, often unexpectedly, or after it has lost relevance. (See "middle-aged women.") We haven't actually had the first frost yet—though the temperatures veered awfully close just this morning—but, after a week or two of brisker day, we're expecting a veritable heatwave—77º this weekend. I'm not sure how I feel about that, though it may mean we get to pull a few more tomatoes off the vine. For those of you still reaping summer's bounty, cook it down to the essence of sunshine: a brilliant yellow, sharp and fruity Sunshine Sauce.
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Oh yes, more mushrooms! And it's raining like the devil in these parts, so probably more yet to come. I'm still not complaining. G found a brilliant orange chicken mushroom growing on the split trunk of the oak tree that crashed through our back fence during Irene and it went right into a pot of soup. I have so much maitake (aka hen-of-the-woods or grifola frondosa) in my freezer—and dried, too—that I'm set for hot pots for the rest of the winter. All this bounty has led me to invent a delicious soup: wild mushroom made with wild mushroom stock. The only other wild thing I had on hand (other than my imagination, of course) was some wild rice, so I threw that in, too. It turned out wildly earthy, nutty, chewy—more of a stew, really. Perfect for these days of incipient fall, and for October 1st which is World Vegetarian Day. In fact, I think I read somewhere that October is Vegetarian Awareness month. Meaning that we're supposed to notice they exist? Whatever, it seems like a good excuse to whip up lots of vegetable-centric dishes. Hey, flavor them with bacon, I don't care. But let's explore a few we may not cook on a regular basis: kohlrabi, parsnips, mung bean sprouts, jerusalem artichokes, turnips, puntarelle. It's a wild world but somebody's got to eat it.
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