Though I was treated to Chinese take-out on Valentine’s night, Sam and I had our real Valentine’s celebration later in the week. Thursday morning, we typed out childcare and kitty-care instructions for Grammy and taped the note to the refrigerator door. After shoving our swimsuits and flip-flops and bottles of SPF-50 into a suitcase, we dusted off our neglected passports, kissed the kids goodbye, gave the cats scritches under their necks, and headed off to the airport to catch our plane to Mexico.

We spent a full two and a half days lounging at the infinity pool, looking outward toward the swaying fronds of the coconut palm trees lining the beach and the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico just beyond. We read a lot, finishing two books a piece, and we occasionally braved the frigid temperatures of the pool. I gorged myself on guacamole and salsa. I learned that Mexico’s version of “mild heat” in a pepper is not quite the version I’m used to.

I completely relaxed. It felt good to finally catch my breath.

I’ll share some photos soon, once I download them off my camera’s memory card, maybe this weekend. First, I must share this macaroni and cheese recipe with you. I was inspired to make this after flipping through the pages of an old, spiral-bound community cookbook, it’s yellowing pages chock full of recipes for mysterious dishes like “Sara’s Jello Surprise” and “Aunt Jean’s Spam Casserole.” I found a few recipes for macaroni and cheese casseroles made with a no béchamel technique — just the combining and baking of grated cheese, eggs, and milk, with already-cooked noodles. After fiddling around with the method and ingredients, this is the recipe I came up with.

I made this last Sunday, before we headed out of town, in hopes that my kids would think I was the best mom EVER for leaving them with such cheesy goodness to eat while we were away. But it didn’t work out that way. It never does, really. My son was quick to declare that he did NOT like macaroni and cheese, and he refused to eat it. Refused to even sample a bite.

I swear, I think someone replaced that child with a blonde, blue-eyed impostor.

Baked Macaroni and Cheese Casserole

Yield: 6-8 servings.

Macaroni and cheese casserole should always be present at pot-luck dinners and church suppers - or at any social gathering involving Southerners and food. This version of macaroni and cheese is the dish you'll want to show up with.

Ingredients:

8 ounces uncooked elbow macaroni
6 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
1-1/2 cups milk
2 eggs
1/4 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon coarse salt
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
8 ounces Colby cheese, shredded
8 ounces white cheddar cheese, shredded

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly butter a 9 x 13 casserole dish and set aside.

In a large pot of salted water, cook elbow macaroni according to package directions, until al dente, about 7 minutes.

While the pasta is cooking, whisk together in a medium bowl the melted and cooled butter, milk, eggs, sour cream, salt, and white pepper. In a large bowl, combine the cooked and drained pasta, the butter and milk mixture, and the shredded cheeses. Stir well. Pour into the casserole dish. Bake for 45 minutes, until golden brown and bubbling.

The first friend I remember having was in preschool. It seems like her name was Cindy, but that was also the name of my imaginary friend, the one who lived in the upper branches of the tall pine tree across the dirt road from my house. One day, Cindy (the real one) and her father were riding a tractor on their farm. She fell off, was run over by the tractor and killed. I remember the sadness I felt when she didn’t return to school, sadness at her being taken from me. I couldn’t have been more than 4 when this happened, just a year younger than my son is now, but I vividly remember my parents telling me of her death. They didn’t hide the facts of what happened.

I met Carrie when I was in third grade. Her family – her mom and dad and three sisters – had moved from Ohio to our small town in north Florida, and we were instantly fast friends. Carrie’s family lived much like we did – in an old home without air conditioning, without much money, and with parents somewhere on the strong end of the hippie spectrum. Carrie and I were avid readers growing up, and we often sat in the back of the classroom, devouring books after finishing our classwork, usually well ahead of other students. We stayed best friends throughout our school years, but we began growing apart during college when we our lives and interests started diverging. Though we never spoke of it, our waning friendship felt like a break-up to me, and I felt heartache for a long time.

For many years – probably all of my 20s – I never felt entirely settled with who I was as a person. And maybe because of that insecurity, I didn’t let many people get too close to me. I had a lot of stressful things going on in my life. I was working full time and trying to get into medical school. Within one year, I was accepted to medical school, got married, then moved away to a big city to attend school. My brother was in the initial phases of getting diagnosed and treated for schizophrenia, spending time in and out of the psych ward. I spent a lot of time being angry and scared and overwhelmingly sad at what was happening to him.

I had friends during those years, but I didn’t open myself up to them in the way that they deserved. The way I deserved. I held back. I had so much going on that I didn’t want to risk getting hurt.

Something changed when I reached my 30s, and it drastically changed when I began writing and sharing my life openly, here and on the blog I had prior to this one. This act of putting my words to screen, giving them life outside of my own head, has allowed me to express myself in ways that I’m often not very good at verbally. On this screen, I can be completely honest and open and let people in. And I’ve come to realize that I don’t care if I’m being judged for my words, for my personal stories. They’re my stories, my life. This is who I am.

Last weekend in New York, I spent a glorious three days with my friend Julia. Over those days, we shared some pretty amazing meals – and conversation – with several women whom I’ve come to know and love, and one that I’m thrilled to have met during this trip. Since we returned, I’ve been reflecting on the people that this blog — that my writing — has brought into my life, and I feel blessed to have these friends by my side.

Friendship is such a beautiful, precious thing. I am so grateful for it.

*    *    *    *    *

Several weeks ago, for New Year’s Eve, a group of our friends gathered around our table to share a meal. Among other things, I served these braised beef short ribs. The meal was wonderful, but the company was even better.

Braised short ribs are best if they’re allowed to rest overnight after cooking. When preparing for the New Year’s Eve dinner, I started these ribs the day before. The aromas coming out of my oven as the ribs simmered gently in the heavy dutch oven for more than two hours were enchanting. It was hard not to dig in immediately, but I knew that I would be rewarded for my patience when I finally served them the following day.

A couple of hours before dinner was to be served, I brought the ribs back up to a simmer and finished them off, adding carrots toward the end of cooking. The meat was perfect – tender and moist, and the overnight rest allowed the savory flavors to richen and deepen. The beef threatened to fall off the bone when I reached in with tongs to serve it, and in many cases, it did.

Now, it’s hard for me to think of braised beef short ribs without thinking of my good friends gathered around the table to enjoy them. And that’s not a bad thing at all.

Braised Beef Short Ribs

Yield: 6 servings.

Braised short ribs taste best the following day. I recommend braising these the day before you want to serve them. It's a breeze to warm them up in the oven. Creamy grits, polenta, or mashed potatoes make a great base for these hearty ribs.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil
6 pounds meaty beef short ribs
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 celery stalk, finely chopped
1/4 cup finely chopped shallot
1 tablespoon tomato paste
12 whole cloves garlic, peeled
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon dried herbes de Provence
2 cups red wine (such as Zinfandel or Cabernet Sauvignon or Malbec)
2-1/2 cups canned lower-sodium beef broth
1 can (14.5 ounces) diced tomatoes
2 bay leaves
1/2 cup (approx) water
24 baby carrots
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a heavy large oven-proof pot (such as a Dutch oven) over medium high heat. Sprinkle ribs with Kosher salt and pepper. Working in batches, add ribs to pot, taking care not to overcrowd, and brown well, turning often, about 8 minutes per batch. Transfer ribs to a large bowl with tongs.

Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of drippings (or add oil as necessary to measure 2 tablespoons). Add onion, chopped carrot, celery, and shallot, and cook over medium-low heat until vegetables are soft, stirring frequently, about 10 minutes. Add tomato paste and cook, stirring frequently, for 1 minute. Add garlic, flour, and herbes de Provence; stir 1 minute. Add wine and 2 cups broth; bring to a boil over high heat, scraping up browned bits from bottom of pan. Add tomatoes with juices and bay leaves. Return ribs and any accumulated juices to pot. If necessary, add 1/2 cup water (or more) to pot to barely cover ribs. Bring to a boil.

Cover pot tightly and transfer to oven. Bake until ribs are very tender, about 2 hours 15 minutes. (Note: If making ahead, stop at this point and refrigerate uncovered until cold. Cover and keep refrigerated. Bring to a simmer on the stove top or in a 300 degree oven before continuing.)

Add remaining 1/2 cup broth and baby carrots; press carrots gently to submerge. Cover, return to oven, and continue cooking at 350 degrees until carrots are tender, about 15 minutes. Discard bay leaves. Transfer short ribs and carrots to platter; tent with foil to keep warm. Boil sauce to thicken slightly and season to taste with salt and pepper.

the view from my room

sheeps milk ricotta with truffled honey with thyme at locanda verde

poached eggs with cotechino hash, spinach and tomato hollandaise (locanda verde)

a street in soho

grand central station

night view of the city, from my hotel room

the dutch, in soho

drinks at the dutch, soho

inside the dutch

black and white cookie

times square

the mercer kitchen, in soho

the mercer kitchen, in soho

turkey burger with red peppers and fries at the mercer kitchen

the bar at the mercer kitchen, soho

weather up, in tribeca

cheers!

beautiful light as we headed home

Every where I look, I see trees trying to bloom, confused by the warm weather we’ve had. The young maple trees that line our side street have newborn leaves popping out on their spindly branches, and when I got in my minivan at the airport after arriving home from Birmingham on Sunday, I found my van covered in the powdery yellow pollen from the oak tree branches overhanging the lot. And, for some reason, the Bradford pears seem to be the most confused, having just lost their leaves for the winter.

My weekend in Birmingham this past weekend was a little cold weather escape for me. I was able to wear sweaters and my new puffy white coat all weekend. I was even surprised by ice on my windshield on Sunday morning, when I got in the rental car to head to the airport. I could have done without the ice, but the crisp weather was a nice change from what I’m used to.

This coming weekend, I’m in for an even bigger taste of cold weather when I head up to New York City for a medical conference. I won’t mind the 40 degree weather one bit since I’m going to one of my favorite places on earth. Born and raised in the south, I somehow manage to feel like a New Yorker every time I visit – and the feeling persists for months after I return home. My love for the Big Apple is so apparent to my husband that Sam has even asked me a couple of times whether we should consider moving up there.

Don’t worry, Mom. We’re not moving anytime soon.

None of this really relates to this recipe for Chocolate Brownie Pudding except for the fact that the dessert will certainly warm you up on a cold night. Plus, it’s so darn good that I just couldn’t keep it from you any longer. I tweaked the recipe just a bit from a recipe from Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics – a great cookbook if you don’t own it already.

Now, in full disclosure, my non-chocolate loving husband was not overly impressed by this dish. It was just too rich and, well, chocolatey, for him.  Which means that it is the best dessert ever to serve to someone who adores chocolate. Like me.

When you take the casserole dish out of the oven after it bakes for an hour, the top of the surface is flat and smooth, hiding the gooey goodness just below the surface. Cracking the top by pressing gently with the back of a spoon reveals the glossy inside, showing just a hint of the molten chocolate below. The dessert — not quite a brownie, and not quite a pudding, but a nice blend of the two — has a texture that makes you think it’s not been cooked long enough. A couple of spoonfuls of this, either warm from the oven or warmed in the microwave, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream will satisfy every dessert craving you didn’t even know you had.

Unless you’re like my husband.

Don’t be like him.

Chocolate Brownie Pudding

After baking, the top will look fully cooked but the center will appear to be underbaked, and this is to be expected. The texture should be like a cross between an brownie and a pudding. Serve this by the spoonful - or spoonfuls - with a scoop of cold vanilla ice cream on top.

Ingredients:

2 sticks unsalted butter
4 large eggs, room temperature
2 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon Grand Marnier

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter a 2 quart baking dish. Melt the 2 sticks of butter and set aside to cool.

With an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat eggs and sugar on medium high heat until very thick and pale yellow, about 5 to 10 minutes. Meanwhile, whisk together the cocoa and flour and set aside.

When the egg and sugar mixture is ready, decrease the speed to low and add vanilla extract, Grand Marnier, and the cocoa and flour mixture. Mix until just combined. With the mixer still on low, slowly pour in cooled butter and mix again until just combined.

Pour the batter into the prepared baking dish and place it in a larger baking pan or roasting pan. Add hot tap water to the pan to come halfway up the side of the baking dish. Bake for 1 hour. Allow to cool some; serve warm or at room temperature.

Minimally tweaked from Ina Garten's recipe in Barefoot Contessa Back To Basics, 2008.

After a lazy morning at home, we had lunch at one of my latest favorite restaurants. Blue Gill is close to my work, and in keeping with my dogma of maintaining a separate work and home life, both mentally and physically, I’ve usually avoided the place on my days off. On Friday, though, my craving for their cucumber and tomato salad with pickled red onions was too powerful to resist.

Surrounded by doctors in light blue scrubs and hospital administrators in dark suits, the kids and I snacked on fried green tomatoes, and they insisted I share the cornbread that accompanied my salad. We discussed our upcoming trip to the circus – an event neither of them seemed terribly excited about, so mostly I spent the time talking up the lions! and clowns! and other fun stuff! – and since Oliver’s fried chicken dish came with a crispy wing and thigh, we reviewed chicken anatomy.

Have I mentioned how much I love talking anatomy with my kids? They love learning names of body parts, whether it’s on a chicken or on themselves. Madeline used the word “wiener” this weekend after noticing a special little part on a male squirrel we happened to see in a photo. I was shocked at the use of slang and promptly corrected her.

The children’s teachers are going to just love me, I just know it.

We finished the day with a nature walk at a local state park. Devil’s Millhopper, described on the Florida State Park’s website as a “bowl shaped cavity 120 feet deep,” is really just a big sinkhole. My parents used to take us there when my brother and I were kids, especially when we had out of town guests. My guess is that, to keep the out-of-towners from getting bored with the flat, monotonous landscape that is north Florida, my parents drove guests around to the handful of unusual places this part of the country is known for. Like sinkholes.

The kids and I trekked down the wooden stairs into the bottom of the Devil’s Millhopper, stopping to look at old limestone rock formations and pretty red leaves and tiny waterfalls along the way. On the way down, that sinkhole only seemed a fraction of the size I recalled it being from my childhood. I was puzzled as to how it could have seemed so huge back then. And then I started climbing up, the kids quickly leaving me behind as they raced to the top. They laughed and yelled down for me to hurry up. I trudged up those wooden stairs, trying to catch my breath, hiding the pain of my burning lungs with a pained smile on my face when I passed other visitors headed downward.

So, okay. It’s a big sinkhole.

The upcoming weeks are going to be a bit more hectic than these last ones have been. I’m headed out of town for the next two weekends, and the work weeks are full, with no holidays left for some time. When life gets crazy, it’s time for comfort food, and the first dish that comes to my mind (besides take-out Chinese, of course) is shrimp and grits.

I’ve been on an eternal quest to find the best recipe for shrimp and grits, and while my mission is still ongoing, I’ve finally got a recipe that comes closest to what I seek.  This other version of shrimp and grits was good, but right now, this is the recipe that I’m going to stick with.

I like my shrimp and grits to have a sauce with some kick to it, plenty of sauce, enough that I can mix it in with the grits or mop it up with some crusty bread after all the shrimp have been devoured. This recipe has the perfect amount of sauce, and the addition of crumbled sausage adds some depth to the flavor. A dash or two of hot sauce and a squeeze of lemon gives the piquant dish just what it needs to send you and your guests back for seconds.

Shrimp and Sausage with Creamy Grits

I use sausage for additional flavoring in this recipe. To make it more healthful, replace the pork sausage with chicken sausage. The heat in the recipe can be increased by upping the amount of hot sauce to your liking. Also, if you're pushed for time and still want to enjoy shrimp and grits, just use quick-cooking grits (follow the instructions on the package) in place of the stone ground grits.

Ingredients:

For Grits:
2 cups water
2 cups whole milk
1 cup white stone ground grits
1/4 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon kosher salt

For Shrimp:
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1/3 cup onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
2 pounds uncooked large shrimp, peeled & deveined
8 ounces mild Italian sausage, casings removed & chopped or crumbled into pieces
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 (14-ounce) can diced tomatoes in juice, drained & juice reserved
1/2 teaspoon (or more) hot sauce
1 to 2 teaspoons fresh squeezed lemon juice
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup sliced green onions (optional)

Directions:

For Grits:
1. Bring water and milk to a simmer in a 2-3-quart heavy-bottomed saucepan. In a large bowl, cover grits with water and whisk vigorously. Let stand for 30 seconds, then skim off any bits that have floated to the top with a fine mesh strainer or a spoon. Drain grits well in a fine-meshed strainer and whisk into simmering milk.

2. Reduce heat to low and simmer grits, partially covered, stirring often until grits are tender and thickened (they should be like loose oatmeal) - approximately 45-50 minutes. If the grits become too thick before they are tender & creamy, thin with hot water (1/4 to 1/2 cup).

3. When grits are creamy and tender, stir in cream, butter, and salt. Remove from heat and keep warm, covered, up to 20 minutes.

For Shrimp:
1. Melt 1/4 cup butter in a large heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and sauté until tender, about 4 minutes. Add garlic and sauté for one minute, until garlic is fragrant. Add shrimp and sauté 2 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove shrimp to a large bowl.

2. Add sausage to skillet and sauté until sausage is cooked through, approximately 5 minutes. Add white wine to skillet, scrape up any browned bits, and boil until wine has reduced some, about 5 minutes. Add drained diced tomatoes and simmer until slightly thickened, about 2 minutes.

3. Add the cooked shrimp and simmer until shrimp are warmed through. Thin sauce with the reserved tomato juice if desired. Add hot sauce, lemon juice, salt, and pepper to taste.

Spoon grits into shallow bowls and top each with the shrimp and sausage mixture. Garnish with sliced green onions and serve.