Diced vegetables form the interior of the crumble.

On our first full day in Paris, my husband and I walked all over the Ile de la Cité and the Ile St. Louis, the two islands in the middle of the Seine. After a long morning of churches and walking, we found ourselves near the Bastille. The birthplace of the French Revolution is no longer home to a prison — on that spot stands a modernist opera house, all steel and glass — but rather to a hip neighborhood filled with restaurants, shops and bars.

It was already after 1 pm when we arrived at Bastille and we were starved. Although I had planned almost all of our meals, I had nothing set for lunch that day. Our guidebook recommended a local café, popular with the neighborhood residents and office workers, called Bistrot du Peintre. As it turns out, Bistrot du Peintre has been on this corner since the turn of the century and features a stunning Art Nouveau interior.  Nevertheless, we grabbed a table on the sidewalk, next to a charming older French couple, and I proceeded to put my college French to good use. This was one of the few spots we went to where we didn’t hear any language other than French and none of the waiters insisted on handing me the English menu. This was a real neighborhood spot off the tourist track. But it wasn’t the French that baffled me, it was the handwriting. I couldn’t read the scribble on the chalkboard menu listing the day’s specials to save my life. So, we concentrated on the printed menu where I had more luck.

My husband was intrigued by one of the appetizers, a carrot and zucchini crumble. That was the word the menu used: crumble. Clearly an example of “franglais.” I wasn’t sure what to expect but we ordered it anyway. What came was an adorable glass jar filled with finely diced vegetables in a creamy sauce topped with a buttery crumb topping. Not surprisingly, we devoured it.(Then my husband ate a steak and scalloped potatoes and I had a quiche with salmon and zucchini, salad and fries. Not exactly a light lunch but so good.)

What I didn’t realize that day was that savory crumbles are quite a thing in France. The very next day, we were invited to lunch at a French friend’s home. She was completely flummoxed about what to serve us because I had given her the long list of my husband’s food restrictions. Plus, her son was coming and he is a vegetarian. (While vegetarianism is no big deal to us, it is not as common in Europe.) In the end, she served us some Middle Eastern mezze to start — hummus, eggplant caviar, tomatoes and cucumbers — and the main course was a zucchini crumble with goat cheese. Another crumble! I was astonished (and somewhat excited.) We loved it and I decided right then that I had to recreate this dish when I got back to the States.

The buttery topping makes this crumble swoon-worthy.

When I got back, I did a little research and I learned that savory crumbles have been quite trendy in France for the past few years. Here is a recipe for a vegetable crumble from 2010 from the popular food blog Matt Bites — a recipe that was also inspired by a trip to Paris. I made my version last night and my husband declared it better than any of the crumbles we ate in Paris. To prove his point, he polished off the whole thing. Then, this morning he saw how much butter was in the recipe and he was not pleased. Yes, there is a lot of butter. I’m not sure what to say about that. The recipe is very delicious and as a vegetarian main course, I’m sure it must be better for you than a big steak. So, enjoy! Just don’t let your family see the recipe.

Savory Vegetable Crumble

Feel free to vary the vegetables in the crumble accordingly to what is in season and your family’s tastes. Also, if you have them, go ahead and add some fresh herbs before baking, like parsley, basil, thyme or chives.

8 oz. butter
1 onion, sliced
4 carrots, peeled and diced
2 medium zucchini, diced
2 Roma tomatoes, diced
1 tsp. each dried oregano, basil and thyme
4 oz. soft goat cheese
1 cup flour
2 tsp. ice water
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 375. Butter a 9×13 baking dish. Melt 2 T of butter over low heat in a large saute pan or deep skillet. Add the onions and saute until translucent. Add the carrots and zucchini and toss to combine. Saute the vegetables until softened but not browned. Season with herbs and salt and pepper. Whisk in goat cheese and remove from heat.

Pour sauteed vegetables into the prepared baking dish. Add the diced tomato and toss to combine. Set aside. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, salt and pepper. Cut remaining 6 TB of butter into small cubes. Using a pastry blender or clean finger, cut the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Pour the ice water over the flour and butter mixture and stir with a fork. Spread crumble mixture evenly over the top of the vegetables. Bake at 375 for one hour.

Inspired by Paris: Vegetable Crumble is a post from: West of the Loop

Cold pea soup with a vegetable ratatouille at Cafe de l'Alma in the 7th arrondisement in Paris.

My husband and I just returned from a magical week in Paris. We strolled the cobblestone streets hand-in-hand.  We marveled at the great works of art and we were awed by the magnificent churches.  We discussed politics and the differences between our respective countries with our French friends. But, most importantly, we ate amazing food. From the 7 Euro petit dejeuner of rich, decadent hot chocolate, fresh-squeezed orange juice and pastries at our local cafe to the 6 course extravaganza at Septime, one of Paris’s hottest tables, our week was filled with memorable dining (and snacking!) experiences. I came home from the trip inspired and itching to take my cooking to a higher level.

One thing that really impressed me was the seasonality of the cooking we ate in Paris. At the restaurants we went to the fact that it was spring was evident in every bite. We saw lots of asparagus — including some elusive white asparagus — peas, tiny new potatoes, herbs and strawberries. We felt certain if we returned to these same restaurants in July or October, the choices would be very different. As a result of this focus on the best of the season, the dishes we ate were bursting with flavor. At Septime, we both had a dessert that will haunt me forever: a tangy fromage blanc ice cream with the very first strawberries from the south of France and teeny tiny meringues to add crunch. The dish was so simple but captured the very essence of the strawberry.

On two occasions, my husband — who is a soup lover — ordered cold pea soup as his starter. Both versions were incredibly flavorful and refreshing. So when I saw English peas at the grocery store yesterday, I decided that I wanted to try my hand at this classic springtime dish. Normally, I might not go to such trouble for a first course on a weeknight. But I was still on a high from Paris — or was suffering from major jet lag — so I went for it. I’m so glad I did. The soup turned out fantastic and I was bursting with pride. This elegant dish will surely be making an appearance at my next dinner party, when more people than just my husband can be impressed by it. He was impressed enough to eat two bowls though.

I used fresh peas here, even though shelling them is a lot of extra work, because I really wanted to use the best of the springtime produce. It is very hard to find fresh peas that haven’t gotten starchy and old which is why frozen peas are so popular. I suspect you could use frozen peas in this recipe without too much harm. I may have to try it myself once the brief season for fresh peas is over.

My version of cold pea soup with mint and yogurt.

Cold Pea Soup with Mint and Yogurt

8 oz. fresh English peas, shelled
2 cups finely chopped shallots
2 TB butter (use the best quality butter you can find)*
1 TB flour
3 cups chicken broth (homemade is best here but low-sodium canned stock will work)
4 oz. plain Greek yogurt
Handful fresh mint leaves
Salt and pepper to taste
Chives for garnish (optional)

Melt the butter in a large sauce pan. Saute the shallots over low heat until softened but not browned. Sprinkle the flour over the shallots and toss to coat. saute for a few more minutes to get rid of that raw flour taste. Season with salt and pepper. Gently whisk in warm or room temperature chicken broth. Add the peas. Simmer until the peas are tender but not mushy, approximately 15 minutes. Remove from heat.

Puree mixture in a food processor with the mint leaves until very smooth. Whisk in yogurt and chill. To serve, garnish with chopped chives and a dollop of yogurt.

* One of the things I brought home from Paris was Bordier butter, a favorite of French chefs. It comes in amazing flavors like smoked sea salt and seaweed. My husband thought I was loony for bringing home butter but the saleswoman at the charming épicerie where we bought it — one that specializes in products from Brittany, the coastal province in the west of France — assured me that people do it all the time. She even sold me a special insulated carrier to keep my precious butter in. I only wish I had bought more.

Inspired by Paris: Cold Pea Soup with Mint and Yogurt is a post from: West of the Loop

This time next week I will be walking along the Seine with my husband.

West of the Loop will be on hiatus next week. My husband and I are going to Paris sans kids to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary, which will occur on May 26. (I’m fairly optimistic at this point that we will make it to ten years.) Paris is a special place for me. I have visited the City of Light numerous times as a child and again as an adult. I even spent my junior year of college studying there and living with a French family. So I have been fortunate enough to experience Paris not only as a visitor but also as a resident. I still have friends in Paris to this day — friends that I am looking forward to seeing next month. One friend — the woman I call my “French sister” — I have known since we were both 14. Now we are both married and have five children between us.

My husband has been to 49 states and the territory of Guam, but he has never been to Paris. For years, he and I have both dreamed about going there together so that I could show him around the city that I love so much. At some point when we were exhausted and frazzled with kids and jobs and life, we decided that we were going to Paris for our tenth anniversary. Nothing would stop us. We stockpiled airline frequent flier miles for our trip. When I went to Paris without him in 2008 — I went with my mother as a 35th birthday present from my parents — we vowed that the next time I went, it would be with him.

A year ago, when it first became possible to book frequent flier tickets for May 2012, my husband suggested we plan our trip. I hesitated. At the time, my dad was sick. He had been fighting a particularly aggressive form of brain cancer for just over a year. Things were not looking good and he was undergoing an experimental second course of radiation. The plan had always been for the grandparents to come and stay with the kids while my husband and I were on our Paris trip. My parents had agreed to it in theory years before. But in May of 2011, there was a very real question about whether my parents would even be able to come to Chicago to take care of my kids. We had no idea what kind of shape my father would be in a year, but we had every reason to expect that it would not be good. Even putting aside the issue of who would watch the kids, would I even want to be so far away from home if my dad was not doing well? I suggested to my husband that we postpone the trip.

My husband gently pushed back. He pointed out that we had been talking about this trip for years. If we didn’t book it, my father would surely know why and that was not the message we wanted to send to him. Dad did not like the idea of us not doing things because of his illness. If we don’t book it, my husband argued, we definitely will not be able to go. If we do book it, there’s a chance that we will have to cancel it. But there is also a chance that we will get to go. Let’s take the chance, he said. So, after confirming with his parents that they could watch the kids for the whole trip if necessary, my husband booked two business class tickets to Paris using the hundreds of thousands of airline miles that he had accumulated with all his travel over the past ten years. In a way, it was an act of optimism. We were going ahead with plans we had been talking about for years — long before cancer had up-ended our world.

A year has passed since we booked those tickets. And in that year, my dad lost his gallant fight with brain cancer. It did not happen the way we expected. It was much quicker. A year ago, I thought my dad would be very sick right now. Instead he is gone. But I am still going to Paris.  My in-laws are coming to watch the kids for part of the week and my mother is coming by herself to watch the kids for the rest of the week. In some ways, it is just as we planned and in other ways, it is completely different.

In the difficult months since my father died, looking forward to this trip has helped me enormously. It has been a bright light in an otherwise dark time. Even though this year has been so much worse than I thought it would be — and I thought it was going to be a bad year — I am grateful for that act of optimism that my husband pushed me into a year ago. While my dad is not here to see us leave for Paris, before he died, he knew that we had our tickets. There are fewer and fewer things that I do now that I can say my dad knew about. I like that this trip is one.

See you when I get back!

10th Anniversary in Paris is a post from: West of the Loop

Overripe strawberries work just fine as a topping for this easy yogurt cake.

This morning, I opened the refrigerator to find wrinkled, overripe strawberries staring back at me. After several days of eating, we had finally come to the bottom layer of a large container of berries that I had bought at Trader Joe’s for something like $7.  The strawberries seemed to look at me reproachfully as if to say: “Look at us now! You know the kids are going to call us ‘yucky’ and refuse to eat us. You’re going to have to throw us away and so much for your false economy of buying the big thing of strawberries. Serves you right, lady!” Who know strawberries could be such snotty little jerks? But I knew that there was no way I would throw out those strawberries. Whenever you are faced with fruit that is not actually moldy but is just a little past its prime, there’s always a way to salvage it. For one thing, you can bake with it.

I turned those overripe, back-talking strawberries — okay, maybe I imagined that part — into a delicious strawberry-lime yogurt cake that will serve as a tasty breakfast or after-school snack for my family all week. On top of a cake, no one can tell that the strawberries had gotten wrinkly and a bit soft. The baking process covers up all those flaws. And it is not just old strawberries that can be salvaged by baking. Any kind of berry or stone fruit, such as peaches, plums and apricots, that is past its prime can be used in baking without ill effect. And I’m talking about easy baking projects too. No need to make elaborate fruit pies. The yogurt cake recipe that I link to above is absurdly easy: it does not even require an electric mixer — think: kid-friendly — and can be made with almost any fruit. You can also make a buckle, which is an old-fashioned one-layer fruit cake, with almost any berry. My favorite fruit cookbook Rustic Fruit Desserts has recipes for a lemon-blueberry buckle and a cranberry-orange buckle.

Everyone knows that you can make banana bread with overripe bananas but did you know that you can also freeze bananas? If your bananas are going brown and for whatever reason you don’t feel like making banana bread that day, just throw them in the freezer, peel and all. They will turn a disconcerting shade of black, but they are perfectly edible. I wouldn’t eat frozen bananas straight, but once thawed, they will work just fine in banana bread, banana cupcakes or a smoothie. As a matter of fact, I like to throw a mushy banana in the batter almost any time I am baking cupcakes. You hardly taste it and it helps keep the cake moist. You can do this with cake mixes as well.

What about overripe melon? I haven’t actually tried this, but a friend told me that cantaloupe can be pureed in the blender and then mixed with yogurt and frozen in Popsicle molds. Apparently kids love it. Overripe watermelon can be made into watermelon gazpacho, granita or, frankly, some sort of crazy cocktail. In fact, a crazy cocktail is probably the best and highest use for watermelon, okay?

Bruised and overripe apples and pears can also be baked in cakes as well as chopped up and cooked into apple or pear sauce. My favorite way to use slightly imperfect apples or pears, however, is as a topping for bread pudding. And here is where my kitchen frugality really goes into high gear. When I get to the end of a loaf of bread — not supermarket sandwich bread but good bread like challah or a baguette — I freeze the heel. When I have collected enough bread odds and ends, I thaw them and turn them into bread pudding. Bread pudding just happens to be my husband’s favorite dessert. It’s a great dessert for entertaining as well because it can be prepared entirely ahead of time and then popped into the oven when you sit down to your main course. Perfect timing!

To make an apple or pear topping for bread pudding, just saute sliced apples or pears in butter with some sugar until the sugar caramelizes — don’t walk away from this project because it will happen quickly! Pour the fruit and caramel on top of a prepared (but not baked) bread pudding and you have a really special dessert ready for the oven. Here is a more complete recipe for the caramel apple bread pudding that I made for my elegant dinner party last month.

We Americans throw away so much food every day and there is simply no need for it. There is almost always something you can do with food to use it up before it goes bad if you just think about it in a different way. If you, like me, buy a lot of fruit because your kids like to eat fruit way more than they like to eat vegetables, you probably also have found yourself with fruit that is starting to get a bit yucky. Before you toss it though, try to give that fruit one more chance to feed your family. Bake with it, freeze it, turn it into a smoothie or a popsicle. Just don’t throw it out!

Fruit Going Bad? Don’t Throw it Away! is a post from: West of the Loop

Some of the mouth-watering pastries at Hendickx Belgian Breadcrafter

On a recent cold and rainy Saturday morning, I was lucky enough to take a behind-the-scenes tour of Hendrickx Belgian Breadcrafter, a true European-style bakery located in the heart of Chicago’s Gold Coast. While customers filed in for their chance to purchase a warm croissant and fresh coffee, our lucky group was whisked to the back room to watch master baker Renaud Hendrickx and his staff make their artisan country bread, their flaky croissants, their rich Belgian dark chocolate cake and their sweet and savory eclairs. The smells wafting from the nearby ovens were intoxicating. Luckily, the tour was punctuated by many samples or there might have been a mutiny.

While the workers loaded and unloaded the ovens, kneaded dough and filled eclairs, Renaud’s partner Dominique explained the rich tradition behind Belgian baking. She told us that even in the 21st century, Belgians prefer to buy their breads and pastries from master bakers who do all their baking on the premises. It is that tradition that Renaud seeks to carry on in the States. All of Hendrickx’s products are made in their tiny back room with the freshest ingredients. The Hendrickx massive country loaf — weighing in at a hefty seven pounds — is made from scratch with only four ingredients: flour, yeast, water and salt.  Their croissants — which come in several mouth-watering flavors — take 18 hours from start to finish because the dough must be allowed to rest periodically in order to form those delicate flaky layers.

The care and expertise that Renaud brings to his craft is evident in every bite. My husband declared the buttery croissant that he sampled to be the best of his life. And then he went back for one of the apple turnovers. My children would not let us leave without buying some of the hearty country bread, which fortunately is sold by the quarter and half loaf because what modern family can eat a 7 lb loaf of bread? But the loaf is a revelation for those fed on tasteless supermarket bread. The flavor is yeasty with a hint of salt and the texture perfection. The firm crust protects an airy but not doughy interior. It is bread like this that is the staff of life.

Hendrickx Belgian Bakery is truly a Chicago gem and its Gold Coast neighbors know it. The line was practically out the door by 10 am. The bakery even features a small cafe where one can enjoy a soft-boiled egg or a perfectly brewed cup of tea with one’s pastries. But if you don’t live near the Gold Coast, you can still enjoy the Hendrickxs’ European-style breads and pastries. Artizone.com will deliver Hendrickx bread, croissants and even that dark chocolate cake to your door step.

For me and my husband, our excursion to the Hendrickx bakery was the perfect teaser for our upcoming trip to Paris. I can’t wait to see how the Parisian croissants stack up to the Chicago ones.

Full disclosure time: I was invited to tour Hendrickx bakery because of my on-going relationship with Artizone.com, a website for which I develop recipes. On the tour, we received free samples and some products to take home. I purchased some additional products of my own volition. I was not asked to write about the tour nor was I compensated in any way. All opinions expressed herein are entirely my own.

A Taste of Brussels in Chicago is a post from: West of the Loop

Merguez sausage adds a smoky heat to this lentil soup.

It’s a cliché to quote TS Eliot’s aphorism that April is the cruelest month. So let me just say that the weather this month in Chicago has been abysmal: cold, grey, rainy and dreary. Gosh, it’s almost like the weather is supposed to be in March. Except this year, March was like July.  Anyway, all this talk about the weather is a long way of explaining that it is still soup season west of the Loop.

2012 has been the year of the lentil for me in the kitchen. I have embraced this humble legume as a way of expanding my repertoire of vegetarian meals. Lentils were always something I enjoyed eating in restaurants but felt intimidated to make at home. I have since learned, however, that dried lentils are easy to make at home and don’t require the long soaking time of, say, dried beans.

Since overcoming my fear, I have used the red Indian lentils to make a curried lentil dish that was inspired by my Sri Lankan cooking class. And I regularly use the green French lentils — called lentils de Puy — to make lentil soup. Lentil soup is one of those foods that makes you feel virtuous — it’s like 70′s vegetarian restaurant fare — yet still tastes really really good. I am particularly excited about this lentil soup recipe because it uses merguez, which is a spicy Moroccan lamb sausage. (Yes, I know that this soup is therefore not vegetarian. It could be though! Just skip the sausage.)

I am excited about using merguez for two reasons. First, as I mentioned, merguez is a lamb sausage, meaning it does not contain pork. After all, it comes from North Africa, where the majority of people are Muslims, who — like observant Jews — do not eat pork. We do not have pork in our house (because we are semi-observant Jews) and I miss having an ingredient that imparts a smoky spiciness the way pork sausage can. Merguez is a happy substitute.

I also enjoy cooking with merguez because it reminds me of my student days in Paris. Merguez are street food in Paris — sold on street corners on a bun with matchstick-thin frites piled on top. When you are stumbling home drunk after a late night out, a merguez with frites really hits the spot — or so I am told. I wouldn’t know anything about that.

So, for all these reasons, I was thrilled to discover that Gepperth’s Meat Market sells merguez and my friends at Artizone.com deliver it. I have been stocking my freezer with several pounds at a time. Merguez is also good grilled or added to pasta dishes. My husband is not sure that he likes merguez as much as I do — but then again, he’s never had one on a Parisian street corner at 2 am. But he does like this lentil soup recipe, in which the merguez is solidly in the background adding richness and depth without too much lamb flavor.

If you can’t find merguez or have no religious objection to pork, a smoky pork sausage would be a fine substitution. And again, if your goal here is to eat vegetarian, just skip the sausage altogether. This soup makes a satisfying vegetarian dinner when paired with a salad and some crusty bread.

Lentil Soup with Merguez

¹⁄₂ lb Merguez sausage
3 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1 lb green French lentils
1 Large Onion chopped
3 Carrots peeled and diced
3 Whole Celery ribs, chopped
3 Cloves Garlic minced
1 can whole plum Tomatoes with juice
6 Pints Chicken Stock
2 Teaspoons Cumin
2 Teaspoons Coriander
1 Pinch Cayenne pepper
2 Tablespoons Red Wine Vinegar

After checking for any random pebbles or other undesirables, soak the lentils in boiling water for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, remove the Merguez sausage meat from its casings and brown in a large stock pot. When the meat is browned, remove and set it aside. Add olive oil to stock pot over medium heat. Saute onions, garlic, carrots and celery over medium-low until tender and translucent. Add spices and salt and pepper. Saute a few more minutes until fragrant. Add the tomatoes with their juice, crushing the tomatoes with the back of your spoon, and bring the mixture  to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until thickened, 15 minutes. Add lentils and chicken stock. Bring back to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until lentils are soft, about 45 minutes. If you have an immersion blender, you may want to use it to puree the soup at this point. I prefer to do that for a smoother texture, but it’s not necessary. After pureeing, return the browned sausage meat to soup. Simmer until warmed through. Add red wine vinegar at the end to brighten the flavors. Garnish with Parmesan cheese.

Lentil Soup with Merguez is a post from: West of the Loop

JR seems to have come down with a bug this weekend. It’s a rare occurrence that our little guy is sick.  He actually hasn’t missed any preschool this year because of illness, save one afternoon when I pulled him out early to have the pediatrician look at the weird rash that had spread across his face. (Rashes he gets a lot. Although he is almost never sick, JR is what one dermatologist called “the kind of  kid who keeps us in business.” Eczema, impetigo, molloscum, cradle cap — you name a skin condition, JR has had it.) As I watched JR sacked out under his Spiderman blanket this afternoon, I was reminded of this post I wrote about him in June 2011. I thought I would re-post it for a chuckle. It seems appropriate today.

I have been laid low this week with a summer cold. Henry James once said that “summer afternoon” is the most beautiful phrase in the English language. If that is so, then “summer cold” must be one of the ugliest. The cause of the summer cold, I have no doubt, is sleep deprivation caused by none other than my beloved son. You see, JR has been getting up at first light for the past few weeks. Think 5:15 am. He has blackout curtains in his room — so please don’t suggest getting some — but as soon as a crack of light seeps in through the sides, that kid bolts out of bed like he was shot out of a cannon. Usually, my husband handles the early morning shift. (This was the result of a Faustian bargain he made with me when Zuzu was a baby. As an early-to-bed, early-to-rise kind of guy, he said that he couldn’t deal with the baby’s night wakings,  but assured me that when she was older, he would get up with her in the morning. That may have sucked for the first year, but now it turns out to have been a pretty sweet deal for me.)  But he was traveling much of last week and earlier this week, so I had no choice but to watch the sun rise with the J-Man. Combine that with a deadline that caused me to burn the midnight oil a few nights in a row, and I was running a serious sleep deficit. For me, that always results in illness.

As I sniffed and sneezed my way through my summer cold, my husband and I were reminded of the fact that JR — the very cause of my grief — never gets sick. All the parents reading this just thought: “Don’t jinx yourself!” But folks, we are way past jinxing. It’s downright spooky. Seriously, we’ve been saying for months that the kid never gets sick, and he still hasn’t gotten sick. In fact, he did not miss a day of preschool for illness all year. The last time I remember him being sick was January…of 2009.

That last illness was a fun occasion. I had come down with a massive upper respiratory infection on a Sunday and the next morning my husband left on a business trip. I was so sick that I couldn’t even get out of bed to take the kids to school. I arranged a ride for Zuzu with a neighbor and one of the preschool teachers picked up JR on her way to school. Over the course of the morning, JR slowly started coming down with something himself.  The teachers knew something was wrong because he was so quiet and docile. The preschool director actually drove JR home herself because she knew I couldn’t get out of bed to pick him up.

The rest of that day was one of the hardest I have had as a parent. I actually made the calculated decision not to give JR any medicine to bring down his fever — which was not dangerously high, I feel compelled to add — because I knew that if he started feeling better, I wouldn’t be able to handle him. But if he stayed sick and feverish, then we could just make it through the rest of the day, sprawled out together on my bed, sleeping and watching TV. Not my finest parenting moment, perhaps, but I have no regrets. I did what I had to do.

So, that was the last time that JR was actually sick. 18 months of perfect health is quite a streak for a preschooler. My husband and I constantly ask ourselves why it is that JR has the constitution of an ox. My husband’s theory is that germs are afraid of him. That strikes me as plausible. My only competing theories are that either 1) JR ate so much dirt as a toddler that he is now immune to everything or, 2) he has a freakishly strong immune system because he consumes such massive quantities of Go-Gurt.

There is one other theory as to why JR is so disturbingly healthy.  The weird thing is, despite the fact that he hasn’t had a fever in a year and a half, JR always feels hot to the touch.  He runs so hot that sometimes people who hug him think he’s feverish when he’s perfectly well. And he never feels the cold. Even when it’s bitter out, he never complains and he is perfectly content to run around in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt when I am wearing jeans, boots and a wool coat. These additional weird things about JR have lead me to conclude — and this is where I reveal my familiarity with the “Twilight” series — that he must be part werewolf. No other explanation seems possible. And frankly, it explains a few other things about the boy as well.

So my answer to the Team Edward versus Team Jacob question that all the kids (and embarrassed 30-something women) are debating these days? Plainly, I’m on Team JR.

My Kid is Part Werewolf (Repost) is a post from: West of the Loop

Ramps looks like wild onion, Both the green tops and the bulbs can be used.

It’s mid-April and for Farmers’ Market Finds that means two things: ramps and fava beans. I will talk about fava beans another time, when I have recovered from the repetitive stress injury I got while shelling them. Today I want to talk about ramps. Ramps are one of those foods that has gone from obscure to so-trendy-as-to-verge-on-becoming-overexposed in the past two or three years.  I remember reading about a West Virginia town’s ramps festival in the Washington Post Food section a dozen years ago.  Back then, ramps were a plant that only grew wild and those in-the-know had to forage for them.  By 2008, they were one of the year’s Top Ten food trends.  Now you can find them at Whole Foods, two (teeny) bunches for $5.

Ramps herald the arrival of spring and thus cause an amount of excitement that some find to be disproportionate to their merits. I will admit to being one of the people who gets excited about ramps. For the uninitiated, ramps are a variety of wild leek with a mild garlic flavor.  They have a small bulb at the bottom and a leafy green top.  They are apparently hard to cultivate and tend to be available only for a few weeks in the spring.  Someone must have figured out how to grow them, however, if Whole Foods is selling them.  While I’ve been reading about ramps for years, I have only been able to buy them recently because most Illinois farmers’ markets do not start until late May, and ramps were traditionally an East Coast phenomenon anyway.  So when I saw them for sale at Whole Foods after all these years, there was no question I was going to buy some.

I had a lot of fun with my ramps this week.   I pickled the bulbs in a sweet and spicy brine and made a delicious garlicky-tasting pesto with the leaves.  Other times, I have sautéed the greens and folded some of them into scrambled eggs and used the rest to top a pizza.  You can really use the sauteed greens anyplace where you enjoy the flavor of onions, like on top of a hamburger.

Pickled ramps are quite a phenomenon and you can find lots of different recipes for them. Here is one that my friend Marisa (of the canning blog Food in Jars) posted on Serious Eats. I improvised my particular pickled ramps recipe, but since this is a quick pickle that is refrigerated, not one that I process for shelf-stability, it is okay to improvise a bit. I will have to wait a few more weeks to see how they turned out.  One trick I have learned about pickled ramps: slice them thinly before eating . Last year, when I made pickled ramps, I tried to eat them whole and I found them stringy and tough and just not very good. But then, at a restaurant, I had a dish that was garnished with sliced pickled ramps and I loved it. So that’s how I plan to use my pickled ramps in a few weeks when they have had time to cure.

One thing we know for sure about ramps: they will be gone in a week or two, if they are not already. But it was fun to play with them while they lasted.

I love the bright green color of pesto made from ramps leaves.

Ramps Pesto

2 small bunches ramps, green tops removed and roughly chopped (approximately 3 cups)
1/4 cups pine nuts, toasted*
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine pine nuts and ramps in a food processor and process into a coarse paste. With the food processor on, add the olive oil slowly in a steady stream. Process until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste. This pesto can be frozen. Feel free to add grated Parmesan before serving. Use as a sauce for pasta or any other place where you use pesto.

*It really makes a difference in the flavor of the pesto if you toast the pine nuts.

Quick Pickled Ramps

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp. pickling salt
2 bunches of ramps, bulb ends only, trimmed and cleaned
1 bay leaf
Pinch red pepper flakes
Pinch brown mustard seeds
3-4 whole cloves

Bring water, vinegar, sugar and salt to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Place the ramps in a sterilized, clean (preferably warm) 8 oz. glass jar. Add the bay leaf and other spices. Pour brine over the ramps in the jar, leaving 1/2 of room (known as headspace) at the top. Wipe off the rim of the jar and cover with a plastic top or ring and lid. Store in the refrigerator for a week or two before eating.

Farmers’ Market Find: Ramps is a post from: West of the Loop

Part of my new living room.

My house recently got a dramatic makeover. A few months ago, my mom sold the house that she and my dad lived in for over twenty years and moved into a very cool apartment. Naturally, she could not bring everything from a five-bedroom house to her two-bedroom apartment, so there was a lot of extra furniture. My parents had some beautiful antiques that they had bought over the years and that they had inherited from my grandparents, so these were not pieces to get rid of. Happily, my mom sent many of them to me. A moving truck arrived at my door on Sunday morning and two men unloaded couches, tables, chairs, dressers, lamps — so many lamps! — pictures and china and glassware. My family room got a complete makeover. My previously empty living room is now full. Even my bedroom has a new love seat and end table where the ironing board once stood. (The ironing board was never a decorating choice — just laziness.)

We also redid Zuzu’s room as a result of hitting the furniture jackpot. Previously, her desk had been located in a corner of the empty living room. Now that the living room really looks like a living room, her desk has been kicked out. We ended up moving her old desk to the kids’ playroom to be an art table and Zuzu got a nice antique desk in her bedroom. But getting that desk into her bedroom required a major stuffed animal/doll furniture/book purge. Lots of things had to be moved to the attic — which is our playroom — to make room for her big girl desk.

The truth is, Zuzu is a complete packrat. This a tendency she inherited from her father, whose junior high school papers are stashed in our basement along with ancient computer keyboards and cassette tapes. (Needless to say, I am very much looking forward to the big electronics recycling day in River Forest on May 5.) And, like her father, Zuzu embraces a level of chaos in her bedroom that would give me hives.  Years ago, her room was overrun with miniscule Polly Pockets accessories. Now it is overrun with Harry Potter Lego pieces and American Girl Doll hair accessories. And getting her to tidy up is no mean feat. I don’t blame her – picking up all those little pieces is tedious.

JR’s room isn’t much better. Although he is not into Legos yet, he recently got into Playmobil, which has some ridiculously small pieces. He has a Playmobil Zoo, for example, that not only has teeny tiny meerkats, it also has teeny tiny meerkat scat. Are you kidding me? And he has a lot of multi-part building toys, like Wedgets, Magna-tiles and Geo-Mags, that he uses to create elaborate habitats for his Schleich animals. It’s a clean-up nightmare.

Zuzu's Toydozer lives next to her Harry Potter Legos.

So, I now have a grown-up looking house with lots of nice furniture, and big kids whose toys have lots and lots of small pieces. How am I going to keep my house looking halfway decent? Well, for one thing, I have stashed a Toydozer in each kid’s room and another one upstairs in our attic play room. The Toydozer is a new, kid-friendly clean-up tool that was, naturally, invented by a mom who was tired of cleaning up Legos.  The Toydozer has two parts: the base or “gatherer” resembles a dust pan. The second part is a scoop that you use to sweep the little toys into the base. Then, you just dump the collected toys into a bin or container. In case you are thinking to yourself that the scoop will surely get misplaced, rest assured that it actually attaches to the base with Velcro when not in use.

The best thing about the Toydozer is that kids will actually use it themselves. It is made out of colorful, sturdy plastic and the scoop is very easy for little hands to manipulate. Plus, you might even convince your kids that it is fun to sweep the toys into the base. In fact, Toydozer was named one of the Top 10 products that makes clean-up time more fun. Even if you can’t convince them that cleaning up is fun, at least with the Toydozer, you can assure your kids that the task will be done quickly and they can move on to something else.

The Toydozer retails for $18.99 and ships free from their website. To learn more about the product and the mom who invented it, go to the Toydozer Facebook page or follow them on Twitter. If you are interested in buying your own Toydozer, you can get 20% off the retail price with the discount code BLOGGER20.

I also have one Toydozer to give away to a lucky West of the Loop reader! To enter the giveaway, leave a comment to this post telling me what your biggest clean-up challenge is. Is it art supplies? Legos? Playmobil animal scat? I am curious to know.

You can earn an additional entry the following ways:

• Follow @toydozer on Twitter.
• Tweet about this giveaway with a link back to this post. Use the hash tag #toydozer.
• Like the Toydozer Facebook page.
• Share this giveaway on your Facebook timeline with a link to this post.

Please leave me a comment for each additional entry that you earn. All entries must be received by April 20. That’s Friday, people! I will select one winner at random. Good luck!

This post is part of a Toydozer blogger outreach campaign. Participating bloggers, including me, have been provided with a complimentary Toydozer to review and have been compensated for their time. All opinions expressed herein are entirely my own.

Spring Cleaning with Toydozer is a post from: West of the Loop

Lemon curd is a noble use for leftover egg yolks.

Whatever you do, don’t throw them out!

As I have mentioned, it is Passover this week and kosher-for-Passover desserts are a whole crazy category unto themselves. Meringues happen to be an extremely popular Passover dessert, as indeed is any recipe in which the leavening occurs through whipping egg whites into a foamy frenzy. My friend Rowena, of the fashion and lifestyle blog She She Shoppers, made a beautiful Pavlova for her family’s Passover Seder dessert. I myself made a semi-successful batch of Pesadich brownies last week that consisted of sugar, cocoa powder, four egg whites and not much else.

When I was making the brownies, I saved the four leftover yolks in a plastic container and stashed them in the fridge. Why did I do that? As I have said before, while I am not a frugal person in most areas of my life, I hate waste in the kitchen. And moreover, I know that extra egg yolks can come in handy. A few days later, faced with rapidly aging leftover egg yolks, I decided to make lemon curd. (Actually, the lemon curd recipe that I use, which comes from my friend Marisa’s canning blog Food in Jars, calls for six egg yolks. So, in order to use up the four leftover egg yolks, I had to separate two more eggs and ended up with two leftover egg whites, but let’s not focus on that right now.) I mentioned this in passing to Rowena who responded mournfully that she wished she had had my lemon curd recipe because the leftover egg yolks from her Pavlova had ended up in the trash.

Rowena’s comment made me realize that perhaps people don’t realize all the different uses for egg yolks and egg whites. Hence, this post. There is no reason to throw out leftover egg whites or egg yolks and I hope that after reading this post, you won’t ever do it again. I am not a strident environmentalist nor I am a frugal penny-pincher. But I am a cook who likes to get the most out of her ingredients and I am experienced enough to know how to do that. With a little bit of knowledge and imagination, anyone can do the same.

If this kind of instinctive cooking is something that you are interested in learning more about, I highly recommend a new book by Tamar Adler called An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace. I am in the middle of this book and I am so excited about it that I have been highlighting favorite passages like I am in a college English seminar. If you are in a cooking rut, or just want to cook more mindfully, this book is for you. She even has a whole chapter on eggs: poached eggs, boiled eggs, pasta with eggs, leftovers with eggs. It’s brilliant.

Egg Yolk Ideas

• Make lemon, lime or other citrus curd (recipe below)
• Lots of rich doughs call for egg yolks only, such as shortbreads or babkas.
• Add egg yolks to fresh ricotta cheese and chopped spinach as a filling for stuffed shells, manicotti or lasagna. The yolks will thicken the mixture and add nutrition. Season with a dash of nutmeg and salt and pepper.
• Add egg yolks to ground beef or ground turkey for making hamburgers or meatloaf. The yolks will act as a binder.
• This is ambitious, but one of the sexiest things you can do with leftover egg yolks is make homemade mayonnaise, or, if you want to get really fancy, aioli.

Lemon Curd

This recipe comes from Marisa McClellan of the canning blog Food in Jars. Her cookbook of the same name will be out in May. I can’t wait!

6 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
½ cup lemon juice
1 stick of butter, cut into chunks
Zest from the juiced lemons

In a small, heavy bottom pot, combine the egg yolks and sugar. Add the lemon juice and cook gently over medium heat. Stir continually for 10-15 minutes, adjusting the heat as you go to to make sure that the custard does not boil. (If it does, the eggs will curdle and it will be nasty.) The curd is done when it has thickened and coats the back of the spoon. Remove from heat. Drop in the butter and stir until melted.

Pour the curd through a fine mesh sieve set over a heat-proof bowl to remove any bits of cooked egg. Do not be tempted to skip this step because biting into to a little piece of scrambled egg in the otherwise smooth curd is — you guessed it — nasty. Whisk in the zest.

Pour the curd into a glass jar for keeping. I find that this recipe makes a scant pint. Lemon curd is delicious on pound cake, scones, stirred into yogurt or as a dip for berries.

Egg White Ideas

• Any kind of meringue. You can make meringue kiss cookies with just egg whites and sugar — they’re a very low-calorie treat for the dieters in your life. Here is an old recipe of mine for chocolate mint meringues. If you are entertaining, you can make a large meringue to fill with berries and cream. A Pavlova is a good example of this kind of meringue dessert. You can also make a meringue topping for a pie or bar cookies. Meringues are pretty easy to master if you find a good cookbook explanation of the technique, like the one in the Joy of Cooking. I find the most important thing is to make sure the bowl you use to whip the egg whites is scrupulously clean and grease-free and add the sugar gradually.
• Often light desserts such as angel food cake call for egg whites only.
• Scramble with low-fat cheese for a healthy and filling breakfast. Or add egg whites to a whole egg to stretch your scrambled eggs out while still getting the richness of a yolk.
• Egg whites can be frozen. One clever way to do this is to freeze individual egg whites in compartments of an ice cube tray. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t even own an ice cube tray because the freezer makes my ice cubes. But I do have a little freezer tray for making homemade baby food (ha!) so I use that.
• You can use egg whites to make dough stick together, such as when you are making a ravioli, a wonton or even a filled cookie.

That should get you started. If you have any other clever uses for just egg yolks or just the whites, leave them in the comments.

What to Do with Extra Egg Yolks and Egg Whites is a post from: West of the Loop