You don’t really start working so much with mushrooms unless you’re going a little crazy or falling in love with them or both. Mushrooms are mysterious. When people visit our little mushroom operation, they struggle a bit with vocabulary to ask questions: “So you plant…the mushroom…spores?” Humans are generally conversant with ideas of roots and flowers and seeds, but we are not so everyday-equipped with terms like mycelium or spawn run.

We try to make analogies: you can consider mycelium the “roots” of the fungus, sort of, kind of, and the mushroom itself is essentially the fruit. But mushrooms are neither plant nor animal—Fungi are their own kingdom! we gleefully geek out—and there the similarities end. There is no ovum, no brightly colored, buzzing, pregnant reproductive generative-ness to the mushroom life cycle. There is fertilization involved, but not in a way that is easily recognizable to us, and it varies from fungus to fungus exactly how that happens. “Male” and “female” designations break down in mushroom sex. To cultivate a shiitake mushroom is to cultivate rot, to take a perfectly good, fresh, green log, and to coax it through somewhat controlled breakdown, and to harvest the fruits of that degeneration.

* * *

This year, more rain fell by mid-August than falls on average in an entire year. My tomatoes–normally the best part of my summers–have swollen, cracked, and dropped to the ground, green. The basement has flooded minor-ly twice and majorly once. Ben fights mildew and rot in the vineyard. What a blessed relief, then, to be growing something that flourishes in the wet; to have no tomatoes or sweet corn to speak of, but at least to have something to harvest. After a particularly large downpour, we brought in 50 pounds of shiitakes. Plenty, in a hard summer, in a changing climate. It reassures.

A dystopian novel about a wet, mildewy world where people only eat mushrooms is something I would read. Apocalypse and dystopia are kind of in fashion right now, and no doubt The Handmaid’s Tale and The Hunger Games and Westworld have affected me as much as everyone else. But alongside these greater cultural phenomena, I find myself seeking out people and books concerned with the question about what remains after it all burns (or floods, I suppose). Apocalypse is a lens through which to consider what remains after disaster, and what resiliency means. An abridged version of my summer reading and listening list:

– A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit is the consummate human-resiliency-in-the-face of disaster book that I’ve read before and returned to.

– HOW TO SURVIVE THE END OF THE WORLD podcast, by Autumn and Adrienne Maree Brown, two sisters/academics/a litany of other accomplishments, has been the biggest surprise delight of a podcast I have ever been recommended. The subtitle of their podcast is “learning from the apocalypse with grace, rigor and curiosity”, and they’ve turned me onto some amazing female POC writers.

– The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Tsing is, full disclosure, a book that I likely am not smart enough to comment on in full. But holy moly, the parts that my Instagram-dulled brain can comprehend really helped me to think through ideas of resiliency and changed the way I discuss issues of scarcity and precarity. This is the book that led my friend to turn to me at quiet moment on the beach and say, “You, um…talk a lot about capitalism right now.” Yup, I do, Steph, and it’s likely because of this book.

– My friend Leah Stokes is somehow a potter, academic, writer, and gardener all at the same time. She specializes in climate change policy, and kicked off this year with a New York Times op-ed and hasn’t looked back. I love following her writing because it’s smart, but also because she’s always asking questions, taking people to task, and trying to figure out answers (while still acknowledging that things are hard and doomed and that scratching around in your garden might not make a difference but it’s an important project nonetheless).

* * *

Next to my bed is a notebook with a pen clipped to it. On it I have written in all caps with a Sharpie, GRATITUDE JOURNALS ARE DUMB BUT YOU SHOULD DO IT ANYWAY. The gratitude journal is something I am supposed to do on the increasingly frequent days where I feel very, very tired and that everything is pointless and we have doomed ourselves and that not even love or god or Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez can redeem us. I do, in fact, think gratitude journals are dumb, but as my therapist sneakily asked me, “OK, but how are those other ways of dealing with your feelings working out for you?” (Touché.)

The jury is still out on the gratitude journal’s effectiveness, but I will say that one of the things that I have written in there is that I’m thankful for those of you who have read this blog in the past and have written to ask if I’m OK during the one-year-plus that I have not posted here. The truth is that I haven’t been okay, probably for a long time, but particularly over the past year.

My writing–something that typically brings me a lot of joy–has been one of the largest areas of my life to suffer. Maybe you also are sitting out there, thinking of something that you should enjoy doing, but that anxiety or a sense of general overwhelming stuck-ness or pointlessness or self-loathing is paralyzing you? Let me urge you to not be like me. Don’t wait until you’re in your 30s to get help. I want to tell you that you are heard, and that you’re enough. I don’t quite believe it yet myself, and I’m not really here to shill boring, one-dimensional positivity in the face of apocalypse. My work right now is in asking the questions. What remains? I try to ask myself. How can I be resilient?

The post The mushroom at the end of the world first appeared on The Yellow House.

Yes, you’re allowed to drink on the train. The Union Station liquor store does brisk business in the afternoon, tanking people up with mini-Chardonnays, beers, and airplane Dewar’s bottles for the train ride home. Every once in awhile there’s an exposé on the local news about a “party car” on the commuter train, usually an overblown account of some wildness that goes on while people are under the influence. At one stop outside DC, there’s a guy who will take pizza orders and deliver them into the arms of waiting passengers.

But I switched jobs, and the new job is in a different part of the District. I take a bus now instead of a train. It’s a quieter, more subdued crowd. They come from the ‘burbs instead of farms, little-ticky-tacky-box types of folks. We do not drink, at least not alcohol, and probably not coffee because everyone is off of caffeine and gluten. We aren’t allowed to eat. I no longer have a cute, cocky young conductor friend who lets me ride for free because I baked him cookies one time.

The changed commute reflects a changed schedule: I go into the city less often now; but for much longer days. Dinner is a real chore on those long days; I am usually ravenous and a little blinded by low blood sugar when I get home.
. . .

Two of my favorite food people on the Internet are Amelia Morris and Tim Mazurek. Amelia interviewed Tim here recently and it was entertaining and thought-provoking, as they both are. But it was a quick little parenthetical that Tim slipped in that I’ve been thinking about a lot: “…am I the only 9-5 food blogger?”, he asked. And he’s probably not, but I think he’s one of the few successful ones. How odd, really, that the people who we trust to help us find ways to eat and cook realistically for our families and friends are those who make their living writing about cooking. It’s probably why I value Tim’s voice so much, because I know that he gets up in the morning and goes to kick ass at his full-time, non-food job and then makes time to share his writing and critical eye on recipes that work.

…

Food media rewards making really good food look effortless and accessible. I kind of think that really good food is the opposite of effortless and accessible. Like a lot of people, I’ve been digging into the highly anticipated Liz Prueitt‘s Tartine All Day: Modern Recipes for the Home Cook, but approached it with some trepidation. Prueitt and her husband, Chad Robertson, are at the helm of the San Francisco cult-Tartine empire, professional cooks who make Cali-cool, naturally leavened bread and café fare. Billed as a “hardworking cookbook that will guide and inspire home cooks”, you have to wonder if it actually will, considering the source.

Prueitt’s intro to the book is reassuringly grounded, though. “You see, there’s no way around it: cooking is work. Work in that it requires forethought, a modicum of skill, and time. Work in that you must use your hands, stand on your feet, and wash the dishes. (And, full disclosure: for my husband, Chad, and me, cooking is work. It is how we earn our living.)”

. . .

I’ve been baking a lot of bread so I’ve been eating a lot of bread. I’ve written before that I think bread is a workhorse that can turn little scraps from the fridge into a meal very quickly, which is invaluable lately as I adjust to new rhythms. There’s no recipe for that kind of meal, though, it’s just foraging in your own kitchen for something that satisfies your hunger. It does feel like foraging, too, digging past Tupperware containers and shaking up old jars of vinaigrette and smelling leftovers to see if it’s still good to smash onto a piece of toast. In the end, I have not actually cooked, but I do have what feels like kind of a decent meal, and more importantly, I am fed.

. . .

The types of train folks who eat Domino’s pizza, who drink Dixie cups of red wine, and who are bribe-able with homemade cookies are my people. You can’t cook on a commuter train, they won’t get home until 8 PM, and they are hungry. I like hungry people. Maybe, like me, they’re foraging around in their fridge when they walk in the door, smashing stuff onto toast, standing at the kitchen table to eat before they take off their coat. So here’s a recipe from Tartine All Day that is not a weeknight dinner by any means, but is still really good, and importantly, makes excellent leftovers. It is a bit of work, but as Prueitt writes, “Your simple hope is that while sitting around the table to share the fruits of your labor, the effort fades to memory.” We won’t always be, but all we can do is keep on cooking and feeding our hungry selves, and we might sometimes be that lucky.

The post Savory bread pudding with mushrooms & bacon first appeared on The Yellow House.

I am making three lasagnas, one for a family member who was just diagnosed with lymphoma, one for a friend with a brand new baby, and one for my sister.

The baby and the cancer happened so quickly, seemingly days apart. Events like these make me broody about mortality and humans and life. In darker moments, it feels relentless, this onslaught of new babies and people I love falling sick, as if I will never possess arms open enough or heart big enough to welcome them and give them the tenderness they deserve, the protection they need. Three lasagnas: the puniest of offerings.

I bring the lasagna to family dinner, and everyone has seconds. Everyone is quiet while they chew. It is not okay. And yet.

II. On a Tuesday night, oh wait, now early Wednesday morning, oh god

I am not one to wallow, really. I think things can be really, really bad, but not apocalyptic. Modernity is simultaneously more fragile and more resilient than we think. I believe in work. Which is probably why it was a very bad idea to take off a week of work during the election.

We are having talks about normalization in our household and in popular media, and I have opinions about it. What I want everyone to know is that it’s human to normalize things, so you shouldn’t feel guilty when you do. Should you fight it? Yes. Set yourself a calendar reminder every morning at 8 am to write to your senator about Aleppo or Bannon or campaign finance reform or immigration. Automate your donations. Use behavioral psychology to help your poor lizard brain keep its focus on important issues of which it will tire. And it will tire. You will want, soon enough, to post a photo of the yuppie naturally leavened bread that you baked.

When bad things happen, there’s a bizarre insistence from other conscientious folks that we stop talking about flip things like what’s for dinner, but the fact is that we all still eat, and that the bad things are there, every single day. Similarly, the work never, ever ends. Timeliness of our response is important. Consistency, though, and settling in for the long haul, is paramount. We have to be able to, every single day, keep our brains and hearts open enough to fight injustice where you see it and drive yourself to work and take care of your babies or your health or your girlfriend and sometimes to eat dinner. These things are not of equal importance. But there they are, all contained in the span of the same 24 hours.

I’m stirring a pot of soup while calling my senator (How is he doing? I ask the answering machine. Must be weird to be that-guy-who-was-almost-vice-president). Some people’s day jobs are writing about food. Some people’s day jobs are working at a bank. Some people’s day jobs are being Senator-Almost-Vice-President. My day job is working on health systems in poor countries, but for some reason I’ve also been writing a silly blog about food (sort of) for six years. I want us all to keep our day jobs and our silly blogs and keep cooking dinner and keep fighting. These things are not mutually exclusive. I want us to work to keep them not mutually exclusive, not just for ourselves, but for everyone else. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone else could cram fighting and working and also enjoying a meal into their days?

This is what I am committed to, the victory of the ordinary-that-is-not-ordinary. It is popular to act like sitting down to a reasonable dinner at the end of the day is a small, humble act. What a joke. It is a big, hard act, and it is a privilege.

I have a nurse practitioner friend who says that everyone medicates in some way or another. I drink more wine than I should.

III. Early Wednesday morning

We have a small copse of woods on our property, around 4 scrubby acres. It’s not much, but it’s a veritable nature preserve for the surrounding area, as the developments close in around us. Coyotes, white-tailed deer, pileated woodpeckers. The deer are a plague. We signed up for a service that links small landowners with hunters, with the aim of letting some bow hunters into the woods this season. (Yes, this is basically AirBnb for hunting. What a world.)

At first, I wasn’t sure how I felt about having strangers out killing animals in our woods. But I’ve been surprised how nice it feels to share our small sanctuary with people, and grateful for their respect and kindness. One is a wine importer, and brings gifts of ground venison alongside bottles of Brut cava. Another, an older gentleman who has retired to the aforementioned dreaded developments, is so enthusiastic it’s catching. “This is God’s country!” he shouts as he walks back in, cheeks cold and shiny red. He’s convinced there’s an eight-point buck out there. They drive in before dawn.

One day as I headed out, Tom, the wine importer, huffed and puffed through the yard, dragging a doe behind him. “Did you just get her?” I asked. “No,” he said, “I got her at first light, clean. She dropped where she stood. But then I sat and watched the morning.” He promises to bring the backstrap – the choicest cut – for us, and I promise to share with him the best venison chili recipe. He drives home, and I drive into DC.

IV. Yesterday
I have been writing an essay about Dairy Queen for about six months now. I got it into my head the last time I visited my grandparents’ farm in Indiana that I was going to write this piece about Dairy Queen and taking refuge and hockey-puck-shaped Dilly Bars. I planned to take a grand writer road trip to confirm that, per this outdated website, the original Dairy Queen in Joliet, Illinois became a church and then an auto insurance office. Sometimes I overshare and tell people all about this fabulous essay that I’m sort of in the middle of writing, and I have a lot of it done, like a lot, like 10,000 words a lot, which actually is definitely too many words to write about your personal feelings about Dairy Queen.

In any event, I consider it something of a creative failure to have only been able to write part of a long, bad essay about Dairy Queen for six months. I don’t need to tell you the kind of paralyzing, sneaky, hate spiral this can send someone into, one where one doesn’t do anything at all because of the aforementioned clear creative failure.

But I do want to write more, and yesterday, at a very low moment, decided that even if it’s just a LiveJournal rant about feelings, thinly-veiled politics, soup, and dead deer, that I would do so, today. So here I am. Ben is at a conference (farmers have conferences in the winter). I am eating cold leftover Kung Pao tofu. I am writing.

Tomorrow I’ll call Tim Kaine’s answering machine again.

***

I. This lasagna – the creme fraiche is a true stroke of genius. It’s almost annoying how fabulous all of Julia Turshen’s recipes are.

II. This soup: Kenji for president

III. Best ever venison chili: Molasses! Coffee! Many chiles!

IV. Get your wok out, I made Kung Pao tofu that’s a mash-up of this (without the deep frying, sorry President Kenji), this, and this recipe. It is a process, but good. Chinkiang vinegar if you can get your hands on it; 1 tbsp red wine + 1 tbsp balsamic if you can’t.

V. Places to send your ducats, if ya got ’em:
– Southern Poverty Law Center
– Planned Parenthood
– NAACP
– Council on Islamic-American Relations
– Consider supporting your local or regional or national news outlets! We need strong free press more than ever.

The post What to eat when things aren’t going so well first appeared on The Yellow House.

No one ever seems to think this is an odd question, which makes me think that it hits on something important. My aunt is in her fifties, but I think her answer is 27 (is that right, Colette?). The point of the exercise, I guess, is that hardly anyone believes that when startled awake, they would give the age they actually are. What does that mean?

There’s nothing like summer to make me mull over how vague and relative time is. In contrast with the Everglades-heavy air outside, summer time feels fluid, perhaps sluggish in the moment but then, whoops, it’s late July, high summer and the black-eyed Susans are blooming. I measure time in bumper crops (first, zucchini; then, berries; now, tomatoes).

Summer brings vacations, if we’re lucky, which have their own odd way of messing with time. Ben and I went on a mini-escape to Seattle as part of a work trip, which was mainly an excuse for me to eat as many bivalves as I could get my hands on. Molly and I hung out for a couple hours at Dino’s. (We had a lot of Campari, which, if you read Molly’s stuff at all, you’ll know is the way to hang out with Molly). Ben and I also carved out a little brunch with Tara at the famous Orchard House. Seriously, though: mostly I just ate oysters washed down with white wine and Puget Sound views, and tried to get my mind off of accumulating work emails (seeking strategies for how to deal with this stress of “unplugging”.) (Seriously.)

My little sister had a baby in June, which was a wonderful, monumental, crazy thing itself that I am still processing. We traveled together to Colorado with the baby to meet my mom’s family. On one particularly fussy day, the baby ate constantly and then crash-slept for 8 hours. When Louise picked her up in the morning, we were stunned: was this the same baby? Did she actually just grow a full inch and gain three chubby thigh-folds? Can you be five weeks old but look different overnight? (Do babies have a startle-you-awake-in-the-middle-of-the-night age?)

Back in Virginia (and back to work), it is very, very hot, and accordingly, appetites are not robust. Last night for dinner I had a beer, a handful of cherry tomatoes, and some sour cream and onion potato chips. When I have been cooking, it’s in response to all the aforementioned zucchini and berries and tomatoes. I haven’t been grocery shopping in a long time. I thought I might round up some of the ways I’ve been using up all of the good summer stuff, which is a bit of a cop-out laundry list, but it’s all I can muster in this humid haze.

I hope there’s a cold one to crack open wherever you are.

SUMMER SQUASH
I grew a fancy Italian heirloom zucchini this year, and maybe because of that have been cooking zucchini recipes almost exclusively from Rome-based Rachel Roddy, which is not a bad way to be cooking.
Simplest: Zucchini slowly cooked in garlic scented olive oil. Drape over toast or eggs.
Slightly more involved: Pasta cooked with a carbonara-style creamy egg sauce and ribbons of zucchini.

Because of some ridiculous oversized, overblown zucchinis that I grew, I also dredged up this baked zucchini fritter recipe from the olden days of this blog, which remains delicious and not too difficult, although I would now brown then a bit more.

TOMATOES
Someone recently reminded me that you have a good guide (from three years ago now) to the ways I mostly deal with summer tomatoes, here: Tomatoes at the Yellow House. I still make that tomato jam every year, although Domenica Marchetti’s new Preserving Italy book has me contemplating a golden version: stay tuned.

We tried this unusual tomato salad with cumin and lemon – really nice with a summery dinner.

I have become convinced that good ol’ caprese is way better with burrata than with regular mozzarella – do it.

And still more Rachel Roddy inspiration: We made these tomatoes stuffed with rice for dinner and they were so lovely, and so worth the wait time involved.

The post Summer, then first appeared on The Yellow House.

It has been the wettest, coolest, cloudiest spring in memory, and while reasonably happy for the water, all of our growing plants are a little slower on the uptake than normal—so, weirdness aside, I’m happy for the early glut of greens. (I am also posting not-relevant photos of one of the rare sunny afternoons we’ve had to remind myself what the sunshine looks like.)

I’ve been writing about growing collard greens and eating them for almost as long as this site has existed, but always in cooked form. This raw collard salad takes its cue from the raw kale salads that have dominated public consciousness in the past few kale-crazy years: thick, hearty greens, sliced thinly or torn into small pieces, dressed aggressively with assertive flavors, and then massaged or left to break down a little.

Just like when I first tried those raw kale salads, I was a skeptic about this collard version; just like when I first tried those raw kale salads, I was wrong. Unlike the kale, however, collards have a smoother leaf, resulting in a mouthful that’s a little less textured and is a little less shout-y about the fact that you’re eating such a hearty, cabbage-family plant raw. Raw collards are a bit peppery and make a nice change-up from your normal greens, falling somewhere between a true slaw and a tender, young salad.

After being dressed and tossed with a gingery, nutty vinaigrette, the ribbons of collards transform from waxy and stiff into a glossy, relaxed tangle. The original Bon Appétit recipe that I adapted this from called for making a seed brittle out of sesame and pepitas; you should definitely try that if you have the time. But toasted sesame seeds alone, thrown on top, are good enough for a quicker version, sticking pleasantly to the dressed leaves and crunching nicely in contrast with the slick collards.

The post May + a gingery, seed-y collard green salad first appeared on The Yellow House.