One Bowl at a Time

Bread sticks, guacamole & chips

 There's nothing like making soup for Martha Bayne's Soup and Bread at Chicago's Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia. Where else can you give away gallons of soup and pounds of breadsticks to people reveling in free food, while benefiting an agency that feeds the hungry? Martha's slogan is "building community, one bowl at a time," and that must be what makes it such a kick. You ladle out soup while checking out the other cooks' contributions—there were seven kinds last night—and then have one of the Hideout's excellent draft beers and chat with friends and strangers.

Lentil & sausage soup

 Martha makes sure there's always one for vegetarians: last night, curried ginger and carrot and green chile pozole, the latter made by a young woman from Texas who brings back armloads of Hatch chiles when she visits. For meat eaters there was an elaborate pork mole with home-pickled jalapeños and the best sign of all, see Holy Mole below.

Pork mole

  For meat eaters there was a ham and split pea soup  featuring meat from the cooks' family farm, a creamy Seneghalese chicken stew crunchy with coconut, and a  Moroccan spiced lamb soup. I made the lentil and sausage soup, invented by AntoniaJames, that won a prize on food52, using Kielbasa from C and D Family farm. They sells their formerly happy pork, beef, chicken and more at farmers markets throughout Chicago. I switched up her ketchup for harisssa, providing a little heat, but not enough to prevent one-year-old Anna from gobbling down some lentils.

The event takes place every Wednesday until spring, 5:30-7:30, and benefits a different community agency each week. It's a cozy respite form winter any time, but for me, it's best when I cook.

Soups set up

Peace at Christmas

Fish and Chips

 The fall semester at Columbia College hurtled to an end in mid-December, and suddenly my last class was over. I was on my way—by windy hike over the Halsted bridge and along Fulton Market—to Next Restaurant. Their Childhood menu transformed each kiddie favorite into a riff on itelf, from fish and chips rendered as a child's drawing to a winter walk in the Michigan woods that looked like an artful pile of twigs and tasted of parsnip and pine. A deconstructed sweet potato pie offered filling, crust and ice cream before a tabletop campfire (visible in the background).

Winter Wonderland

Sweet Potato Pie and Campfire

My daughter, Erica, and I cooked all day the next day, and one day later forty people aged ten months to seventy plus assembled at our house for hot cider, wine, squash soup, myriad cookies and Christmas carols. Erica displayed her handmade, blown-glass ornaments and sold quite a few.   

Erica's ornaments

Cookies, Christmas party

 Then, a week before Christmas, I settled into a deep peace. The party finished, I had only minor preparations to make for the holiday.  Time's slowing was almost palpable: some knitting here, cooking there, reading things the semester's rush had not allowed. Revisions on my novel each morning.Watching the news, I lucked into PBS's lovely rendition of Mark Doty's poem, "Messiah: Christmas Portion." 

Erica's lampwork beads

Joan and Byron Kast joined us for Christmas Eve, when we preserve the tradition of acting out gifts:  the recipient must guess before the gift is given. Joan made little bags of stocking gifts, inviting us all to trade with much hilarity. I sacrificed peanut butter cups and clung to my sardines. Erica and I exchanged gifts on Christmas morning, including this beautiful lampwork necklace and earrings she made for me. Through with the joys and obligations of ritual festivity, we went our separate ways, then joined when darkness came to watch Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris." What fun to meet F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Gertrude Stein and eat genuine Thai food from Sticky Rice.

Advent: Promise and Preparation

Maggie at O Cebreiro

Santa Maria la Real

In late summer I joined a novel-writing group/class led by Fred Schafer, a Northwestern professor. Besides reading and critiquing the work of members, we read and study all the novels of Colum McCann over the course of a year. Even before the first review of my work, Fred's insight into sentences and plots pushed me to new places in my novel, radical action for my protagonist and more immediate ways of telling her story. Something about the challenge to my existing words on the page and the promise of breakthrough in plot (change it!) plunged me into Advent preparations. When writing's confabulation threatened to drive me crazy, I turned to making Christmas cards, hunting up a photo I took last summer in the 9th-century church of Santa Maria la Real in O Cebreiro, Spain. The image of Madonna and Child felt right for Christmas, and recalling my walk to Santiago last summer seemed to anchor the year.

Harvard & Brioche hats

Christmas marshmellows

Shortbread Stars

As the days got shorter and colder, I started knitting hats for my kids and grandkids, intrigued by pattern and stitch. I'm still searching for the perfect warm, all-encompassing style I'll make for myself after Christmas. And preparation means baking, this year, lots of old Christmas favorites: German Lebkuchen, Vanille Kipferln,  homemade oreos and more.

A disappointing semester teaching Writing and Rhetoric II at Columbia College Chicago (four students out of eighteen failed) came to life with Occupy Columbia, a protest against higher education's reliance on part-timers—a ubiquitous practice—as well as escalating student debt. And my class also perked up with one student's discovery of Kirby Ferguson's marvelous video, "Everything's a Remix," a sort of visual analogue to Jonathan Lethem's "The Ecstasy of Influence." Tracking it down, I came upon this great video he made for CNN, called "The Language of Christianity," based on Marcus Borg's Speaking Christian. Take a look below—it's short.
"Everything's a Remix" runs ten minutes, but if you're interested in how movies combine and transform to create new ones, check out the link. How wonderful the ways we give to and borrow from one another.
First, light snow has turned Chicago white this morning. As daylight gets paler and briefer, Advent's search for illumination narrows to expectation of birth in a circle of light, warmed by a fire that we keep feeding while cold circles, heavy, outside.

Lessons Learned This Thanksgiving

Erica Kast after 8 K Turkey Trot

What's all this talk about gluttony, somnolence, and turkey coma on Thanksgiving? It's not necessary. You can have much more fun without it. Here are some lessons I learned this Thanksgiving:

 1. Start the day with a physical challenge. I didn't, but daughter Erica ran the 8 K Turkey Trot, beating her previous time, and we all stood on the sidelines and cheered, though it took cell phones to find her among the 8000 other runners. Next year, maybe yoga for me.

2. You can do all the cooking in twenty-four hours—with enough planning and hands. People who cook all day do not want to stuff themselves at night, especially if you . . .

3. Remember to feed your cooks! Lunch is necessary, light and ample. Maybe tuna salad with apple, celery and Greek yoghurt.

4. Dry brining is much better and easier than wet. See the "Judy bird", though it takes three days. Our heritage bird from Caveny farms was tender and delicious, even after the carcass turned into soup.

5. Speaking of soup, Squash Bisque   is a restaurant recipe (courtesy of Eleven Madison Park) easily a adapted to home, and just exotic enough (from star anise and green cardamom) to make sure everyone stays awake.

6. Broiled Brussels sprouts get new life from a sauce of 1 T. Sriracha sauce, 3 T. honey and juice of a lemon discovered by Merrill of food52 when she ate them fried as bar food. I wouldn't try frying them on Thanksgiving, but the sauce is great.

7. If summer's herbs are still alive, fresh rosemary and sage give a special lift to bread stuffing.

8. You can ditch long-time favorite traditions! Our dearly beloved cranberry pudding gave way to unctious apple slices dipped in caramel (nothing but sugar, cream and honey cooked to 253 degrees) and then in vanilla soaked cashews. I admit the caramel preceded the twenty-four hour window.

More food was left this year than ever before, and people took leftovers home. Eight of us ate and nobody slept, roused by running and cooking's adrenaline.

Next Restaurant: Tour of Thailand

Modernist coconut dessert

Next Restaurant's Tour of Thailand is a romp, a chef's romp from street snacks to a modernist interpretation of an Asian coconut dessert, and you're invited along. After Next's formal excursion back to Paris, 1906, their first offering, Thailand was a hitchhiker's jaunt, and you're invited along. How great to be on board at the most creative stage of an enterprise, when chefs are trying out concepts, dishes and pairings, rethinking what a restaurant can be!

Snacks are served on Thai newspaper with authentic plastic glass and spoon: chewy, funky fermented sausage, fried prawn cake, crisp and heady with lemon grass. You scoop the roasted banana (above) with a spoon, and dumplings are filled with green curry. Pink punch looks sweet but tastes fruity, juice enlivened with brandy and sparkling rosé.

The burn of Tom Yum soup made with pork broth is soothed by chunks of pork belly and accompanied by a cocktail you can inhale as well as drink. Fragrant chrysanthemum, like chrysanthemum tea, is mixed with gin, sweetened with lychee.
Rice comes next, accompanied five sauces you mix and match: spicy, funky, eggy, sour and crunchy. The sauces remain as catfish filets are presented, covered with flowers, accompanied by a Basque white wine, the first wine of the evening.

Modernist interpretation of Asian coconut dessert

Roasted banana, green curry dumpling

Next Restaurant's Tour of Thailand is a romp, a chef's romp from street snacks to a modernist interpretation of an Asian coconut dessert, and you're invited along. After Next's first offering, a formal excursion to Paris, 1906, this trip is a hitchhiker's jaunt. How great to be on board at the most creative stage of an enterprise, when chefs are trying out concepts, dishes and pairings, rethinking what a restaurant can be. The choreography of service remains an intriguing mystery at Next, as servers appear out of nowhere just in time to present and explain each dish. I thought their informative, informal style fit better with Thai than with Paris.

Tom Yum soup

Snacks are served on Thai newspaper with authentic plastic glass and spoon: chewy, funky, fermented sausage and fried prawn cake, crisp and heady with lemon grass. Pink punch served alongside looks sweet but tastes fruity, juice enlivened with brandy and sparkling rosé.
The burn of Tom Yum soup made with pork broth is soothed by chunks of pork belly and accompanied by a cocktail you can inhale as well as drink. Fragrant chrysanthemum, like chrysanthemum tea, is mixed with gin, sweetened with lychee.
Rice comes next, accompanied by five sauces: spicy, funky, eggy, sour and crunchy. The sauces remain as catfish filets arrive, covered with flowers, accompanied by a Basque white wine, first wine of the evening.

Five sauces

Catfish in caramel sauce

Who knew beef cheek could be so rich and tender? Served in a peanut curry, the meat fell apart. Chicago's own Half Acre brewery made Horizon Ale specially for Next: a light, slightly sweet beer to go with the beef. Modernist magic appeared in the form of a non-alcoholic, clear shot of watermelon and lemon grass, a flavor blast. And that merely hinted at the complexity of the the two-part dessert: coconut sorbet in half of a coconut and the other filled with a mix of corn frozen with liquid nitrogen, mango, tapioca and more: crisp, creamy, sour and sweet. It sounds like a science experiment, but was, in fact, a perfect dessert. Could there be more? A perfect half of a dragon fruit with a rose infusion, served with a rose, and a milky rooibus tea served in a bag with a straw. Back to the street.

Dragonfruit with rose infusion

Rooisbus tea with palm sugar and milk

Next next year: Childhood. I can't wait.

Whole Group at Martha's Vineyard

Fourteen for dinner

Joan, Byron, Erica at West Tisbury Market

Lola on beach

 This is the fourth year our mix-and-match family has gathered at Martha's Vineyard, and this time my West Coast sons made the trek with granddaughter Lola, making the total fourteen peeps at its height. The first couple of nights Erica and I cooked, using produce from the West Tisbury Farmer's Market and Morning Glory Farms. 
Then others took turns each night. In what sense is this group a family? In fact it's the children and grandchildren of Eric Kast and their partners. I was his third wife, so his grandchildren range in age from thirty-seven to eight, and my daughter, Erica, has a nephew older than she. Go figure.

Dinner cooked by Eun and Ari

Eun making eggs

Tom's arm, starfish, Lola, Anton

Erica in the Mytoi Japanese Garden, Chappaquiddick

Erica and Emma on the Chappy Ferry

Richard and Lola playing Jenga

This year Erica discovered a hike with a bit of elevation and a view in Chilmark, so Kim, Emma, Erica and I took off one afternoon and climbed to the 311-foot summit of the Peaked Hill Reservation, enjoying the rich greenery, birds and quiet. Another day Emma, Tom, Erica and I biked to Edgartown and took the two-minute Chappy Ferry to Chappaquiddick, a small island I'd never been to. The island is gorgeous, with an uncrowded beach and windswept dunes covered with beach grass. The Japanese Garden, unfortuneately named Mytoi (not Japanese, but "my toy" spelled to look Japanese), is full of beautiful bridges, reflective pools and stepping stones.

On rainy days, everyone played riotous games, from Jenga (for Lola) to pickup sticks to poker to scrabble to timed chess. At the end of the week, on Chappy day, the sun shone bright.