Stay at Stove Dad

Love Doesn't Always Mean Love Handles

On Tuesdays, Santa Maria always reads the Science section of the New York Times. Today's edition prompted her to write a guest post. Here it is:

Stay at Stove Dad is a pretty fantastic husband and father.  Sometimes he goes overboard (see last weekend's cookfest of chicken soup, coq au vin, shrimp fennel risotto, quinoa salad, etc. etc. etc.), but this is a fairly benign form of excess.

Like Stay at Stove Dad, I love to eat. Unlike Stay at Stove Dad, who is Irish and has a lean and lanky physique thanks to a ultra-high speed metabolism, I'm from German stock and I have Valkyrie proportions.  I am unhappy when I can't fit into my pants, and was even unhappier when I was still wearing my pregnancy sackcloth, a full year after I'd given birth to our second child.

Apparently, this is a common outcome.  According to an article in today's New York Times, "Study Says Women With Mate Get Heavier," over a decade, married women with a baby gain twenty pounds; married women with no kids gain fifteen pounds; and childless women with no partner gain eleven pounds.

These women are suffering because their mates can't or won't cook.  We women still are doing so much more around the house and with the kids, how can we take on shrimp fennel risotto too?

Here's how I reversed this unhappy flabbiness: Weight Watchers (I know it's not for everyone, but I love it! I liked Girl Scouts and Candy Stripers, and WW is another up-by-your-bootstraps diverse group of women). Eating healthily is made easier and more fun by Stay at Stove Dad's cooking. His awesome delicacies are shorn of much of their fat yet still have plenty of protein and flavor.  I especially like his two versions of quinoa salad (extremely yummy and filling), one summer, one winter version; and also his chicken soup (a lemony fantasia and excellent cure for the common cold). The day he baked his first cake, a buttery carmelized pear upside down cake, it is true that he had to barricade the kitchen and call all of our friends and neighbors to "rescue" the cake from me (or was it me from the cake?), but that's another story.

According to the same article, there's an increase in obesity in men who father children as well. This news may not be worthy of a headline, but it's worth noting. It's not just moms whose health is in jeopardy as we pair off and reproduce.  Men, pick up your spatulas and save yourselves and your families!

FDA Food-Label Stories

The New York Times' Well blog is a font of interesting and important stories. A recent post there concerns a new report from the Center for Science in the Public Interest highlighting the need for new food labels. The Center is quite right. Food labels, those useful little black boxes on the back of everything from candy bars to cereal boxes, can be wicked hard to understand. The information can be confusing, and down-right misleading.

For example, a common trick of food manufacturers, especially soda companies, is to break a product into more than one serving when they know full well everyone who purchases it finishes it in one gulp, so to speak. Consider the amount of sugar in a twenty-ounce bottle of Coke. The number on the label is per serving, not per bottle. There are at least 2.5 servings in a bottle. When was the last time you saved half a bottle of flat Coke for the next day? And then saved half of that for the day after?

The Well blog's post is a good one, but it seems to miss a bigger story. According to Fooducate, a fascinating blog run by a highly educated Bay Area dad who can't find sufficient information in order to make rational decisions about buying groceries, the FDA is actually soliciting comments from the public about changing the labels. If you follow the Fooducate story, you'll be led right to where you can tell the government how to help you. We have until January 19, 2010 do to so.

(By the way, there are 27 grams of sugar per serving in a bottle of Coke. 2.5 servings per bottle equaling 67.5 grams total. But what does a "gram of sugar" look like? There are 4.2 grams of sugar to a teaspoon. As the writer Frances Whittelsey points out, that works out to 16 teaspoons in one sitting. Sixteen! That's a lot of sugar.)

Expectations about Thanksgiving (mine and others)

Over the past few years, I've spent a lot of money, if not a lot of time, in therapy, and I've had such a good experience that I'm thinking about renaming this blog Stay on the Couch Dad. I won't, though, because what's going on in my kitchen is more universally appealing than what's going on in my head.

Still, it's hard to divorce family memories from food, and one of the biggest food-and-family fests of the year is rapidly approaching. That is, of course, Thanksgiving. Today's Times has a good article on the troubling family dynamics that can develop around the dining room table. My favorite part of the article is at its end:

"Betsy [a high school teacher in Boston] said her cousin also complained of holiday meal tension with her own family, so the two devised a strategy to help each other cope. Each made bingo cards, but instead of numbers, the squares were filled in with some of the negative phrases they expected to hear during the meal, like “That outfit is interesting” or “Your children won’t sit still.” As comments were made at the separate family celebrations, each woman would mark her card.

“Whoever fills up a bingo row first,” Betsy said, “sneaks off to call the other and say, ‘Bingo!’

For my own part, I'm getting a break from cooking. My sister Mary, who is the current winner of the family real-estate lottery with a nice house (two floors! a yard!) in Connecticut, is hosting. I'm delighted to be joining her. She is being very generous--much of the extended family will be there. I'll be bringing my in-laws along with the wife and kids. My contribution is minimal. I'll be making turnip as a side dish.

Turnip was one of my favorite dishes on Thanksgiving. The other was a spicy creamed spinach that my grandmother introduced and that my own mother has taken to making. Other than those dishes, I never much liked what is served at Thanksgiving. Of course, I feel heretical saying this, but it is true. Turkey? I could take it or leave it. Gravy? Never cared for the stuff. Stuffing? I had a weird thing about it. I only liked what I guess is called Stove Top Stuffing--the stuff my mother would bake outside the turkey. It was crunchy, and I liked that. My most embarrassing favorite dish--canned cranberry relish. I liked the way the can itself left rings around the tasty red circles.

One of the things I'm dealing with in therapy are the expectations I inherited. I'm now dwelling on what unconscious expectations I'm handing down to my own children. They're not pretty. I have a tendency to look on the dark side of things, for example. My father was a trial lawyer who specialized in malpractice and personal injury suits. For every cup of coffee, there was the case of the exploding coffee maker that burned a child. For every country road, there was an intersection in which a drunken driver mowed down two young lovers in a Volkswagen van. For every new building I lived in during college with a beautiful view of the treetops, there was a lack of a fire exit. Or so I was told by my father.

I'm now curbing my tendency to do the same thing to my kids. Nina wants to bring a toy to school to show her friends? I have to stop myself from saying, "You're going to lose it in the classroom." I'm working on it.

Thanksgiving presents an opportunity. The holiday is built around expectations. Turkey, gravy, stuffing, and a laundry list of sides. Family and friends and, what will it be? Arguments over politics? How to raise one's children? What to eat or not to eat? Those are just a few ideas I pulled from my own memory and from today's Times article. But I like to see my family, so I'm hoping that enjoying the company of family will be an expectation I'll be handing down to my children.

Speaking of expectations, I had a few of my own mangled last week when I saw a great article by Mark Bittman in the Times about what to make for the coming dinner. He offered 101 suggestions. The headline, though, is what threw me: "101 Head Starts on the Day." Missing its connection to the holiday entirely, I thought it was 101 ideas To Get Food Ready for a Given Workday. I was thrilled. Finally, an article I could really use. But, no, it was not about getting ready for the everyday, it was about getting ready for the big day. Alas.

There's BPA In My Daughter's Soup?

On Sunday, The New York Times disrupted my menu planning. One of the key things that I’ve relied upon to get me through the week is Progresso’s canned lentil soup. I feel like I might sound like a housewife in the fifties by saying this, but it felt to me like a miracle food. My daughter Nina is crazy for it, and it’s very healthy (aside, perhaps, from its sodium content).

Whenever I heard Nina say it was her favorite food, my heart both sunk and soared. I was sad that she didn’t favor one of my home-cooked meals, but I was delighted that she found such a nutritious dish so tasty.

Now, I learn, according to Nicholas D. Kristof , it is nearly poison. The issue is Bisphenol A, or BPA, a synthetic estrogen that is common in certain plastics and that has the nasty potential to disrupt developing endocrine systems.  BPA is not in the soup when they make it, but it is in the epoxy used to line the cans. It then leaches into the food.

The science on this isn’t conclusive. Something called the Business & Media Institute calls Kristof’s article scare mongering. But then again, they led another story with “Somewhere in our office are old bumper stickers proclaiming: “Proud Member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.”

No matter what the pundits say, when it comes to kids just a hint of danger is enough to change behavior. So for the time being, we’re dropping the soup from our weekly rotation. I’m going to miss it, as is Nina.

What I'd really like is a statistical analysis of the risks of BPA versus the benefits of getting the out-of-season nutrients that canning provide. As someone at risk for prostate cancer, I'm interested in as much lycopene as I can find. My primary source is canned tomatoes. I'm not ready to give them up.

There's another possible solution—having the government get the chemical out of the food (though this is, apparently, not without its risks; swap out the epoxy and invite botulism). None the less, there has to be a better technological solution. In the meantime,  bills are before congress to ban the chemical from food containers. I’m going to get in touch with my senator, Charles Schumer, who is one of the sponsors of one of them.

Can You Eat Meat and Still Be Green?

Over the past few years, Al Gore, the king the climate-change issue, has been called on the carpet by environmentalists for his consumption of beef, the argument being that industrial agriculture contributes to global warming. And now the Times of London has declare that we need to give up meat to save the planet. 

Today's New York Times has another take on the issue. Around this house, we rely on public transportation and we don't eat much red meat, so I'm not worried about my carbon footprint. Still, it was an interesting read. 

The Summertime Blues, or How Not to Cook Mussels on the Grill

While on vacation, I managed my cooking responsibilities quite comfortably, which means I spent less time at the stove than I did on the beach.  One night we ate crabs (see below), another night one of my brother-in-laws grilled chicken on the barbecue, and yet another night we threw together some salads in the afternoon and relaxed with cocktails come evening time, salads being dishes that don’t get cold and don’t suffer from sitting around while you watch the sun set.

Last week’s dining section of the New York Times had a couple of articles addressing the challenges facing home cooks when they go on vacation. Julia Moskin wrote about the pitfalls of a sharing a kitchen, and she offers up a handy list of items not to forget. Jhumpa Lahiri contributed a cover essay on the essentials she needs to throw in the car. Chief among them, the cast-iron frying pan.

I thought of her essay this weekend while visiting the Abuelita. Usually, when we see her, we travel by train and try to limit the amount of things we carry. These days, though, we happen to be in possession of my late father’s Chevrolet, and our attitude towards luggage is quite a bit more liberal. “Want it? See it? Take it,” is more the thinking. Among the things we carted up there: my cast iron frying pan (Santa Maria discouraged me from taking both of the ones I own).

I took the frying pan to make Mussels a la Plancha. You can’t make them without it. Unlike Lahiri, though, I encountered another hitch. I didn’t bank on the Abuelita’s concern for the cleanliness of her new sealed-top electric stove, the surface of which happens to be white. She wanted to protect its pristine surface from my charred black frying pan.

So I did want any man would do when faced with female resistance in the kitchen: I started a fire. I figured the old Weber grill would be as good as anything to heat the frying pan. I had dreams that it might make the mussels even better. Grilling usually improves everything.

Alas, my experiment was a failure. The frying pan got hot enough to open the mussels, but the fire didn’t generate enough heat to cook off the liquid and give them that concentrated, explosive fresh-out-of-the-sea flavor. I had to plead with the Abuelita to give me access to her stove, which she did. Fortunately, the pan did not mar the surface and everyone was happy.

I think the effort failed because the pan was too far from the fire. I had placed it on the wire grilling surface. Maybe next time I’ll stick it in the coals. Anyone have any experience using a cast iron pan with an open fire?

An Old Friend Shares His Best, Healthiest Pancake Recipe and Other Advice

Lately I’ve been in touch with a former colleague, the writer and editor Charles Michener. I used to work with him in New York, and he’s now based in Cleveland, researching a book on the lakeside city. Charles is a bit older than I am, and his children are grown. He’s still interested in cooking, certainly, and offered the following advice. It is timeless.

I've cooked for my family (ies) since I got fascinated as a kid by how to make an omelet. I was about ten when I successfully flipped a mushroom omelet without using a spatula. (Now I prefer to turn off the heat while the top is still runny, put a lid on the pan, let it sit for thirty seconds and then gently roll up the omelet.) In my view, making an omelet is the best way to begin learning proficiency at the stove. It teaches you how to handle and crack eggs; blend whites and yolks; make judgments about seasoning (don’t salt the eggs until after they’re in the pan); understand different ingredients (cheese, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, herbs); observe the effects of heat; and execute split-second finishing so that the result looks good on the plate. And you learn how great such a complicated little mixture tastes when it’s right off the stove. From there, it’s a short step to frittatas, which I also find deeply satisfying to make. Another wonderful learning dish for kids is risotto, which I taught my daughter when she was three. The slow transformation and expansion of rice kernels into the pillowy final product is magical. Making a risotto also teaches diligence and patience.

In high school, I belonged to a group of boys who started a Gourmet Club as a way to get girls. It worked. Don’t forget to put Edith Piaf on the hi-fi when you’ve brought out your Coq au Vin in a copper pot and placed it next to the pre-dripped candles.

I've cooked in a restaurant in Venice, Italy. And I really enjoy cooking for myself, fortified by an ice-cold vodka martini without vermouth. Lately, I've tried cutting back on oils—using cooking spray (the best I've found is Smart Balance Omega)—and substituting light chicken stock for oil in salad dressing. I've also cut back on eggs—or at least whole eggs (whites alone do almost the same job); pork and beef (the occasional Nieman Ranch bacon is like Beluga caviar; a great cheeseburger is now like Beef Wellington); cheese (except for goat cheese); and milk (except for almond, soy or rice milk). I've actually grown to like whole-wheat pasta and brown rice.

I did a simple dinner the other night for eight people: a salad of baby spinach and watercress, roast beets marinated in Balsamic vinegar, toasted walnuts, crumbled feta cheese and marinated white anchovies; brown rice (I like Lundberg Countrywild) with lots of bay leaf, tossed with scallions, parsley and lemon zest; and a shrimp sauté - garlic, chopped tomatoes, shitake mushrooms, capers slowly simmered in chicken stock before adding the shrimp, brightened at the end with lots of chopped fresh tarragon, basil and a splash of lemon juice. Dessert: berries and sorbet.

Essentials in my pantry: capers; Maldon sea salt; Pepper Supreme peppercorns; bay leaves; cayenne; tumeric; cardamom pods; coriander seeds; cinnamon; whole nutmeg; pure vanilla extract; Worcestershire sauce; Sriracha hot chili sauce (better than Tabasco); small jars (better than tins) of Italian tuna packed in oil; ditto with anchovies; Goya canned beans; canned whole tomatoes (I love Redpack); varieties of brown and wild rice; Carnaroli rice for risotto; rice crackers; varieties of whole wheat pasta, especially penne rigate (most versatile); good quality red wine vinegar (for salad dressing) and extra virgin olive oil (get the best and use sparingly as finisher on pasta); extra light olive oil (for salad dressing and cooking); white vinegar ("secret ingredient" in chili and complex stews).

Essentials in my fridge: lemons and leeks (the two best culinary catalysts); non-dairy milk; variety of Italian, Spanish and Greek olives (never pitted); sun-dried tomatoes; tomato paste; Trader Joe’s ginger spread (good with cheese or to spark up a salad dressing); Dijon mustard; Hellman’s mayonnaise; Durkee’s Famous Sauce (still the best sandwich spread ever); parmigiano reggiano; homemade tarragon pickles; multigrain tortillas; varieties of good spicy salsa; wild forest honey; pure maple syrup.

Top tip: the best cooking is cooking with things at hand–and by hand.

Here's my recipe for the best, healthiest breakfast I know of. The kids will love it.

Oatmeal Pancakes

               The proportions are for four, 4"  pancakes.

• 1/2 cup old-fashioned rolled oats (not instant);
• 1/4 cup low-fat cottage cheese (or yogurt);
• 2 egg whites (one beaten and folded in for fluffier pancake);
• 1 whole egg (optional);
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract;
• 1/4 tsp. cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (or more for flavor);
• 1/2 tsp baking powder;
• pinch of salt.

Combine ingredients in a blender and mix until smooth.
Let batter settle while heating griddle to very hot.
Lightly grease griddle with a stick of butter or Smart Balance Omega spray.
Pour batter onto griddle in four, same-sized pancakes.
Flip when bubbles appear and pancakes darken and begin to smoke.
Serve with heated pure maple syrup or wild forest honey.
You can add blueberries, thinly sliced bananas or crumbled toasted walnuts to the batter.

Looking at Father's Day

I have had the good fortune to discover a website called Once A Month Mom. 

The site, which is run by a pair of dedicated stay-at-home-moms, cleverly addresses the task of feeding one's family. Their central idea is to do all of a month's cooking in one day. Each month, they propose, and deliver, a slate of recipes to cover thirty days worth of meals (which, for a variety of reasons, turns out to be fifteen dishes--they've really worked this thing out).

Recently, one of the moms behind Once A Month Mom invited me to write about Father's Day. My post, which includes a great summer pork recipe, is here.

A Thai Chicken Salad Recipe to Try

With all the chopping of vegetables and washing of dishes, cooking gives me a lot of time to think. Lately, I’ve been considering why I have the tendency (to be kind to myself) to turn a given situation into a problem.

I do this more often than not. Last year, we had trouble sleeping because our youngest would wake at the creak of a floorboard. The logical solution (other than moving to a sturdier, roomier residence than our floor-through apartment) was to get a white-noise machine. It took me weeks to actually buy one as I muddled over the possible drawbacks. I needed a new computer for a project I wanted to start. Again, it took me months to make the purchase. Why? Because all I could see was what might go wrong, not what might go right. (For the record, the noise machine turned our apartment into a virtual duplex, and the computer helped me complete the project in a timely fashion—in other words, I was wrong on all accounts).

I don’t have a good answer yet for why I engage in this kind of thinking. But I am attempting to change my behavior. Instead of looking at things as problems, I’m trying to see them as opportunities.

Out of limes for the Vietnamese Chicken Salad you wanted to make this morning? Not a problem, but an opportunity (in this case, to send the spouse to the store to pick them up, along with half-a-dozen other things the house needed).

The salad turned out just as delicious as the week before, and a funny thing happened while I was eating it for lunch. I was reading the dining section of the New York Times. Right there in front of me there was an article about a Thai restaurant in upstate New York, accompanied by a recipe for a chicken dish that was similar to what I was eating. Making this comparison is like saying Miles Davis and I both once played the trumpet (which is true, in one sense and completely misleading in another). Like mine, the Times’s recipe had chicken and lime juice but it was much more complicated. It involves things like roasted rice paste and Laoatian chili power, all of which are things I’m looking forward to having the opportunity to explore.

News about Ham, Grape Nuts, and Michelle Obama

Today’s New York Times food section has a nice echo of my previous post about culatello. The science-and-food writer Harold McGee covers the renewal of American-made dry-cured hams. Producers in Virginia and elsewhere are now making hams to rival those of Italy and Spain.

“Have you ever placed a vanishingly thin morsel of rosy meat on your tongue and had it fill your mouth with deepest porkiness, or the aroma of tropical fruits, or caramel, or chocolate? Or all of the above?” he asks.

Monday’s Wall Street Journal had a fascinating piece on the history of Grape Nuts. The breakfast cereal was a staple around the house when I was a kid. I enjoyed its crunchy taste, especially with a few spoonfuls of sugar on top, but my favorite memory of it concerns my father. He loved the stuff, but would sometimes get him very agitated. It was the vitamins or the minerals or the fiber that irked him. His problem with it was that it took too long to chew. He was always in a hurry in the morning.

On Sunday, also in the Times, Amanda Hesser wrote a brilliant op-ed about Michelle Obama’s relationship to the kitchen. According to the Times, the First Lady said, “I don’t miss cooking. I’m just fine with other people cooking.”

Hesser clarifies her message. “Though delivered lightheartedly, and by someone with a very busy schedule, the message was unmistakable: everyday cooking is a chore.”

That’s the truth. But Hesser doesn’t stop there. The best part of her column points out what we lose when we don’t cook at home: A connection to food and each other.