The Agenda War

While some families strive and stress to keep up with the Joneses, my family's struggle for glory is more internal in nature. And while the typical family looking to one up their neighbor measures and ranks wealth, stature, cars, kitchens, and closets full of crap, our familial rivalry is rather immaterial. Every weekend, the text messages fly from pool lanes to opera houses; from the nation's skies to its great lakes, from one's room with a view to someone else's with an arguably better perspective, as we engage in an innocent game of who is having more fun with their 48 hours of freedom. As soon as the first cocktail is poured on Friday at 5:00 PM, lines are drawn and the battle of the ultimate weekend agenda commences.

At a young age my parents preached that we should make every trip count, that an idle hand is the devil's workshop, and that time is money. The combination of these valued life lessons has made each of us agenda over achievers, trying to make the most of our time in and out of the office. Sure you can just go to the pool for the day, but if you can go to the pool, network your way into five business deals, eat the best, yet healthiest lunch you've had in decades, learn how to prepare said recipe, swim a zillion laps, teach all the children around you how to swim as well, read one book, two magazines, and every leading national newspaper, tan evenly, and find time to have a couple laughs, well than that's a quality pool day. 

While my brother, sister and I dare to compete with my Mom and Dad every weekend, generally they win without contest. In fact, I'm willing to bet that their calendar could often times beat out the most intense presidential schedule.

There were times, days, weekends when I was favored to win the war, but since Mary has come along our ability to cram in as much as possible has been limited. Recently, a friend even asked how all the other stuff was coming - she had read about motherhood, but she wondered if I was still gardening, running, cooking, baking, and entertaining.

While I've been focusing on small wins in the kitchen, around the backyard and on the sidewalks of Chicagoland for the past three months, this week was different. As Mary becomes more and more acclimated to life, calculating her agenda becomes easier and easier, and Peter and I have been able to move ourselves further and further from an established comfort zone. This week, we nearly did it all: there was a pretty rapid 5K run (3.1 miles in 20:50 - boom!) followed by a barbecue with the Joerns, a trip downtown - 20 miles in the car for Peter and Mary, just 10 for me because I jumped out halfway to get a run on the Lake in, boating, a bargain night out at Vie with Claire and Trent (best French 75 ever!), visitors, a week-long love affair with rhubarb - in the form of crumb cakes, crumbles, and an iced slab pie, FIGS!, trimming roses, and (oooh, ahhh) vacation planning! Arguably, to a fussy little baby on Sunday night, we did too much.

So as Mary starts showing signs of crawling, so too are her parents, eeking our way back into more adventurous routines and all the other stuff that makes us who we are. But we're still a far cry from first place.

On today's agenda - baking a birthday cake for Uncle Trent and wishing the gold medal winner in calendar court, my Mom, a very happy birthday!

Lo.

Fig Salad with Prosciutto, Goat Cheese and Toasted Walnuts 
Serves four 

Six fresh figs, cut in half
Four slices prosciutto, cut into strips
4 ounces Cyprus Grove purple haze goat cheese, crumbled
1/4 cup toasted walnuts, halved
Red leaf lettuce, enough for four salad plates
1 teaspoon honey
2 tablespoons salad oil
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
Salt, pepper

Make dressing by whisking together honey, vinegar, oil, salt and pepper. Set aside.

In a large bowl, toss lettuce with dressing and goat cheese.

On a salad plate, arrange portion of lettuce. On top place three figs, ribbons of prosciutto and toasted walnuts. Serve.

Pesto Pizza Please

It has been a week colored with closed conversations - passionate offline dialogue that isn't ready for the public's attention. So as a blogger with too much to say, but under the guidance to hold off for now, what to do?

I'm guessing, just talk about the other things that happened this week, which for us, of course centered on food. That and the many hours I have spent watering the garden.

It has been a remarkable summer in Chicago so far - remarkable in that the heat indexes have consistently soared above 100 degrees, the humidity makes the neighborhood feel like a sauna, and we have reached drought status. We've only seen about an inch of rain in the last 30 days. The lawns are scorched, except for my neighbor down the block who must have a permit to produce a rain forest climate in his yard. The hostas, hydrangeas and lilies around the block have browned. And there are trees that are already changing color and losing their leaves.

While I let our grass go an au naturale brown, I refused to give up on the garden. I had worked so hard on it at the beginning of the summer, and I was determined to make it thrive. I've probably spent a good 40 hours alone watering plants - a labor of love, dedicated Double G and Dad, my gardening role models. But it has worked. This week, the tomato and butternut squash vines started showing more and more young fruit, I harvested the first round of jalapenos, the herbs got fuller and fuller, and the flower beds showed bigger, brighter colors. I felt like I could finally say that I had traded in my dirty thumbs for green thumbs. (And I was pretty proud.)

On Tuesday we added the jalapenos to the beef kebobs. And last night, I gathered basil, Italian parsley and a little bit of mint to make pesto for the first time this year. 

We used it as a base for one of the pizzas we made. On top of it, we stacked shrimp, sun dried tomatoes, and goat cheese. Then as we've been doing a lot this summer, we took the cooking outside. We baked the pizza at 525 degrees in the gas grill, which resulted in the best crust yet. Airy and a little bit chewy on the inside, crisp on the bottom and around the edges.

(This photo was taken about 10 minutes into baking, we let it bake another 5.) 

The next best thing besides food to keep your mind off of things is traveling. So I'm off to Park City for my first blogger conference. Now this should be interesting ...

Lo.

Pizza Dough

3 1/3 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon yeast
2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 cups luke warm water

Mix together flour, yeast, and salt. Add water and stir until shaggy. Using your hands, bring dough together until it just forms a ball. Cover it and let is rest for 10-15 minutes.

Take dough out of the bowl and knead for 5-8 minutes, until smooth and supple. Do not add extra dough - use a dough scraper if need be.

Using the dough scraper, divide the dough into four equal pieces. Roll each into a ball. Then one at a time, roll each ball of dough up like a carpet, then turnover and seam side down, roll up again, and then one more time. Mold the dough into a tight ball from there, roll in flour and set on a tray. Repeat this folding and rolling process with the remaining balls. Cover the dough, and let rise for 5 to 6 hours.

When finished rising, either heat grill or oven to 500 - 525 degrees. (I can never get my oven hot enough.) Top pizza with desired toppings. Tonight we went traditional: Garlicky roasted tomato sauce (roast garlic, shallots, tomatoes with juice, salt and pepper in 2 tablespoons butter for 30 minutes), pepperoni, mozzarella. And gourmet: pesto, roasted red peppers, shrimp and goat cheese. And bake for 15 -18 minutes.
 
**Tips**

* For this dough recipe, you really do have to wait 5 or 6 hours, don't skimp because that rising period adds so much air and dimension to the dough.

* Using the grill made the best pizza crust yet - we cranked it all the way up to 525 degrees. If you have an outdoor oven you will get the same effect, but in my experience, using our indoor oven hasn't cooked the crust as evenly as possible.

* Brush the edge of the crust with olive oil - it gives the crust a nice brown color and makes it taste even better.

What the Singlefolk do

I'm very disappointed in myself. I shouldn't be up yet. I should be on my third or maybe only second hour of sleep. When I do wake up though, I should have stories to tell - foggy memories of a night that I'll never forget, coming more and more into focus. I should be chuckling to myself.

As it is, I'm up to water my flowers, shew away the early birds getting their worms from my yard, and greet the neighbors participating in a similar morning regimen. And I'm mad that I let myself do it.

'Do what?,' you ask. 

This. See, I've been evaluating my Facebook feed recently - it's become very predictable. Weddings, honeymoons and babies. That's it. I used to wake up on a Sunday morning excited to see the people, parties and incriminating photos of a great Saturday night. But for the past year or more, all that seems to pop up on Sunday are bridal party shots and 'good mornings' from baby after baby. While I love seeing that kind of content, I'm left wondering what my single friends are doing? Why aren't they posted their fun so that I can vicariously live through them after I've had my fill of the Pet Parades, ice cream socials, and trampolines that come with suburban life?

This weekend, Peter went fishing in Cape Cod. So in essence, I got to be a party of one for the weekend. I had the chance to find out what all the single folk were doing in the city - the fun stuff that has become too cool to post on Facebook. And to persuade my city-dwelling friends that I haven't prematurely turned 45 years-old.  

I had mapped out a great Saturday evening - Division Fest, drinks with Kate around 9:00, meet up with Cinderella before her chariot from the Casino to the city turned into a pumpkin at midnight.

But yesterday after a 14-mile run, including a stroll through the annual Pet Parade, a trip to the frame store, loads of laundry, letter writing and reading in the hammock, and another afternoon in the garden, the sun started to set as I pulled one last weed. It was already 7:00. I got showered and dressed, debating whether or not I should still go downtown, ultimately reaching the answer, 'no,' which in turn has made me very disappointed this morning. 

I just checked Facebook and there was just a subtle reference to what I missed - a check-in at the Rooftop at the Wit, and one where my friend got to skip the line. One of my favorite places. VIP treatment. Darnit. 

While I love the green grass of the Western Suburbs. I believe the single ladies (and men) of the world are playing in some very verdant pastures. And I wish I had frolicked in them this weekend. Singles, keep living it up, staying forever young, and saving the secrets of your incredible revelries for the eyes and ears of the people that can stay up past 9:30.


Lo.

Dirty Thumbs

There are green thumbs on both sides of my family. Double G was an avid vegetable gardener, in essence, producing a yield to feed a family of ten. And my Dad has tamed, planted, and tended a half an acre arboretum of a yard, filled with perennials and annuals that my Mom doesn't even know the names of. So, I'm thinking the genetic probability that I inherited some verdant digits is pretty high.

However, when it comes to gardening, some might argue that it's not so much nature that determines your capability to grow, it's the way you were nurtured. And luckily, I have some of that going for me as well.

Every year, I got lessons from Double G in tomato planting, zucchini growing, and asparagus harvesting. And applied them to the small vegetable garden that my Dad cornered off for me. My Big Boys were never as big, juicy and plentiful as Grandpa's, but they seemed to improve each season. I also received annual lessons from my Dad on the floral side of gardening - how to turn over the soil and prep it for planting, how to perfectly space Impatiens, how to prune and trim the perennials, and how to patiently water each bed until their thirst was quenched.


When we moved, I had given thought to the amount of work it would take to renovate the house. There were priorities: The chimney, exterior facade, asbestos tile to cover. And long term projects: the bathroom remodel, champagne room build-out, replacement of windows and doors. What I failed to factor in though, was the yard. I failed to do a diligent surveillance of exactly what was out there and what kind of man power it would take to tame it.

For the past couple weeks, I feel like I've been playing Secret Garden at my house, bringing a plot of land, neglected for a decade or more, back to life based on what is wick and what is not. My evening hours have been dedicated to yanking and digging up the root systems of Jurassic weeds, figuring out where one lethal bush ends and the other ones begin, waging the battle of the green ivy, and cursing the laziness of my neighbors who apparently don't garden and instead hire western suburban labor to do everything for them.

I have scratches up my legs, pollen swimming in my nasal passages, and dirt embedded in my nails.  I've tried to scrub it out with the nail brush, but it won't budge. My weed war has produced a new form of irritability in me. And unfortunately for Peter, dinner keeps getting later and later. You could have rounded up to 9:00 PM this week. There is always one more monstrous weed to pull - one more 10-foot (yes, 10 foot) poke weed to murder with my trusty shovel.

However, in gardening, there tends to be a wonderful reward on the other side of your labor. The beauty and bounty that you have produced with your own hands can be mesmerizing. Bed by bed, I've been able to celebrate my progress, and as I surveyed it on Wednesday evening, the little girl next door told me that I had done a beautiful job.
'Well it was a lot of hard work,' I scoffed.
'It was worth it though.'
Ah, how wise that one is.  

My verified green thumb is yet to be determined, but I believe, given my perpetually dirty hands, that I'm on the right track. Double G always used to have a little dirt under his nails - a sure sign that he had been tilling and toiling in the garden. Perhaps, the soiled-hand look - the one that comes from people who like to get their hands dirty, and can't help but get them dirtier the minute after they've cleaned up - is the first step to fulfilling my green DNA.

Off to say good morning to the yard and to give my vegetables, herbs and flowers a drink. 

Lo.

The Missing Season

Hidden Valley boasted four seasons to their resort life. Vivaldi composed concertos that corresponded to each of the changing seasons. Poussin painted them; Franki Valli named his band after them; And businesses galore, ranging from tanning, to furniture, to heating and cooling certify their products will work through each of the four seasons.

The thing is, I feel like I only know three seasons well - that at least recently, I'm not very familiar with the Earthly Paradise that Poussin painted or the subtle, cheerful, awakening of the world that Vivaldi orchestrated. Instead, I've been living in a place where one only needs to acclimate to three and sometimes only two seasons. A place where winter burns away into summer almost instantaneously around Memorial Day weekend. And where Indian summers get extinguished by the first snow fall on Halloween. In Chicago, and for that matter in South Bend and Pittsburgh too, I have seen very little of spring in the past twenty years.

But this year, oh, this year, something magical happened. About ten days ago, a week before the first official day of spring, the temperatures rose, the sky went from overcast to crystal clear, the sunrises and sunsets became ethereal, the birds commenced a set of sweeter melodies drowning out the obnoxious geese, the buds popped out of the trees and bushes, and then, just as Vivaldi's introduction swelled into the familiar chorus we know well, the colors of spring started blossoming, turning every inch of the Midwest into something spectacular.

Flowers I hadn't seen since looking around the wild strawberry patch, up the bank or under the Magnolia tree on Bartlett Street started appearing. Violets, buttercups, crocuses, and other delicate varietals produced by only the perfect spring climate finally had the chance to perk up and say hello.

While the dormant flora awakened and slowly, gently, miraculously added their beautiful pigments and fragrances to my suburban landscape this week, I felt that dinner needed to have a spring-like palette and aroma as well. So on Monday, we grilled citrus marinated sea scallops, served them over a pea puree, tossed up a beet and feta salad, and sat down to a meal that tasted as wonderful as spring looked. 

But while reveling in spring wonderment, one of my co-workers commented that she was nervous about what the weather meant, hinting at the effects of global warming. While it dampened my mood, I couldn't help but think that if so many people before us staked their masterpieces, businesses and namesakes on the four seasons, why isn't a real spring in Chicago the most natural thing? I think Double G's asparagus are all for it at least. 

Lo.

English Pea Puree

• 3/4 cup chicken stock
• 1 cup English peas, shucked from their pods
• 2 teaspoons butter
• 5 mint leaves
• 1 tablespoon of a triple cream cheese, like St. Andre
• Salt and pepper

In a small sauce pan, heat chicken stock and butter. Bring to a boil, add peas, then reduce to a simmer.  Cook for about 5 minutes, until peas are bright green and tender. Add cheese, melting it into mixture.

Put peas and stock in a blender, along with the mint, salt and pepper. Puree into a smooth mixture. Serve warm under chicken, lamb, or seafood. Sure, it looks like baby food, but it's fantastic!