Why do you love food?

Food. Where do I begin? It starts somewhere between boiling salted water until it was dry just to see what would happen and staring, longingly, for hours at the glossy pages of my mother’s Betty Crocker cookbook. I’d hover around my father, working over our little white enamel gas stove throwing bits of leftover chicken, the last of the cabbage, and squirts of teriyaki sauce into a pot to turn out something comforting for us on a rainy Portland night.

In college, my palate seared after a year of suffering through carbohydrate-sprayed cafeteria lettuce, I managed to cook all my meals in a dorm room, to the marvel of my peers. “How DO you make a bean burrito?” they’d ask. “That chicken smells divine,” they’d cluck. And of course it was far from divine, it was chicken breast in a pan with some salt.

At one point I even pledged to drop-out of university to attend culinary school. But my family, lovers of higher education that they are, didn’t approve. Looking back, I’m still not sure why I’d listened.

Luck flew me to Spain for a semester abroad where a sense of adventure in eating was born. I dove into barnacles, snails, stinky cured pork hanging from the ceiling, curious wines, and a little something called saffron. I visited Greece and fell in love with gyros pita, olive oil, the darkest greens, and foraged herbs. Never had I ever loved a cheese as much as feta. The yogurt, the homemade wine, the lamb, it was all so much and yet never enough. Around and around Europe I went, sampling and tasting, cooing and coveting. My love for global cuisine was bred.

As a real adult I now live on the Big Island of Hawaii, in a whole new world of sub-tropical edible wonders. I’m passionate now about discovering and preserving Hawaiian food culture.

But I feel that I’ve reached a plateau with my culinary skills that can only be continued with a culinary education.  Please help me continue along my path toward great cooking, and this time, I won’t let my family talk me out of it.

*This was my submission to the Food Network Great Food Truck Race scholarship contest in answer to the following prompt: "What cuisines are you passionate about? Explain how a scholarship from The International Culinary Schools at The Art Institutes could help you expand your knowledge of global cuisines." Wish me luck. 

PS: there is still time to enter if you are interested, deadline is 2/28/13.

Clam Digging in Oregon

The Edwards' home in Silverton, Oregon

It's Christmas eve. An impenetrable mantle of hot electric blanket has forced me out of the bed I'm sharing with Dustin at his parent's newly built house in Silverton, Oregon. We've gone to bed leaving twinkling lights downstairs and plans to host his mother's family tomorrow. The beast is waiting quietly in the fridge for his turn to be roasted and the house murmurs with Dustin's steady sleeping breath and the hum of the heater.

Earlier today as we walked the property in the brisk afternoon I couldn't help but imagine myself holed up in their tiny, red guesthouse working hard on my first novel, a pot of tea steaming on the stove  as my fingers tap, tap, tapped the keyboard. The clouds piled high above our heads as we rode the tractor back to the house.

This place has a mix of both homey familiarity and a sense of belonging I can feel nowhere else but in Oregon, where the trees and the mud and the icy mountain streams make up the very blood in my veins. This sensation grows as we trudge through the fields in high rubber boots down to a nearby creek, stopping to admire rose hips and forgotten blackberries still red and unripened on the vine. Moss grows thickly on the little wooden bridge crossing the creek and the coffee colored water rushes under us, drowning out the sound of my thumping, longing pulse.

Netarts, Oregon

Days later, after the last guest has gone, full and happy, and toting a number of tasty leftovers including smoked turkey, Yorkshire pudding, and champagne cake, I select my breakfast from the once inviting, now daunting pile of endless Christmas cookies. Blackberry brandy and eggnog have slowed me this morning but I've managed to pull on some boots and a sweater. The beach awaits.

Netarts, Oregon

We arrive in Netarts on an utterly perfect day. The sun is (almost) out and the wind has taken a break. Waves crash far offshore and the salty air creeps slowly down into my lungs. The combination of cliffs and breakers and moss and trees trees trees on the Oregon coast is like nowhere else. Lucky for us the tide is low and I came prepared with a shellfish permit.

Digging for clams in Netarts, Oregon

Rake, shovel, and bucket in hand we set off skeptically down to the sand. My dad had told me about this method of simply raking the sand and scoring clams. I doubted this claim as my memories of clam  digging as a kid were just that, digging to frigging China in the freezing sand as fast as possible before the clam out-dug you.

Oregon cockles

When you dig for clams you look for little holes in the sand, step near them, and hope the clam shoots some water up at you through the hole. That's how you know where to dig. Well, as we sloshed along the sandy bay, we saw no such holes. At all. I was beginning to look the fibber. My mother in law suggested we just start raking.

So we raked a little in the sandy tide pools and pop! up came a clam. We laughed at our luck but then pop! pop! pop! we scored more and more. Within 15 minutes we'd drawn a small crowd and the legal per day catch limit. This was definitely the easiest clam digging I'd ever done.

As you can see from the photo, these clams are quite large. They have a hard, textured shell and are technically called cockles. Before you steam, broil, slurp, or chowderize your cockles, be sure to soak them in an open container of fresh water for at least a couple hours or up to 12. Do not cover with a lid as the cockles need to be able to breath. Soaking them allows the excess sand to seep out before cooking. We skipped this step because we were so excited to eat them, but trust me, it's vital, we were eating some crunchy clams.

The recipe below is the simple way to enjoy clams. Serve with crusty bread, pasta, or hot cooked rice.

Fresh, steamed Oregon cockles

Steamed Oregon Cockles

20 cockles (or your favorite clam)
1 cup white wine (salted water or broth is fine, too)
1 clove garlic, smashed
1 TBL butter
salt & pepper to taste

After the cockles have soaked in an uncovered container of fresh water for at least 2 and up to 12 hours, rinse and set aside.

In a large pot, add wine and and garlic over medium high heat. As soon as wine begins to boil, add cockles to the pot and cover. Be sure not to crowd the cockles. It helps to have a glass lid so you know when the shells have opened.

Steam for 3-5 minutes or until shells have opened wide. Discard any that do not open. Serve with the wine/butter mixture and add salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy!

Dear 2012,

The thing I most want to do in this moment is make a giant list of all the wrong that occurred in the year  of our Lord 2012. I want to wallow in it, highlight it, point out how unfair everything that ever happened in 2012 ever was. I want you to feel sorry for me. I want to feel sorry for myself. For not being skinnier, for not being in my 20s, for not becoming a famous blogger, for never seeming to do the things I really really really want to do. For failing to do everything perfectly, including choosing the right career and keeping an impeccable garden. I realize while writing this that my greatest sin, in my own mind, it not achieving perfection.

Because there's the times that I do those things that I really really really want to do. And those wonderful things get covered up by clouds of self doubt, by some need to tell myself, hey you really ought to have done better. I'm always raining on my own damn parade. Truth is, the failures and unexpected twists that have made up this past year are the very things that have gotten me through it.

This year, I really really really wanted to know what it felt like to live in New York. You know, the glam, the hustle and bustle, the opportunities. So I just did that, went to New York and acted like I lived there for a few weeks. And it worked, I totally felt like I did live there. Nothing glamorous happened save for a dirty martini at sunset atop the Met. Except that everything glamorous did happen including a rained out Shakespeare in the park performance, dollar oysters around every corner, art appreciation lessons from a stranger at the Brooklyn museum, frog legs at Coney Island, matinee ballet amid fur clad seniors, and standing-room only Mets baseball. In New York, the glamour is in the grit.

After visiting Ellis Island, whose museum on American immigration is truly inspirational, I did a quick search on their website just to see if there were any relatives who'd passed through. Without much searching at all, I found a record from 1922 of my grandfather returning to the US from Turkey. The document indicated he was in Constantinople on business.

My grandfather died when my father was small, so I never knew him and neither did he. We knew next to nothing about the man. Maybe because my grandmother was too devastated to talk about him, or maybe because she didn't know him well herself. We will never know. But staring at that computer screen in my friend's studio apartment in Manhattan suddenly brought the man to life. Next to his name on the Ellis Island manifest document was a short description of his trip length and purpose, as well as his date of birth and an address in Brooklyn, New York. Now, we'd known he'd been born somewhere in New York, but we didn't know anything about his childhood or young adult life. For the first time in my life I needed to know everything there was to know about this man.

I stayed up all night and spent the next few days feverishly researching documents and family trees, pouring over census records and Ancestry.com. Meanwhile, my friend helped me find a long-term rental apartment in Brooklyn, steps from Prospect Park. I lugged my possessions up seven flights of the stone, World War II era building and into my new digs on the well-heated top floor apartment with a view of the neighbor's window across the breezeway and my very own rusted fire-escape. This was definitely the ideal New York living I'd been striving for. After settling in a bit, I took a walk to orient myself to the nearest subway stops, grocery stores and outrageously bad coffee shops I would learn to love in the weeks to come. And there it was, under shady sidewalk trees, lined on both sides with iconic brownstones behind wrought-iron fences, Greene Ave. The street my grandfather had listed as his address in 1922.

I laughed at serendipity and hung a left, admiring the homes and tiny flower gardens, looking for #1622. These brownstones are definitely pre-1922, I thought, his house is certainly still standing. As I passed #34 and #35, it occurred to me that 100 degrees was not ideal conditions for such a long walk. It was good enough in that moment to simply walk where he walked, to exist where he existed.

Turns out #1622 no longer stands. But in the weeks that followed, I found much more than an old brownstone. My obsessive family research led me to my grandfather's siblings (who we never knew about) and their children and their children. I looked one of them up in the old-fashioned Yellow Pages and called the number. And she answered. Without much explaining at all she knew who I was and on my very last day in New York I got to meet her, at Grand Central station, amid the definition of hustle and bustle.

Just like that my father, who never had an uncle or aunt or any family at all, had a cousin. And I, who'd imagined my summer wistfully drinking cocktails at jazz bars while writing poetry on napkins, had discovered that I didn't need to know what it was like to live in New York, I was freaking from there.

In the end I ought to have done a lot more than I did in 2012. The year, as a whole, was far from perfect. Exactly where it should be.

Potluck All-Stars

The holiday season is teeming with potlucks. From work celebrations, to Christmas parties, to family gatherings my calendar is full of them.

My first tip is to plan ahead. Look at your calendar right now and next to the potluck event, jot down what you're thinking of bringing. This way you'll have a chance of remembering this when you do the grocery shopping that week instead of scrambling to throw something together a half hour before the potluck. Which is in the real world, what I ALWAYS do.

This year is going to be different! I am planning ahead people. Below are my potluck go-tos. Most require minimal prep, but if they are more in-depth, I'll be sure to warn you. I'm going to put them in order of difficulty/time involved to prepare.

Have fun this holiday season and remember, eat something before you dive right into the spiked punch. Oh and never eat the booze soaked fruit. Never.

Easiest Peanut Butter Candy Ever

Easy Potluck Ideas (as in, I'd trust my husband to make it if I'm running late. None of these require cooking and can be thrown together in less than 30 minutes)

"Costco" Style Broccoli Salad
Pink Slaw
Magic Bean Salad
Easiest Peanut Butter Candy Ever

Fig and Goat Cheese Bruschetta

Mostly Easy Potluck Ideas (as in, you need to cook these ones, but should not take more than 1 hour)

Fig and Goat Cheese Bruschetta
Southwestern Meatballs with Creamy Cilantro Dipping Sauce
Positive Self-Talk Potato Salad
Don's Grilled Sweet Potatoes (scroll to bottom of link)
No-Carb Lasagna
Steamer Clams
Avocado Pie

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Kinda-Difficult Potluck Ideas (as in, you may need to prepare these the day ahead but are great if you want to wow the crowd)

Savory Pumpkin Pie
Pineapple Upside Down Cake
Coffee Brigadeiros
Homemade Butterfingers
Limoncello (this one needs a couple weeks prep, be sure to read the recipe first!)

Homemade Butterfingers

Blue Corn Pancakes with Garlic Avo Butter & Tomato Chipotle Syrup

Blue cornmeal made its way into my shopping cart last week. I just couldn't resist it when I spotted it in the bulk section. Since Dustin isn't a huge fan of cornbread, I had to put my recipe dream machine to work. Did I really just call my brain a recipe dream machine? This whole food blog thing is obviously going way too far.

Let's have some fun with pancakes. It all starts with blue cornmeal, a little fresh corn and some playful toppings that resemble the usual butter and maple syrup. But don't get tricked, these pancakes are anything but sweet. If you are not into making the "syrup," salsa would work just fine.

These would be great served with sausage and eggs. Breakfast for dinner!

Blue Corn Pancakes with Garlic Avo Butter & Tomato Chipotle Syrup
pancake recipe adapted from Closet Cooking
makes about 12 four inch pancakes

For pancakes:

• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 cup blue cornmeal (regular works, too)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 TBL sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup milk
• 2 eggs
• 2 TBL butter, melted
• 3/4 cup corn, about 1 ear (frozen is fine, too)

For butter:

1 ripe avocado

1/2 head roasted garlic (about 6 cloves)

1 tsp lime juice

salt to taste

For syrup:

1 can chopped tomatoes (with juice)

2 chipotle chiles in adobe

1 TBL sugar

salt to taste

In a food processor or blender add the can of tomatoes to the chiles, sugar, and some salt. Blend until smooth. Dump into a small sauce pan over medium heat. Simmer for about 10 minutes. Set aside. 

In a food processor or blender add the avocado, garlic, lime juice, and some salt. Blend until smooth. Taste for adequate salt, set aside. 

In a medium bowl mix together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, sugar and salt. In a separate bowl, mix melted butter, eggs, and milk. Add wet ingredients to dry and mix until just combined, try not to over mix. Fold in corn. 

Add dollops of pancake batter to a hot skillet, flipping when bubbles appear in the batter. Top with "butter" and "syrup" and have fun. Enjoy!

Savory Baked Apples with Parmesan and Sage

It's possible you are freaking out because tomorrow is T-gives and you still don't know what to make. Don't freak out. It's turkey. It's potatoes. It's pie. As long as there's enough of it, no one will complain.

But just in case you want to make an unexpected and super fancy side that is (much) easier than pie, I have a recipe for you that I'm really excited about. These baked apples would look awesome next to a turkey, but would pair especially well with ham or any porky product. They look elegant and I love serving foods that are fun and unique.

And before I go I need to say that this year I'm thankful for some really amazing people. You. All of you that read this little blog and leave comments or like my posts on Facebook, you are what keeps me going. Thank you from the bottom of my avocado pie. Sincerely.

Savory Baked Apples with Parmesan and Sage 
serves 4

4 apples
1 cup walnuts
1 garlic clove
1/4 cup yellow onion
1/2 cup parmesan cheese + 4 TBL for topping
4-5 fresh sage leaves or 1/2 tsp dried sage
salt & pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 325. Core apples using a paring knife, taking care not to pierce the bottom of the apple. If you do, all the sweet juices will leak out. This is tricky, but don't worry, no need for perfection here.

In a food processor or similar device, grind up the walnuts, garlic, onion, 1/2 cup cheese, sage, and some salt & pepper. Spoon walnut mixture into hollowed apples, pressing to pack in. You may need more or less filling depending on the size of your apples. Top each apple with 1 TBL of additional cheese. 

Place apples in a baking dish or sheet and bake for 1 hour or until apples are soft and cooked all the way through. Serve as a side to turkey, ham, pork chops or ? Enjoy! 

Roasted Chai Spiced Pumpkin Seeds

You might remember the truckload of pumpkins I scored awhile back. Well, what is the hidden gem of the orange squash god? Seeds of course.

I never really know what to do with the seeds. Roast, peel and then eat? Coming from someone who can't be bothered to roll out pie dough, there is basically no way in hell I'm peeling thousands of tiny seeds.

And then I discovered that you can eat the whole seed without peeling it. Oh. I mean duh. But seriously, if I didn't know that, then maybe you didn't either and maybe I just saved you hours of pumpkin seed peeling time that you could use instead to play with your kids who might grow up to be research scientists and discover a cure for cancer all because you played with them more and all because I told you not to peel the pumpkin seeds.

See? I'm curing cancer one pumpkin seed at a time.

Oh by the way, make these immediately and don't share them with anyone, especially your kids. They need more time on the computer doing preliminary research.

Roasted Chai Spiced Pumpkin Seeds
coats about 2 cups of seeds

Seeds from 1 pumpkin, rinsed (or 9 like me, haha. Seriously it was awesome.)
1TBL olive oil
1 tsp cinnamon
1tsp allspice
2 pods cardamom (shells removed)
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 seed from a star anise, outer shell removed (optional)
2 TBL agave or honey

Preheat oven to 400. Place seeds in a pot and and cover with water. Boil for 10 minutes and drain.

Spread seeds on an oiled baking sheet and toss to coat with oil. Roast for 5-20 minutes depending on the fatness of your seeds. Basically, you need to keep an eye on them. They need to be nice and browned, to the point where they are nearly burnt. This is because the crisper they are, the better.

Meanwhile, in a spice grinder or mortar grind cinnamon, allspice, cardamom, pepper, and star anise.

When seeds are done and have cooled a little, place in a bowl with spice mixture and toss to coat. Drizzle the agave or honey in a little at a time, stirring constantly so all seeds are coated. Best when warm. Enjoy!