Super Natural Every Day: Earnest Summation

I spent a lot of time analyzing my relationship with Super Natural Every Day while I was having the relationship. Here's what it was like: like dating an impossibly beautiful, cool, and graceful person who you really want to mesh with, but don't, quite. Like The Way We Were, and you're Barbra Streisand.

I admire this book a lot. I admire the sensibility, the aesthetic, the photography, the principles of restraint and mindfulness that underpin every gorgeous page. But I'm just not that restrained or mindful and the food -- simple vegetarian dishes --  wasn't what I, or the people I live with, wanted to eat.

Except when it was! There were some big hits. So the spread here is very unusual.

Of the 23 recipes I cooked from Super Natural Every Day:

worth the price of the book -- 2 (lemony yogurt on the outstanding farro soup; broccoli gribiche)
great -- 5 (I craved the white beans and cabbage and Swanson's oatcakes.)
good -- 5
so-so -- 9
flat-out bad -- 2

For the record, here the designations "so-so" and "flat-out bad" reflect sharp differences in taste, not recipe glitches. At this house, we simply like sweet things sweeter, cheesy things cheesier, alcoholic drinks more alcoholic, and we're not lovers of millet and tempeh. I wish we were, but we're not. Still: an exquisite cookbook, with some excellent recipes. This book stays.

My yard is a petting zoo

We babysat our niece and nephew last weekend so that Justine and Michael could go away for their anniversary. Ben sat on the deck and sprayed himself with the hose just about the entire time.  I tried to remember what my own children were like at 18 months. I tried to remember what they ate, how I got them to sleep, when they woke up, how they liked to play. Couldn't. None of it.

For dinner, I served the children Heidi Swanson's mostly-not-potato salad out of Super Natural Every Day.

My mother would have loved this.

It's in the big bowl, but the humans were cuter than the salad. I was very drawn to this recipe -- a melange of chopped celery, green beans, tofu, and a very few potatoes -- because it seemed like a good diet dish, which it was. But it was not so much fun to eat, at least not when your mind is on potato salad. Conceptually, it's on a par with mostly-not-avocado guacamole or mostly-not-chocolate brownies. I mean, it tasted nice, but maybe it needs a new name. Like, chopped celery salad with potatoes?

On Sunday morning, I got up early and made Swanson's baked oatmeal. I had one of those dangerous self-congratulatory thoughts as I prepared this pretty, pretty dish. I thought, "Stella is going to love this and remember forever the baked oatmeal she had at Aunt Jenny's." Having deceived myself in this manner repeatedly over the last 14 years, I immediately I self-corrected: "This is not going to happen. Just thinking it actually ensures it's not going to happen."

I am a sage! It did not happen. I served the oatmeal to Stella who wrinkled up her nose and said, "I don't like it. I don't like nuts."

Owen said, "I don't like oatmeal that is baked."

Isabel looked at it and said, "Oh, it has fruit in it. No thanks."

My husband thought it was tremendous and ate heartily, and I agreed: tremendous. The recipe is here. If I were to make it again, I might increase the sweetener just a bit.

Apart from complaining about the baked oatmeal and spraying themselves with the hose, the children spent a lot of time with the goats and chickens.

I know. Funny, given I don't like eggs.

I have turned into the eccentric woman with the crappy (all senses) back yard and too many animals. I did not see this coming.

Stella is holding a prized Penedesenca chick. 

In case you couldn't see the prized Penedesenca chick.

On Monday, I made Swanson's dilled green beans and seitan. The little kids were gone by then -- I would not have imposed this on them. While I loved the chewy, spongy seitan, no one else ate it. No complaints, no fights, just no one ate it. My husband pushed the seitan to the side of the plate.

It was better than it looks. 

And with that I was done with Super Natural Every Day.  I still want to make Swanson's bran muffins, tutti frutti crisp, and carnival cookies, but I decided not to force myself. They are fattening treats and this isn't the spring for fattening treats.

Anyway, there's a sweet coda to my short expedition through this lovely book. On Tuesday, I found myself with aging CSA corn, aging CSA fava beans, aging CSA green peppers, and brand new CSA cilantro. I concocted a dish that was entirely inspired by Heidi Swanson, using up ingredients I bought to cook from her book. It was fabulous. So fabulous, in fact, that I wrote the recipe down.

Super Natural Homage Succotash

1 pound fava beans (week old is okay)

4 ears corn (they don't have to be just picked -- week old is okay)

2 tablespoons coconut oil (or vegetable oil)

1 small onion, finely chopped

1 small green bell pepper, finely chopped 

1/2 cup canned coconut milk

2 tablespoons Thai red curry paste

kosher salt to taste

handful of fresh cilantro, finely chopped

1. Shell the fava beans, peel off the skins, and blanch for one minute in a pot of boiling water. Drain.

2. With a sharp knife, scrape the kernels off the corn.

3. In a large skillet, heat the coconut oil with the onion and green bell pepper. Cook for about 5 minutes until soft. Add the corn. Cook, stirring, for 3 minutes.

4. Add the coconut milk, curry paste, and fava beans and a splash of water. Stir and cook for a few more minutes. Taste for salt. Scrape into a bowl and top with cilantro. Serves 4.

I served the succotash with steak, which was not very Heidi Swanson, but is very Guy Fieri, whose book I start tomorrow night.

 I didn't notice quite how fatty until just now.

The incredible, inedible egg

We feed our chickens well.

I'm an adventurous eater, but like most people I have a few intractable aversions. And they are pretty lame. I haven't drunk a glass of milk since I was 5 and I don't think I've ever eaten an entire egg. I like the yolk of a fried or soft-boiled egg, but the white makes me skin crawl. Hard-boiled eggs are out of the question as are deviled eggs and egg salad. But worst of all: scrambled eggs. I can barely stand to watch other people eat scrambled eggs. I would as soon eat a fetal duck egg as a scrambled egg.

Which is why I should never have attempted Heidi Swanson's seasonal vegetable frittata from Super Natural Every Day. I like frittata when there's so much cheese and vegetable that you can convince yourself the egg is just there to help the other ingredients coalesce This was not Swanson's seasonal vegetable frittata.

I'm not sure zucchinis are in season, but they were in our CSA box, so I used zucchini as our seasonal vegetable and sliced up some potatoes. Swanson calls for a mere ounce of goat or feta cheese for 10 eggs, so I doubled that, given my need to disguise the eggs. I thought it was a very handsome frittata.

But while I was hungry, I was apparently not hungry enough. It was too eggy for me. At the same time, it was too full of zucchini for household scrambled egg lovers. "Not the best, Mom," said Owen. "No offense."

 I don't fault Swanson's recipe. I just don't have a feel for egg cookery. We fed the leftovers to the chickens, who love eggs with a disturbing ardor. Which may have something to do, though I'm not sure exactly what, with why I'm turned off by eggs.

Our second favorite Heidi Swanson pasta salad.

Last night, I made Swanson's tortellini salad using CSA broccoli and supermarket asparagus. It was tasty, but compared unfavorably to the orzo salad I described in a previous post, the recipe for which you can find here. Try it!

As I've mentioned, I'm going to cook from Guy Fieri Food next. It appeared in the mail and Owen has been flipping through it and folding back pages of he-man dishes like spaghetti and meatballs and pork ribs. Every day he asks me when I'm going to stop cooking from "the vegetable book."

I know. But Owen has eaten a lot of tempeh and broccoli lately and I owe him. And for all the noisy graphics and dudespeak, the recipes in this book look delicious and solid.

Meanwhile, here's what's left on my Swanson to-cook list:

-baked oatmeal. Because Soule Mama loves it.
-dilled green beans with seitan. Because I've never eaten seitan. (Or, as Buddy Garritty calls it, "satan.")
-repeat of the cauliflower soup. Because there's a CSA cauliflower to use up
-mostly not potato salad. Because there are CSA potatoes to use up.
-carnival cookies. Because: popcorn, peanuts, bananas, chocolate chips, ground almonds.
-Tutti frutti crumble. Because the picture is so beautiful.
-Bran muffins. Because I have been searching for the perfect bran muffin recipe since I was 18.

Mama Bear cooks faster than she types

This boy likes white bean dip.

The cooking from Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Every Day continues:

Saturday night, my sister invited us over for dinner and I contributed Swanson's white bean spread and served it with crackers and cucumber slices.  I somehow got it into my head that the instructions included steeping a 5-inch branch of rosemary in olive oil. The resulting spread was delicious, but very, very, very piney and resinous. This struck me as interesting, because Swanson usually has such a light hand with the flavoring. I was puzzling over this until last night when I reread the recipe and saw that she calls for a teaspoon of rosemary. The dish is satisfying and hummus-like and I suggest you make it as directed by Swanson. You can find the recipe here.

That was Saturday. No one invited us to dinner on Sunday night, so we stayed home and I made Swanson's broccoli and potato gribiche. You roast small, thin-skinned potatoes and broccoli then toss the warm vegetables in a tangy dressing (gribiche) of hard-cooked egg yolk, olive oil, vinegar, shallots, mustard and herbs. Spectacular.

gribiche 

Three comments:

1. I might in future omit the potatoes, because the broccoli held the dressing better.

2. But if I were to make it with potatoes, I would steam or boil them, as soft steamed/boiled potatoes absorb dressing better than roasted potatoes.

3. I omitted the chopped hard-boiled eggs you're supposed to toss with the broccoli because I don't personally like hard-boiled eggs.

This boy likes gribiche, but won't let me photograph him eating anymore.

Monday night, I made Swanson's weeknight curry, a super-quick stew of Thai red curry paste, coconut milk, cauliflower and zucchini. It was exactly as billed -- an easy weeknight dinner.

The next morning, I baked her millet muffins. Having eaten almost no sugar for a month, I am probably not the best judge, but I thought they were outstanding.

Hunger is the best sauce.

I'm not sure what the tiny, chalky pellets of millet add to the muffin, but I don't mind them.

Tuesday night, I made Swanson's orzo salad, using whole wheat macaroni because I couldn't find whole wheat orzo. You blanch some broccoli and use about half of it to make a pesto. I'd never tried broccoli pesto and it was great. Toss the pesto with the rest of the blanched broccoli and your boiled pasta, add some chunked avocado. Rich, sharp, tangy, cheesy, nutty, much loved.

I am coming to the end of what I can do with Super Natural Every Day. There are a few more recipes I want to try, but I've pretty much powered through that book. I went to the library yesterday to try to borrow Swanson's prequel, Super Natural Cooking, but every copy in the Marin County Library system was checked out. Popular! So, regretfully, within a few days I guess I'll be moving on. The next cookbook has been chosen. Not by me, but with my consent. Owen has even gone through and folded back the pages of dishes he wants me to cook. It will be a test of my theory of dieting, which is that it's all about portion control.

Speaking of which, the other day a friend told me I looked thinner, that my face looked "less poofy." It's one of those compliments you turn over a few times in your head before you let yourself be truly happy about it.

Last night, I went out to dinner with my family and the waitress brought me a glass of wine and said, "Here you go, Mama Bear." It's one of those passing comments you turn over a few times in your head before you decide it's the waitress, not you.

We kilt those green bell peppers

You're not welcome anymore.

Blogger erased my last post, which is not a huge loss except that I wanted someone to make Heidi Swanson's white beans and cabbage from Super Natural Every Day and then to reassure me that it is as incredible as I thought it was. I've reattached the recipe to the end of this post. I worry that I'm losing my critical faculties, as being on a diet has made everything taste wonderful to me.

Almost everything. I still don't like green bell peppers. Although this is the season of asparagus and cherries, in our CSA box last week they gave us cold storage apples, zucchini(?!) and three green bell peppers. I really hope they don't keep this up or I might have to shop around for new A to CS.

I've only ever made one recipe in my life that highlighted green bell peppers to good (or any) effect. I  remember it like it was yesterday. To my shock, when I looked up this recipe, I saw that I made it in September 1998. Owen was -2. That's a long time to remember a recipe.

Was it really that good?

I made it again on Friday night and, yes, it is as improbably delicious as I remembered. You cook small pieces of green bell pepper in olive oil with onion and parsley until they combine to form a soft, sweet melange, then you toss this lovely green sauce with pasta shells and some Parmesan. I probably wouldn't go out and buy green peppers just to make this -- it only encourages the farmers -- but if you need to use some up, this is the recipe you want. It comes from Verdura by Viana La Place, one of my favorite cookbooks. I've made a few very slight changes.

Pasta shells with green peppers and herbs

4 tablespoons olive oil
1 small yellow onion, minced
3 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
1/4 cup Italian parsley, chopped
3 green peppers, cored, seeded and cut into small dice
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 pound whole-wheat pasta shells
2 tablespoons softened butter
Parmesan

1. Heat the olive oil and onion in a wide skillet and cook until the onion is translucent. Add the garlic, parsley, green peppers and some salt and pepper. Cook until the peppers are tender.

2. Meanwhile, cook the pasta in a big pot of boiling, salted water. When the pasta is almost done, scoop out about 1/3 cup of the water and add to the skillet of warm peppers. Drain the pasta. Add it to the skillet, toss in the butter, and stir until everything comes together. Serve with Parmesan. Serves 6.

Small portions, no seconds. Anything can be diet food.

And here is the recipe for Heidi Swanson's white beans and cabbage. If you make it, let me know what you think.

2 tablespoons unsalted butter or olive oil

4 ounces thin-skinned potatoes, unpeeled, scrubbed, and finely diced

kosher salt

1 large shallot, thinly sliced

2 cups cooked and cooled white beans (I used navy beans)

3 cups very finely shredded green cabbage (about half a head -- though I would use more next time)
pinch of red pepper flakes (optional)

Parmesan

1. Warm the butter or olive oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Add the potatoes and cook until they are cooked through, 5 to 8 minutes. Be sure to scrape the pan and toss the potatoes once or twice along the way so all sides are browned

2. Stir in the shallot and the beans. Let the beans cook in a single layer for a couple miutes until they brown a bit, then scrape and toss again. Cook until the beans are crusty on all sides

3. Stir in the cabbage and cook for a few minutes until it "loses a bit of its structure." Serve with Parmesan.

Self pity is such a good look on me

Next time I'll make chocolate mousse. 

I can't really explain why my diet isn't working. It has become a source of despair and of that I am ashamed. Despairing about weight is foolish and frivolous. But I can't help it. I am despairing. A diet is a powerful metaphor for effecting change in your life and it is every bit as powerful when it doesn't work as when it does. Just in a profoundly discouraging way.

I wish I could make a joke about my feeble will power but my will power hasn't been feeble. I wish I could make jokes about my slothful habits, but my habits haven't been slothful. I've been spinning and hiking and yesterday tried something horrendous and mortifying called "Pilates Abs." I've also forbidden myself to sit down except when necessary, like to compose a blog post or watch Fringe. The other day when the temptation to sit overcame me, I baked Heidi Swanson's oat cakes from Super Natural Every Day.

I would have been better off sitting. Even sleeping.

These oat cakes are:

a. very delicious
b. very fattening

Whole grain pastries are tricky. They seem like a good idea -- oats and spelt flour, flax seeds and nuts! -- but I think a fluffy white cupcake would have been more dietetic. It's the granola syndrome: a cup of granola is more nutritious, but Frosted Flakes are less fattening.

Anyway, I can't make these again because basically all I eat now is scrambled tofu, fish, and kale.
However! If you are not a diet, I highly recommend these oat cakes. You can find the recipe here.

Jenny Craig? Adderall? Master Cleanse?

Cabbage soup -- thin, brothy, and jaundiced yellow

I've been listening to Born Round, Frank Bruni's memoir of his struggles with weight and bulimia before becoming the restaurant critic for the New York Times. I like it a lot. Bruni is an excellent companion -- clever, confidential, self-deprecating -- and I turn him on whenever I'm cleaning or driving or cooking. He's my new gay best friend, notwithstanding the fact we've never met.  Sometimes he overshares, but I like that it in a gay best friend. Or any best friend. Plus, it's gratifying to hear about someone who is (or was) far more extreme and neurotic about weight than I have ever been.  It makes me feel better.

And worse.

Because -- and I don't want to be mean, but Bruni says it himself! -- he ate like a pig when he was fat. He ate chickens and left piles of bones in his car. He emptied minibars. He got up in the middle of the night and made mountains of pasta. He consumed multiple ice cream sandwiches at a sitting. And then when he finally started eating slightly less and generally understanding about portion control and moderation and exercise, the pounds melted away.

That's how it works. For men.

My husband stops buying candy bars, restricts himself to 6 homemade chocolate chip cookies per night, and a week later weighs what he did in college. I eat tiny portions of cabbage soup and oatgurt, lay off the negronis, do not touch the Easter candy, not even a Peep, go to bed hungry, yet remain as sturdy as a draft horse. I am losing weight, but at the rate of a few ounces a week. You have to admire an implacable body like mine. It is a stalwart body, a strong body, a good body in a famine. I'm trying to look on the bright side.

I've made a few more dishes from Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Every Day:

-kale salad. Imagine kale chips tossed with toasted coconut and quinoa. Unfortunately, I don't love kale chips. If you do, try this recipe. Otherwise, try Martha Stewart's kale salad and skip to Swanson's green lentil soup.

-green lentil soup. There are a gazillion lentil soups out there, but Swanson's is special. (She credits Small Shed Flatbreads, a fabulous little restaurant here in my town, for the inspiration.) You cook down some onion and garlic in coconut oil, then simmer your lentils and when it's all soft and falling apart, puree with coconut milk and stir in some curry powder and butter. (The recipe is here; I used water instead of broth.)  I've made this twice in a week, once for a family dinner and a few nights later as the opening course of a tiny dinner party. It's super-easy and somewhat fattening, but if a modest bowl of this is all you eat for dinner, I consider it a reasonable meal. Perhaps erroneously.

Ravioli

-Ravioli in harissa. I made this for the second course of the small party that opened with green lentil soup. Storebought ravioli, olives, broccoli, feta, harissa. I ate one raviolo. Based on that one raviolo, it was a fine dish.

-Two days ago, frustrated at my inability to lose weight, I made Swanson's delicious but very austere cabbage and chickpea soup for lunch and ate a single bowl. It's brothy and you feel thin and deprived when you're eating it. You also feel poor. It tastes like what I imagine Flemish peasants ate in the 16th century, except with lots of curry powder. I had it again for lunch yesterday and will have it again today.

Now, it is time for the highlight of my day: spin class.

From soup to shoes

cauliflower soup

The spring here has been flat and gray and the American suburbs seem lonely and bleak and Barcelona, in memory, populous and lively and engrossing. If the sun would just stop being so coy maybe all would look rosier. We took a walk Saturday morning, bundled in our jackets, and under the sad white sky we saw a bobcat, a half dozen wild turkeys, a deer, an enormous black beetle, lupines, poppies, the mighty Pacific Ocean, cliffs, a sandy beach, and many joggers in unflattering tights listening to iPods. I whined to my husband that I think I made some wrong life choices because I was so much happier looking at people in harem pants and chunky glasses in Spain. You should all feel very sorry for me. . .

But only because I'm on a for-real diet. I'm trying to make it interesting and delicious, with moderate success. Friday, I had my biggest hit with the cauliflower soup from Heidi Swanson's new Super Natural Every Day. This soup does include croutons and a small amount of aged cheddar cheese, but I still think it counts as a dietetic dinner if you consume just one bowl. The soup is rich and mustardy (!) and if you have this book, rest assured that you can use water instead of stock, omit the shallots, and toast any bread you have around for the croutons (I used leftover English muffins, ciabatta, and hamburger buns) and end up with a supernaturally outstanding meal.

I'm completely under the spell of Super Natural Every Day. I did not plan this. I was planning to cook from Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty, as I mentioned a few weeks ago. But that book has never quite seized my imagination. Meanwhile, I'm constantly picking up Super Natural Every Day and flipping through it, the way I was constantly flipping through Pioneer Woman Cooks a year ago. Although Heidi Swanson and Ree Drummond are pretty much polar opposites, they both forcefully convey their personalities and sensibilities through food. This is exactly what has always beguiled me about cookbooks: the way they can express so much while seeming to talk about muffins and main courses.

If you're unfamiliar with Swanson's blog, she's a vegetarian who embraces creamy vegetable fats (avocado, coconut oil) and unusual beans and grains. She uses a bit of cheese in her recipes, but never much, and she skimps on sugar.  Her photographs are lush and gorgeous, her voice is measured and precise, and her work inspiring and aspirational. I want to step into the lovely, orderly world she depicts and become the kind of restrained and principled person who can say:


"I do my best to keep a relatively minimalist kitchen, treating it more like a studio space than anything else. . . ."


"You'll likely notice I don't automatically season every one of my recipes with salt and pepper."


"I use little whispers of toasted sesame oil in my cooking but it can be devastatingly overpowering. To say I'm judicious with it is an understatement."


"I find myself most excited about light, bright, refreshing beverages. . . on the fancy beverage front, my repertoire is short and spritzy and none involve hard alcohol."

Sadly, the words "light," "bright," and "refreshing" do not describe the beverages that excite me most. I am most excited by drinks that are "heavy," "complex," and "intoxicating." They always involve hard alcohol. I season everything with salt and pepper. I've never cooked with a "whisper"of anything -- certainly not delicious sesame oil! --  and my kitchen and its cabinets look less like a studio space than the attic of a grandmother with hoarding tendencies. These are clearly my preferences; this is clearly my personality.

And yet here I am, halfway to 90, still envying and aspiring to the aesthetic of others, like I don't have one of my own. My mother did this, too. It's the insecurity of the magpie, the magpie who envies the minimalist.

A magpie sensibility is one reason, pace Gabrielle Hamilton, I ultimately found Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table so delightful to work from. I still haven't gotten that book out of my system. At first glance it's hard to figure out where Greenspan is going with the jumble of recipes, but once you plunge in you discover it's a magpie book that joyfully pulls from all sources and uses all manner of ingredients at the expense of an instantly discernible aesthetic. Don't be deceived. There's a unifying spirit to the book, and it's the inclusive and vibrant spirit of the magpie.

Anyway, here is Swanson's description of her honey and rose water tapioca: "The key to this fragrant tapioca pudding is a light touch with the honey and rose water. Too much of either and the tapioca goes from being lovely, charming and understated to vampy and garish."

I love rosewater more than I can say. I always double the amount called for in recipes. I will now, in a very awkward segue, provide the requested photograph of the platform shoes I brought back from Spain:

Too clunky to be vampy, but definitely garish. Muxart.

Are these loud green shoes a garish anomaly in my closet?

 I am afraid not:

Very cheap. Very uncomfortable. In 5 years, never worn, but treasured. 

Garish. Magpie.

In other news, we got leashes for our goats so we can take them into the unfenced part of the yard to eat blackberry vines. The other night I teased Isabel, who is 14: "Would you rather go without food for 24 hours or take the goats on a walk around the block."

Isabel: "Twenty-four hours? I'd rather go without food for 48 hours."