Food, Family and Memory

What a beautiful day! Perfect for taking a walk at the beach, shopping at our local farmers' market, cooking, and eating outside.

We've cleaned off the deck. Arranged tables outside for lunch. Prepared a carrot salad and a couscous with grilled vegetables, made kosher pickles and a pasta with braised beef and watercress, soaked chicken and onion rings in buttermilk for fried chicken, and baked a custard with chocolate.

Today will be a good day.

For me the fried chicken with onion rings is the centerpiece of the meal. I have strong childhood memories of my mom making fried chicken when we went to Will Rogers State Beach in Santa Monica. Nothing Colonel Sanders ever made came close.

I blame my mom. Growing up eating her hearty Italian pasta dinners has made nearly all other grains seem insubstantial. Rice is good, but you have to eat more of it to get full. Wheatberries are filling, but they take too long to cook. Couscous is, well, wimpy. That's right, couscous is wimpy. How can anyone get full on a dinner of delicate, fluffy couscous? I can't. That's why I have relegated it to breakfast.

For breakfast, couscous works. It's a welcome change from oatmeal and is just as versatile. It can be made with water or milk and tastes great with add-ins like nuts, dried fruits, or fresh berries. Of course, a drizzle of melted butter, maple syrup, or honey only makes it better.

This Warm and Nutty Breakfast Couscous is packed with belly-filling good carbs and lean protein. It's crunchy, chewy, sweet, and filling. It's definitely not wimpy.

Nothing I make ever comes out the same way twice.  Maybe it’s because I don’t measure?

I make my brother cookies all the time, usually his favorite- chocolate chip, and he knows they will always be a bit different.  I use the same recipe, really I do.  By the way, this is the disclaimer for the recipe below.  I wrote it down out of my head.  Good luck!  Don’t be afraid to adapt. 

Maybe that’s the deep lesson from my refusal to remember what I did last time?  Nah. 

I just like having fun in the kitchen.  In college, I lived in what we affectionately called “the treehouse.”  It was a converted attic surrounded by big pines (I think it was pine).  My kitchen was so small that I could practically wash dishes, stir my veggies, and stand inside my fridge all at the same time.  I loved it.  

Okay, I admit that I have read Patricia Wells' Food Lover’s Guide to France so many times that the pages are no longer glued to its spine. My copy smells old because it is old. It isn’t all that accurate anymore but there is still some relevant information, just less. This book is the reason I have had so many treasured memories of France.

The most memorable one in the whole book for me was finding the walnut oil man - Patricia Wells wrote that he had a water wheel that aided in the extraction, used no electricity, the farm was difficult to find and beware of the dogs. All true, but so much more...

I was the navigator, not the driver that day. I was responsible for finding all the tiny little roads on our paper map to the mill. Half the roads weren’t on the map and any signage was obscured by overgrown trees. It was very rural and our afternoon was turning into either a treasure hunt or wild goose chase. I could feel we were near. When my boyfriend asked if I found the road on the map, I nodded. Not true, we were lost.

You can guess what the driver said as we drove threw the same intersection for the fourth time. “How can we be lost if you are reading the map? You know how to read a map?” “Yayyyy”, I replied - you could cut the tension with a butter knife. One more try, then I would agree to give up the goose chase. Suddenly, I saw it - the faded yellow sign covered with ivy and grown up trees like Patricia had described, only more overgrown.