Store Lists: More Little Notebooks

I’m about half way through reading  Milk Eggs Vodka: Grocery Lists Lost and Found by Bill Keaggy. He and his friends spent several years collecting grocery lists that people left in their shopping carts or dropped in the parking lot. He has arranged them into categories, like Doodles and Noodles or Chides and Asides. In truth the lists are pretty similar in their brevity, bad spelling, and preponderance of processed food. These little scraps of paper, while fetching and evocative, are not nearly as detailed and organized as my little notebooks. Are you surprised?

















I have two such notebooks, one for Berkeley and one for Sonoma. I’ve been using the Berkeley one for ages—maybe since we moved to the west coast 13 years ago. I started the Sonoma notebook in 2005, finished it up last week and initiated a new one today. These notebooks are a little beat-up by the time I’m done with them—what with going in and out of my purse, resting on the child seat of the grocery cart, and finally sitting on my kitchen counter where I can consult the current plans and add items for next week’s shopping. Each page is filled with my scribbles: items crossed out as I throw them into the cart, others circled that aren’t available, and the odd note to myself.

So let me take you through the process. I pull a couple of cookbooks off the shelves, sit in my favorite chair with them on my lap, and start flipping through indexes. Sometimes my choices are based on a hankering (like today I just felt like some red meat) and sometimes on the basis of what is hanging out in the fridge (like the tomatillos I bought recently without a designated use). When I find a suitable recipe (within my capability, time and cost constraints, taste and aesthetic preferences), I jot it down on the right hand side of the page, along with the cookbook (Mastering the Art… becomes MAFC) and page number. On the left hand side, I list the ingredients I need to make the recipe. I repeat the process until I have two or three meals planned. This sounds intense but in fact it doesn’t take very long and I love looking through the cookbooks and imagining good things going into my mouth.

I try to make enough food at any given dinner to give me an additional dinner of leftovers which, fortunately, everyone in this family adores. So three preparations yield at least six meals. Because I don’t like to eat the same thing two nights in a row, I often alternate leftovers with freshly cooked meals. For example a typical week might look like this: Cook 1. Cook 2. Leftover 1. Cook 3. Leftover 2. Eat out. Leftover 3. You get the idea.

Taking the time to plan the menus and shopping about once a week suits me just fine. I am fortunate to have farmers markets and good supermarkets in easy reach. I love knowing that at the end of the process we are provisioned for the week and that once I start cooking, I’ll have everything I need. Most of the time.

Dang, I forgot the milk.

End of Summer Tomato Tart

Tomato Cheese Tart

Pie crust for a low-sided 12-inch pizza pan, partially baked and cooled
12 ounces Swiss, Emmenthaler or Gruyere cheese (or other melting cheeses), cut in thin slices
2 or 3 large tomatoes, cut into ½-inch slices
OR
7 medium roasted tomatoes (14 halves)
Salt and pepper
1 teaspoon dried basil or 3 tablespoons finely cut fresh basil (in chiffonade*)
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
Coarse salt for garnish

1. Sprinkle the fresh tomato slices generously with salt and place them on a cake rack to drain for about 30 minutes. Pat them dry with paper towels.
OR
Drain the roasted tomatoes if they have been sitting in their accumulated liquid.
2. Preheat the oven to 375ºF.
3. Arrange the cheese slices, slightly overlapping, in the bottom of the cooled crust and place the drained or roasted tomatoes side by side on top. Sprinkle with a few grindings of black pepper, the dried or 1 tablespoon fresh basil and the grated Parmesan cheese.
4. Bake in the lower third of the oven for 25 minutes, or until the cheese has melted and the top of the tart is lightly browned. If the top isn’t quite brown enough, you can put the tart under the broiler for a minute or two, watching it carefully.
5. Sprinkle with a bit of coarse salt and the remaining 2 tablespoons of basil chiffonade just before serving. Serve hot or warm.

4-5 servings
Adapted from the Time Life Series Food of the World M.F.K. Fisher's The Cooking of Provincial France.
 

*To make a chiffonade, stack basil leaves on top of each other. Roll the leaves lengthwise and cut crosswise into 1/8th-inch slivers. The end result should be a pleasing tangle of basil-y goodness.

Pie Crust

For a 12-inch pizza pan with low sides:
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup plus 3 tablespoons (1 stick plus 3 tablespoons) cold unsalted butter, cut roughly into ½-inch pieces
7 tablespoons ice water or more if necessary

1. Combine the flour and salt in the container of a food processor. Add the butter and pulse until the butter and flour are blended and the mixture looks like cornmeal, about 10 seconds.
2. Add the ice water to the mixture. Pulse until you see the mixture coming together. If it doesn’t after a couple of additional pulses, add more ice water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until it does.
3. Dump the contents of the container onto a sheet of plastic wrap and mold it into a ball. Flatten the ballot a disk; bring the plastic up around the dough to cover it completely. Either freeze for 10 minutes or refrigerate for 30 minutes. (You can also refrigerate the dough for a day or two or freeze it almost indefinitely.)
4. Sprinkle a smooth countertop or a large board with flour. Unwrap the dough and place it on the work surface; sprinkle the top with a little flour. If the dough is hard, let it rest a few minutes to warm up just a little.
5. Roll with light pressure, from the center out. Continue to roll, adding a small amount of flour as necessary, rotating the dough occasionally, and turning it over once or twice during the process. When the dough is about 1/8-inch thick, place your pan upside down over it to check the size. You want your circle of dough to be about 2-3 inches bigger than the pan it will go into.
6. If the size is correct, move the dough into the pan by folding the dough in half and placing the fold in the middle of the pan. Carefully unfold the dough and press it gently into the outer edge of the pan.
7. Trim the extra dough about 1 inch above the rim. Fold the dough above the rim in half (to ½ inch) and crimp with your fingers to make a decorative edge. With the scraps, you can fill in any part of the circle that’s missing.
8. Place the pan in the freezer for 10 minutes or the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Partially Baked Pie Crust

1. Preheat the oven to 400ºF.
2. Prick the dough all over with a fork to help prevent the crust from poufing. (You’ll see what I mean when it happens.)
3. Tear off two pieces of aluminum foil. Press the sheets crossed over each other to conform to the dough, especially on the sides. Weight the foil with a pile of dried beans or rice, pie weights, the bottom of a 12-inch spring-form pan or a tight-fitting skillet or saucepan—anything that will sit flat on the surface and hold the dough in place. Sometimes I just do the foil and don’t weight it with anything and it’s just fine. The pouf goes down.
4. Bake for 12 minutes. Remove from the oven; remove the weights and foil. Prick the bottom, once again, with a fork.
5. Bake for another 4-5 minutes or so until the crust is just starting to turn a light brown and the bottom looks set.
6. Remove from the oven and cool on a rack.

Adapted from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food, Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and M.F.K. Fisher’s The Cooking of Provincial France.

Friday inspiration: Happy anniversary, Twiggy!

Hi everyone! It's been a few days without writting, but I'm back! I've been a little bit busy!

But before we talk a little about my week, I'd like to share with you some pictures of twiggy in honor of its sixtieth anniversary.

Twiggy is still today one of the most charismatic and groundbreaking women on the planet. In the sixties her image and innovative mod look broke with the previously established stereotype. While I have always found extremely thin, also I find it fascinating and beautiful woman.

Congratulations on your sixtieth anniversary, Twiggy!

Also, looking for pictures of the famous model, I met Mary Quant gaps and designs that I love ... and that makes me think of a dress I saw the other day and you can buy me, because I love it!

The Stones with a Patty Boyd wearin a Mary Quant dress.

And I can not speak of the sixties without mentioning my great idol, Davi Bowie ... how handsome he was! Do you know that my father looked like he was young? Let's see if I look a picture.

On Tuesday we went to Sabadell Nati's birthday at a Japanese restaurant that was not bad, though they wanted us to eat more sushi than recommended for your health!

Dress - H&M

Tights - Calzedonia

T-straps - Promod second hand

(Yes, my new hair color is darken but in my room there's no light, so it looks like almost black and it's not like this!)

On Wednesday I went to Ikea with Stefani, Mareen and Martina, my roommates, and we bought many things for our rooms and for general household: candles, blankets, dried flowers ... I will come back yet again find a shelf ... and to buy more meatballs! I love Ikea food!

And yesterday was raining all day until nearly night. Esther, Elena and I had a coffee before lunch, while we were waiting to Laia for going to the new Cos shop (a branch of H & M) that have opened in Barcelona. They have beautiful clothes, though a little expensive for my pocket. We were also trying on clothes in Adolfo Dominguez.

Afterhaving lunch and taking a walk in the rain, at which point I got soaked, I was with Kim, Esther's boyfriend, who is a filmmaker and a while we were talking about lot of things.

Finally I returned home, but before I bought socks imitation Miracle Angelic Pretty Candy ... I laughed a lot to see and to me I had to take!

This afternoon I will stay home until 7, as I have to send an email to try to attend the Tea Pary of Baby the Stars Shine Bright at that hour, Wish me luck!

PS: My look of yesterday! I was wearing a coat too and my red umbrella!

Tshirt - Bershka (it's really old!)

Skirt - Bershka

Tights and socks - Calzedonia

Shoes - Bodyline

Headbow - Calire's

Yes, I must change my posture for pictures, hahaha!