Creamy-ish Mushroom Soup

Soup always makes me feel better.

Is it just me, or does it feel like these weeks in quarantine are going by as fast as ever? Maybe it’s the fact that there is just so much to do. I know it’s vastly different for people who live alone, don’t work full time, or don’t have children, and there are positives and negatives for all.  For me, there’s always something, more like at least three or four somethings that I should be doing at once.  It’s sort of exhausting but it also keeps me going, keeps me from worrying too much, wasting time thinking about all of the possible ways this pandemic will shape our lives going forward when it’s impossible to know.  Amid impending mass layoffs at my company, I’m grateful that I don’t have the luxury of time to spend speculating as to whether or not I will lose my job, panicking over the possibility that I will. 

Being quarantined with little kids has its moments, for sure, but it also has THIS! And no, Emmett does not call me “micchelle”!

There are so many immediate needs I need to attend to here. I’ve got to just keep going. Roll with the punches, and remember that while my worries and fears are real, they are also trivial compared to those that so many others are facing at this time. Also, the weather is finally getting better and we are still healthy and safe with so much to be thankful for. This week we got a huge box of toys from our cousins in England and it was like Christmas! Better than Christmas! The kids were so excited and have been having a blast with all of their new toys over the last few days. Isla learned how to ride her bike without training wheels and Eve learned how to ride a bike with them. Both are SO proud. Even though, admittedly, being a 24-7 parent instead of a “working” parent can test my patience, this extra time with the kids is such a blessing.  They are so funny, so full of joy, so quick to adapt to even these crazy circumstances. I’m striving to be more like them.  

Not to toot my own horn, but it seems that others were inspired by my recently organized pantry and decided to follow suit.

One small success was lunch today. I love cooking but it’s not easy to keep up the enthusiasm when you are cooking multiple meals a day and don’t necessarily have the time or resources to plan or prepare them the way you would like. Still, I’ve been trying to find new recipes so that I can expand my repertoire and continue to enjoy the process. I don’t know about you, but I think most people who cook get excited when they find a recipe they want to try and realize that they already have all of the ingredients on hand.  That is probably especially true right now. This was that and then some. It’s from Bon Appetit, where I have been getting a lot of good recipes lately. The recipe is vegan, usually not a selling point for me, but right now, a recipe that doesn’t require me to use up any of my precious stash of chicken stock is more than welcome. This one was simple. Mushrooms, cashews, thyme, garlic, onions, shallots, miso and olive oil. And the reviews! This recipe got rave reviews on bonappetit.com! I always read the reviews before I invest in a recipe. This time, I was a little incredulous, but I’m a believer. This soup makes my “dinner party list” and not just for vegans or vegetarians (but if you happen to be one, MAKE THIS). Even I didn’t miss the meat or dairy one bit. It is insanely good. And that’s without the garlic oil, which just puts it over the top (and makes it fancy). I’m generally not a fan of recipes with sub recipes. No one is a fan of recipes with sub-recipes, am I right? But the garlic oil only took three minutes to make and was definitely worth the lift.

Garlic oil. This would be great drizzled on pasta, pizza, or as a dipping oil for fresh bread.

Of course, I didn’t follow the recipe exactly. I added some dried porcini mushrooms that I found in the back of the cupboard which I soaked (along with the cashews) while I was cooking the fresh mushrooms, onions and shallots. After adding the wine, I added the porcini-cashew mixture and soaking liquid to the soup, along with a little less than the suggested volume of water. Then, after simmering the onion-shallot mixture with the porinis and cashews, I blended them with the miso until the soup was completely pureed. Finally, I added the sauteed fresh mushrooms back in for texture and let it simmer for a few minutes. Final result? Yum. I cannot believe something so easy and dairy free could be so creamy and full of flavor.

Step one. Saute your fresh mushrooms.

They cook down a lot, this is how they should look before you remove them from the pan.

Puree (cashew-porcini mixture + shallot-onion mixture and water) before adding the sauteed mushrooms back in.

Garlic oil ingredients in the pan (added red pepper flakes - we like things spicy).

Three minutes later…

I won’t have any leftovers but if you do, pasta sauce would be a great option. Just reduce it over the stove by simmering it for 30 minutes or so until it thickens up a little more. Toss with pasta, top with garlic oil and parmesan. Pour yourself a big glass of wine and call it self-care. Call yourself a genius. Have seconds.

Here’s to happy surprises in uncertain times.

Pandemic Pantry - Crispy Fish Cakes

Cooking during a pandemic is interesting. It has its upsides - there’s always someone home to check the oven, and downsides, like not being able to get certain things when you want them.  I’ve been waiting until we have no produce left, then placing a large grocery order online so that we’ll be set for several days. When the food first arrives, I organize it all, freezing some proteins and staples like butter. At first, the fridge is overflowing but before I know it, we are completely out. I never realized how much we eat! Usually, we all eat our lunches and snacks outside of the house and go out to eat as a family from time to time.  Eating everything at home makes a huge difference in how much we need to buy and how fast it goes. So it’s been strange. There are periods of having TONS of food and then periods when almost everything is gone and I have to be creative with pantry items just to keep us going. Today was a pantry day.  This week I cleaned and organized our pantry.  Paul thought I was losing it, but staying home ALL THE TIME means that the messes that I’m normally not around long enough to let bother me are driving me nuts. And given the changes in how we’re cooking and eating these days, I feel like it’s more important to know what we have and make use of items that have been pushed to the back of the pantry. Also, having a clean and organized pantry makes me want to cook from it.  Motivation is so important, especially right now.

When I found a can of salmon and one of tuna in the back of the pantry this morning, I knew immediately what I would make. Fish cakes! These would also rid me of the bag of crusts saved from the kids’ sandwiches that has been sitting on my counter for days. Yippee. Nothing I love more than reclaiming my counter space. I threw the crusts in my blender until they were crumbs, toasted them in the oven, and finely chopped the vegetables I had in the crisper. After sauteing those for a few minutes, I combined them with the tuna and salmon, a couple of eggs, some Worcestershire sauce, old bay seasoning, salt and shaped them into cakes. Then I threw together a scallion-garlic-yogurt sauce to go with them (make extra, it stuff goes with everything) and left it all in the fridge so that I could quickly put together a home-cooked lunch in between the day’s work and homeschool obligations. #makingitwork

It was a treat to have a real lunch and it felt good to use up some of my “incidental” food stash. I know it’s hard to follow a recipe these days. I happen to have lots of eggs at the moment but I know that they have been hard to find for some. I pan-fried these cakes in bacon fat, because I’m out of butter. Turned out just fine. Delicious in fact. So we’re all tweaking recipes and doing the best we can with what we have. It’s like we are all on some crazy episode of “Chopped”, making meals with whatever is around, multiple times a day. Sometimes frustrating, other times a fun challenge.

Nope. I did not bother to make them uniform in size and shape. I don’t think it matters much as long as they are around the same thickness.

I’m trying to view this entire quarantine as more fun and challenging than as a source of anxiety. Some days that works better than others. We are all human. My kids, all of the kids, everywhere, are showing so much resilience. They miss their family, friends, teachers, babysitters, school, the park, being able to do ANY of the things they usually do, but they take it in stride, even the ones that are too young to understand why it has to be this way. They are amazing. I’m learning so much from them and from being home with them more. I’m watching them grow in ways that I didn’t see or notice before. Having more real conversations with them. Listening to their conversations with each other. I’m honored to witness how they are coping with this situation in positive ways, like building closer bonds with each other as playmates and confidants. Emmett and Isla are so much more excited about going to the same school together next year (fingers crossed) than they were before.

I’m learning about myself too. Until now, I never knew that, apparently, I hoard sponges, and have unopened bulk packages of sponges in all of my cabinets. Also powdered sugar. So send over your powdered sugar sponge craft ideas! No seriously, I’m thinking more about what I really want my life to look like than ever before and how I can take the best parts of this quarantine and incorporate them into my new normal. I know I want things to slow down. I want to have more time with my children. I don’t know how I plan to do that but it looks like I will have at least another month of stay-at-home time to figure it out. Where’s your head right now? What are you enjoying about all this time at home? What are you excited about doing once things start to open back up?

How did I never know that you could just stick the ends of your scallions in a jar with some water and grow more? At least I won’t run out of these!

Ingredients

For fish cakes:

10 ounces canned fish

1 cup bread crumbs

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 

⅓ cup mayo

1 tablespoon dijon mustard

2 large eggs

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 rib of celery, finely chopped

1 carrot, finely chopped

½ large or 1 small onion, diced

1 clove garlic, minced

1-2 scallions, finely chopped

1 tablespoon capers

Old bay and salt to taste

Oil or butter (I used bacon fat!) for frying

For scallion-garlic yogurt sauce:

⅔ cup plain yogurt

1 tablespoon mayo

1 teaspoon dijon mustard 

1 tablespoon capers

2 scallions, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

2 teaspoons lemon juice

1 teaspoon lemon zest

Salt to taste

Directions

1. Make the sauce.  Combine all sauce ingredients and stir until fully combined. Place in the fridge to let flavors come together. 

2. Turn the oven up to 400F.  Toast bread crumbs in the oven for about 5 minutes. 

3. Combine fish, Worcestershire sauce, mayo, mustard, scallions, capers and toasted bread crumbs in a large bowl and mix with a spoon.

4. Heat oil in a large frying pan, add veggies and garlic and saute until softened. 

5. Add veggies to the bread crumb mixture and season with salt and Old Bay. Crack eggs into the bowl and mix everything well.  I do this with my hands. If the mixture seems dry, add a little bit of milk or yogurt to hold the mixture together. It shouldn’t be wet but it shouldn’t be so dry that it falls apart when you try to form it into a disc. 

6. Allow mixture to rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. 

7. When you are ready to eat. Heat oven to 400F. Remove mixture from oven and form into patties.

8. Heat oil, butter or bacon fat over medium-high heat in the same pan you used to saute the vegetables.

9. Add patties to pan and cook until browned on one side, about 4 minutes.  Flip and cook about 3 minutes more.

10. Place the pan in the oven and cook until the patties are cooked through, about 7 more minutes. 

11. Serve with yogurt sauce. 

Happy Easter - Alone Together Lemon Pie

How are you this week? We’re ok, definitely eating well thanks to the many people on the front lines still working, delivering packages and assembling orders of groceries that families across America are picking up and having sent to their homes, and to the first responders who are fighting hard to make sure that everyone who is sick is getting the care they need. One major source of anxiety surrounding this epidemic is the knowledge that, sooner or later, COVID-19 may affect each of us personally. Not knowing how, or what that looks like in the coming months is super scary. Not knowing when things will return to “normal”, also scary but less blindingly so.

For us, this week was the week when the big sickness got personal. It’s really not my story to tell, but I will say that if staying home with four kids while trying to work full time remotely didn’t make this whole pandemic “real”, it’s real now. While we pray for our friend in the hospital, we carry on. I keep telling myself that even vulnerable populations have high recovery rates, and while we keep hearing about the thousands who are dying so many more thousands are recovering.

Masons in training. We are at the “will play with anything” stage of our quarantine.

I keep imagining my friend walking through the door in a month or two, offering to help me with the kids, happy that her “immunity” allows her to be out and about while others still have to be very cautious about resuming their regular activities. Yep, that sounds like her.

I hate that she’s missing Easter and that none of us are getting to spend the time with our friends and relatives for the Holiday. I hate that we aren’t going on the Easter Egg hunt circuit this year, just when the kids are at the age where those are the MOST fun. Funny enough, I distinctly remember being at an Easter egg hunt in our neighborhood last year, commiserating with the other parents about standing in the line, the frenzied two minutes when all the kids trample each other for eggs with candy or little plastic things in them that litter our homes for weeks. “Why do we do this to ourselves over and over again?” Little did we know, the very next year, we would be longing to have an Easter egg hunt to go to and other parents to commiserate with, in person.

We gave up a lot for Lent this year ya’ll, A LOT. I think there’s a part of each of us that is wondering why this is happening and what we should be taking away from it all. How we will change because of this. There are little things of course, more of us will shop for essentials online, we will probably keep several weeks of dry goods and paper goods in our basements, but there will also be big things. We will be more grateful for each day and remember that we are not guaranteed our jobs, our homes, our communities, the safety of our first responders who we depend on for our own safety and well-being. We are not guaranteed another day to live and breath or spend with our loved ones. We will be grateful for all of the little things that we complained about before. We will have more empathy for others. We will reevaluate our choices, how we spend our time, our lives in general, realizing how quickly it can all be taken away.

So while I’m sad, and anxious and worried about my friend, and the future for all of us. I’m also so incredibly grateful this Easter, more so than I have ever been. I hope I don’t unlearn this lesson if and when the world returns to “normal”. Today, I’m especially grateful for:

1. The sounds of my kids playing together (even when they are fighting) because it reminds me that they have each other.

2. The fact that my family and all of their immediate needs (eg. for snacks, drinks, me to pay attention to them, to find something for them, etc. etc) keeps me from thinking too much about the state of the world.

3. The spring weather, longer days with more sun. Great for walks or just opening the window.

4. My home. I love it and I’m so lucky to be quarantined in such a lovely space. Also, heat, water, and electricity.

5. Technology, for making it possible to work, to communicate with the kids teachers and schools, friends and family near and far, and to still feel connected.

6. My love of cooking. I have a backlog of recipes that I’ve been wanting to try and working my way through them feels like being productive.

7. My kids somehow realizing that wasting food right now would put me over the edge. Inexplicably, they have been great eaters this whole time and we’ve barely wasted any food. Usually they are notorious wasters, which, unfortunately, might be true of most first world little kids, maybe COVID-19 will change that?

8. Memories of Easters past, including a few years ago when Paul’s cousins from Ireland came to stay with us. Also, so happy that we were able to see our friends from Japan last summer and spend that time with them - so many people are having to cancel plans to visit friends and family far away these days.

9. My parents for staying home and staying safe! I worry about them every day but I know they are doing everything they can to stay safe and healthy. Thanks Mom and Dad!

10. Emmett reminding me that we need to make Lemon Pie for Easter and not letting me off the hook.

As you can tell, those were stated in no particular order because obviously, Lemon Pie is most important, sorry Mom and Dad. Just kidding, but Lemon Pie is pretty great. I love that Emmett has wanted another Lemon Pie since my sister-in-law brought one over last Easter and he has not stopped talking about Lemon Pie since. What can I say? He’s a kid who knows what he likes.

So, to make a Good Friday and even better Friday, we launched the crust portion of our lemon pie this morning bright and early. If I’ve learned anything from living with these people for the last several years, it is that they have zero patience when it comes to pie. We started early enough that we’d be able to eat it in the afternoon.

Graham crackers crusts are fun to make with kids if you don’t think about the graham cracker “sand” that ends up all over your kitchen and house as a result. I just pretend I’m relaxing in a caftan at some sort of beachy high end villa and pretend it IS sand. Being with little kids 24-7 has reminded me that you can always pretend. Aside from fun, the other great thing about a graham cracker crust is that it doesn’t require flour! Because you know what? Flour makes bread, so we can’t be using our precious flour on pies until the supply chain catches up.

I used a very simple graham cracker crust recipe from Martha Stewart. I feel like they are all variations of the same thing, no? Melted butter, graham cracker crumbs and sugar blended together, pressed into a pie plate and baked in the oven for a few minutes. The custard recipe is from Stella Park’s recipe for Creamy Lime Pie, using lemons instead of limes, no other changes at all. It’s tart, but still sweet and the milk mellows is out a little. I love really tart pies too, but those scream for billows of whipped cream, which I don’t have at the moment, so I’m glad this pie really doesn’t need it. I love that Stella gives such specific instructions for cooking the custard to ensure success. You really can’t mess this up!

“Don’t zest your fingertips!”

The end result is creamy and tart with a cookie crunch. Perfect for kids and grown ups. Emmett was in heaven and made me promise that we would have Lemon Pie more than once a year AND that we would have it every Easter from now on. I’m cautiously optimistic that I will need to make two or more next year when our family and friends are able to reassemble in small groups and we can reclaim our Holiday traditions. Happy Easter everyone. Stay safe, healthy and grateful. And much love to everyone having a hard time during this hard time.

The calm before the storm.