Monster Cookies and the Beast of Inspiration

For food writers, maintaining a balance can be difficult. Most of us would have the public to think we spend our days in a photogenic sequence of tasting, pondering, journaling, and then mess-free tinkering in the kitchen.

But if you’re doing it right, this is definitely not the way it goes for anyone. The ebb and flow of deadlines seems to collide with spells of failed recipes and technical issues: a leak under the sink, a downed internet connection, a flat tire when you need to drive to a special store to get a very specific ingredient.

This is why I don’t like to blog. Writing about the mundane inconveniences I face may be honest, but it’s not very engaging. And I don’t want to project an airbrushed (or filtered, as it were) image of what my daily life consists of. There’s a lot of typing and a lot of using the internet and a lot of cross-referencing different recipes. There’s a TON of grocery shopping and washing dishes and wiping down kitchen counters and sweeping flour and crumbs off the floor.  

And there’s cooking. I get antsy if I go a few days without cooking. I taught a pressure cooking class this weekend, and I’ve been developing recipes for a few different assignments the past few weeks, so I’ve been in the kitchen a lot, but yesterday I realized I needed to just get in the kitchen and cook for fun.

That’s where the balance comes in. If you don’t make space in your schedule to lavish in the sheer joy of making food with no agenda, then your writing and your recipes won’t be inspired at all. You have to put yourself in the place that made you want to get into food writing in the first place.

So a few days ago I blocked out several hours and made the food I wanted to make. I minced the cores and stems of some broccoli and cauliflower, and I cooked them in a skillet with some olive oil until they were browned in some parts and soft in others. I made a miso dressing and cooked some quinoa and made myself a big bowl of healthy stuff, because that’s what I like to eat.

And then I cleaned up and went to pick my daughter up from school. Out of the blue she asked me if we could make monster cookies, and I said yes, even though monster cookies had absolutely nothing to do with any of the assignments or independent projects I had going on.

We needed to get M&Ms to make monster cookies. Without M&Ms, they are a different cookie. We got the M&Ms. We made the cookies. I experienced the small triumph of my parenting identity and my writer-chef identity intersecting peacefully. Most of the time I feel them tugging at one another, keeping me from being fully present in any one role, but for about fifteen minutes I was right in the zone with Frances. It felt good.

I though the freestyle cooking and the cookie-making sessions would set me behind the following day, but I wound up tearing through my to-do list. I also decided I needed to type up the monster cookie recipe, because I tinkered with it a bit, and I was happy with how those came out, too. Frances was even happier, though.

Monster Cookies

Makes about 2-1/2 dozen medium cookies

I don’t know too much about the origin of these. Why are they called monster cookies? What region are they most identified with? I do know they are popular here in southeast Ohio, they don’t contain any wheat flour, and despite that they are probably not gluten-free, because I’m sure M&Ms contain gluten somehow, and monster cookies are not monster cookies without M&Ms. Packed with candy and sugar, they are not health food, but they are hearty and wholesome and rich and peanutty. This recipe is an adaptation of an adaptation, like a modern folk song. Like “Louie, Louie” or “Hey Joe.” I love songs like that, and I love these cookies.

·         4 cups rolled oats

·         1-3/4 teaspoon baking soda

·         ½ teaspoon table salt

·         1-1/2 cups peanut butter (chunky or smooth, processed or natural)

·         ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

·         2 cups light brown sugar

·         2 large eggs

·         1 teaspoon vanilla extract

·         12 ounces (1-1/2 cups) semisweet chocolate chips or chunks

·         12 ounces (1-1/2 cups) milk chocolate M&Ms

1.       Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Arrange the racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicon baking mats and set aside.

2.       If you’d like the oats to be a little more varied in texture, pulse them a few times in a food processor fitted with a metal blade, until some are powdery and others are still whole. Empty into a large bowl. Add the baking soda and salt and stir to combine. Set aside.

3.       In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine and peanut butter and butter. Beat on medium-high speed until smooth. Add the sugar and beat until lightened, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the vanilla.

4.       Add the oat mixture, one half at a time, and beat at low speed. Beat in the chocolate chips and M&Ms (you may need to do this with a sturdy wooden spoon instead of the mixer). The dough will be greasy and a little soft, but not crumbly.

5.       Scoop out the dough in rounded tablespoons (about 1-1/2 inches in diameter) and place 12 to a sheet. Bake for about 10-12 minutes, rotating the pans from top to bottom and back to front halfway through baking. The cookies will be lightly browned when ready, but their centers will still feel a bit soft to the touch. Let the cookies rest on the baking sheets for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely. Cookies will keep, tightly covered, for up to 5 days.

Pressure Cookers Are for Lovers: "Vegan Under Pressure"

You can keep your sous vide machine. Slow cookers? Blech. I’m a fast cooker, and proud of it. You can be, too. Pressure cooking is more mainstream than ever, which is great news.

I’m biased, of course. I own five pressure cookers. This may seem excessive, but since I teach pressure cooking classes, I need a whole fleet of them. In fact, I’m game to acquire a few more, because every time I’ve taught a pressure cooking class, it has sold out. This is not so much because I’m awesome, but because pressure cooking is a positive trend was can be happy about.

I was skeptical about pressure cooking at first, but now it’s a way of life for me. And, in large part, I have The Veggie Queen—a.k.a. Jill Nussinow--to thank. I got into pressure cooking because I had to, but Jill made it welcoming and rewarding.

A number of years ago, I worked in a fancy cookware store. I’ve always been a cookware gearhead, plus I have a background in professional kitchens, so I was good at moving the high-end stuff: All-Clad, Mauviel, Le Creuset. The store also offered Fagor and Kuhn Rikon pressure cookers, and on the rare occasions a customer asked about them, I froze up.

This drove me crazy, because I do not like to be poorly informed, but lo! One day I got an email from Jill Nussinow, who I’d interviewed once as an expert on whole grains. She offered to send me a copy of her DVD, Pressure Cooking: A Fresh Look. Hmm, I thought. This could be the key.

Her short video and affable yet straightforward manner took away all of my misgivings about the thing. I borrowed the store’s demo model, a Fagor Duo 6-quart, and began experimenting at home. Long story short, I fell in love. Not only did I become the store’s go-to pressure cooking authority; I never returned their demo model. The Fagor Duo 6-Quart remains my favorite model to this day (don’t fear; the store had a spare).

There are some differences between how Jill and I cook. For one, she’s vegan, and I’m not. I use a more generous hand with fats and salt than she does. I eat a lot more gluten. Jill’s a Registered Dietitian, and I consider hot dogs to be a fun and special treat.

But the funny thing is how much our pressure cooking styles intersect. We rely on pressure cookers to turn out fresh, flavorful, healthy meals for our families and for ourselves. We rely on pressure cookers to make whole foods, like dried beans and whole grains, speedier to incorporate into our daily menus. We both like having soup for breakfast. Pressure cookers deliver on all of those fronts.

I had the opportunity to test some of the many quick and colorful recipes in Jill’s newest book, Vegan Under Pressure: Perfect Vegan Meals Made Quick and Easy in Your Pressure Cooker, and I’m delighted to see it hit the shelves. I teach some of her recipes in my pressure cooking classes, and I’ll gladly refer my students to this inspiring volume. Just looking at it makes me want to break out one (or two or three) of my pressure cookers. The Barley, Shiitake, and Walnut Burgers are favorites, as is the That Red Curry with Winter Squash, Mushrooms, and Broccoli. Even though I consider myself a pressure cooking expert, there's always something new to learn, and Jill's book showed me how to rig up a set of foil helper handles to lift hot bowls from the interior of a pressure cooker (before, I'd just fiddle with tongs, which is unwieldy and unsafe). So even though the recipes are fantastic, the tips and tricks are a big draw, too, making this a cookbook useful for pressure cooking novices and veterans alike. 

Here’s a recipe from Vegan Under Pressure I’m sure I’ll come back to. It’s fast and flexible, because you can swap out some of the vegetables for others if you don’t have everything on hand. My carnivorous husband found the tofu and tahini combination satisfying, and the kick of sriracha was just what we needed on a slushy winter evening. Serve this over hot brown rice, like I did (the brown rice I made in an Instant Pot electric pressure cooker, another item Jill got me into). So it was a 2-pressure-cooker dinner, which is always an indication of a gratifying meal. No worries, though--you only need one pressure cooker to make yours.

© Lauren Volo

Sassy Sesame Tofu with Sweet Potato, Carrots, and Sugar Snap Peas

from Vegan Under Pressure by Jill Nussinow, MS, RDN

Serves 4

"This crowd-pleasing recipe is a simple and delicious way to prepare tofu, which gets firmer under pressure and absorbs the flavors of the cooking liquid. It cooks very quickly. It’s best to cook the sugar snap peas on low pressure for just a minute so they don’t become mushy. The sweet and spicy sauce at the end makes it even more special. Serve this over any type of rice or other grain."

• 2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
• 1 medium yellow, white, or sweet onion, sliced from top to bottom to equal about 2 cups
• 1 carrot, peeled and cut on the diagonal into ½-inch pieces
• 1 cup diced peeled sweet potato
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons sesame seeds
• 1 pound extra firm tofu, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 1 to 2 tablespoons tamari
• 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
  
• ⅓ cup vegetable stock
• 2 cups sugar snap or snow peas, cut in half [Sausagetarian note: I substituted chopped napa cabbage, using the same cooking times, and was very pleased with the results.]
• 2 tablespoons sriracha
• 2 tablespoons tahini, optional, for a richer dish [Sausagetarian note: I really liked the flavor kick and body this gave to the dish, and recommend using it if you’re a fan of tahini]
• 2 tablespoons chopped scallion, for garnish

1. Heat a stovetop pressure cooker over medium heat or set an electric cooker to sauté; add the sesame oil. Add the onion, carrot, and sweet potato and sauté for 2 minutes. Add the garlic and 1 tablespoon of the sesame seeds and sauté another minute. Add the tofu, tamari, vinegar, and stock.

2. Lock the lid on the cooker. Bring to high pressure; cook for 3 minutes. Quick release the pressure. Carefully remove the lid, tilting it away from you.

3. Add the peas and lock the lid back on. Bring to low pressure; cook for 1 minute. (If you do not have a low pressure option, lock the lid on and let sit for 2 to 3 minutes.) Quick release the pressure. Remove the lid, carefully tilting it away from you.

4. Stir in the pepper sauce and tahini, if using. Garnish with the remaining 1 tablespoon sesame seeds and the chopped scallion and serve.

Variations: Use broccoli florets or 1-inch pieces of green or wax beans instead of the peas. Cook at low pressure for 2 minutes with a quick release.

Text excerpted from Vegan Under Pressure, © 2015 by Jill Nussinow. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.​

Roasted Strawberries, circa 2012

(A transmission from a past life in Portland, Oregon)

The strawberries in our garden are in full swing now. We’re picking about a pint of ripe ones a day. All year long I wait for these little gems, the pleasure of plucking them right from our own backyard.

“They taste kind of weird,” says Joe, and he’s right. They’re a tad too acidic, or a tad too ripe, or just wan and watery. I blame the late-season rain, because it’s handy to blame things on the rain here. They’re not terrible berries, just not as mind-blowing as I’d like. I can go to the farmer’s market and get a flat of Oregon-grown Hood strawberries that will blow some minds. Our backyard strawberries are convenient and passable.

But they’re ours, and we’re kind of a weird family, so it’s fitting they taste weird. I still think they are miraculous in their way. I planted them three years ago after my brother and I walked past a house in our neighborhood with a bunch of strawberry starts laid out in the front yard next to a FREE sign. I get to ignore them all year long, and then for about a month they give me fruit.

A friend growing strawberries in her Portland yard shared that she feels so blessed in numbers that she spits out any offending berries that aren’t up to flavor spec. A luxury, yes, and one we could adopt here as well, but I love our underwhelming strawberry children, and I can’t bring myself to write them off.

So I’ve been blasting them in the oven a bit to intensify their flavors. Roasting fruit is de rigueur, so I’m not blazing any culinary trails here. I think some people roast strawberres on a parchment-lined sheet pan, but I want some syrup to go with it, so I put them in a small gratin dish that collects their gooey liquid. It’s almost like making jam in the oven, and it’s a jillion times easier, and I don’t have enough ripe backyard strawberries at a time to make jam, anyway. The vanilla bean is really what makes this amazing. It fills in that gap of exquisiteness my berries suffer from.

Roasted Strawberries, a.k.a. Oven-Baked Strawberry Compote

Makes about one cup

• One pound (about a pint) strawberries, washed and hulled
  
• 2-3 tablespoons turbinado sugar (though you could use any kind of sugar you had on hand; I like the fruitiness of turbinado)
  
• ¼ vanilla bean

1. Position a rack in the center of the oven. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
2. If the strawberries are those big honking ones, you may want to cut them in half, but you don’t have to. Put them in a medium-sized shallow baking dish, preferably non-reactive (ceramic, enameled, or Pyrex vessels are good choices). Add the sugar. Split the vanilla bean vertically and scrape out the seeds; add the seeds and the scraped-out vanilla bean hull to the berries. Toss it all together a bit, but don’t worry about it too much. It’ll all even out in the oven.
3. Place the dish, uncovered, in the oven and bake for 30 to 45 minutes, stirring a little bit midway though if you remember. You want to see the berries collapse and lots of juice rapidly bubbling all around them. The whole mess will thicken and become jammy as it cools. 
4. Store, covered, in the refrigerator for up to five days. Leave the vanilla bean hull in there so that the flavors both deepen and mellow as it all sits.

Here’s what you should do with this stuff:

• Spoon it over nice, thick plain Greek yogurt (full fat!) 
• After scraping the warm mixture into a container, there will be a bunch of syrup clinging to the spoon. Lick this off because you don’t want to waste it. It’s so sweet and a little wine-y and it might make you feel a bit sick, but it’s worth it. Wipe off your face when you are done; you will have ruby streaks all around your mouth. You can also share this spoon-licking part with your kid.

Totally Grown-Up Halloween Candy Brownies

We don’t mess around here when it comes to over-the-top desserts. When faced with the curious problem of too much leftover trick-or-treat candy, I don’t just rip open a brownie mix and throw in handfuls of Twizzlers and Smarties. There has to be a method to the madness.

My method came about after our town’s untimely October 25 trick-or-treat night. We’d purchased an extra-large bag of candy, because we now live in a neighborhood that’s quite popular for commuting trick-or-treaters. Come the big night, though, we were all having so much fun meandering around from house to house with our friends and their kids that, by the time we got back home, the streets were empty; we didn’t hand out one piece of our trick-or-treat candy. “Give it to people who don’t have enough food!” Frances suggested. The concept of donating candy to a food pantry makes sense to a 4-year-old, but to me there’s something amiss with it to me, like dropping off moldy Reader's Digest Condensed Classics at a charity booksale.

So much effing candy.

For a few nights I nibbled an assortment after Frances went to bed: a Snickers bar, then a Twix, then a little pack of M & M’s. I should have been satisfied, but my hands kept creeping back to the candy bowl.  

As an adult, I find most candy too sweet and one-dimensional. Halloween candy does not hit the spot like it used to. Really, why do I bother eating it at all?

My husband started nibbling at the corner before these got a chance to cool. I like them better the next day, after they've set.

There’s another reason I should keep my distance from those little sugar-bombs in their shiny wrappers. I wrestled with an eating disorder for many years, and junk-food sweets were always my undoing. That’s why I never have that kind of stuff around the house. Just seeing a bowl of candy makes me feel compromised, distracted, and weak. It’s difficult to write about not because I’m ashamed, but because it’s challenging to articulate to anyone who hasn’t gone through something similar. People wouldn’t leave festive crack pipes and dime bags out in front of recovering drug addicts, but those of us who came out of disordered eating to have healthy, balanced relationships with food have to deal with this bullshit every year. It begins with Halloween and tapers off after New Year’s, when everyone freaks out about their holiday indulgences.

So this year, I decided to be the candy’s boss and make it into something worth eating—something so worth eating one or two amazing bites would do it. Taking a cue from Maida Heatter’s brownies layered with baked-in peppermint patties, I dug out my favorite brownie recipe, some fantastic raw ingredients, and a sharp and pointy knife. I unwrapped twenty Fun Size candy bars and chopped those fuckers up. I dropped them onto the brownie batter, shoved them into a hot oven, and told them to go to hell. Once they cooled, I cut them into tiny squares and ate one. A few hours later, I ate a second one. And then I was done, because I’d taken something shitty and made it into something awesome.

These witch and pumpkin picks are so cool. My mom saved them from the 1970s.

Totally Grown-Up Halloween Candy Brownies

Makes 36 small brownies

This is essentially candy bars bound with brownie batter, a baked confection. The batter itself is intense and bittersweet, something to offset the cloying candy. Cut them into tiny squares, like truffles.  

• 3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped
• ½ cup unsalted butter
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs, straight from the refrigerator
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract, optional
• ½ cup unbleached all-purpose flour
• 12 ounces Snickers and Milky Way bars, sliced crosswise into sections about ½-inch thick (this is 20 Fun Size bars)
• ½ cup chopped roasted peanuts (salted ones are nice, but unsalted will work, too)

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. 

Melt the butter in a medium high-sided skillet over medium heat, keeping an eye on the pan so the butter does not burn. When the butter is quite hot (you may hear it sizzling or popping a bit), remove the pan from the heat and add the chopped chocolate. Stir once with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula and set aside to finish melting while you prepare the pan.

Line an 8 x 8-inch pan with foil or parchment paper, letting several inches hang over two opposite sides to create handles. Grease the pan and foil and set aside.

Now stir the chocolate and butter mixture until is smooth and the chocolate is completely melted. Beat in the sugar and salt, then beat in the eggs, one at a time. Add the vanilla, if using. Beat in the flour until the batter is smooth and shiny and a little tacky.

Spread half of the batter in the prepared pan. Lay the ¾ of the candy bar pieces on top of the batter in a mosaic fashion. Drop the remaining batter on top and smooth as best you can (it does not have to look perfect). Lay the remaining candy bars pieces on top, and then scatter the chopped peanuts over them.

Bake until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the pan comes out with moist crumbs, not raw batter (about 30 minutes, but this can be hard to gauge, since the caramel and melted chocolate will be gooey). Cool on a rack or place in the freezer until the brownies are cool and set. Using the parchment or foil handles, life the brownies out of the pan. Invert on a cutting board and peel off the foil or parchment. Place another cutting board on top and invert again, so that the brownies are nutty-side-up. Cut into squares (I prefer smaller ones, a little over an inch across) and serve. To me, these taste best the day after they were baked; when still hot from the oven, they’re impossible to cut nicely, and they’re so gooey all of the flavors run together.

Pawpaw Pudding

First, get some pawpaws. Hurry, you only have a few weeks left. This article I wrote for Serious Eats explains how to do that. It's awesome and you should read it right now.

Next, make this pudding. It’s homey and custardy, with intriguing caramel notes and an undeniable pawpaw kick. Using a food processor, it takes only minutes to blitz that batter together. (Note: estimated minutes blitzing batter excludes gathering of pawpaws. It took me about 40 minutes to haul home ten pounds. Call it your exercise for the day.)

Pawpaw Pudding

Serves 6 to 12

• nonstick cooking spray, to grease the dish
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 2/3 to ¾ cup sugar (I prefer a less-sweet pudding)
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• 1 large egg
• 1 large egg yolk
• 1 cup pawpaw pulp
• ½ cup buttermilk, preferably not low-fat
• ¼ cup half-and-half
• 2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste OR vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and position a rack in the middle. Grease a 9-by-9 inch baking dish, preferably glass or ceramic, with nonstick cooking spray.

In the bowl of a food processor, pulse the flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda to combine.

In a large glass measuring cup or medium bowl, combine the pawpaw, buttermilk, half-and-half, and vanilla bean paste. With the machine running, add the pawpaw-buttermilk  mixture through the feed tube. Turn off the machine, scrape down the sides, and add the butter with the machine running. Your batter should have the consistency of pancake batter.

Pour the batter into the greased dish. Bake until the center is set but still jiggly (like a pumpkin pie), about 30 to 45 minutes. The sides of the pudding will rise up and brown, while the interior will be flat, shiny, and amber-colored. Let cool to room temperature and serve with crème fraiche or whipped cream (I like this for breakfast with a big dollop of Greek yogurt, but I could say that about most any dessert.)

The pudding will keep 2-3 days at room temperature. I suppose you could refrigerate it, but I like it better when it’s not cold.

Tomato and Summer Squash Chutney

Our glorious summer tomato days are waning. I want to eat as many tomato-centric sandwiches as possible, and I feel those opportunities slipping away as the calendar marches on. I ate sliced of the last ripe red tomato in the house yesterday, on a sandwich smeared with squash-tomato chutney made a few days ago from many of its tomato siblings. How delightfully perverse to ingest multiple forms of tomato carnage in one petite sandwich.

This time in the season, a lot of us have a pile of not-quite ripe tomatoes, and another pile of outright green ones. You can cook them all up in this sticky, sweet-tart sandwich spread. The tomatoes melt into a gel, suspending cubes of squash that are nearly candied. I use it all year long. It’s the best thing to put on a grilled cheese sandwich, and it has also eclipsed ketchup here as a topping for hamburgers.

This is a fine entry-level preserving recipe, and makes a significant dent in the bulbous summer squash that seemingly spontaneously generate during hot months. The key to chutney working as a sandwich spread is the dice of the squash and peppers; if too large, they sit clumsily on the bread. The correct dice is ½ to ¼ inch, and it will require a decent investment of knife work. Put on your favorite podcast and look at is as therapeutic.  

Yellow Summer Squash and Tomato Chutney

Makes about 7 to 8 half-pint jars 

This is a great way to use up those homegrown summer squash the size of a human’s femur. Yellow squash makes the prettiest chutney, but you can add green zucchini, too. I also like to use patty pan squash. If I have a particularly femur-esque specimen, I cut off about ¾ from four sides and pitch the elongated cube of mealy interior. This might mess with your yield, so if you are using older or bigger squash, make sure to weight it post-cutting.

• 2 pounds summer squash, preferably yellow, diced between ½ and ¼ inch
• 1 pound onions, finely diced
• 1-1/2 pounds ripe tomatoes, cored and chopped
• Up to ½ pound not-too-spicy gypsy or wax peppers, seeded and diced ½ inch, optional
• 3-1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 2-1/2 cups apple cider vinegar
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger
• ½ teaspoon dried red pepper flakes
• 1/8 teaspoon sweet paprika
• 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• 1 teaspoon table salt

Combine all of the ingredients in a large (about 5 quart) non-reactive pot, such as stainless steel or enameled cast iron. Stir to combine, cover, and bring to a boil over high heat.

Uncover and continue to cook (in a well-vented room if you don’t want to wipe everyone out with vinegar fumes) over high heat. For the first 20 minutes or so, you probably won’t need to stir very often; there will be plenty of liquid. If you see any scum rise to the surface, skim it off, but there won’t be anywhere near as much as, say, a batch of strawberry jam might produce.

Once the chutney starts to thicken, stir it with a wooden spoon every now and then. Gradually reduce the heat. When the chutney starts getting glossy and the bubbles get smaller and make little snapping noises, it’s very close to ready. You should feel a decent amount of resistance when you stir. It will take between 45 minutes to over an hour for the chutney to cook, depending on many factors: the intensity of the flame, the liquid content of the veggies, the particular character of the day.

Pack the chutney in warm sterilized jars (I prefer half-pint), leaving ¼ inch headspace. Process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. The chutney isn’t too bad at all right after you make it, but it gets better if you allow the jars to age a month or so before opening. Store any jars that didn’t seal properly in the refrigerator for up to one month.

Pasta with Tomatoes, Corn, Herbs & Feta

I am guessing it’s not easy being married to me. My temper can be short, and I have a habit of insisting on getting my way. But Joe’s soldiered on in our union for nine years. There are times I figured we might not be married by now, still. This may be normal, as far as marriages go. That every marriage is a locked box both perplexes and delights me, because there’s no need to measure what Joe and I have against larger yardstick: if it’s working, hey, go with it. I have friends who I look at and assume they must be living in harmony and bliss, but you never know. I have other friends who I marvel are still together. Knowing why and how is not my job, though; it’s theirs.

In those heartfelt odes to spouses I see people post on Facebook, this notion of a husband being “my best friend” comes up a lot. And fine if it is true for them, but Joe is not my best friend, because I already had a best friend when we met. There are things I tell Joe that I’d never tell a friend, and there are things I tell friends that I’d never tell him. It works because he gets that. I don’t want Joe to be everything to me. That seems unfair.

Today’s our anniversary. Earlier, I’d told Joe we were going to have tortilla Española with romesco sauce and a big tossed salad for dinner, and he was enthused. Our initial hope was to go to the Buckley House, which is our town’s dependable fancy-pants restaurant, but we’re low on cash at the moment, and a Buckley House dinner is not for lean times.

Some unexpected construction at my daughter’s daycare facility threw off my schedule, though, and I realized making romesco sauce would take longer than I’d like and create unwanted stress. So I switched to pasta with sweet corn and tomatoes instead. To me it’s the pinnacle of Ohio recipes, because sweet corn and tomatoes are the best we have to offer. Joe didn’t want to move here to Ohio, but he did. He’s still ambivalent. But I feel like I’m in my element. How can two people be so compatible yet never fully happy in the same location?

Joe does not do well with sudden changes, but he was okay with our dinner switchup. It resulted in fewer dirty dishes to clean, always a plus. We drank a $5.99 bottle of Spanish Tempranillo with our pasta. The herbs and tomatoes had come from our backyard; the corn, from a field somewhere in our county. It’s definitely GMO corn, engineered to be as sweet as a cold glass of Southern iced tea, but you can’t win ‘em all. And so goes marriage. You can’t have everything in one person. Spending life with a boring husband, to me, would be a terrible fate. Out marriage has been anything but boring, so we must be doing something right. Maybe I’ll make this pasta again in another nine years, for our 18th anniversary. Maybe we’ll go to the Buckley House instead. Does it matter? An anniversary is one day a year. It’s the other 364 days that really count.   

Pasta with Tomatoes, Corn, Herbs, and Feta

Serves 4

It was only after residing in a handful of other states that I realized the superiority of Ohio-grown tomatoes. This pasta cannot be made with grocery store produce; it is a summer-only dish. You can throw together sweet corn and beautiful homegrown tomatoes—the most coveted of summery Ohio foods—to make an incredibly fresh, flavorful pasta dish in a flash.

• 3 to 4 large, ripe tomatoes, cored and chopped
• 1/8 teaspoon Aleppo pepper
• 2 to 3 ears fresh corn, or 1-2 cups cooked corn cut from leftover cobs of sweet corn* (and cripes, please don’t use grocery store corn or frozen corn. Not this time.)
• Kosher salt, as needed
• 8 ounces angel hair pasta
• 4 large cloves garlic, sliced very thinly crosswise
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cups loosely packed fresh basil leaves, thinly sliced, or a combination of fresh basil, thyme, and oregano (go heavy on the basil and lighter on the other herbs)
• 4 to 6 ounces feta cheese, crumbled

Place the chopped tomatoes in a medium bowl. Add the Aleppo pepper; season generously with salt. Toss to combine and set aside.

Bring a large pot of salted water on to boil. If the corn hasn’t been cooked already, plunge the whole ears of corn into the water and cook for five minutes. Don’t drain the water; you’ll use it for cooking the pasta. When cool enough to handle, cut the ears from the corn and set aside.

Cook the pasta until al dente; drain..

Meanwhile, in a 9- to 10-inch skillet, heat the garlic and olive oil over high heat, stirring occasionally, until the garlic is a light golden-brown (do not allow to burn). Add the corn and cook until it’s heated through. Add the tomatoes and cook for just a minute. Remove from heat.

When the pasta is al dente, drain it. Add the saucy tomato-corn mixture; toss with the feta cheese and basil. Season to taste with more salt and pepper. Cover for a minute or two to let the pasta absorb the juices form the tomato sauce.

Divide the pasta among serving dishes. Crumble the feta cheese over each bowl and serve.

*Sometimes, leftover corn that’s been cut off the cob and stored for several days (or frozen and thawed) can be soggy. To dry it out and perk up the flavor, I toast it a heavy, dry medium skillet (preferably cast-iron) over medium-high, stirring occasionally, until charred spots appear on the corn, 2 to 3 minutes.

Make a Summer Hibiscus Beer Cocktail

Tart and tangy hibiscus beer cocktail. For a copywriting client. It's a sweet gig.

Usually I keep my copywriting life separate from my own personal writing, in part to distinguish my personal voice from the ones I slip into when writing content for clients. Transparency is important to me. I don’t partner with PR firms to write about products on Sausagetarian, for various reasons (PR agencies have not been approaching me, for one), and that’s okay. I did a little of that with a pasture-raised veal producer on an old blog, and while I felt their products were fantastic, it just was not a good fit for either party involved. I'm a little too left-of-center to make that click on my own web turf.

But I’m going to break form and share a blog post I wrote for the company I create web content for, Heirloom Finds Jewelry. And that's because they recently asked me to develop a signature Heirloom Finds beer cocktail for their blog. So this? It does click. I get to comb through bins of jewelry in their headquarters and pull out funky bracelets and necklaces to integrate in food styling. It’s awesome! The staffers that I collaborate with are open to new ideas and committed to delivering content that’s engaging and useful, not just SEO-driven drivel. I really feel like part of the Heirloom Finds family. Also, they are my go-to tasters when I’m developing recipes for my vegan baking project. They know good food!

Here’s that beer cocktail, the First Blush. If you dig statement jewelry that’s unexpectedly affordable, check out their site; by selling online, they can keep their prices low.