Me And My Meal Plan: A Photo Essay

I live in a university dorm as faculty-in-residence, and the position comes with a meal plan. I probably eat four meals a week in the cafeteria, and usually the food is just okay, perfectly fine. But last week, I had these green beans and they were amazing, generously seasoned and slightly crisp, not bland, rubbery and overcooked as they tend to be. I had seconds. I had thirds. I finally approached one of the cafeteria workers and expressed my admiration. Turns out, he was the guy who made the beans. "Butter," he said. "Butter, lots of garlic, salt, and fresh basil." Fresh basil. Damn, Northwestern.

This mostly vegan meal resembled something I'd cook myself; collard greens, rice with lentils, and hush puppies. I am not vegan; I eat a plant-based diet that includes a little dairy, the occasional egg, fish once in a while. I thought it would be hard to find enough to eat in the dorm, but it is usually surprisingly easy. Industrial food has changed since I was first in college.

Although here was a dinner that could have come straight out of 1986. Remember all those baked potatoes we used to eat? The idea to add the tuna came from my years of living in England. They will put anything on a baked potato over there (they call them "jacket potatoes"), and as it turns out pretty much anything tastes good on one.

Some things are just not for me. I don't at all get why students freak out over and line up for something called the "hot cookie bar." A tray of hot, gooey, undercooked cookies. That's it. But I do love that the students leap from their seats when this comes out every Friday. I'm surprised by how much I enjoy this aspect of communal living, the group rituals and rhythms of the week. I have always considered myself a very private person, but it is fun to inhabit a bigger and more social world. I never lived in a dorm when I was in college, so it's interesting to have this experience as a middle-aged woman.

One thing we can all agree on is this: Sriracha is absolutely essential. I have always been a fan: now I'm an addict. Forever after, when I am squirting Sriracha all over my stir fry, my roasted potatoes, my omelette, my tomato soup (try it!), I will remember these weird and wonderful years.

No groceries to buy on the way home. No exhausted and uninspired weeknight vegetable chopping. No dishes to wash. What do I care if I end up eating some strange dinners once in a while? The meal plan has brought gender equality to my family - I am writing more, playing music, I even go out to see shows once in a while, maybe because I'm not exhausted from my second shift. It's a big adjustment for me, and a bit of a conundrum - I love food, I love to cook, I am a huge proponent of home cooking, but I have got to admit: my life is better with a meal plan.

The Taste of a Place: Lemon Mint Drink

I spent an amazing week in the Middle East over spring break, as a trip advisor for a group of Northwestern students visiting our campus in Qatar. I've been back for two weeks now, my jet-lag is finally gone, my camel photos have made the rounds, and all that remains is to reconcile my intense craving for an addictive drink I had in Qatar, a local specialty called lemon mint drink.

I've experienced this kind of thing before, especially back in the day when I was routinely traipsing around the country as a rock drummer. The first tamale I ever had in my life was in New Mexico, from a stand by the side of some highway, and it blew my mind. I got home to Indiana suffering from terrible cravings, and there was no place to go to satisfy them, no way I was going to try to make tamales myself, nothing to do but live with the longing. My list of foods to pine for grew over the years - burritos in San Francisco, fish tacos in Southern California, the impossibly good whole wheat biscuits at the Bluebird Cafe in Athens, pizza in New York (sorry, Chicago).

Add to that list now this pretty, refreshing Middle Eastern drink, basically a strong sweet lemonade flavored and colored with a lot of fresh mint, the perfect thing after a day in the sun. I thought this might be a craving I could satisfy at home, and after a couple of attempts I think I came very very close. I closed my eyes, took a deep sip, and was almost back in the (camel) saddle again.

Bookmark this one for when all the gardens are exploding with mint. And I think a shot of vodka or gin added to the mix might possibly make this the perfect summer cocktail.

Lemon Mint Drink
serves 4

1 cup hot water
5 tablespoons sugar
Juice of 5 lemons
1.5 ounces mint leaves, rinsed and dried. No stems.
3 cups water
1-2 cups ice

Combine sugar and hot water and stir until sugar is dissolved. Pour into blender.

Add lemon juice, mint leaves, water and ice, and blend blend blend.

Press through a strainer and pour over ice.

(You can skip the straining, but the texture won't be quite as nice).

(I know this is a basically immoral amount of sugar - I am going to work on a version with agave, coming soon!)

Nothing hits the spot (after a camel ride by the Persian Gulf) like a glass of lemon mint drink.

What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Tired: Hot Ginger Toddy

What has helped me survive this endless season? Denis Johnson. Friends and family. Parks and Recreation. Robbie Fulks. And plenty of hot whiskey drinks.

This particularly spicy life-saving cocktail needs a better name than "Hot Ginger Toddy," but I can't think of one. "Polar Vortex Toddy" has been shot down, fairly. If you have any ideas please email me (fredalovesmith@gmail.com). Basically what we have here is a huge amount of ginger juice and a huge amount of lemon juice mixed with honey and whiskey, topped off with almost-boiling water.

This recipe makes two drinks.

First, juice a big lemon or a couple of small ones. Discard seeds and measure - you want 4 tablespoons of juice.

Next, grate a nice big piece of ginger root- approximately six inches.

Gather up the grated ginger and squeeze to extract juice. Some people use cheesecloth for this, but I don't bother.

Ideally you will have 4 tablespoons of ginger juice, but a little less will be okay too.

Divide the ginger juice and lemon juice between 2 mugs, add a tablespoon of honey and a shot of whiskey to each, and add hot water to fill the mugs.

Hot Ginger Toddy
makes 2 drinks

4 tablespoons lemon juice
4 tablespoons ginger juice
2 tablespoons honey
2 shots whiskey (I prefer Irish whiskey for this drink)
Hot water

Combine ingredients in 2 mugs and stir well.

Here comes the sun.

The Pineapple Door Knocker

I took one look at the house on Saratoga Drive, with its green door and pineapple door knocker, and knew we’d finally found our home. It was the pineapple; it made me smile. Jake thought I was crazy, but I was right, as usual, and we lived there for eight years.

Henry was born in the living room, yelling. I was scared when he wouldn’t nurse. I tried and tried; the midwife helped me. He wouldn’t latch on, wasn’t interested. She made me give up for a few minutes while Jake held him and we all had tall glasses of dry champagne. When I tried again, Henry went right for it and we all laughed. "He was waiting for the good stuff!" said the midwife. So we drank more, laughed more. After that, it was always a good house for parties.

The kitchen was enormous. I had it painted yellow and spent a lot of time in there. Sometimes I sat on the floor of the kitchen playing guitar with the sink piled full of dishes. Once I was washing dishes, listening to the radio, very pregnant, when Alex Chilton’s "I’m in Love with a Girl" came on. It struck me in that moment as a father singing to his daughter. He sang, "I’m in love with a girl, the finest girl in the world. I didn’t know I could feel this way." Right then I knew: I wasn’t ever going to have a girl. I just knew it, like with the pineapple. I held on tightly to the edge of the sink so I wouldn’t fall down and sobbed into it, shaking and crying. I wasn’t ever going to be the mother of a daughter.

But you can’t have everything. And when Henry was born I knew it was perfect, having two boys, and he was like a sun lion, the way he came roaring and burning into our quiet little family—the three of us sitting there with our books, and him yelling for good champagne.

I can’t stand to write about leaving that house.

"Take the door knocker" said Una, but I couldn’t. It didn’t just belong to that place but to that time, to those years. Moving to England wasn’t exactly like dying, but I thought about that song that says, "you can’t take it with you when you go."

Why do I want to write about this? Why do I even want to write at all? Because it’s hard. Because it’s so, so hard and I hate it. Because words have always eluded me, have always gone tearing away from me when I’ve needed them the most, and so I’ve determined to chase after them. 

Fred Curry said, "Always go for the stretch. Sometimes the stretch is to stay. Sometimes it’s to go. Sometimes it’s to say yes. Sometimes no. It changes all the time: so quit lounging around in your comfort zone."

           Fred Curry was incapable of doing anything much besides give advice, but his advice is still burned in my brain. He sat at the back of People’s Park on Kirkwood Avenue, buying booze for underage kids and talking to anybody patient enough to listen to him. He told me he was seated by angels, and all about the LSD in the 60s, back when it was coming from the government. And once when I said:

"Fred, I think I’ve had too much to drink," he said:

"Freda, don’t believe everything you think."

The Best Snack in the World: Seaweed Sesame Nut Crunch

Seaweed Sesame Nut Crunch

1 cup sesame seeds
1.5 cups whole, raw cashews
1 ounce wild nori (laver), cut into approximately 1-inch pieces
2 tablespoons coconut oil (or some other oil)
5 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Big pinch sea salt
Big pinch cayenne pepper

Preheat oven to 325.

Combine all ingredients in a large skillet over medium heat. Stir until mixture bubbles and everything is coated and combined, 2 or 3 minutes.

Transfer to parchment paper-lined baking sheet and bake 8-10 minutes. Watch closely. This will burn suddenly.

Cool at least 10 minutes. Tear into chunks. Watch it disappear.

Get Your Hijiki On: Spicy Seaweed Sauté

I live in a dorm and eat most of my weeknight dinners in the cafeteria downstairs from my apartment. I am not complaining. I love having a meal plan. It's great to be able to come home from work after a long day, put on a pair of slippers and schlep down to an all-you-can-eat buffet. No frantic 5:30 trips to the grocery store, no tired pizza orders, no sink full of dirty dishes.

But let's just say I eat a lot of chickpeas during the week. A lot of salty lentil soup, bean burritos, and baked potatoes. I don't mind simple food, and it's fine, but usually by the weekend I am ready for something a little wilder, something that makes my cells and tastebuds sing a different song.

Add to this my recent fixation on seaweed, and here's what you get: a bowl-full of lively macrobiotic-inspired dishes: soba noodles with tahini-umeboshi sauce; tofu marinated in soy sauce, browned in coconut oil and coated with toasted sesame seeds; piles of steamed baby kale; and the pièce de résistance, a zingy sauté of onions, carrots, and the most powerful tasting seaweed of them all, hijiki.

Hijiki is briny and fishy and tough; it needs soaking and takes a while to cook; it's strong-smelling and takes some getting used to. But I have grown to love it, especially when cooked for a good long time with sweet vegetables and the toothsome seasoning trio of soy sauce, mirin (cooking wine) and cayenne. A little hijiki goes a long way, and it makes the perfect side dish to a grain-and-vegetable-based bowl of food like this, adding flavor and texture and a wallop of nutrition.

This is a bowl of food just begging to be mixed into a jumble, and hijiki is the magic element that brings it all together.

Spicy Seaweed Sauté

Serves 3 or 4 as a side dish

2 tablespoons coconut oil

1 small onion, sliced thinly

Big pinch sea salt

2 carrots, sliced into thin rounds

Big handful dried hijiki, soaked in water to cover for 30 minutes (or you can use arame, no need to soak)

1/2 cup water

2 tablespoon shoyu or any good-quality soy sauce

2 tablespoons mirin or cooking sherry

Big pinch cayenne pepper

Heat coconut oil in skillet, add onion and salt and cook ten minutes over medium heat. Add carrot and stir well. Drain hijiki and stir into vegetables, cooking for a few minutes.

Add water, shoyu, mirin, and cayenne. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes. Check and add a little more water if you need to.

Uncover and cook off any remaining liquid. Taste and adjust seasoning.

Hail hijiki! Baked potato, I'll see you on Monday.

Don't Hate Me Because My Kombu Chips Are Beautiful

Kombu is a seaweed, mostly used in Japanese cooking as an ingredient in soup stock (dashi), because of its amazing flavor-enhancing qualities. It is loaded with glutamic salts, basically MSG without the gross headaches or health risks, and so makes food taste better, and makes beans more tender and digestible. It's good for you too; a potent source of iodine, and a good source of iron and calcium. 

Here's a nice piece from the Kitchn about kombu as a handy pantry item. 

Kombu also, as it turns out, makes the most delicious chips you've ever eaten. All you have to do is heat some oil in a pan and drop in squares of kombu (I use scissors to cut them). They cook almost instantly, changing from leathery and inedible to crispy and delectable in a minute or less. Watch this video to see their dramatic transformation!

kombu chips a video by lovesmiths on Flickr.

Kombu Chips

Serves 2 as a snack

Approximately 4 strips kombu, cut into 1 or 2-inch pieces

Coconut oil for frying

Heat oil until very hot and moving around but not smoking.

Add kombu chips and cook for about a minute until they expand and bubble or curl. See video.

Remove with a slotted spoon or chopsticks and drain on paper.