Lately I haven’t been sleeping or thinking about baby tees, cooking, marketing ideas, exercising, health, friends, painting, or blog posts. All I think about is politics. Today I went on a retreat back into the rest of my life.

I cooked Balsamic Roasted Butternut Squash Polenta from Michael Chiarello’s Tra Vigne Cookbook. The recipe title in the book is Soft Polenta with Variations. I first tasted it at Kazi’s house on the night our cooking group (The Saucy Spoons) all cooked from this book. It’s dangerously delicious, especially good in the Winter months. Getting a bunch of good cooks together to make recipes out of the same book really tells you a lot about the author and his/her cooking..and if the recipes were well tested.

Roasted Butternut Squash

Heat oven to 350. Any winter squash will work but i love Butternut. Peel and cut into 1″ chunks and put into a bowl. Make a mixture of Molasses, Balsamic Vinegar, salt, pepper, herbs (I used fresh rosemary and dried marjoram; fresh sage is what the recipe called for). Melt some butter till it’s lightly browned. Take pan off heat so you don’t get spattered and add the Molasses mixture. Put back on stove and cook a couple of minutes to meld flavors. Pour over the squash and toss. Place on a baking sheet and roast till very tender, 30-45 minutes. Toss a couple of times during the roasting. Let squash cool 10 minutes then puree in food processor. I usually freeze half the puree for the next time I want to make this dish.

Make polenta using cream or half & half as a portion of the liquid. When polenta is cooked through but still moist, mix in the squash puree. Then mix in grated Parmesan cheese. Serve with a drizzle of Truffle Oil (I didn’t have any and it was still divine without it.)

I love smooth foods like this and creamed spinach is another favorite. This recipe reminds me of the one we got at Ruth’s Chris Steak House in New Orleans, back when there was just the one and only Ruth Chris Steak House and franchising a restaurant was left to the hamburger crowd.  

My Creamed Spinach

Cook spinach, frozen or fresh, briefly. Squeeze all the liquid out.* Chop. Bring heavy cream to a boil. Add chopped spinach along with salt and a bit of grated nutmeg. Stir in some room temperature butter. Nobody said it was diet food!

*Save the spinach liquid and add it to eggs to make green eggs and ham. Or cook it down to a near glaze and add back to the spinach.

And then there is my cousin Lisa Pulitzer’s divine spinach casserole; you’re going to love this if you make it. 

Picture of Lisa and Sylvie

Lisa Pulitzer’s Spinach and Artichoke Casserole for a Crowd

4-5 boxes of frozen chopped spinach  

1 stick of butter

bacon fat if you have it

1 package of cream cheese

Some sour cream or heavy cream

parmesan, about 1/3 cup or more to taste

3 Tbsp lemon juice

bit of garlic

2 cans of artichoke heart bottoms

1 teas. Coleman’s dried mustard

1 bunch of scallions (white bottom part)

Put spinach in a colander in the sink and let defrost. 
Pour very hot water over spinach.
Squeeze like crazy to get out as much water as possible.
Chop and saute scallions.
Place all ingredients (except buttered bread crumbs) into food processor and puree.
Put into a buttered casserole dish.

Buttered Bread Crumbs

Heat some butter then add fresh breadcrumbs and brown lightly. 
Scatter breadcrumbs over the top of spinach and bake at 350 for 35 minutes.

There are so many things to recommend about my eccentric hometown, mecca of food, music, drink, sex, and humidity that I’ll keep adding to this post. New Orleans is the fastest growing city in the USA according to the Census Bureau so it’s changing quickly. I suppose it’s because nature hates a vacuum, and Katrina certainly caused an evacuation (blight on George Bush and his administration). Especially in these trying economic times lots of young people are moving in sensing opportunity.

So, first things first..food. My favorite restaurant in the city is the much touted Cochon. You walk in and are drenched in the smell of bacon. This is a serious pig spot where the pigs are received whole and the parts turned into a symphony of variations. That’s fancy talk for whole lotta great pork dishes..and so much more.

I rarely get beyond the ham hock with lima beans or Louisiana cochon with turnips, cabbage & cracklins. But my mom got the beef brisket with horseradish potato salad and my cousin got the oyster & bacon sandwich and they were all wow. The only negative is the hard bench seating which never stops me from going there a couple of times per visit home. Chef Donald Link is much loved for being one of the early restauranteurs to make their way back to N.O. after the storm and help the stunned city believe it could get well again.

Sucre, A Sweet Boutique 
I also had an amazing Lemon Curd Gelato  at Sucre, a confectionary shop for desserts, coffee, and ice cream on Magazine Street. Here, for your mouth watering pleasure are just a few of their many gelato and sorbet flavors: Brown Butter Pecan, Steen’s Cane Syrup, Milk Chocolate Cashew, Cinnamon Red Hot, Tequila Lime, and Nectar Cream. Here’s a picture of their gelato bar.

If you want to get a feel for the authentic New Orleans read John Kennedy Toole’s Pulitzer prize winning The Confederacy of Dunces. Here’s a picture of the Lucky Dog Cart that his outrageous but so true character Ignatius J. Reilly toted around the French Quarter.

And if you want a live taste listen to WWOZ, next best thing to being there. As they put it, “dedicated to bringing New Orleans music to the Universe”.

Great, wonderful, hot, hole in the wall BBQ at The Joint; don’t miss the baked beans filled with strands of smokey pork.

The United States Post Office has got a new game, it’s amazing, in a good way!

While trying to figure out shipping costs for my business I asked the lady at my local post office who said “Look at this line; I don’t have time for all these questions”. Typical, nice. But there was another lady behind the counter that day, observing. So I asked her and she said “I’ll have the small business specialist for your region call you.” RIGHT. No one called for 3 weeks but then I got a call from the incredibly nice Adriana Garcia who told me she’d have someone from my area call me. RIGHT. 5 minutes later I got a call from Thomas Dotson who said, “let’s make an appointment; I’ll come out to your office to assess your needs.” My first thought, he’s an ax murderer; the post office does not come out to assess your needs! But I took a chance and Thomas Dotson spent more than an hour working with me. I suppose it’s a reaction to all the revenue lost to UPS and FEDEX but for whatever reason, THEY ARE BACK, better, less expensive, offering terrific services. Thomas recommended Endicia which makes printing and shipping from my computer a breeze. I haven’t been back to the post office for months; one less cranky lady in my life. Amen.

Ellen Rose put this prose/poem (below) up in The Cook’s Library and a customer came in recently wanting to know where it was from. Somebody knew.

It’s called After Dinner, She Discusses Marriage with Her Friends by Debra Bruce and was published in The Massachusetts Review in 1987 ©.

It’s really really sexy so be prepared or be scared!

She mentions raspberries, apples,
and blueberries, so here is
my cousin Sandra’s
great and easy recipe for

VANISHING BLUEBERRY PIE.

FILLING:
1 Cup Sour Cream
2 Tbsp flour
3/4 Cup sugar (too sweet for me, I removed 1/8th cup second time I made it)
teas. vanilla
1/4 teas salt
1 egg
2 and 1/2 Cups blueberries, washed, drained, patted dry.

TOPPING:
3 Tbsp flour
2 Tbsp cold butter
A handful of chopped walnuts or pecans
Cut the butter into the flour.
Add the chopped nuts.
You can do this in advance and
refrigerate till needed.

9″ unbaked pie shell

Preheat oven to 400°

Pierce pie shell all over with a fork, put aluminum foil over the shell and fill halfway up with
beans or rice; (I’ve been using the same batch of beans
for about 10 years). Bake for 7 minutes; let cool for 5 minutes and remove beans and foil.

Mix sour cream, sugar, vanilla, flour, salt, and egg.
Fold in blueberries. Pour into pie shell.

Bake 25 minutes. Sprinkle on topping
and bake another 10 minutes.

Let it cool off then refrigerate.

P.S. There is also a divine recipefor Blueberry Streusel Bars
with Lemon-Cream Filling in the June/July 2008 issue of
Fine Cooking magazine.

After Dinner, She Discusses Marriage
with Her Friends

I’ll never forget the first time I slept
with him. He told me things I almost wept
to hear — how he’d slip out at dawn as a boy
to pick loamy mushrooms in a field. Joy
flowed through him as he simmered them in cream
while his parents slept. I thought I was dreaming
that next morning when I wobbled out of bed,
thinking he was gone, finding him, instead,
looking down at my skillet, my two white plates.
He watched frying eggs slowly undulate.

Corn bread was in the oven, peach preserves
in a dish. What had I done to deserve
a lover like this? Soon after breakfast
I phoned a justice of the peace. The rest
is history. Friends laugh when we tell them.
Then their smiles weaken and fade away. Then
their faces go blank and they look at us
as if we’re morons waving from a bus
at strangers. I know what they want to know.
They think there’s got to be more. Food can go
but so far to explain the mystery
of human intimacy. I agree.

But there’s always one more secret to share:
this same boy picked raspberries, hiding there,
the ripe and soft-lipped fruit pressed to his own
soft lips at dusk as his parents called him home.
I taste that memory and hunger more
for him. Our friends start glancing at the door,
the window, anything but us, confused,
as if they’d asked for coffee and been refused.

I hear him in the kitchen. Now he comes
with cups of apple compote soaked in rum.
Conversation resumes. Somebody asks
about monogamy. How can it last?
He pours my mocha java. How many times
I’ve sat on the porch alone while my mind
simmered with lust, watching our landlord’s son
clipping geraniums. Fresh cardamom
drifting from the kitchen couldn’t compete
with those gold shoulders, those naked, shapely feet.
I’ve straddled the railing, wanting, for hours,
to ride him bareback into the flowers,
letting myself fall slowly, slowly off
and spill beneath him, his voice as soft
as strokes of butter melting on warm bread.

Of course I’ve never done this, as I said.
But I’ve come close. One summer day I reached
for that boy’s black hair. Suddenly the screech
of the screen door — My husband! He’ll clobber
us both! But he’d brought blueberry cobbler
for me, and a tart whose fan of sliced pears
was draped in silky chocolate everywhere.
Tasting the tart from his finger, I learned
such depths of chocolate, a sweetness so stern
I couldn’t even moan. Now, not a word
is spoken. My friends stare as if they’d heard
me say I took a linzer torte to bed
or slept with upside-down cake at my head.
They shake their heads, my husband’s hand, and go.

It’s late but I’ll stay up, watch him make dough
for breakfast biscuits, grind up cinnamon,
melt down butter and knead the raisins in.
He’ll bake them in the morning, plump and sweet,
sugared together on a baking sheet.

Inside reads: Happy Holidays

If you had lived through a New Orleans summer (think of it as the flip side of a Chicago winter) you’d know how exciting it was when the acorns fell from the enormous Oak trees; we’d survived another one and could look forward to a beautiful, chilly winter.

So my thoughts turned to the Season today and I made a new Holiday card.

Hangtags just sit there with little more than Small/Medium/Large on them. Kind of lonely so I added recipes, illustrations, and poetry. Who knows what’s next..I hope you enjoy. The first recipe on my Maternity Hangtags is for my Polka Dot Cookies, One-Bite Chocolate Sandwich cookies with Cream Cheese filling. I’m working on a video to demonstrate rolling out the dough which can be a tiny bit tricky until you see it.

And here is the kids hangtag front and back.

A little sprite named Summer wearing How Love Grows Tee.

If you send me photos of you or your kids wearing Butterfly Tees this is where they will go. If you want to give me a first name and a city or state, funny story or factoid that would also be great but not necessary. I’d also love to put up interesting photos of your refrigerators..you know, with all the stuff held up by magnets.. and all that they say about you and your family!

I’m including a picture of my boy Nick who is now 19 and giving me a very hard time of course. You can see that not even a fat baby boy could stop me from cooking.

Here’s a picture of Sonia from N. Carolina. I love the way she mixed her plaid pajama bottoms with the Give Peas a Chance tee; very fashion forward! Love her cool bracelet too. 

Bloggish because I don’t know if I’ll have the time or worthy content to add on a daily basis. I do have lots of nutty thoughts and am passionate about food, art, and politics so this is where I’ll let her rip.

I wonder since 175,000 new blogs are added every day (according to Technorati.com) isn’t everybody too busy writing to read any of these blogs?

So, on to food.

Food is so important to me that I’ve written a poem about it. I’m a good cook but lately I’ve been a terrible cook. When I learned my cholesterol was 303 I took drastic measures. Haven’t eaten cheese, eggs, beef, or butter for a month and I don’t know how to cook this way. My tastebuds are so sad. Thank goodness for Chris Matthews and Keith Obermann and this insane political season to take my mind off my so called cooking. I’ve bought some good low fat cookbooks and magazines but a life without butter? I’m not all that sure it’s better than the alternative. I did find a not-that-bad, could-get-used-to-it fat free Feta cheese and non fat yogurt.
Greek Style Fat Free Feta made by President Cheese

Non Fat Greek Strained Yogurt made by Fage(available at Whole Foods)

FOOD MY LOVE
Woke this morning,
Thought of food,
Got me quickly
In the mood.

Eggs with salmon,
shallots too,
brioche with butter,
swig of grand cru.

Changed my mind,
(it’s allowed),
leftovers from when
I Mister Chowed.

Got up, got dressed,
It’s onto lunch,
Barely even finished brunch.

To Cook’s Library,
buy a book,
Read with coffee,
What to cook?

Miso beef in Lettuce Cups?
Chiles Nogada with toasted nuts?

Or Lemon Chicken with tarragon,
No! Risotto, mushrooms, and bits of corn!

I’m just living in a foodie daze,
It fills my dreams,
my nights my days.

Call me obsessed,
Call me a fiend,
at least it’s not
meth amphetamine

Goodby and good lunch!
CP

Meanwhile, if you’re in Los Angeles don’t miss West Third Street just East of The Beverly Center on La Cienega. If you love cookbooks visit The Cook’s Library.
It’s one of only two all-cookbook stores in the country, has a comfy couch, good music, an incredible selection, and a very well informed staff (I should know, I work there on Saturdays!) All the foodies and chefs (including Top Chef contestants Stephanie and Antonia) pass through our doors. You’ll find foreign language cookbooks from the big European chefs, obscure titles, the latest and greatest new cookbooks, book signings by the authors, and often goodies the staff is testing. Do come visit. Ellen Rose opened this store 20 years ago and if you’re lucky enough to be there when Ellen is in the store you will be mightily entertained.

ALSO ON THIRD STREET:
Across the street is Joan’s On Third, everyone’s favorite lunch and take out place with really good coffee. Try the hazelnut meringue cake with a filling of (I’m guessing here) mascarpone, whipped cream, and dried apricots; it’s divine. If you’re interested in cheese then get into a conversation with Chester who is brillant on the subject and will give you tastes and ways to serve the cheeses.

A couple of doors down from Joan’s is Nathalie Seaver’s wonderful store. She sews and designs very feminine women’s clothing using great prints plus a terrific assortment of gifts. There’s a bit of a French focus since those are her roots.

For the wierd and the wonderful check out New Stone Age and next door Freehand. Right next to The Cook’s Library is Traveler’s Bookcase. Don’t leave home without stopping in..maps, travel books on every spot on the planet, great gifts. For a little love go into Puppies and Babies and, what else, play with the puppies.

Other great stops on West Third Street:
Clothes/Shoes:
Sigerson Morrison
Noodle Story
Polka Dot & Moonbeams 2 stores on the same block, one is new clothes, the other vintage

Interesting Things:
New Stone Age
Freehand
Plastica

Food:
Little Door Next Door(so French;
many cute Frenchmen)
A.O.C. (wine and tapas)
Sofi(such a pretty garden and authentic
Greek food)
Chado Tearoom (Afternoon English tea with
sandwiches and scones)

For a more comprehensive guide to Third Street try:
http://losangeles.metromix.com/style