Procrastination pie: A lesson in avoiding the really hard work

Little Bird. My most recently completed painting, from September 2014.

I got angry at my son yesterday.

He was supposed to be practicing piano, but he was crying and upset because the piece was difficult. This was not the first time he has experienced this level of frustration with working through something hard. We've tried to coach him through the difficulty, explaining that when something is hard, you just have to work harder. Hardness is not a reflection on intelligence or value; it simply means that something is difficult and requires more work.

I tried going that route first. I told him to take a deep breath and try to slowly work through the lines note by note. Calmly, persistently. He responded with more frustration and tears. I tried again. And then I'm ashamed to say I totally lost it. I yelled. I told him he needed to pull himself together and get over being so emotional about struggling. It went on from there. It wasn't pretty, and I didn't feel good about it afterward.

Thinking about the incident while doing dishes later, I recognized my hypocrisy. I had spent much of an unexpected snow day avoiding my own hard things. Instead of painting or writing or even working on a project for a client, I cooked and cleaned and ran 4 miles and folded laundry, frittering away precious time on easy things. Not easy in terms of the amount of work required, I was exhausted when the day was over, but easy in terms of emotional, mental, and creative effort. Like my son, I constantly struggle with and get anxious about doing certain kinds of work; the difference is that I am a lot better at hiding it from myself and others by doing prodigious amounts of other stuff.

I try to tell myself that being creative is not supposed to be that hard, that I shouldn't get frustrated, that I should take a breath and slowly and persistently push through the difficulty, and perhaps that I should even relax and enjoy it, but the truth is every time I start putting paint to canvas or trying to write a story is a moment of stress, anxiety, and fear. And even when it goes well (which is actually pretty frequent), the terror returns and remains because the next addition of color, the next creative choice could screw it all to hell. I tell myself I shouldn't care. It should be about the process, not the product, but at heart I don't believe that. I tell myself that if I really loved to paint as much as I think I do, it should be easy to get up and do it. But it's not. Just because you love something doesn't make it easy. So painting starts sit for months and sometimes years before I finish them because mustering the courage to push them through the next step is so hard and requires so much emotional energy. (For example, I started Little Bird, the painting at the beginning of this post, five or six years ago and only finally got around to finishing it last September.)

Starting this year, I plan to do better. (I also plan to be more understanding toward my boy.) I've figured out ways to trick myself into running even when it's cold or hot as hell, I'm sore and tired, and I really don't feel like it. Surely I can trick myself into painting and writing more?

In the meantime, while I was avoiding the hard work, I made this shepherd's pie, which turned out to be a huge hit. Inspired by my friend Jeff, who made a shepherd's pie using cauliflower mash instead of mashed potatoes a few weeks ago, I decided to try replacing some of the mashed potatoes with cauliflower. The cauliflower adds a nice, light sweetness to the mash, but is a bit more watery than potatoes are. I may try replacing the potatoes with cauliflower altogether sometime soon, but if/when I do, I will probably need at least two heads of cauliflower and less half and half. I also used a combination of ground beef and loose pork sausage, but you can use any combination you like. And even though I made this meal in part to avoid work, don't be fooled: It's a somewhat time- and labor-intensive recipe, so don't plan to make it on a weeknight. (Unless you have a snow day.)

Shepherd's pie, ingredients

• 1 large head cauliflower, broken into florets
• 6 medium yellow potatoes (use any potatoes you like; I just like yellows better)
• 1/4 cup half and half
• 1 Tbsp butter
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 lb loose pork sausage
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2-3 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 14 oz. can of diced tomatoes, fire roasted is nice but not necessary
• 2 Tbsp tomato paste
• 2 cups water
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• smoked paprika, salt, and pepper to taste
• bread crumbs (optional)

Instructions

1. Peel the potatoes and boil them in salted water until tender, about 30 minutes.
2. Steam the cauliflower until tender, about 15-20 minutes depending on your steamer (test the cauliflower with a fork).
3. Using a ricer (which will make your life easier, I promise), rice the cauliflower and the potatoes into a bowl. Add the half and half and butter and some salt and pepper and stir together until you have a nice even(ish) mash. Taste the mash to make sure you've added enough salt and pepper. Set the mashed potato-cauliflower mixture aside.
4. In a large saute pan, heat the olive oil. Toss in a sliver of onion to test the heat. When it sizzles, add the rest of the onion and cook it for about two minutes. Then add the sausage and the ground beef. 
5. Cook the meat and onions until the meat is no longer pink. If the meat has some brown bits, bonus! Drain most of the fat from the pan. 
6. Add the garlic to the pan and let it cook for about a minute (do NOT let it burn). 
7. Add the tomatoes, water, tomato paste, ketchup, mustard, and perhaps a teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper and smoked paprika to the meat in the pan. Stir everything together. Over medium-high heat, let the mixture cook down to a loose mass (the pan should contain some liquid, but the mixture should not be watery). Taste the mixture and add salt and pepper until you like it.
8. Next, assemble the pie. Pour the meat mixture into a large, oven-safe baking dish (mine is about 13 in. by 9 in.). Shake the dish gently to make sure the meat is somewhat evenly distributed. Then place big spoonfuls of the potato-cauliflower mash over the meat mixture and using the back of a spoon spread it out somewhat evenly. (It's a "rustic" dish; it doesn't have to look perfect.) If you want, spread some bread crumbs or Panko over top of the mashed potatoes. (At this point, you can set aside the pie for a few days and bake it another day.)
9. Bake the pie for 50-55 minutes in a 450-degree (F) oven. Eat. Enjoy. Try to do the hard things.      

Pink lemon cupcakes: The trouble with color (and a heartbreaking baby story)

My little boy turned six this week. It's hard to believe so much time has passed since those first terrifying days when he was a helpless floppy thing with a neck too weak to keep his head upright, soft spots in his skull, and an appetite I could barely keep up with. Now he's his own person, becoming more himself and more independent every day, which is great, but sometimes I miss him wanting to be with us. Other times I sigh with relief that I can just sit back and watch him be himself.

No. I must stop here. Pretending that the terror of those first days was solely because he was a helpless baby and I didn't know how to take care of helpless little babies is nowhere near the whole truth. There's more to the story. 

The Boo (nicknamed for scaring us so) was born with Persistent Pulmonary Hypertension of the Newborn (PPHN). It means his blood didn't flow the right direction, and he was at imminent risk of death from lack of oxygen from the moment he was born.

We were not prepared for trouble. My pregnancy had been just about perfect. Every test had gone well. So when the doctors and nurses lifted him over to the warming table, and I could hear him struggling and the quiet, concerned, intense murmur, I could tell something wasn't right, but I was too exhausted and torn up to understand. I was just waiting to see my boy. Instead, they whisked him away to the NICU, and I didn't get to see him at all. 

I don't remember much else about that day. I was stitched up. They tried to get me in a wheelchair to go and see the Boo in the NICU, but I passed out cold (blood loss or meds? I have no idea). Mike went back and forth between me and the NICU, watching over us both, doing his best to take care of us, understand what was happening, and translate medical speak into English for us laypeople.  

I think a day passed like this. I spent time learning how to pump milk, trying to eat well, and receiving lots of visitors, and Mike went back and forth, back and forth, relaying information, keeping us together. He brought me a picture of the Boo's ear; it was all he could see among the tubes and wires, and it was perfect.

A little over 24 hours after the Boo was born, I was finally able to sit upright in the wheelchair and make it to the NICU to see my baby. He was beautiful and heartbreaking. We weren't allowed to touch him or speak loudly around him. Any stimulation at all meant that his blood oxygen level would go down, so we had to keep our distance and pour love onto him through air and glass. 

By the second night, Mike had been awake for more than 48 hours. At two in the morning, it seemed as though the Boo was finally beginning to stabilize, so Mike lay down on the couch in my recovery room and fell asleep. Two hours later, I was still semi-awake when the doctors came in quietly to tell us that things were no longer going well. The Boo would have to be transferred to another hospital with more advanced equipment, specifically the ability to provide treatment with inhaled nitric oxide and an ECMO machine (a kind of bypass machine that takes blood out of the body, oxygenates it, and then passes it back into the body). I was wheeled down to the NICU with Mike, and we sat and watched as a team of medical personnel prepared to move our little baby into a plastic box on a gurney (a device they called the "Spaceship") and transfer him to Georgetown Hospital in Washington, DC.

I will never adequately describe the grief of sitting in that wheelchair, in that dark, night-quiet hospital corridor watching skilled, concerned, caring people preparing to take my son away. A cold, black pit had opened in my chest and would never close. I could not stop weeping. When I heard the siren as the ambulance left, I wept more. I wept every time I heard an ambulance for a few years. 

I couldn't go to Georgetown that night, but we decided Mike had to go while I stayed and prepared to leave Manassas Hospital the next day. I spent the day pumping milk, eating, and trying to get on my feet long enough to shuffle down the hall, a prerequisite for release. In late afternoon, I was released, and my parents drove me downtown.

What followed was a desperate search for food and a cold, miserable night in a guest room at Georgetown. By the time I got to the hospital, the cafeteria was closed, so we had to order Chinese to be delivered to the emergency room. We slept on a bare mattress on the floor. Mike's glasses broke during the night. The next morning, we decided this was no place for me to stay and recover and gave up the guest room. Our plan was that I would visit during the day, and my brother (who had immediately booked a ticket from Sweden on hearing of our troubles) would drive me home to rest every afternoon, while Mike stayed until late in the evening.

And so the next few weeks passed. Mike sat and watched our boy's saturation rate like a hawk for 10 days. For him, every dip in the numbers was a slash to the heart, a threat that our son would die. The one night I wasn't there because I was too sick and weak to make it, the doctors wheeled out the ECMO machine (an invasive procedure that can leave permanent scars) and then decided against it. I was dazed, in shock, and on pain medication, trying to maintain a schedule of pumping milk and stacking up bags of it in the hospital refrigerator until the day when the Boo would be able to start drinking. 

Then came a turning point. One night, while I was doing my two a.m. pump, and Mike was calling the hospital to check on our boy, the nurse told Mike that the little guy had extubated himself. (She had a hilarious way of saying this, which left us laughing in hysterics.) The boy was done. Annoyed with the stuff stuck down his throat, he just spit it right up. As my sister-in-law commented later, "Only two weeks old, and already rebellious and addicted to drugs." (To save his life, the doctors had had to administer a lot of drugs to keep him sedated and ensure his blood flowed in the right direction. We had to wean him from the addiction by administering opium for several weeks, but that's another story.)

After 29 days, we finally got to bring our boy home. Those 29 days of fear and grief were the worst of my life, and they left damage that took a long time to undo. But he survived. And now the earth has traveled around the sun six times since the day when he first arrived, so it's time for a treat.

           

This post was supposed to be about the cupcakes I made for his birthday celebration at school, but obviously, I got a little off track. My original idea was to make cupcakes that look like toadstools, a fun thing to celebrate both his birthday and Halloween. Sadly, the natural food dyes I purchased were not up to the task of turning my lemony frosting red, just pink. Even though I added ALL the dyes, red, blue, and yellow, the frosting remained stubbornly pink. It's a pretty pink, but I still feel a little funny about showing up with pink cupcakes to my boy's birthday party. At least the taste made up for it (and I gussied them up with some sprinkles, although my decorating skills are seriously lacking). 

So now, finally, here is the recipe for pink lemon cupcakes and some tips for coloring foods. This batch was enough for 24 mini cupcakes and 12 regular cupcakes, so it would probably be enough for 24 regular cupcakes or 48 minis (if you have two pans, which I didn't, thus the mixed sizes). 

Ingredients

FOR THE CUPCAKES*

• 1 and 1/3 cup PLUS 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 and 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 and 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup canola or other mild vegetable oil 
• 2 large eggs
• 1/3 cup whole milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• zest from one lemon (don't forget to wash the lemon carefully)
• 1 cup boiling water

FOR THE FROSTING**

• 12 Tbsps (1 and 1/2 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 3 cups powdered sugar
• 4 Tbsps lemon juice (make sure to strain out any seeds)
• zest from one lemon
• 1 and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• red food coloring (optional)

Directions

FOR THE CUPCAKES

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Place bake cups in the wells of your cupcake pan(s). 
2. In a large bowl (your stand mixer bowl if you have one; it will make this recipe so much easier), mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and lemon zest. Use the paddle attachment at low speed to mix it all together evenly. Then add the sugar and mix at low speed until evenly distributed. 
3. Add the oil and mix at low speed until the mixture is crumbly, sort of like sand. 
4. In a separate bowl, mix the eggs, milk, and vanilla extract until blended. Add the egg mixture to the flour-oil mixture at low speed until blended. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides if needed. 
5. Finally, with the mixer at slow speed, add the boiling water in a slow, even flow until the batter is just mixed and smooth. Once again, scrape down the sides as needed. 
6. Fill the bake cups about 2/3 full. Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes for regular cupcakes and 30-35 cupcakes for mini cupcakes. They should be lightly golden-brown on top when they are done. Let them cool in the cupcake pans. (Putting the pans on a rack would probably aid cooling.)

FOR THE FROSTING

1. Sift the powdered sugar into a stand mixer bowl if it has lumps.
2. Add the remaining ingredients (softened butter, lemon juice, lemon zest, and vanilla extract) to the bowl. Start mixing slowly with the paddle attachment until the powdered sugar is just incorporated into the butter to avoid getting a cloud of sugar. Then beat on high speed until the frosting is white and fluffy.
3. Beat in drops of red food coloring until you get the shade of pink you want. 

After making this recipe, I asked my friend Cheryll of Decker'ated Delights who makes beautiful cakes and cookies how to get a good shade of red. She shared these tips:

1. Don't use food coloring. 
2. Use the paste. Apparently AmeriColor works well and doesn't leave a funny aftertaste. (Obviously, this doesn't quite fit with my real food ideals, so I will probably have to live with pinks and lavenders for now, but I wanted to pass on the information in case you want to try it.)  
3. Tint with a light pink first for a vibrant red. (Or light brown if you want a deeper red.)
4. Then tint with red. 

* Adapted from the Devilishly Moist Chocolate Cake recipe in Tish Boyle's The Cake Book.

** Adapted from the Creamy Frosting recipe in Williams-Sonoma's The Kid's Cookbook. 

Steamed mussels with corn, tomatoes, and bacon...and a confession about envy

I am flawed. Few days pass me by without a struggle to manage anger, fear, anxiety, and, perhaps worst, envy. Oh yeah, envy, that nasty little twit of a demon that sits around highlighting how successful person A is; and how well person B seems to manage a career, a family, and a glamorous life; or how gorgeous person C's food photograph is; or...the list goes on. I know envy is bad for me. I know envy doesn't tell me the real story of another person's life and accomplishments. I know envy doesn't tell me the real story about what and who I am and what I have accomplished. And that's why I fight with it, try to talk it away. It doesn't always work.


These daily struggles is one reason why it's so refreshing to be with a friend or a person whom I admire and feel deeply for without the tiniest scrap of envy or anger or anxiety. I can simply enjoy his or her skill, competence, self-confidence and feel peace. I think I am able to articulate this for the first time because of last Sunday, when we went to dinner at a friend's house, a friend my husband and I haven't seen in a long time. She knows I have been doing the Grand Tour, introducing my son to different countries and their cultures, food, history, art, music, anything that comes up. She's Indian so she suggested we comes over for dosas (she knows I love them) and have India week. So we did. 


And while we were there, I sat back and watched her. I loved the genuine affection she immediately showed my son, whom she's never met before. I enjoyed watching her strong hands as they skillfully spooned idlis out of the steaming trays, or placed them on plates for the children to eat; her hands were fast and steady, but unhurried. Her demeanor was calm, competent, and loving. She's smart, skilled, successful, manages her household well, and yet she induces no envy in me, only peace and a sense of being cared for. It's indescribably wonderful. And such a relief from the evil spirits that seem to infest my mind half the time. (And, no, I don't really think that evil spirits infest my mind. It's just a metaphor, OK?)


Anyway, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the steamed mussels with corn, tomatoes, and bacon I ate a little while ago and now am going to share with you. It's just a thought, an aside, and a tribute to a person who made me feel welcome, full of admiration, but free from quotidian poison. It was truly lovely.

So, let's move on the mussels. I hadn't been to a regular grocery story in a few weeks, but we were almost out of toothpaste, sandwich bags, canola oil, cheese cloth, canning labels--the kind of things that are hard to find at an organic market or a farmer's market, so my son and I went. While we were there, I had the idea that I wanted to make something with mussels for dinner (after all, I recently found out that farmed mussels are OK to eat according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch, and I really enjoy mussels). So I got a bag (I also got a couple of gorgeous sockeye salmon fillets, but that's a story for another day). When I got the mussels home, I took them out of the plastic bag they were in and put them in a container full of ice in the refrigerator. As I was putting them away, I got a whiff of them and was immediately entranced: A briny, fresh, salty smell came from them, clean and bracing as the ocean. I was entranced. I don't remember ever smelling mussels like that.

When thinking about how to prepare them, I knew I wanted to use some of the sweet corn and tomatoes I got from the market last Saturday (after a visit to another friend on Saturday, we walked away with more tomatoes, beans, and squash, so we've really got a bit of produce glut). I decided to steam them with the mussels in some wine, with a little bacon, and oh yeah, how about a sprinkling of homegrown parsley to round it out? This was a tasty, fresh summer meal, cooked in a just a few minutes.

A note on cleaning mussels and food safety: Most recipes that include mussels have you "debeard" them with a sharp knife. Truth is, most of farmed mussels you get these days don't have much of a beard, perhaps one in ten will. But the beard is kind of a yucky, stringy business that isn't going to please anyone at the table, so definitely cut them off when you find them. Also make sure that you scrub each mussel thoroughly; that will help eliminate any grit. If any of your mussels are already open before you've cooked them, discard immediately (that means they are dead, and you don't want to cook dead mussels). Also, if any of them don't open after you've steamed them, again, discard.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs (1 bag) farmed mussels, scrubbed, sorted, and debearded
• 4 slices of bacon, sliced thinly
• 1/2 onion, chopped finely
• corn kernels from three ears*
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 cup dry white wine
• salt and pepper to taste
• a handful of chopped, fresh parsley (or any other herb you've got growing in the garden)

Instructions

1. This dish takes very little time to cook, which means that preparing all your ingredients in advance is especially important. So first thing, prepare your ingredients. 
2. In a large, deep pan, cook the bacon over medium heat until it's golden brown and crispy. 
3. Add the onions to the pan, cook them until they are soft.
4. Add the corn, tomatoes, and garlic. Stir until the garlic is fragrant. 
5. Add the mussels to the pan. Stir a couple of times.
6. Add the wine and cover the pan with a well-fitting lid. Let the mussels steam for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat. 
7. Just before serving, season with salt, pepper, and parsley. Make sure to give everyone some bread to soak up the broth, which is so delicious, it's ridiculous. Imagine you are by the sea and relax.  

* A few days ago, I tried to describe how to cut the kernels off the corn cob for my corn chowder post, but I am afraid I didn't do a good job of it. Hopefully the following images do a better job of showing how to do it. Stand the cob up on its end (cut off the end if the cob shifts around too much on the cutting board), hold the knife perpendicular to the cob and slice down, cutting off corn kernels in sheets.

Overcoming fear: Lessons from the kitchen

I read an article about the trendiness of using foam in food this morning. What popped out at me was writer Andreas Viestad's shock at hearing comments about making his own whipped cream during a promotional tour a few years' back. He quotes a television host proudly saying, "Did you really whip the cream yourself? Well, my grandmother did that, too!"

As a fellow Scandinavian, I fully understand his amazement at such surprise. I encounter it too: People who speak of bread-making in hushed and reverent tones, as though the skill were some esoteric, magical knowledge bestowed in dark temples by the High Priest of Yeast and the Demiurges of Flour. Or people who are terrified at the thought of cooking a turkey for Thanksgiving, when getting the chance to cook something that big and impressive is so much fun! I can quickly think of a half-dozen items that are easy to make from scratch that many seem to be unable to accomplish without a ready-made product from the store, such as pancakes, biscuits, vinaigrette, marinade, stock, gravy, cookies, etc. Cooking is not rocket science, and yet many seem to approach it with the fear I reserve for trying to do calculus or talking to people on the phone.

Thankfully, I have never been afraid of cooking. Its familiarity to me and the long line of successes that I have had overcome the occasional disaster. But I have other fears and weaknesses. I have messes around the house that I strategically avoid including in the food photographs. I frequently cringe at things I have written. At times, picking up the charcoal and the paintbrush is a real struggle: What am I going to make? Will it be any good? Am I just being stupid to even try? Are my ideas pathetic, weak, derivative, shallow? I get anxious about not being as well organized as I'd like to be or struggling with debt. I feel embarrassed when I haul my heavy body out the door to go for a slow, painful run and imagine how stupid I must look.

In other words, I drag a chain of anxieties, fears, embarrassments, and shames around with me that can make movement difficult, if not downright impossible. I try to rely on little mantras sometimes, like Ted Kennedy's idea of not letting perfection stand in the way of accomplishing something good, or the idea that a long journey starts with a single step, but they don't always work for me.

But here's another idea. I am not afraid of cooking because I am so familiar with it. I have seen it done around me all my life. I have done it myself for years, and I have tried all kinds of things. Know the saying, "Familiarity breeds contempt"? Well, in this circumstance, that's not as bad as it sounds. All that familiarity I have in the kitchen gives me the history to try and fail without too much embarrassment because I know I have succeeded in the past and that I will succeed again soon. All the familiarity and knowledge I have picked up lets me analyze my mistakes and figure out where I went wrong.

So how do I apply this to my fears and anxieties? I breed contempt through practice and familiarity. I try and fail and then I try again. I put embarrassment and fear in a room, and I lock the door. I know they are still there, hooting and hollering away, trying to get out, but I work on ignoring them until they shut up. I drag my floppy belly out the door and run, and I look with empathy at those who run more slowly than I do (and with envy at those who fly by). I make myself write and move on when it's done. I practice drawing, paying little attention to what I draw because I know the ideas will come as I continue to practice. I trick myself into doing the things that scare me or embarrass me or make me feel shame as often as I can with the hope that eventually the shame and fear will go away.

So if you're afraid of cooking, here's what to do. Pick a recipe, any recipe, something you think you might like and try it. Make a mess in the kitchen. If you don't know what something means, look it up. Don't be afraid not to know something and look stupid. The smartest, most talented people in the world got that way because they didn't care if they looked stupid and asked a lot of questions. Maybe your food won't be great the first time, maybe it will. Either way, do it again. Do it until you can do it perfectly and take pride in it. Then try something else and do the same. Build your ability and your familiarity step by step. Know that practice will make you better. And in the meantime, I will try and do the same.