Summer of Seafood

It’s been upwards of 90 degrees outside for the last few days (although a woman I work with insists that it’s “a thousand”) and at times I’ve thought that unless I plunge myself into the ocean immediately, I won’t be able to go on. There isn’t a very accessible ocean around here, but seafood is pretty easy to get to, so instead I’ve been plunging myself into that.

First, there was the Swedish Midsummer Festival. The lawns at Battery City Park filled with blond heads wreathed with flowers, sipping champagne and flowery Swedish spirits, dolloping pickled herring onto crackers, and enjoying the view of the water (though unfortunately it wasn’t the kind of water you can jump into). The food vendors had all sorts of specialties – meatballs, cured salmon, new potato salads – but the lines were unfathomably long, and our stomachs dictated that we choose the shortest one, which meant we were getting korv: hot dogs. The hot dogs were served plain or topped with skagen, a shrimp salad with mayonnaise and dill, and as a waited impatiently in line, I realized that I’d much rather have a skagen sandwich than a hot dog with skagen on top of it. I requested this, a little nervously, when I finally reached the front of the line, and they very obligingly made my special order. The cool, creamy salad was the perfect end to a sweltering day.

The next afternoon I headed out into the sun again, to check out something that had been on my to-do list for several months. The food vendors at the Red Hook ballfields have gotten a lot of press lately, and their set up has changed since the Health Department forced them to give up their tents and move into trucks. But the food and the atmosphere seem to have remained intact: the shady sidewalk on Bay Street feels like an escape from the rest of the city, and the cooks are still turning out authentic Latin American food, at a pace that suits them. The shrimp ceviche was perfectly sweet and tangy, with a nice heat from the green hot sauce that they add just before serving. I was also excited to try pupusas, a Salvadoran dish of fried maize flour cakes filled with cheese and vegetables or meat. The pupusas platter was an unbelievable deal: one pork pupusa, one cheese and loroco flower pupusa, a pile of chicharones (fried cubes of fatty pork), and a side of bright purple cabbage slaw, all for only seven dollars. The pupusas were the best part; the mild cheese and soft dough were a decadent combination.

Two servings of shrimp in less than 24 hours seemed like impressive seafood consumption, but I was about to get much, much closer to the fruits of the sea. When I arrived at Talei’s apartment that night, everything seemed fairly normal: spotless as usual, some friendly faces standing around, an open bottle of wine. Except that the sink was full of live crabs. They clawed vaguely at the sides of the sink and at each other, possibly trying to reach the ones neatly stacked on a platter to ask them why they were so…pink. Talei bravely took on the task of transferring the live ones to the pot, but after lifting one of them out of the sink to find that it was gripping the detached claw of a different crab, she declared that they “had personalities” and she didn’t want to kill any more herself. I volunteered to kill one crab, testing out how I felt about my recent decision not to become a vegetarian. In the end, most of the food preparation was done expertly by Paul, who had more seafood experience than the rest of us.

After an informative demonstration by Hien on How to Eat Blue Crab, the twelve of us started grabbing specimens from the two enormous heaps in the middle of the table and cracking into them ourselves. Crab juice, crab guts, and flecks of crab shell flew everywhere. It was hard to get at the meat, but what I did manage to pry out was delicious: subtly sweet and seasoned by the broth it was boiled in. The orange eggs were easier to find; they had the texture of hard-boiled egg yolk, but with a slightly bitter aftertaste. I don’t know how long we stood around the table, our hands dripping with clam juice, prying open crab after crab. We went through at least three large platters before getting tired of it. And then moved on to oysters.

This seafood-filled weekend was a reminder of the advantages of sticking to coasts, never straying too far from the ocean.

National Picnic Day

Happy National Picnic Day! Have you had a picnic yet today? You’ve got half an hour left. I celebrated by eating lunch on the fire escape, feasting my eyes on the view of the BQE onramp (and, to be fair, the distant top of the Statue of Liberty).

I should have gotten to this post sooner, to offer advice for those already planning picnics and to inspire the rest to get up from the computer, go outside, and eat something. But I think what they always say about Earth Day applies here too; therefore, “Every Day Is Picnic Day,” especially at this time of year. Take a look at these pictures and recipes from picnics past, and pack one for tomorrow. There’s no chance of rain.

Gado gado: peanutty potato salad.

Chips and dips are always a good idea.

Flowery cookies to eat amidst flowers.

Does a snack count as a picnic? These spiced cashews were a good accompaniment to reading in Carroll Gardens Park. Combine chili powder, cayenne pepper, dried rosemary, and salt and grind with a mortar and pestle. Spray roasted cashews with cooking spray and stir with spice mix.

Sometimes picnics are best without recipes. A few carefully selected ingredients made a good spread on Governor’s Island. Crunchy vegetable + cheese + bread/crackers + fruit is usually a good combination. And if it’s not enough, there’s always the Dippin Dot vending machine.

Fifth Avenue Fair

By far, the best part of summer is being outside most of the time, and an important sub-part of that is eating and drinking outside. If, like many urban dwellers, you don’t have a backyard, it can be slightly more difficult to arrange these kinds of activities. Some countries make it easy, and the summer I spent in Paris was full of night-picnicking on the steps of Sacre Coeur or on the lawn of the Champ de Mars with a slab of Comté, a few baguettes, and several bottles of wine.

But this Puritan nation of ours is less accommodating (in more areas than this), and we have to be more surreptitious here. Except on those lovely days when the city fences off a length of an avenue for the most delightful of summer events: the street fair.

The 5^th Avenue Fair, which happened a few weekends ago, includes many of the less exciting aspects of those generic street fairs that pop up on blocks of the Village every weekend between May and October, but it goes far beyond Mozzarepas and fake silk scarves. All the local restaurants make an appearance, and there’s a lot of good food to choose from. We started out at the Bierkraft stand, which was selling gigantic pulled pork sandwiches and watermelon beer. The beer tasted like a yeasty Jolly Rancher, which was actually very refreshing in the heat.

I had considerable trouble deciding between the many Greek and South American food carts, but was very happy with the hummus wrap I settled on, a sun-dried tomato tortilla filled with hummus, kalamata olives, tomatoes, and feta. We then met up with a few more friends, who were coming from brunch and didn’t need more food, but had a different excellent idea: margaritas.

Naturally, I had already identified the cheapest margarita stand, so we all lined up there. As we each successively took a first sip from our to-go cup, the same reaction passed over each of our faces, an expression of the thought, “Oh, this is much stronger than I had expected.” We continued down 5^th Avenue, sipping our sour tequila, slowly fading into a sun-soaked daze. It was a beautiful day, and one of those prized opportunities to walk around in a slightly heightened state in a crowd of several thousand happy Brooklynites of all ages, shapes, and colors.

Stay tuned for more summer food festivals: The Lebanese, Greek, and Swedish Midsummer Festivals are all coming up.

May Flowers

I’ve been hoping that recent April showers will bring some May flowers. The April flowers have been lovely, but it’s always good to have more.

I’ve been trying to think in general about how to celebrate the advent of May; I participated in some memorable Maypole events as a kid which piqued my interest in all things pagan, and I would kick myself every year for failing to wake up at dawn and wash my face in morning dew collected from some nearby shrubbery. I don’t think New York has any morning dew – and even if it does I’m certainly not getting it anywhere near my eyes – so I’ve had to come up with alternative plans.

Many May Day traditions involve the bounty of flowers that appears at this time of year, so as a small preliminary celebration I decided to bake something florally-inspired. There’s been a jar of lavender sugar sitting untouched in the cupboard for several months now, and spring seemed like the perfect excuse to test it out. Though some people find them too “soapy,” I’ve always liked flowery flavors – candied rose petals, jasmine tea, the violet ice cream they sell at the Jardin de Luxembourg. I was hoping that the lavender sugar would infuse a batch of cornmeal cookies with a substantial perfume.

The final result was less dramatic than I had envisioned, but the cookies turned out pretty damn good nonetheless. I increased the ratio of cornmeal to regular flour to ensure a satisfying gritty crunch, and the buttery flavor of corn (and ten tablespoons of butter) was complimented by lemon zest and a subtle background of lavender. What surprised me most was the texture: I’ve gotten used to baking dense, shortbread-like cookies, and the addition of an egg created the perfect degree of tenderness for pairing with a cup of coffee.

Lemon-Lavender Cornmeal Cookies

¾ cup unsalted butter, softened
¾ cup sugar (I used half lavender sugar and half regular sugar, but using all lavender sugar would probably be excellent)
zest of half a lemon
1 egg
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt

Beat together butter, sugar, and lemon zest until very creamy. Add egg and beat until well-mixed. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl, and slowly add to butter mixture. Form dough into a log and wrap with wax paper or plastic wrap; chill for at least an hour. Slice into ¼-inch rounds and bake on parchment paper at 350 F for 10-15 minutes, until edges are just beginning to turn golden. Remove from baking sheet to cool.

Pommelo

While numerous studies have shown that taking Vitamin C has no curative effect on the common cold, I nevertheless crave citrus when I’m not feeling well. Maybe it’s because the placebo effect has taken root after a childhood of being told to drink orange juice if you’re sick, but I swear it actually does make me feel better. Or at least like I’m doing something. I’ve been trying to fight off a cold with this method all week, guzzling orange juice and eating an orange or grapefruit with every meal. I was feeling marginally better, but then I passed by the green grocer and saw something I had to have: the biggest dose of citrus found in nature. The pommelo.

The pommelo, pictured here with a large grade AA egg for size comparison, is native to Southeast Asia. It’s easy to find at Chinese supermarkets like Ranch 99, and thus the fruit made several appearances on afternoons during high school when we had nothing better to do than drive around El Cerrito buying novelty snacks, then trying not to get too much pommelo juice on the leather seats of the ’85 Volvo station wagon (though juice stains would have been the least of its problems, since it lacked functional seatbelts, the ability to go above 40 mph, and a muffler). Katherine and Jess also expertly rigged up a pommelo as the vehicle for their egg drop project in Physics class (the results were positive; the egg suffered no cracks).

I hadn’t had a pommelo in a while, probably because they’re a bit high maintenance. First of all, they’re not exactly a single-serving fruit. And though I’ve managed to eat one in a moving car, even on a kitchen counter they’re not exactly easy to prepare. Prying off the skin takes some effort, and then you’re face with hacking away at a thick layer of spongy pith before you even see any of the edible flesh. But today, this dissection process turned out to be more worthwhile than I could have imagined. If a colony of bees ever raised a grapefruit to think it was a honeycomb, it would taste like this fruit. The segments were succulent but not messily juicy, unlike the cruel grapefruit that spurted all over my dress on Saturday. I thought we were a bit past citrus season at this point, but it must be prime pommelo time – hurry out and get one today.

I think I’m feeling significantly better, but I’ll probably keep eating pommelo just to be safe. I have a feeling pommelo might be a habit-forming substance, but until conclusive studies are conducted, I’m going to take my chances.

Irish Inspiration: Beer Bread and Green Soup

St. Patrick’s Day, for me at least, approaches with less anticipation than most other holidays, with the exception of, maybe, Ash Wednesday. I try to remember to remind myself to wish my dad a happy birthday over the phone, but that’s pretty much it. I’m not that into parades or Irish-themed drinking establishments – for both genres, it seems like if you see one you’ve seen them all. But for some reason, when I walked into the office today to find that my friend had made chocolate Guinness cupcakes for the occasion, I suddenly felt like I was under-celebrating.

I needed a festive cooking project, and beer cupcakes reminded me of a phase I went through during senior year of college: beer bread. At the time, cooking with beer seemed like a novelty (actually, the novelty of cooking of any kind hadn’t quite worn off), and the claim that mixing flour and baking soda with a can of beer could get you homemade bread required testing to be believed. In trying it, I learned that beer bread is unbelievable. Stirring in the beer creates a tantalizing yeasty aroma without the stress of activating any yeast, and the elastic dough bakes into a moist, dense crumb with an impressively professional crust. This time I mixed in some chopped basil and cubed cheddar, little bursts of cheese and herb flavor throughout each slice. Now that I’ve revisited the recipe with this loaf, a list of hundreds of variations to try has been running through my head: figs and gorgonzola, olives and goat cheese, fennel seeds, citrus zest, flax seeds, hazelnuts. I promise, the basic recipe is a magic trick that makes perfect fresh-baked bread appear in your oven.

Of course, I have no evidence that beer bread is particularly Irish. The fresh pea soup I made to go with it didn’t fit with the holiday’s ethnic aspect any better, but it was a strikingly bright green, as I the rolling hills of Ireland are said to be. All in all it was one of the best meals I’ve produced in a while, so I wasn’t concerned with whether it paid an accurately homage to St. Patrick or his native land. I was, however, very grateful for the inspiration.

Beer Bread

1 ½ cups whole wheat flour

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

4 ½ teaspoons baking powder

1/3 cup light brown sugar

1 ½ teaspoons salt

1 12-ounce can of beer

Optional add-ins: ½ cup to 1 cup cheese (diced or crumbled), dried fruits, olives, nuts, 1-3 tablespoons fresh chopped herbs, anything else that sounds good

Whisk together all ingredients besides beer in a large bowl. Pour in beer, and stir until completely incorporated, forming a fairly stiff, springy dough. Pour into a greased 9 X 5 inch loaf pan. Bake at 375F for 50 to 60 minutes, until the top is crusty and toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Bright Green Pea Soup

1 pound frozen peas

1 large onion, diced

½ - 1 cup chopped fresh herbs (mint or cilantro; use more if cilantro)

2 (or more) cups chicken or vegetable stock

Salt and pepper

Saute onion in a medium pot until it softens and becomes translucent. Add peas, and pour in enough stock to cover all ingredients, plus a little more. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes. Puree in a blender in batches (filling it no more than 1/4 of the way each time, or else the hot soup will explode all over you when you turn on the blender – just trust me), adding in the herbs. Alternatively, use a blender stick directly in the pot. Add stock to desired consistency, salt and pepper to taste. Serve with a squeeze of lemon or drizzle of olive oil.

Snow Day Ice Cream

Another blizzard, another day’s plans erased by snow. So much snow. More snow than I’ve ever seen before. What are we going to do with all this free time, and with all this snow?

Staring out the window at the flurries that were now traveling horizontally, I began to wonder: could we eat it? For a fleeting second I contemplated how silly I would feel googling “recipes with snow,” but saved myself the embarrassment when I remembered Paula Deen’s demonstration of snow-based ice cream. I don’t know how she got snow into her sunny Savannah kitchen, but I recalled her mixing a bowl of it with condensed milk and telling us all to give it a try. What better use of a blizzard and a long-forgotten can of condensed milk could there be?

The idea of consuming the product of New York precipitation did give me some pause, however. This isn’t exactly the kind of city where I would regularly graze on what I find lying around in the street (which you can totally do in like, Singapore, right?). But I must have inhaled about a pound of the stuff walking home last night, and I felt fine this morning. Plus, friends far more paranoid and germophobic than I am deemed it a fine idea. I’ll also admit to a reassuring “eating snow” google search.

I selected a Tupperware snow catcher and placed it on the fire escape, but the small amount of snow it caught was melted by a short interlude of sun. In the end, I collected a sample from the untouched deck/roof behind the apartment. The recipe said to use eight cups of snow for one 14-ounce can of condensed milk, but scooping snow in precise cupfuls turned out to be difficult. I estimated that I got about six cups into the container, packed fairly densely.

Once inside, I dumped the stuff into a large bowl, poured in about two-thirds of the condensed milk and a capful of vanilla, and tried to combine them without melting the snow too much. It did lose a lot of volume in the process, so I put it in the freezer afterward to try to resolidify some of the puddles that had formed. After about a half an hour it seemed a good consistency. I stirred in chopped mint and scooped it into a glass, adding almonds for some crunch.

The snow ice cream was, as you might expect, not indistinguishable from real ice cream, and had more in common with a creamy granita or milkshake. But it tasted great. Condensed milk never disappoints the taste buds, and it took on a very nice perfume from the mint and vanilla. I can imagine all kinds of flavorings and additions working well in this context – fruit syrups, jams, liqueurs, and any kind of small crunchy candy.

I would eat this every day until the snow melts if carcinogen build up were not an issue. As it is, I'd call this a great activity best limited to one blizzardy day a year. And since I no longer have any use for the snow, I hope it hurries up and melts into spring in the very near future. Skipping straight to full-on summer would be fine by me as well.

What's for Pudding?

Most meals in the Elliott/Dolan household of my childhood ended with an aura of defeat, followed by cries of “What’s for pudding?” This would confuse any poor non-family members who happened to be present, who had already been confused enough by whatever my mother had put on the table, whether it had been a heap of ungarnished shredded carrots, a pile of baguette cubes with a side of olive oil, or an inconsistently microwaved TV dinner. “What’s for pudding?” must have seemed syntactically jarring, and the thought of being forced to accept a pudding cup in a flavor that my mother found “interesting” was probably almost too much for our pitiable, uninitiated tablemates.

They needn’t have been so worried. “Pudding” is just what the English call the dessert course, and there never was any. Every Christmas, however, my mother would buy a packaged Christmas pudding, a tough, dense dome of dried fruits and stickiness. Years of store-bought Christmas puddings convinced me that I didn’t like them, but my grandmother’s homemade pudding, flambéed and doused in brandy butter, was a real revelation. This year I wanted to try making one myself, and I thought persimmon would be a nice seasonal flavoring. Little did I know, steamed persimmon pudding cake is actually a traditional American dessert, therefore (I thought) perfect for our cross-cultural British-American vegetarian Christmas.

Steaming a cake on the stove is actually no more difficult than baking it, and because my attempt succeeded so well, I’m convinced it’s foolproof. The batter is fairly typical, moistened by persimmon puree and lightly spiced with ginger and cinnamon. I folded in walnuts and raisins at the end, and poured it into a buttered Pyrex dish fitted with a lid. I raised the dish off the bottom of a large pot using the cylindrical part of a jar lid, and then filled the pot with water to halfway up the side of the Pyrex dish. The water should have been added before the dish, since some of it got in through the top, but it didn’t make much of a difference – remember, the whole thing is eventually inverted onto a plate anyway. The pudding took a little over two hours to steam and was ready to be taken out and cooled just before we sat down to dinner. Forty-five minutes later it came out of the dish without incident, a caramel brown color and deliciously moist. It is lovely with heavy cream or ice cream, but we were very fortunate to be able to dunk it in Rob’s homemade eggnog.

The only problem with this pudding was that there weren't nearly enough leftovers. Next time I’ll use a bigger dish, maybe for a fig and honey version. You can find the recipe for the original here.

[Other highlights of our vegetarian Christmas included a stuffed turban squash topped with a forest of romanesco. Unfortunately all of the pictures of it turned out a bit blurry, and don't capture the prismatic spikiness of romanesco.]

Solution to Winter #2: Patience

Dishes that take several hours are never at the top of my list of Things to Make Soon, but because slow-cooking is the sometimes the only way to achieve a certain depth of flavor, they're often at the top of my list of Things to Eat Soon. Fortunately for me, I happen to have a very patient boyfriend, who fortunately happens to have a slow-cooker.

I've been campaigning for beef stew for a few weeks, my technique varying from subtle hints ("So, what are you doing Sunday or Monday or Wednesday night?") to outright demands ("You have to make it before I leave for California on Thursday"). He reported that the process itself, unlike me, was not very demanding at all: place cubes of meat, potatoes, and carrots in the crock pot in the morning, turn it on, go to work, come home to a very stewy apartment. Easy enough for me to consider trying it myself sometime – but it doesn’t bode well that my impatience manifested itself that evening even though I wasn’t doing any of the slow-cooking. I missed the bus, and even though dinner was six hours in the making, I couldn’t stand the idea of waiting ten minutes for the next one to come. Instead, I took off down Atlantic at a furious pace, noticeably frustrated and inelegantly jostling a cast iron skillet, a bottle of wine, and three large oranges. The bus caught up with me seven blocks later, two stops from the apartment, and I got on. Clearly, I’m not cut out for waiting of any kind.

When I finally arrived and put down my bag, I was ready for a hearty meal. I came ready to contribute to it, of course, since I had been so adamant that the stew be prepared for me. I quickly stirred together some cornbread batter, poured it into the skillet and stuck it in the oven, all of which took about four minutes. I then turned to the task of mulling wine, which I’ve heard is how the Finns survive this part of the year – keep a thermos of this stuff on you at all times, and you won’t care how long it’s been since you’ve seen the sun or felt anything in your fingertips. One bottle of Two-Buck Chuck went into a pot along with a halved orange, a few tablespoons of sugar, and some spices from a packet purchased at Canned Foods over a year ago, the pot was placed over low heat, and I stared at it, willing it to hurry up and get steamy.

About half an hour later, everything was piping hot and ready to eat. Piping hot, actually, is too hot to be consumed, but naturally I refused to wait for it to cool down, and I now have severe burns on the inside of my mouth. But the stew was delicious: nothing complicated, just the flavors of tender beef and root vegetables falling apart all over each other in a satisfying mush. Beef stew is the wool sweater of foods – practical and classic, and something your grandmother would suggest. Although a seared steak or a crisp raw carrot are perfect for certain circumstances, there’s no way to achieve the richness that results when their tastes and nutrients mingle and get to know each other without allowing them some time.

I’m hoping that reflecting on this meal will teach me the virtue of patience, because it seems like the only solution to winter may be to just wait it out. It must take more reflection than I’ve had time for, though, since I’m getting on a plane to California tonight.

Solution to Winter #1: Layering

Well, it finally happened, as I suppose it had to. It got cold. We enjoyed an exceptionally mild fall this year, one that lasted so long that I actually started to appreciate the briskness of a 58 degree day that some (weirdos) are so excited about. Usually when the temperature dips below 75 I turn against the environment entirely, seeing any kind of "sweater weather" as a mocking reminder of what is to come. But this year I had time to acclimatize, get to know and understand the fall, and take back my previous dismissal of it.

None of that matters now. It looks like the real cold weather is descending, with the knifey chill that characterizes Real Winter. Last March I swore that I would not tolerate another winter, and declared a plan to move to Argentina in January and beat the system. However, January is fast approaching and I have no tickets booked; it seems the plan will need to be revised. And because I know that with East Coast weather you don't get anything for free, I'm anticipating that the crippling cold will last a while, and I don't expect to go outside without feeling like I'm being stabbed until late June.

So, how to prepare for the worst? I've already dragged boxes of coats and hats from under my bed, and replaced them with swimsuits and inappropriate shoes. It's now time to consider the transition to make in the kitchen. My summer moratorium on warm foods of any kind ended several months ago, but now I'm looking for things that are truly enduringly warm, that act as internal space heaters hours after consumption when you've been forced to leave the warm cocoon of the kitchen. My first solution is what you get when you apply the logic of winter attire to cooking: lasagna.

A description of any well-constructed lasagna sounds like a bed you might want to jump into, and Chase did a very good job constructing one last night. The layers of ground turkey stewed with tomatoes and spinach were made very cozy by pillowy pockets of ricotta and frilly pasta scarves. It was the best comfort food possible on a rainy day - when it came out of the oven bubbling, we were comforted by the knowledge that the heat from the lava-like cheese would keep radiating in our stomachs until at least the next afternoon.

Last night's dessert was also based on the concept of layering, and additionally on the principle of a “whiskey jacket,” although I used rum because it tastes much better. I bought a bag of excitingly affordable pfeffernüse cookies a few weeks ago in the hope that they would taste like mini-lebkuchen, but unfortunately they did not, and instead were unpleasantly stale and chewy. But since they were spiced very nicely with lots of anise, and the only problem was texture, I decided they should be put to use in some kind of liquid-soaked dessert. Because of its alcoholic sting and abundance of raisins, I never liked the elaborate trifle that my grandmother would make every Christmas, but now that my taste buds have matured I enjoy the memory of it retroactively, and the idea of a moist and gingery pfeffernüsse version seemed promising.

Of course, I inevitably simplified things. A food semanticist would probably refuse to call my creation a trifle; it would qualify as a parfait at best. Lacking a trifle dish and the desire to make anything as complicated as custard, I crumbled pfeffernüsse in the bottom of a reusable take-out container and sprinkled them with a few tablespoons of rum. Then I chopped two pears and simmered them in some orange juice and another splash rum, and poured the fruit over the cookies. The dish went in the fridge to cool while we ate lasagna, and when decided to move on from savory things I took it out and topped it with whipped cream (yes, from a can) and a dusting of nutmeg. The pfeffernüsse had melted into a velvety pudding consistency, and their flavor tasted even better without the distracting staleness. Their Christmas-y spices paired perfectly with the pears and cream, and the bite from the rum balanced the sweetness of the rest of the ingredients.

If every night of winter involved such festive spices and dense, cheesy casseroles, the whole thing might be tolerable. Last night certainly gave me the hope and motivation to keep thinking of Solutions to Winter.