Need a head start?

Mark Bittman gives 101 ideas for a head start on the day right here.

Here's my head start: a case of champagne. That should get you through the day, come burnt turkey, braised feelings, or even sitting at the children's table. Oh, heck, do I have to wait til next Thursday?

Sweet something on the side

Nothing like the prospect of dining with family members and their significant others to up the anxiety level. Why not allay the prospect of negative feelings with a forkful of good stuff?


I'm not sure of the source of this recipe, I clipped it out of one of those humble women's magazines (between the diets and the dessert recipes) ages ago.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Peel 1 1/2 pounds sweet potatoes. Cut into cubes, place in saucepan, cover with water, bring to a boil and simmer until tender. Drain. Add 3 tbls butter onto the hot potatoes, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup milk with one egg beaten into it, and 1 tsp vanilla. Mash the mixture coarsely, pour into a (2 qt) baking dish.

Mix 1/3 cup flour with 1/2 cup brown sugar. Cut in 2 tblsp cold butter; add 1/2 cup pecan pieces. Sprinkle the dry mixture evenly on top of the mash. Bake for 25 minutes.

I'm not hosting Thanksgiving this year, and my only task for that meal is gravy. (More in another post). I will miss this sweet side dish so much, I'll have to make it for another meal.
Like roast pork and braised red cabbage, a perfect fall combo.

Elite dim sum

To celebrate a birthday, we had dim sum on Sunday. That choice is a crowd pleaser, because 3/4s of the family is sick of rice and beans, and the other quarter can't wait to go out to a restaurant.

Elite is really my favorite spot because...drum roll... a) instead of being surrounded by kind women proffering the wares off of their carts (once my son dashed ahead of us, by the time I got to the table he had 10 steaming containers on the table!) you order off the the menu. b) there are photos on the menu, explaining exactly what it is. I don't know where you eat Chinese food, but that in itself is revolutionary. So often I have felt glum and out of the loop, while people who could speak to the waiters in their language got something surely delicious. Sunday we got a few of those dishes we never knew how to order, like the scallop dim sum, and the sticky golden buns.

Dish after dish after dish. We devoured the duck, the macau pork, the har gow. But still the plates came. We ate the shrimp and asparagus in rice noodles, and bao. Good grief, did we really order three different bao? We ate quickly, to clear the pots for the next round. We spilled hot tea; we splattered the creamy goo of one bun all over the teapot. We continued to eat until we stuffed ourselves. Then we ordered another round of shu mai, and ate some more.

Can't wait for the next birthday there.

California Dreamin'

This was originally published on La Bloga:

Unfolding Stories, Unfolding Lives

There's a Middle Eastern grocery store that I often visit, for its ingredients and excellent produce prices. One afternoon, not too long ago, guilt forced me to shop without my young daughter.

That afternoon I stood lifting my plastic sacks of beans, rice, chiles, fava beans out of the cart and onto the counter while my daughter exhibited her usual irrepressibility, causing the cashier, to smile at her, offer her a candy, and then say in mildly accented English, "She reminds me of my own daughter."

Ah, and what is your daughter up to now, I asked.

"She was going to be a doctor. She was an excellent student. And a happy girl. Up until the day she died. Car accident."

The cashier rang up my purchases, glanced at my daughter, then turned away and began wiping her tears. I stammered something about being so sorry. I didn't bring my daughter shopping with me again. I couldn’t bear the longing in the woman’s look.

Awhile ago we were house hunting in the Pasadena area. We finally settled on a home in Altadena, but occasionally I drove through a charming neighborhood to keep tabs on a home we didn't make an offer on, one that seemed so inviting, so full of the promise of family life, with its two storeys, its gables, a child's nursery in the attic, that it seemed destined for a happy family. As time passed I noticed baby accessories then toddler toys sprouting on the front yard; I caught a glimpse of the parents playing with their children. A sense of pleasure filled me, that of a mother of toddlers watching others like herself.

More time passed and as I drove by I noticed that the father appeared ill.

Now as he pushed a stroller up the tree-lined street he was bald. This home began to hold a morbid fascination for me, and I purposefully drove up that street more frequently. I caught a glimpse of him in a wheelchair, then he disappeared from sight completely.

Oh no, I thought to myself.

A "For Sale" sign appeared. Then that family was gone.

Twenty years ago I took a train from Boston to New Haven, during a time in my life someone I loved fiercely was dying, and my life was spinning into dizzying, sickening, circles. The young lady sitting next to me reluctantly struck up a conversation, but somehow it turned to her plans, once she graduated from Brown in month.

"I am going to California. One day I'll run a major film studio," she announced matter-of-factly. "And I know exactly how I'm going to do it."

In the midst of my own grief, being sideswiped by life seemed more probable, but I was fascinated by someone whose life's plan was so clear to her.

The cashier of my produce store stopped showing up. When I asked about her, another woman said, in a pitiless voice, "She was a teacher in her own country. What was she doing here?"

Through a friend in the neighborhood I found out that that young father did indeed die, and his widow moved back east, to her family.

As I think about them now, I prefer to imagine that the cashier is a teaching assistant somewhere, if not a teacher; that the survivors of that father have found something wonderful, if not to replace him, but to enrich their lives. And that driven young woman? I like to believe that her name flashes on the screen at the beginning of the TV shows I watch, or at the end of the films I see.

So many stories if we merely open our eyes and ears to perceive them. Then fill in the blanks to suit our own needs.