On Sunday night, our friends Jody and Mark hosted us at their home for a barbecue. It was a welcome break to our hectic week. Matt’s flight home from Philadelphia had just landed that morning, and he had another going out to Tucson that night. We mixed orange mojitos to ease the transition for all of us.

We had planned on bringing a side dish to use up our zucchini. Only we couldn’t quite decide what to make. But then Liz from The Kitchen Pantry Scientist offered up her leftover Phyllo dough from her dinner party the night before. And so we adapted her zucchini tart recipe to make a sort of Spanakopita. Because you can’t go wrong with cheese.

(Apparently I needed the mojito. I accidentally used basil instead of spearmint and leeks instead of onions, neither of which I realized until Catharine and Jilene from Be Put Together pointed it out. Long week.)

Zucchini Spanakopita

• 1 package thawed Phyllo pastry dough
• 3 zucchini (and/or squash)
• 1 small onion
• 1 tablespoon garlic
• 8 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
• 15 ounces Ricotta cheese
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• 4 tablespoons dill
• 4 tablespoons chopped calamata olives

Spread (or just use butter)

• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 3 tablespoons parsley
• 2 tablespoons oregano
• 1 tablespoon thyme

Butter a 9×13 baking dish. Layer 4 strips of dough, and brush with butter or spread above.

Mix together onion, garlic, feta, Ricotta, eggs and dill in separate bowl.

Peel zucchini, thinly slice and layer in baking dish. Cover with cheese mixture. Slice olives and set on top.

Cover with 4 more strips of Phyllo dough, brushing top with butter or spread above.

Cook at 350 for 35 – 45 minutes, until dough browns and puffs up. Let sit for 10 minutes. Serve warm.

This post is a part of Real Food Wednesday.

While traveling out East, I couldn’t figure out how to feed our kids. Because restaurants that catered to families offered burgers, hotdogs and fries on their kids’ menu. Which I couldn’t understand. Because we teach our children basic life skills like how to read and how to swim. Why don’t we teach them how to eat?

Healthy snacks like apples, nuts and raisins we label choking hazards. Yet we don’t label hazards like dyes, especially Red 3, a known carcinogen which goes into some fruit roll-ups.

We tried stopping at grocery stores to stock our hotel room mini fridges, but there is only so much pasta salad a person can eat hunched over. And so I gave in and swore once I returned home I’d never feed our kids fried food again.

Yeah. Anyway.

When I got back, I was excited to dig into our CSA box from Hog’s Back Farm: crispy sweet corn we boiled that first night, a ripe tomato, white onions, spearmint for mojitos to celebrate a friend’s 40th this weekend.

And green beans, which we’ve bundled in bacon and placed in an airtight container in our refrigerator to roast tomorrow night.

Green Bean Bundles, adapted from Paula Deen at The Food Network:

• 1 pound fresh green beans
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon garlic
• 3 tablespoons Parmesan cheese
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Bacon

Mix olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese in a mixing bowl.

Wash green beans and trim tips. Blanch (place in boiling water) for 3 minutes. Then place in cold water for 6 minutes to stop the cooking process.

Toss green beans in mixture. Wrap 5 stalks per piece of bacon.

Bake at 350 for 10 to 15 minutes, until bacon is cooked.

How do you feed your kids on vacation?

This post is a part of Real Food Wednesday. Even though it’s Friday.

My friend Sean is an amazing writer. I don’t see him as much as I would like, but often his voice enters my head because his writing is so powerful. And this story, “The Recipe Box,” comes to me often when I’m cooking in the kitchen with my children. It reminds me of how powerful a memory is, and that what’s important isn’t the bread we bake or the flour spilled on the flour, but the time we spend together. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

The Recipe Box
By Sean Dilley of Wool Gatherer

Browsing through the organized chaos of my mother’s recipe box is a deeply nostalgic experience for me, akin to sorting a pile of cherished family photographs. Each stained, dog-eared recipe card is a culinary snapshot of the people who prepared the food and shared countless meals together. One card elicits memories of my sisters and me scorching our little hands shaping syrupy popcorn balls each Christmas, while another recipe conjures images of my mother mounding our birthday cakes with glossy white peaks of Seven Minute Frosting.

I believe that the evocative power of these recipes stems largely from the familiar handwriting on the jumbled index cards. Each recipe is a unique, hand-crafted artifact representing a point of personal connection across generations of cooks. Flipping through the cards, I encounter the varied and distinct hands of my grandmother, mother, and aunts. In the blocky third-grader scrawl on a recipe for “No Bake Tasty Cookies,” I even catch a glimpse of myself as a kitchen novice, and I recall the contented hours I spent learning to cook under my mother’s patient guidance.

In recent years, I have discovered that the act of cooking can become freighted with unexpected poignancy. My grandmother, who died twelve years ago, left behind scores of recipes that my family still uses and enjoys. My mother sometimes smiled as she studied those frayed cards, adorned in my grandmother’s elegant schoolteacher cursive. I’m sure my mother still mourned at such moments, yet her spirits were also visibly lifted by the sight of the card and the pleasant memories it stirred. While mixing up a batch of cookies one day, she confided to me that she had long ago memorized the recipe, but she had the card out so “Mom can keep me company while I bake.”

In August 2004, at the age of sixty, my mother died after a short battle with cancer. The most desperate grief has dulled to a background ache, but seemingly mundane things can sharply emphasize her absence in our lives.

Take banana bread, for instance. As far back as I can remember, my mother baked delicious, fragrant banana bread. She loaded it with chocolate chips and kept it free of offending walnuts. The recipe was a staple in our household, and the whole family loved it. Even after my sisters and I had homes and families of our own, we could count on our mom to bring us banana bread when she came to visit. The recipe was very basic, yet the bread was distinctively her own; for some reason, she used re-purposed Folgers coffee tins as bread pans. The tall, battered cans gave her loaves a quirky cylindrical shape that I’m convinced made the bread taste even better.

While visiting my dad last fall, I decided to find that banana bread recipe and do some baking. I hoped that cooking something so closely connected to my mom would comfort me, as I had seen her cheered by her own mother’s recipes.

The daisy-covered cardboard recipe box was on its usual shelf above the stove; I doubt that anyone had opened it in months. After some hunting, I pulled the tattered, vanilla-speckled index card from the box.

I was entirely unprepared for the emotional reaction to the sight of my mother’s tidy, round handwriting. The moment I saw the card, grief struck me like a physical blow. The words swam, obscured by stinging tears. I quickly slipped the card back into the box and closed the lid. It was too soon to find comfort there.

A year passed before I delved into the recipe box again. Determined to bake my family’s traditional Christmas cookies, I hauled out the box and started rummaging. To my relief, the sorrow of my last attempt was replaced by excitement. Not only did I find the recipes I wanted, but I also stumbled across several forgotten gems that would surprise and delight my family. Without question, the heartache of loss remained, but it no longer dominated as it once had. I baked my cookies, and as I measured, stirred, and rolled, I welcomed the memories that flooded back to me. My mother is gone, but even so, she can still keep me company in the kitchen.

It’s great to be home, back in Minneapolis, but it was also great to visit home – you know, the place to which you’ll forever be connected because every road triggers a memory.

While in Ithaca, I went for a drive through Cornell. I passed fraternities where I attended formals (once set-up with a guy who sang Broadway show tunes to me all night; it didn’t work out) and others where I got my heart broken. But I didn’t care. All my memories, both good and bad, had converged to form my past, one I suddenly felt nostalgic for, while our baby girl gurgled in our backseat.

What she looks like with her hair brushed.

Then I came to the place where my grandmother was buried, and had a sudden urge to introduce my daughter to her. My grandmother was close to my sister, and, because of that, over time I found it difficult to find my place with her. Not because of her; she left her door open. Because of me. My interest lay elsewhere: in school, in boys. And then one day, she got sick, and I knew I’d been foolish.

There are things you forgive yourself for when you have a child. Because when you have a child, you realize faults are a part of every life, and a grandmother’s love overlooks yours. And while I don’t have many regrets in my life, I do regret those times I didn’t show up. Because often it’s not what you say or do that matters as much is that you were there. That you were present.

What she looks like when I don’t brush her hair.

And so I showed up at the place where my grandmother was buried, and I felt her there with me. I miss her: how she set the fire alarm off when she cooked pizza. How she peeled six potatoes before I finished one. How she gave me five dollars when I found her car keys in a berry patch.

Yesterday, we celebrated Easter with our friends Anne and Pete, who sent us home with delicious leftover ham (how’s that for a segue?). For dinner tonight, we’re making White Bean and Ham Soup, adapted from Food & Wine Magazine:

• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 1 large white onion, diced
• 1 carrot, chopped
• 1 garlic clove, peeled and smashed
• 1 teaspoon thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
• 4 cups chicken stock or low-sodium broth
• 3 15-ounce cans cannellini beans, drained
• 1 pound leftover ham, diced
• salt & pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoon tabasco sauce

Saute onion, carrot, garlic, coriander and thyme in butter for 3 minutes. Then, add stock, beans, tabasco, and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil, and let simmer covered for twenty minutes. Puree in a blender, return to pot, add ham and set over low heat for five minutes. Serve warm.

This soup was much more appetizing than it looks. I’m having some technical difficulties, with no time to fix them.

I went costume shopping with my children for my friend Nicole’s fabulous Halloween party at Stella’s Fish Cafe. My goal was to grab one costume before they could put three in my cart.

*All Halloween photo copyrights Sarenja DeCandia

Here were my choices: sexy tavern girl, sexy cheerleader, sexy beer girl, sexy fairy.  And hairy gorilla.

After three children, sexy doesn’t apply. Hairy may, but I didn’t want to advertise that.

So I bought the sexy fairy costume because the dress appeared the right length.  And it covered my midriff.  And there was no way I was returning to the store with my children (our 10 m.o. thinks it’s hilarious to wiggle out of her straps, stand up in her seat and dive into the back of the cart to see what’s there). Only when I got home and tried my costume on, I discovered it was skin tight.  And see through.

Matt was thrilled. “Whoa, baby! I love that,” he said.  God bless him.

But he is delusional.  ”You do realize I have to wear this in public?” I said.

Because my stomach did a lot of work to hold those babies in.  Now it pops out after one drink, and I didn’t want to go as pregnant fairy. Being pregnant is not funny anymore.

But I was too tired to return the costume and shop some more.  So I asked my friend Meg what to do. (She has a solution for everything.)

Here is what she came up with:  buy a few yards of tulle and wrap it around your waist.

Then I went as fairy butterfly.  (It made sense at the time.)

Thank God for tulle.

What did you dress as?

Our joyous children woke us before the sun did.

Can I have some of my candy?

‘Cause he didn’t get enough last night.

We made pumpkin lattes to muster up half their energy. It’s a good thing we don’t go out much.

Pumpkin Latte:

• 1 tablespoon pumpkin puree
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice (you could also use cinnamon or nutmeg)
• 1 cup milk
• 3/4 cup coffee
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar

First, we heated the milk, coffee and pumpkin puree in a saucepan. When it steamed, we added the vanilla, brown sugar and pumpkin pie spice.

Then, we pureed it in the blender and poured it in our coffee cup.

Come to Mamma.