The Last Carrot

Last night I flew back from Miami, begrudgingly. Confronting the cold that people back in Maryland had been updating me on all weekend was low on my list of things I wanted to do, just a little higher up than leaving one of my best girlfriends and her three month old baby boy. But, sigh, it had to be done. Honestly, the cold didn't slap me in the face like I was expecting it to but the truth that I have come to, re-recognized over those four days in South Florida, is that I really dislike cold weather. It's quite possible that my beloved Maryland is just too damned cold for me in the winter. Warm weather just captures my heart with its breezes brushing my skin and the pretty dresses and cut-offs and strappy sandals and time spent laying in the sun and gold aviators and men with their shirts off (I need a whole other blog to talk about the men in Miami, by the way.) One of my most favorite things about warm weather is the beautiful simplicity of the food that accompanies it. Hearty, heavy dishes are nice now and again but something in my soul wakes up and dances when I eat fresh and light. The veggies, crunchy and raw or grilled, freshly made juices, creative salads. Even just a simple piece of buttered toast with a poached egg on top. When it comes to food, I think there is a sort of richness in austerity. (Of course, there is also richness in the mu shi take out I ate tonight. Deeply satisfying, finger licking richness, in fact, without which I could not live. But I digress.)

Miami has a reputation for being all about flashy fashion and overboard image consciousness. And for sure that's mostly accurate and well-earned (though I, as an outsider, see it more as a high regard for beauty) but there's also this Miami that is very edgy and organic in a way that seems very real to me instead of just being a false, gentrified, yippie (yuppie/hippie) way. Especially in the neighborhood of Coconut Grove, former bohemian haven now quite upscaled but still cool. Glaser Farms has a raw farmers market there where I could eat my weight in delicious raw food every Saturday. On the way to the airport on Monday, my friend took me to eat at a little sandwich counter that's been around (at different locations) since the 70s called The Last Carrot.

They have lots of vegan options (including deserts), simple and healthy sandwiches, and freshly made juice in any variety you could possibly desire. I had a salad with falafel, which they melted cheese on (never tried that before). I also had a nice tall cup of pineapple/cucumber/ginger juice and slice of amazing strawberry/raspberry vegan cake. Simply incredible. I highly recommend eating there if you ever find yourself in the Grove, looking for a healthy lunch.

Secret Bakers - Nutella Candy Bars

First, sorry no pictures. I forgot to take them before sending the package off to my SB. To make up for this, I will link here to the blog where I got the recipe so you can see her lovely pictures of these sweet, addictive, Nutella-containing bits of deliciousness. The theme for this month's Secret Bakers was Something New, trying recipes that we've never made before. At first, I was going to try my hand at macarons for the first time. Those delicate little sandwich cookies are so beautiful and there are so may neat flavor combinations out there. But every single blog I went to for recipes talked about how hard it is to make them and how many times they had to try before the things turned out right. Yeesh! I think I'll find a place to buy them in Baltimore, thanks. Not that I don't like a challenge and one day I will try to make them. But right now I'm taking it easy in preparation for the insanity of four graduate classes, work, and everything else that life requires which will commence to crush me beneath it like an ocean wave on January 26th.

Instead I thought I'd make my "something new" candy. For Valentine's this year, I'd like to try to make homemade candy for my loves. Nutella, the existence of which is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy, is one of my favorite things in the entire world to eat and bake with. There is almost always a jar of it in my cupboard and yes, I will admit it here for the entire world, I eat a spoonful when I need to. What?! Don't front like you've never done it! And if you haven't, well honey I feel sorry for you. Ahem, I was saying...I wanna make candy and I saw this Nutella candy bar recipe and it was a logical conclusion that I should make them as soon as possible. When I make them again, which I will, there are a couple of things I'll do differently. For one, I will score them when they are still warm to make for even lines to brake the candy along. They turned out more like jagged candy chunks than candy "bars" per se. I would also decrease the powdered sugar...in fact, if it won't mess with the consistency too much I think the powdered sugar could be left out all together. It was just a little too sweet, which stepped all over the Nutella flavor. I'd also like to try chopping some hazelnuts and layering the melted chocolate over them. Ooh and you could add a caramel layer, if you wanted. It's a candy bar, so I think the opportunities to tweak the recipe are nearly endless. Anyway, here is the recipe with my suggested changes. Enjoy!

Nutella Candy Bars

Ingredients
1 C Nutella
2 C finely ground graham crackers
1 C powdered sugar (less would be better if you ask me)
1 C melted butter

4 T Nutella (I'd add more next time)
1.5 C bittersweet chocolate chips

Directions
1. Grind graham crackers very finely and place 2 cups in a bowl. Add 1 C Nutella and the powdered sugar and mix.

2. Add melted butter to the mixture and combine. You'll have a sort of dough now. Press into the bottom of a 9x13 bakign pan lined with parchment or wax paper. I used two 8x8 tins that I just sprayed with cooking spray and it turned out fine, so that's an option if you forget to get wax paper like I did :).

3. Melt Nutella and bittersweet chocolate in a doble broiler or microwave and stir so the Nutella is incorporated. Spread evenly over the graham cracker/Nutella base. Place in refrigerator until cool and chocolate has hardened. They taste best at room temperature.

Let's make something new this year.

At times, I thought the disaster that was 2010 may never end but finally, it has and I am ready to start something new in 2011. I'm ready to get back into cooking and writing about it. In December I moved into my new home, a townhouse in a much more populated area than Chestertown. School is nearby. I love my new job as a server and the people I meet there. I like my roommate a lot...in short, life has finally shifted and settled into a pattern that feels like real life. That term "real life" is a tricky one...what does that mean anyway? I couldn't put my finger on what I'd been experiencing until I was talking with my roomie a couple of nights ago. He was saying that he had been living in a dream world for the past six months, after having made some pretty big life changes himself. And it clicked in me.

I made this connection with the ideas of modernism and post-modernism that I learned about in American Lit with Dr. Abrams-Locklear. What she told us was that modernism is based on this idea that there is a center, an organizing core that holds "it" all together. I would guess that "it" is just us, our ideas about life and how life works, our comforts and loves. Like gravity for all of those things. In their World War I ravaged reality, modernists' works (literature and art alike) reflected the idea that the center will not hold. Actually W.B. Yeats used those exact words in his post World War I poem "The Second Coming." Then post-modernism is based on the fragile idea that there is no center. And there we go, I would propose, trying to create our own center because, let's face it, humans need the emotional equivalent of gravity. That's why religion and tradition and ritual exist. That's why we search for "the one" and probably why a lot of us turn to drugs and alcohol to sooth the pain of not being able to find a center. What I have found for myself and what I see in most people I admire is the discovery of that center within oneself. That's the only place I can rely on, that I house within my very bones and will not leave me until I leave this world. And for that reason, I absolutely must take the time to find that glowing spot inside and plug my weary mind into it daily. My friend Marky calls it "having a core," which I love because she's my running buddy and having strong core muscles is as essential in running as having a strong emotional core is in living a successful life.

Anyway, what any of this has to do with a food blog is that I have felt completely bereft of a center or core for a long time now. I've been adrift in a sea of "what in the hell is going on?" So much has changed in my outer life but especially in my inner life. There was a long stretch there where I wasn't really cooking or baking at all and I feared that that part of my life was over, that I'd lost that passion along the way or that it was only something to carry my through a painful time and now I would have to say good-bye to it. Which is an absurd thought seeing as how I come from food people. My grandmother is in her 90s and has continued to make delicious turkey stew from the bones and meat left over from the Christmas turkey. My parents met and got married at a restaurant two miles from where they now live, which my grandfather was managing at the time. We cook, it's what we do. It's how we take care of ourselves and each other. That being said, now a little over a month settled into my new place and new job and new routine I have been settling back into my old ways of grocery shopping and making tasty and healthy food and pouring over recipes that I want to try. I signed up to do Secret Bakers again (recipe post forthcoming). Everything has changed, everything. And yes, it was a very difficult year. I can say with certainty that it was worth the pain to build and repair the strong center I need to support the woman I want to be and the life I want to live. If it had turned out that, indeed, I'd lost my passion for cooking then that would have had to be ok. But I'm heaving a big sigh of relief knowing that my love of food is right where I left it. Here's to a new year of food adventures!