Glazed carrots.

My father is what some might call obsessive about his homemade stuffing. Every Thanksgiving, he makes the same recipe that his mother made growing up and thereisnomessingwithit. As far as he is concerned, it is perfect and all other cornbread/brioche/sausage/mushroom variations are imposters. I think the way he figures, he gets to have as much stuffing as he wants one day a year, and he is not going to let you (or me) mess with it. I had a similar argument for ordering pad thai for several years whenever I went to a Thai restaurant - not because I didn't want to try new dishes but because no matter how many times a month I was able to go out for Thai food, I never felt like I had enough pad thai. It's just that delicious.

And maybe it's because I also grew up eating his stuffing, so it tastes like Thanksgiving to me, but it is rather delectable. The recipe is hidden away somewhere deep in my parents' cabinets, so I won't be sharing it here, but I will say that there is nothing revolutionary in there - no black truffles or fennel sausage or quinoa. Maybe that's why it has induced such devotion?

These carrots are as simple as they come. They have a total of six ingredients counting salt and pepper, and yet I would argue they can be wonderfully elegant when the moment demands it. Every year, I harass my family into trying a few requisite new recipes to supplement the old standards. There is always the turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, my dad's stuffing, usually my mom's tomato pudding*, and then pumpkin and pecan pies. In the past, I've tried Brussels sprouts and green beans and gratins, but I like the idea of keeping the vegetables simple this year (I can hear my husband laughing as I type this sentence).

For the next couple weeks, I am hopefully going to be sharing some different side dish ideas for you to consider if you are also trying to liven up your Thanksgiving recipe rotation or if you've been invited to bring a dish to a Thanksgiving gathering. Coming from the esteemed Canal House Cooking series, these carrots are everything that pairs well with meat - sweet and buttery, and yet somehow not overly filling or rich. I made them for the first time to go with a Christmas roast, but I think they would pair equally well with turkey and gravy.

Glazed carrots
Adapted from Canal House Cooking Volume No 2: Fall & Holiday
Serves 8

3 lbs young, thin carrots with green tops
3 tbsp unsalted butter
3 tbsp dark brown sugar
1/4 cup sherry
1/2 tsp salt and more to taste
pepper

Trim green tops off carrots leaving less than 1/2 inch of green at the top. Scrub them well with cold water, rubbing around the base of the stems to remove any dark material and then peel them. In a medium, heavy-bottomed pot add carrots along with rest of ingredients. Cover and cook over medium-low heat until the carrots are tender, usually about 20 minutes. Uncover and continue cooking until sauce reduces and thickens slightly, about 10 minutes. Serve immediately or cover loosely with foil until time to serve. Can garnish with chopped parsley if desired.

*An interesting recipe from my mom's childhood which involves lots of butter, pureed tomato and sugar.

Curried chicken salad.

My brother-in-law Matthew left me a very sweet instant message the other day while I was at work (and couldn't respond - sorry Matthew):

"hey I know that you work 70 hours a week and raise a toddler, but just putting it out there that you're due for a new blog post when you get the chance, no pressure, I just really appreciate them."

It helped me get out of my over-worked funk and reminded me that I have responsibilities! I have readers! Or at least one reader. Let me first assure you of one thing: I have not been holding out on you. I have simply been working some late nights, and my husband has been working some very late nights, so our collective use of the Trader Joe's frozen food aisle has been at an all-time high.



We also spent this past weekend with seventeen of our closest friends and their children up in Sonoma county on the Russian River, where we ate our weight in delicious food (Malay fried chicken! artichoke dip! grilled cheese with Josey Baker bread!), but we decided to bring bagels and lox for breakfast instead of slaving over a hot oven ourselves (thanks again Kelly and Kefri!). Needless to say, it has been a little while since I've made anything that feels blog-worthy.



The dishes that I do make when I'm in the middle of this kind of intense schedule are usually dishes that can be eaten at all times of the day, with whatever we have around, and are just as delicious on day five as on day one. I have my mother-in-law to thank for introducing me to this chicken salad, which she first made for a summer picnic when we were in Indiana visiting my husband's family. It managed to satisfy everyone and was so easy to pack and clean up - I was in love. The sweetness of the raisins and apples contrasted perfectly with the crunchy, salty celery, tender chicken, and richness of the curry. It can be eaten as a sandwich, over salad greens, with crackers, straight from the Tupperware container (standing in front of the refrigerator), or my personal favorite - open-faced, on thickly sliced and toasted country bread. As I mentioned, it packs up well for lunches or picnics or football tailgating, and the sweetness of the apples and raisins makes it very toddler-friendly.





The original recipe calls for marinated and grilled chicken breasts, which is how my mother-in-law served it. It was delicious, but I have streamlined my own process to avoid the extra steps of marinating and grilling. For me, the most important thing is to make sure the chicken is not overcooked. I came across this method of poaching a whole chicken so that it never overcooks, and I have never looked back. It only requires a little bit of time (usually a few hours) to cool the chicken completely, so it's important to plan ahead. I also personally like using a whole chicken for the great mix of light and dark meat. Of course, feel free to substitute poached or grilled chicken breast if you prefer only light meat. Using a whole chicken also ends up making a hefty amount of chicken salad, so feel free to cut the recipe in half if necessary, although I have yet to see it go to waste.



Other dishes I'm digging for their simplicity:
Greek style shrimp
Winter squash soup
Pretzel crusted chicken

Curried chicken salad
Adapted from Cooking Light
Serves 4-6

1 whole chicken, about 3-4 lbs
2 tsp yellow curry powder
2 tsp water
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 medium apples, chopped (Braeburn are nice, but others work as well)
2-3 ribs of celery, chopped
1/3 cup raisins
salt and pepper

Rinse the whole chicken and place it in a large pot with a lid. Cover chicken with cold water and partially cover pot with lid. Bring pot to a nice simmer, then turn off heat. Let the pot cool down completely in order for the chicken to cook through, which may take several hours. Once cool, strip chicken from the bone and chop coarsely into 1/2-inch chunks or smaller as desired.

In a large salad bowl, whisk together curry powder, mayonnaise, and water. Add chicken, apples, raisins, celery and stir well to combine. Taste for salt and pepper. Cover and chill until ready to serve.

Zucchini lasagna.

It's hard to know where to start when I've been absent for a little while. I was drained and exhausted after two weeks in the ICU, and I'm only now starting to feel appropriately distanced from all that.

Then there was this little two-week vacation in Southern Utah that did so much to help me forget all the stress and responsibilities of my job and to help me remember all the responsibilities I love, like an all-of-a-sudden-speaking-sentences 2-year-old.

The caviar of the South.

I am back to living at the hospital, now in the ICU, but dreaming of our recent weekend away at a lake house filled with seven adults, two babies, and two toddlers that was a blissful mix of rotating naps, lazy meals, and hot summer evenings with an almost full moon and lots of good conversation. And watermelon. There was lots of watermelon.

Medicine and food.

I have been spending most of my waking hours at the hospital for the last two weeks, as my (patient, kind, generous) husband can attest to. The way residency works, I often have periods of time where I work nearly eighty hours a week, and these past couple of weeks has been one of them. July is also the month when new first-year residents start their training after graduating from medical school, so much of my time has been spent teaching new doctors. In some ways, it's a simple life of wake up, go to work, come home, sleep, repeat. Of course, with that kind of intensity, I always find it hard to turn my mind off when I come home, and there were nights where I woke up several times from dreams of being late to work, patients dying, and other things gone wrong.

Caprese salad and basil pesto.

I have recently become the proud owner of a new library card. That, paired with my Kindle, is all I need to access a seemingly endless assortment of old cookbooks, sent to me instantly, that most people in their right mind would never pick up, as well as things normal people read, like novels.

Happy hour.

Having a child really messes with your social life. I'm sure someone has mentioned this to you before if you haven't already experienced it yourself. I think I was still in denial when I was pregnant with my son, Charlie. I was twenty-nine and my husband and I were living in Brooklyn, so the bar scene was still pretty central to our social life. I remember going to bars with my husband and our friends on the weekends, drinking seltzer water and quickly realizing that bars when you are not drinking are (surprise!) not the most fun. They're usually too loud, you often can't sit down or have a normal conversation. I remember thinking, just wait - only six more months before I get to enjoy beer and going out to bars again! Little did I know that I would never go to a bar again. This is not entirely true, but almost.

Black bean, corn, and poblano salad.

I adore bean salads. I think part of it is because I grew up with a mother who served a green leaf salad with every meal. It was so terribly healthy and terribly, terribly boring. She would usually serve it undressed, which meant we could choose from an array of old dressing bottles in the fridge. Don't get me wrong, my mother can make a mean salad, but the day to day was less than appetizing.

Toddler burgers.

I can't really take vegan recipes seriously. Or restaurants for that matter. I enjoy reading more than one wonderfully written blog by a seemingly normal woman with cute kids who likes to discuss running work-outs and stroller purchasing and vegan eating. But the recipes? Sorry, no chance. At the same time, vegetarian food I can get behind. I've recently become a little obsessed with trying every single recipe in my birthday gift for this year, a little book you might know called Plenty which I believe everyone with a mouth has at least heard about.

Blot kage with strawberries.

We decided this year not to throw a party for my son's second birthday. I felt guilty, of course, but we had thrown a big barbecue in our back yard for his first birthday complete with sangria, cheeseburgers, multiple salads, and a cake shaped like a penis. Yes, we did in fact serve a penis cake at a 1-year-old's birthday party. I was delirious from lack of sleep as an intern in the ICU, and my husband told me he would take care of everything. He decided to make his favorite birthday cake growing up, an ice box cake with layered chocolate wafers and whipped cream that tastes exactly like a giant Oreo (amazing), and he wanted to make it in the shape of a "1" for my son's first birthday. You may be able to see the disaster looming already, but we were oblivious. It was not until the night before, when he was finishing up with the frosting that he laughed and mentioned it might look a little bit like a penis.

Because nothing is ever finished.

I guess it seems appropriate to start a blog by explaining why you're writing one. The truth is, I'm not entirely sure why, but I know I enjoy reading about other people's lives and I feel like I want to be part of the conversation. More importantly, I think it may encourage me to write more if I have an audience - even if it's just my husband! - and there's something therapeutic in that. Of course, usually when I think about actually showing other people my writing, I feel like I want to throw up. Nothing is ever good enough, nothing is ever finished, and even this paragraph is taking me days going on weeks to finish. While I'm sure my favorite blogs are meticulously edited and drafted, one of the reasons I like blogs is that they are not meant to be perfect works of art - they are ongoing reflections on the imperfection of life. They are somewhere between a gossip column, personal journal, op-ed piece, and how-to manual for life.

At least, that's what I aspire to. Here goes.