Cheese and Choux

I've always been clumsy with lunch.  We're talking tripping up the stairs/stumbling on the pavement/scabbed-over knees clumsy.  In those bleak hours from 11 to 1 pm each day - which, by the way, always arrive too suddenly - you can find me scratching my head.  I hardly ever know what to make.  The meal has always been less artistry, than a desperate groping for sustenance.  It's always just been about fuel.

For me, lunch is the only meal that offers this unique problem.  Breakfast is piping hot stability.  Every morning, those deepest, infantile nether regions of myself that cling to routine and predictability, follow the same practiced dance.  I stumble into the kitchen with my hair tousled into its oh-so attractive fro.  While Jordan gravitates towards the coffee maker that I still don't understand, I grab a well-worn saucepan.  (One of the best things for me about being married has been not having to be the one who makes the coffee).  With the sky still dark and the kitchen achingly quiet, we twiddle around each other like bees puttering away in their hive.  We know our tasks; we perform them with nothing less than ritual.  The end-result is always the same and always tastes better than the day before: old-fashioned, grainy oatmeal; sliced fruit; coffee. 

If breakfast revolves around stability, dinner serves to illustrate the polarity in our day.  Dinner is all hats thrown to the wind/taking the neglected route to work/blind dates/a new stamp in the passport/wrapping your tongue around a new language.  Dinner is adventurous and spirited.  We're excited to see each other (hopefully not simply a newlywed thing) after hours apart.  The conversation proves electric, crackling as it darts through the room.  Dinner is curry one night and penne the next.  It's a blend of spices that saturate the place with a coating, as thick and pungent as fresh paint.  If breakfast is a waltz, dinner is Bob Fosse on Broadway.  The sky is dark once again, and the lights have never burned so bright.

Now, inevitably, I return to the notion of lunch.  As a kid, I ate the same lunch as most of my fellow tween suburbanites: two pieces of bread with meat and cheese slapped between; a piece of fruit; some sort of juice box/milk beverage; maybe a cookie.  As an adult, I yearn for something less heavy and infinitely more satisfying.  My lunch, however haphazardly put together, often trails the season most of all.  I'll favor salads in summer and soups in winter.  I like lacing beans with spices and frying eggs on toast.  But, like so many of you, my lunch often depends on time (or lack thereof).  When I have too few minutes, the meal is hacked apart to something that is little more than a glorified snack.  When I have too much time, I nibble on a granola bar as I try to figure out what to do with myself.  And, in my frustration, the meal often regresses to an un-pretty base level of fuel and sustenance.

I'm not sure what has possessed me to become more creative lately, but I'm appreciative for the personal turnaround.  More and more, I've been perusing the spice rack and chopping herbs for lunch too.  I've set pots to simmering.  I've open the windows and allowed the scent its chance to fully circulate.  Maybe it's spring - I don't know, but I've been decidedly less meek from 11 to 1 pm.  A few days ago, I gathered up the most fortitude of all to tackle a reviled vegetable.  Okay, perhaps that's too strong.  Not everyone loathes a Brussels sprout.  Not everyone (disregarding my husband entirely) wrinkles his nose to this unassuming baby cabbage.  I have to admit, though, that I didn't always feel so charitable towards them.  Shredded or cooked whole, I hated Brussels sprouts growing up.  However, as I so often find in recent years, sometimes a re-introduction can serve to ameliorate a terrible first impression.  Within the last year, I ate Brussels sprouts caramelized in balsamic vinegar at a restaurant.  The effect was like stumbling across a high school bully as an adult, only to discover that the years had whittled him to gentleness.  Brussels sprouts have a natural sweetness that the balsamic vinegar can only accent.  The good stuff, the sweet stuff, might have been there all along.  I  had just missed it.

So, with steely determination, I tried my sprouts.  I know what you want to hear.  You want to hear the exaltation of trumpets and cymbols; you want to hear that I loved it.  I didn't.  I didn't love it, but it wasn't half bad.  I had a friend who really enjoyed "stinky tofu" all over Asia, and I imagine that my lovely Brussels sprouts (and feta) encapsulated both that smell and taste.  I was wondering if, in good conscience and whatnot, I could even post a recipe for something that didn't sound off the horn section.  After much ruminating, I think that I can.  You might be stronger than me.  You might already love your Brussels sprouts, and you might hope to be re-introduced as well.  Besides, I didn't hate them.  I opened windows and let the stinky clouds circulate.  I sat with them for a while. 

Before I studied abroad in Germany as a kid, I didn't care for the language.  Even though, as I later learned, English is also rooted in the Germanic school of languages, I felt little connection.  The country isn't in my ancestry; I didn't care for the sausage and sauerkraut and interesting beer & lemonade concoctions.  It wasn't until I returned home that I missed the choppy, insanely long words.  And the stark German music and fashion.  I missed it so much that I reread my journal a number of times and even ate some sauerkraut.  So, you see, I did indeed eat my Brussels sprouts that were tinged with balsamic vinegar.  I might have enjoyed a bland offering of soup and crackers the next day, but - between you and me - I think I just have to give myself a chance to miss them.

And in case you don't love them and don't even want to miss them, I have to give you some credit for trying.  In this vein, I've also included a recipe for some of the chocolate-iest cookies ever.  They're stripped bare of little but a good bar of dark chocolate and their necessary adhesive ingredients.  Between you and me, I think you just need a chance to miss your Brussels sprouts too.

Brussels Sprouts with Caramelized Onions, Feta, and Pistachios, adapted from heartandstroke.com 

Ingredients

1 pound of Brussels sprouts

1 onion, cut into curly strips

2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar

Extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup of  unsalted pistachios, peeled apart and chopped and

1/2 cup feta cheese

Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Heat a large, non-stick fry-pan to medium heat.  Add oil and onions and cook for 40 minutes, stirring often.  The onions will get very soft and mushy.  (You can also store these ahead for one day).

Add balsamic vinegar to the sprouts in a separate pan and stir for ten minutes.

Add the feta to the Brussels sprouts mixture and stir.  Top with the caramelized onions and pistachios. 

Chocolate-iest Cookies, adapted from Whole Foods

Ingredients

1/2 stick of butter

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 6 ounce bar of dark chocolate (preferably, over 70% cacao)

1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips or cocoa nibs

1 cup unbleached white flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Cream together sugar and butter.  Whisk in eggs and vanilla.  Melt the chocolate bar until smooth and whisk it into the egg mixture.  Stir in the flour until all of the ingredients combine.  Use a tablespoon to drop the cookies on a cookie sheet that is covered in wax paper.  Bake for 10-12 minutes.

*You also have the option of freezing the dough for an hour first and rolling it to play with cookie cutters.