"The Vegetables" by James McMichael + Asparagus Risotto

A couple of years ago, someone asked me what my signature dish was, and without hesitation, I replied with risotto. It surprises me now, because when I first started cooking, risotto was one of my least favorite things to make. I thought all the stirring and waiting wasn't worth my time. I lacked patience. I didn't see the beauty in the process. These are lessons I've learned now, but as a young, inexperienced cook, I didn't find value suspended in the grains of rice, but a pan filled with great risk. Risotto, as you may know, benefits from a good amount of loving attention. If you drift away and let the liquid absorb too much, the rice may stick to the bottom of the pan, or even worse, burn.

Once I warmed to the idea of maintaining constant watch on the stove, I still wasn't confident enough to know risotto's nuances. I wasn't certain if the rice was done, if it needed or less stock, or how much cheese to add. But with time, patience, and practice, comes intuition. Today, I just know when the rice is done. Then, I give the pan a triumphant shake, melt the butter and Parmesan, and whip the rice around with a wooden spoon until it flows like a river over smooth rocks. I always smile when I eat it, too.

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A guest post on Life & Thyme

In my experience, pizza is almost always a good idea. This week, I'm honored to be guest posting over at the simply stunning website Life & Thyme. I'm sharing my favorite pizza recipe, plus a poem by Wilda Morris that will remind you of your grandmother. Head over if you're hungry.

Reading to your kids, crazy cake, and a giveaway

As a former literature major, Libby Gruner established two rituals when she and her husband had children: family dinner and bedtime reading. Devouring her essay, "Shared Books, Shared Tables" from the recently published book The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage, made me recall memories I hadn't thought of in a long time, like curling up in my reading nook strung with blankets and sheets to read The Boxcar Children or Michael Crichton novels after school.

The essay explores several children's books with food themes, like Alice in Wonderland. "Food is the medium of transformation in Wonderland," she writes, where Alice is "subject to food rules that seem to constantly change." She relates this to the rules used in her own family, like insisting her son Nick "eat at least one bite of the burger he ordered before he had another French fry," a request that forced him to tears.

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"Turkey Pot Pie" by Terry Hertzler + A Pot Pie for Spring

"Time mutates memory."

"Time mutates memory." This truth anchors the final stanza and springs from the page like a kicked ball bouncing into the street before you have a chance to catch it. It serves as a reminder of how memory shapes us, comforts us, and in some cases, angers us, especially when two people remember the same experience very differently.

The poem begins by setting the scene for a date night gone sour, including roses, attending a movie, and eating dinner at a restaurant, but a moment during dinner triggered an argument. By the end of the evening, the flowers were placed in the garbage, never retrieved. The memory had "mutated" in the minds of each person involved. He recalls eating turkey pot pie at Marie Callender's, she insists they ate vegetable soup at Chili's. The poet may know the topic of the argument, but doesn't share it with us, emphasizing that the point of all this is not the subject matter, but how we communicate to each other.

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On Hunger + Avocado and Cucumber Sandwich

"The fed versus the unfed. What else is there in the history of the world?" -Mary Ruefle

Poet Mary Ruefle said this rather nonchalantly at the end of a reading I attended in February, but it stuck with me. It's a heavy question. Food, after all, is one of the three essentails—the other two being water and shelter—that we need to survive at the most basic level, and the lack of food has dire consequences on the mind and body.

As a well-fed food blogger, my hunger pains are not severe. Sometimes I forget to bring a snack for the afternoon slump at work, or the lack of reservation at a restaurant forces me to wait longer than I would like for a meal. I have the means, the access, and the ability to make healthy choices for myself and my family without a lot of stress involved. Any stomach grumbling I experience are temporary, and nothing to complain about when 50 million Americans don't know where their next meal is coming from.

When you think about hunger, you might envision a malnourished child in the Horn of Africa. Famines cause great peril and are widely publicized in the media, but it's the everyday hungers that are more common, and go largely unnoticed. That's why it's so important to pull back the veil on this issue and take steps to do something about it.

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