Sushi

The November 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was brought to you by Audax of Audax Artifex and Rose of The Bite Me Kitchen. They chose sushi as the challenge.

Back in the day before we even kissed, let alone married and reproduced, my husband and I were the best of friends. If there was a foreign film to be watched or sushi to be eaten, we were off like a shot, leaving the rest of our group to mutter about raw fish and ask "When are you two finally going to start dating?" We referred to ourselves as "sushi buddies" and spent entire weekends watching the Colors Trilogy or playing at DisneyQuest.

Now we work opposite schedules and usually communicate via text message. Our child is our new shared passion, and we have the desperate need for a nap most in common. Even if we had a regular sitter we trusted or the desire to take a six year old to a sushi bar, a tight budget and The Kid's food allergies make going out for sushi impractical at best.

This November my husband had one of those birthdays with a zero at the end. When I saw that the Daring Cooks challenge for this month was sushi, I was ecstatic. We've talked about trying to make sushi at home, even going so far as to buy sheets of nori and a bamboo rolling mat, but our homemade sushi never quite got organized. This time, though, this time it was meant to be.

On the big day I rounded up my supplies and started nice and early to prepare for the birthday dinner. I followed the directions for making sticky rice to the letter. Spent hours steaming and fanning, vinegaring and massaging it.

The ungrateful grains turned out crunchy.

I didn't have enough short grain rice to start over, so I added water, gave it some more soaking time, and cooked it a bit more.

After considerable fussing, fixing, and fuming, I tasted the rice again. Then I ordered pizza.

Several days later with both the post date and my husband's birthday well past I looked over a fridge still full of sushi ingredients and gave the rice another shot. After repeatedly googling "sushi rice" and cruising around the internets, I changed the procedure by bringing the water to a boil before adding the rice and allowing it to cook for a few minutes at a full boil before reducing the temperature. It did the trick and the rice was simply splendid.

Since I'm not comfortable either preparing raw fish or serving it to my child, the fillings I chose were smoked salmon, avocado, steamed asparagus, cucumber, carrot, and mango. Grilled eel is one of my favorites, so I also bought some smoked whitefish, which I skinned and deboned, then gently warmed in some homemade teriyake sauce. Visually the pieces did not resemble the shape of the eel, but the flavor was deliciously indistinguishable to my uneducated Western palate.

Despite construction problems with several of the rolls, everything tasted incredible. My mat was too short to make a full sized spiral roll, so it was the worst casualty of my technique, but now that I've actually tried rolling sushi on my own, I can't wait to make it again.

Many thanks to Audax and Rose for a wonderful challenge! Be sure to check out all the amazing sushi made by the Daring Cooks this month.

Confessions of a Food Allergy Mom #10

It irritates me no end that I still have the urge to use Mommy Spit, the Universal Cleanser, on a Kleenex to wipe my child's face, as my mom did to me. My mental review of my diet for potential allergens in the previous few hours stops me long enough to realize...ew. Sorry, Mom, it's still disgusting.

Food Allergy Recipe Swap

Be sure to check out the food allergy and special diet Recipe Swap at Life as Mom. I'm submitting my old standby Basil and Marinated Artichoke Pesto, which is good on everything from pasta and pizza to sandwiches. I think I need to make another batch!

Halloween Lunchbox

The Kid's wanted nothing but Sunbutter and banana sandwiches lately, so I was thrilled to make a happy haunted lunch from all these great Halloween ideas I've filed away. To make the mummy, I saved a little dough from a batch of biscuits, rolled it into a "snake," wrapped up a turkey dog then baked it for 10 minutes at 350F the night before. The next morning, I added these ingenious edible googly eyes that I've been dying to try ever since I first saw them at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories over a year ago. (I found gelatin free vegan capsules at my local health food store.)

The jack o'lantern is a carved tangerine with black grapes stuffed inside. Rounding things out (visually if not nutritionally) are a skeleton cookie and graham cracker Bug Bites, each one handcrafted with love by the Keebler elves. Alongside are the usual juice/water mixture and some highly reflective monster stickers.

I'm sending this wicked good lunch to Coffee & Vanilla for Margot's lovely Wholesome Lunchbox event. Don't miss her round up on the 15th of each month!

Gingerbread Skeleton Cookies

Oh, I've been such a slacker blogger! The last month has been scary, and not in a good Halloween way. We've been fighting the homeowner blues, replacing both our dishwasher and a toilet, while discovering a few tricks the original contractor left behind. The Kid made it through an egg yolk challenge in preparation for the flu and H1N1 vaccines, but my post on that has been languishing in my drafts file while our computer recuperated from a bad video card in the shop.

To top it off I have almost 500 unread emails, while my Google Reader simply imploded once it reached 1000 posts. I am especially remiss in not thanking both Mel for passing on her Splash Award to me and to Marie for gifting me with the especially appropriate Lemonade Award. There's been no shortage of lemons around here. I'll try to catch up to the comments and emails as soon as I can!

I'm also late on the bandwagon with these clever skeleton cookies that made the rounds on the interwebs last Halloween. They were too adorable to resist, but you may decide that they are a trick rather than a treat, since my gingerbread recipe is just...fussy. I love the results that I get with it, nicely spicy and chewy instead of crisp, but perfectly soft gingerbread doesn't form easily. Continue baking at your own peril! (Or use another gingerbread recipe, instead.)

Dry Ingredients:
3 C AP flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt

Wet Ingredients:
1/2 C nondairy margarine, i.e., Earth Balance, softened
1/2 C packed brown sugar
3/4 C molasses
2 Tbs orange juice

Sift dry ingredients together and set aside. Cream margarine in mixer, then add brown sugar and beat together until light and fluffy. Reduce speed, then mix in molasses and orange juice. Slowly add dry ingredients and mix until combined. Wrap dough in plastic and chill in refrigerator at least two hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 350F. Cut parchment paper to fit cookie sheets. You will need 3 or 4 pieces of parchment paper if using standard half sheet pans. If you have rings that you can slip on the end of your rolling pin, break out the 1/4 inchers now. If you don't, well, the holidays are coming, and you'll be hinting for a set by the time these cookies are done! (They work best with a long wooden French rolling pin, and I suggest buying the pin and spacers as a set to make sure they fit together.)

Lightly flour one of your pre-cut pieces of parchment paper, and plop about a third of the chilled dough onto the parchment. (Leave the remaining dough in the fridge.) Pat the chunka dough down with floured hands, then roll it out to 1/4" thickness. Use cookie cutters to cut out shapes at least 1/2" apart, being sure to leave the cookies in place on the parchment. Carefully remove extra dough from around the cookies and reserve it, then gently slide the parchment paper onto the pan. (Usually I just cover my entire gingerbread cookie with a thin glaze, but since these were "for show" I brushed the excess flour from the cookies with a pastry brush before putting them in the oven.) Bake for 10 minutes.

Grab another dough hunk from the fridge and knead it together with the leftovers from your first sheet so that the extra flour is completely mixed in, then repeat the entire process until you run out of dough. Allow cookies to cool completely before decorating.

Lemon Decorating Icing:
1 C powdered sugar, sifted (I'm serious about sifting it!)
2-4 Tbs lemon juice

Sift powdered (confectioners) sugar into a bowl, then stir 2 Tbs of lemon juice in with a fork or small whisk. Continue adding lemon juice by teaspoons until desired consistency is reached. Keep in mind that the icing needs to be firm enough to pipe fine details, but thin enough to squeeze from an icing bag without causing your hand to cramp and spasm. Adjust by adding additional juice or sugar. (It took me a couple of tries. The teddy bears are an example of too thin icing, while the really cute skeletons at the top were hard to squeeze out.) Again, if you've got a white icing recipe or safe commercial frosting that pipes well for you, go for it. I really like the lemon flavor with the gingerbread, but this recipe is also on the fussy side.

Unless you're making supersize cookies (not a bad idea!) use the finest piping tip you have to decorate them. I used my No 2. Make sure they dry completely before wrapping or stacking. These little guys were extra effort, but they are a huge hit with The Kid and make fantastic gifts.

Mini Meatball and Fruit Kebab Lunchbox

This may be The Kid's favorite lunch yet! After watching Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, The Kid was thrilled to help me make spaghetti and meatballs and I finally had a chance to use the bone shaped food picks I've had squirreled away since last year. They're so cute I may end up making meatballs regularly just to have leftovers for lunches!

Everything tastes better on a stick, so I made some lovely fresh fruit into kebabs. Of course, giving my child a pointy skewer isn't the best of ideas, so I cut colored straws to length, then poked holes in the grapes with a chopstick and slid the grapes onto them with watermelon and pineapple, which didn't require pre-drilling. (Just squeeze the straw towards the end like a tube of toothpaste to remove the fruit that ends up inside.)

To round out the meal I packed a corn muffin smeared with honey. (Note to self, next time make mini muffins, which will pack better.) On the side are juice and a Barosaurus sticker. I'm sharing this lunch awesomeness with Margot of Coffee & Vanilla for her not to be missed monthly Wholesome Lunchbox event on the 15th of each month.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

The new movie Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs features a character with a plot pivotal peanut allergy, which has created a veritable blogstorm about Sam Sparks, the anaphylactic weather girl. [Spoiler alert!]

Most of the unhappiness is focused on the movie's cartoon depiction of an allergic reaction. Sam is thwarted by a gauntlet of pointy peanut brittle from accompanying Flint Lockwood in a quest to turn off his planet endangering invention. As Sam lowers Flint with a licorice rope toward the climatic confrontation with his machine gone amok, she receives a cut on her arm from the peanut brittle, causing the left side of her body and her entire face to blow up like a balloon. Initially she doesn't want to leave Flint, but he plummets away after gnawing through the licorice, and she is whisked back to their flying car by another character, where Manny, the camaraman/physician/pilot is waiting with a dose of epinephrine. He injects her leg, she gasps and sits up, then flies away unscathed.

Some of the concerns are due alternately to the scariness or humorousness of the allergic reaction. Others are to Sam's inexplicable failure to carry her EpiPen with her and her reluctance to leave Flint to seek treatment. Some moms are worried that kids who watch the movie will want to see an allergic reaction for themselves, and attempt to cause one in a peanut allergic child, which is a truly terrifying thought. Food allergies are serious, and tend to take up a huge amount of brain space for those of us who live with them. In the case of this movie, though, it might be worthwhile to step back and take a look at the bigger picture.

Sam's peanut allergy ties into two of the movie's themes: the problematic relationship of consumers to food and the destructiveness of denying one's true nature. The impetus for Flint Lockwood to create his machine, which converts water to food, is the closure of their island's only industry, a sardine cannery. With the movie's typical light touch, the residents of Swallow Falls do not go hungry, rather they are forced to eat sardines, which are "super gross." The success of Flint's machine and his accidental creation of "food weather" allows Swallow Falls, renamed Chew and Swallow, to indulge in a smorgasbord of excesses.

Food lying on the ground is whisked away by another of Flint's inventions, the "Out of Sight, Out of Mind-er," which flings the remains to Mt. Leftover, the humongous pile of food behind a virtually unbreakable damn. Unfettered access to candy has some predictable results on the town's children and the gluttonous mayor with his creed of "bigger is better" eats himself to his own destruction. In this context, Sam's anaphylactic reaction is another example of food as a danger to the consumer.

Sam and Flint share a common trait in their feeling of being outsiders due to unusual interests. Flint copes by isolating himself in his lab with his monkey Steve (voiced by Neil Patrick Harris) while Sam has chosen to play dumb as a perky intern by hiding her interest in hard science. Shortly after meeting, Flint feigns a peanut allergy to impress Sam, as both characters attempt to impress each other by pretending to be different from their actual selves, who are in fact ideal for each other.

Flint's willful blindness to the machine's dangers in his desire to be a hero to his community and Sam's struggle to continue on in their attempt to stop the oncoming food storm despite her reaction to the peanut brittle are both doomed to failure. Only when the two characters accept both their strengths and their weaknesses do they succeed. Sam gives voice to her inner scientist to warn of the impending danger and uses her meteorological expertise to navigate the flying car through the storm. Flint embraces his inventory of wacky inventions to find the tools he needs to turn off the machine and return safely to earth. In a fantastic world of flying cars and food from the sky, Sam's peanut allergy serves as a surprising reality check.

After the movie was over I was impressed by the food for thought included in a cartoon which held my six year old spellbound. During the movie itself, I was continually distracted by the damage potential to my highly allergic child of the food falling from the sky. Cheeseburgers? Beef and milk. Drifts of ice cream? More milk. The morning forecast for sunny side up? Eggs. Shrimp larger than a cartoon character's head? Shellfish. That's some serious prawnage!

So what did The Kid think of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs? "I liked it a lot." What was his favorite part of the movie? "When Steve [the monkey] was chasing the gummi bears around." Was it scary when Sam had an allergic reaction to the peanut brittle? "Don't be silly! It's a movie, so it's make believe, not for real! Can we have meatballs for dinner? I want to help!" Absolutely.

Sunbutter Roll Up Lunchbox

Lately The Kid's been a little distracted at lunchtime. The good news is that one of his new friends has been making a point to bring Kid friendly lunches of his own, so that they can sit together. The less good news is that The Kid would rather talk and play with his friend than eat. (And can I mention how I teared up when his friend's mom told me how her son reminds her every morning not to pack peanut butter? For every inconsiderate boob who thinks that eating peanuts on airplanes is an inalienable right, there's someone else who surprises me with an unexpected kindness.)

The upshot is that I've been working even harder to make lunch appealing and easy to eat. This one has Sunbutter and my mom's homemade chokecherry jelly pinwheels, a mini banana with slices at the top to make it easier to peel, red grapes, and two Enjoy Life Happy Apple Cookies from the Best Gift Basket Ever. On the side are juice and a sticker with different kinds of dromedaries. I just hope that he doesn't get sidetracked by the one hump camel and the two hump camel. That could lead to an awkward lunch discussion!

Labor Day Leftovers Lunchbox

Here's a late look at this alliterative lunch from last week. It contains a turkey burger on a homemade bun, corn on the cob cut into wheels and watermelon chunks with a food pick. On the side are the usual juice/water mix and a couple of marine mammal stickers.

The Kid helped make the buns, which led to the happy accident of several non standard sizes and shapes, one of which was a perfect match for the lunchbox. I made a small sized patty to go with it, and my proud little baker was able to eat his creation at school.

Here We Go Again

Yesterday was picture day at The Kid's school. So in the morning I coerced him into a Hawaiian shirt (Mommy's twisted photographic tradition), wet down his hair, attacked it with a brush, then put a little of my Molding Souffle on for good measure. I should have known better.

Shortly after recess, I got The Call from the school nurse. As the kids were coming in from outside, the teacher noticed that my child's face had broken out in welt like hives. She sent him to the nurse, who dosed him up with Benadryl, then gave me a call. I haven't done a break down of the ingredients yet this time, but I'm pretty sure that The Kid started sweating out on the playground, which gave the mousse a chance to start a contact reaction on his skin.

I've been kicking myself pretty hard for screwing this up, but I'm trying to use the incident as an opportunity to fine tune both the school's food allergy plan and The Kid's understanding of his food allergies.

The good news:

• The teacher noticed the hives immediately and took action.
• The day I spent camped out at the county school board offices until my child was transferred to the only nearby elementary with a full time nurse just paid off in spades.

The not so good news:

• The teacher sent The Kid to the nurse's office accompanied by another student. If the reaction had worsened or his breathing had been impaired on the way there, there was not an adult present.
• The Kid felt the hives, but continued playing rather than alerting an adult. I've realized that almost all the talking and planning I've done with him has been geared toward preventing a reaction, rather than how he should handle it. This is becoming more his responsibility as he gets older.

Deep breaths and constructive thoughts. That's my mantra right now. Just deal with one thing at a time, and maybe, just maybe, I'll run out of things to deal with for a few minutes. Food allergies never take a day off, and I just have that sinking feeling, here we go again...

Update: I just spoke to the school nurse, and she was standing outside the office watching The Kid walk from his classroom to see her. What he told me was correct, but incomplete. That's a relief, and my faith in the school nurse has been justified again.

First Day of First Grade Lunchbox

The Kid and his EpiPens are both at their first day of school. The school nurse and the staff are really very experienced at managing food allergies, but I've still got a twinge leaving him on the first day. We've been chatting with the nurse and The Kid's new teacher about making sure he doesn't get isolated at his designated end of the lunch table, since he doesn't have his friend with milk allergies to sit with him this year. I'm trying to get a "no splash zone" where the kids immediately adjacent and across from him don't have milk or peanut butter with them. The Kid is very good about staying away from other people's food, so I'm mostly concerned with the potential for accidents, as well as the evil substance's sticky properties.

Today's lunch is a little fancier than usual, since the bed of lettuce is strictly decorative. It's cradling two octodogs made from a turkey dog and some leftover ginger candied carrots with a food pick. Alongside are pretzels, seedless black grapes, a small package of gummy dinos, and an allosaurus sticker. I've switched to an 8 ounce reusable juice box for his apple juice/water mixture, since the larger bottle usually came back half full and this one packs better.

Sending a lunch to school means it's time again to head over again to Coffee & Vanilla for Margot's lovely Wholesome Lunchbox event. Don't miss all the adorable bentos and creative lunches she has on display on the 15th of each month!

Volcano Cake

Dinosaur island erupted just in time for a party! I ran into more problems than usual while baking this birthday masterpiece, but dry ice hides a multitude of sins, and The Kid was thrilled to have a functioning volcano cake.

A Tour of Enjoy Life Foods

I'm still a little stunned that I won the Cookies For Everyone Sweepstakes. The trip to Shiller Park, Illinois, packed more into one day than I thought possible. It began with an introduction to the people behind Enjoy Life, a truly dedicated bunch who are justifiably proud of what they do.

Enjoy Life's CEO, Scott Mandel, graciously gave me a tour of the bakery himself. The primary location is a one story brick building that is much larger inside than it appears. (The chocolate is manufactured in a separate dedicated facility, which busted the remaining shreds of my Willy Wonka fantasies.)

Entering the bakery, a long row of bins of allergen free ingredients lined the wall. After years of scouring grocery store shelves for safe foods, I was a little overwhelmed by the variety and abundance. The company's suppliers all sign contracts that their foods will be produced free of contamination and additional testing is done on some ingredients by Enjoy Life before they are used.

Next I was put into a state of Kitchen Aid envy by three stand mixers, all taller than me. After the ingredients are introduced to each other, they are shaped, squeezed or spread into cookies, bars or granola, distributed on trays and placed in racks that are rolled into ovens. The ovens are in the process of being upgraded to a new conveyor system, where the trays enter the oven on a belt at one end, and reemerge completely baked at the other. (More capacity means more cookies!)

The finished bakery products, as well as goodies from the super secret chocolate location (at least to me), are mechanically packaged in preprinted plastic and paper containers. I believe these cookies are Snickerdoodles bent on world domination. Since we don't have celiac problems in our household, I confess that I didn't know until this trip that gluten and egg free cookies could be as soft and chewy as these babies.

After packaging, the goodies are boxed up and kept in the warehouse until they are shipped out to meet a world full of grateful families with food allergies.

The tour ended at the Enjoy Life test kitchens, where I proceeded to spend most of the day talking and baking and talking some more with my new hero, Betsy Laakso, which will have to wait until the next post about this amazing trip!

I Didn't Believe It Either

So, guess who won the Enjoy Life Sweepstakes?



Seriously. It was me.

I'm still at a loss for words, which for me is an unnatural state of affairs. Just completely dumbfounded. Absolutely gobsmacked. (Not to mention drop through the floor mortified when I received the news not long after this whiny post. Oops.)

My whirlwind trip to Illinois takes place this week, and you can follow along with the fun on Tuesday by way of Enjoy Life's Facebook page. I'll be touring the factory, baking in the test kitchen with Betsy Laakso, one of the authors of Cookies for Everyone, and having lunch with CEO Scott Mandell.

That's right, I'm going to a chocolate factory run by the incredible people that make safe food for my son. And they're letting me play in the kitchen with a pro, which is kind of like someone from Little League getting to practice with the Majors. Did someone read my diary? I'm still not convinced that I'm not being punked!

If you have any questions or messages you'd like me to take with me to the Enjoy Life headquarters/test kitchen/bat cave, leave them in the comments. I'll pass them along if I can stop stuttering.

Alphabet Soup

We recently had a rare (for summer in the Sunshine State) long and rainy, Cat in the Hat kind of day. After a morning of coloring books, DVD's, overcast skies and unending drizzle, I broke out the Dutch oven despite the season to make a cold weather favorite for lunch.

2 Tbs olive oil
1 sweet onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, including leaves, sliced
2 carrots, sliced
1-2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 Tbs dried mixed Italian seasoning
kosher salt and fresh ground white pepper to taste
28 oz can crushed tomatoes
15.5 oz can kidney beans, rinsed well
3-4 C water
1 C alphabet pasta

Heat olive oil on medium in a large, heavy bottomed pot. Add onion, celery (reserving leaves), carrots, garlic and seasonings. Stirring regularly, saute vegetables until soft, about ten to fifteen minutes. Add tomatoes, kidney beans, reserved celery tops and water, then bring to a boil. Add pasta and cook according to package directions. Adjust seasonings and serve. This makes a humongous pot of soup. The extra freezes nicely to save for the next rainy day.

The best part of this meal was The Kid's musical accompaniment. It went something like this:

Look, there's a Z! Z is for zebra, mm mm mm. Ooh, that's a kidney bean, mm mm mm. Look, I found a D! D is for dinosaur, mm mm mm.

I'm sending my well lettered soup both to Deb in Hawaii of Kahakai Kitchen for Souper Sunday and to Psychgrad of Equal Opportunity Kitchen, who is hosting this week's Presto Pasta Nights, the long running event begun by Ruth of Once Upon a Feast.