On that night, Carrie and I were discussing what it meant to be a grown-up. Both of us were headed to college, and on that night, we might have known that I was heading to the University of Florida and that she was headed to Stetson. But that may have come later. I think it was Carrie’s idea, but I embraced it: being grown up meant buying your own toilet paper. Yes, that was it. THAT’s what it meant to be an adult. We christened the idea the Toilet Paper Rule.

I’ve bought a lot of toilet paper since that night, and I can look back on my 16-year old self and confidently say that we were wrong.

There have been many moments in my 40 years of life when the thought crossed my mind: “This is it. Now I’m a grown-up.”  Paying my bills in college, with money I earned from the job I worked while studying full time. Getting married and moving in with my husband. Having our first child over nine years ago.

Nothing has made me feel more my age, though, than caring for my sick father.

I sat at Dad’s bedside yesterday in the nursing home, and I talked to him about life outside. I talked about my kids, about the fact that my mother had taken a much-needed, impromptu trip to the beach for a night. Finally, I talked to him about his role as Mayor in his small town, and how it would be best if he stepped down. I held his hand as I told him that, because being Mayor is one of his most favorite things. I upset him with this, for he doesn’t understand his limitations, he doesn’t realize that he has dementia. He cried when I left.

I thought about the toilet paper rule on my drive home. I was so naive back then.

I’m trying to find bright, shiny spots of happiness in the small things these days. And, despite everything I’m balancing on my shoulders, there are lots of things giving me joy right now:

– Eastern bluebirds are everywhere these days. These sweet birds have a special place in my heart, maybe because I never saw them in Florida until about three years ago. Yesterday, as I walked into the hospital, I saw a male and female pair perched on a tree branch. Just the sight of those two birds made my morning.

– I bought myself an orchid, a gift to myself for Mother’s Day. I set it on the kitchen table on Monday afternoon after bringing it home from Trader Joe’s, and each day, it looks happier to be here. Another bloom opened yesterday.

– We’re headed to Walt Disney World this weekend for the Food Blog Forum Orlando. I’m looking forward to meeting new people and seeing old friends. Mostly, I’m looking forward to being surrounded by Disney magic for a few days.

– I finished a book over the weekend, in just two days (which is very quick for me given my limited reading time). The Dinner by Herman Koch was filled with wonderful restaurant scenes, and the writing was terrific. The story disturbed me completely, but I’m glad I read it. I started The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer earlier in the week, and I’m hooked. I only read at night, before bed, and this book makes me want to go to bed at 8 pm.

– There’s this food blog conference in June — you may have heard of it: BlogHer Food — and I’m thrilled to be speaking on a panel about storytelling. Last week I had a conference call with the three other panelists – Molly from Orangette, Rachel from Southern Fairytale, and Jenny from Dinner: A Love Story – and after that call, I’m even more excited about the entire experience.

– Cake. Really, that’s all I need to say. I’m finding happiness in cake. A couple of weekends ago, on a rainy Saturday, I baked this yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Despite the gloomy weather outside, my heart felt light as I mixed ingredients and frosted cake layers. We enjoyed slices of cake for our dessert that night, and I forgot to take a photo of the sliced cake until the next day.  The cake is a bit lopsided, the frosting is not terribly even, and there are crumbs everywhere. But I don’t care. It made me happy.

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Yellow Cake with Chocolate Frosting

Yield: 10-12 servings

Need a birthday cake? A graduation-from-kindergarten cake? A just-because-it's-Saturday cake? This is it.

Ingredients:

For the cake:

1/2 cup buttermilk, room temperature
4 large eggs, room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1-3/4 cup (7 ounces; 200 grams) cake flour
1-1/2 cup (10.5 ounces; 300 grams) granulated sugar
1-3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
16 tablespoons (2 sticks) butter, cut into 16 pieces, softened

For the frosting:

16 ounces semisweet chocolate, chips or chopped
2 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup (4 ounces; 110 grams) firmly packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

Prepare Cake:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, with oven rack in middle position. Butter two 8-inch cake pans, line with parchment paper, butter the parchment, then lightly flour the pans.

Whisk buttermilk, eggs, and vanilla together in a small bowl.

Using a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt on low speed until combined. Add the butter, one piece at a time, and mix until pea-sized pieces remain, for about 1 minute. Add most of the milk mixture, reserving 1/2 cup of it, and beat on medium-high for about 1 minute. Reduce speed to medium low and add in the reserved 1/2 cup of the milk mixture. Beat until incorporated, about 30 seconds.

Divide batter evenly into the two cake pans, smoothing the tops. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a cake tester or toothpick inserted into the center comes out with few crumbs attached. Let cakes cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then remove cakes from pan and cool on wire cooling racks until room temperature before frosting, about 2 hours.

Make Frosting:

Place the chocolate in a medium-sized heatproof bowl. In a saucepan over medium heat, combine the cream and light brown sugar. When the cream begins to simmer, quickly remove the pan from the heat and pour into the bowl of chocolate, carefully swirling the bowl so that all the chocolate is covered. Cover with plastic wrap and let the mixture sit for 5 minutes. Remove the plastic wrap and whisk the mixture gently until smooth and shiny, then stir in vanilla. Refrigerate for 1 to 1-1/2 hours, stirring every 15 minutes, until the frosting reaches spreading consistency.

Frost the Cake:

To frost cakes, place 1 layer on a cake plate. With an offset spatula, spread top with chocolate frosting. Place the second layer on top, and spread frosting evenly over top and sides of cake.

Cake and frosting adapted from recipes from Cook's Illustrated's The Science of Good Cooking.

The post bright, shiny spots of happiness: yellow cake with chocolate frosting appeared first on The Merry Gourmet.

My family has had some challenging situations arise, and no matter what, I feel completely loved and supported by this community. To each of you who reached out to me after my last post, thank you. You lifted me up, as you always do, just when I need it most.

While we were in Louisville, my mother and I had dinner with my father’s brother, Uncle Boyce. My father is one of three boys; Dad is the oldest, and Boyce is the youngest. My dad and his brothers, though their heights, hair color, politics, and religious beliefs differ – prompting some terribly fun arguments when they all get together —  are really more similar than different on the inside, where it counts. So being with Boyce was like being with a shorter version of my dad. It felt good to be with him.

Boyce took us to a local restaurant favorite of his, Cunningham’s Creekside. My mother was familiar with the restaurant and had been to the downtown location way back when, long before it burned down in 2001. Mom and I ordered drinks – wine for me, bourbon for her – a necessity after the long day of travel and worry and hospital rooms, and we breathed deep for the first time in 24 hours. At the tables around us, couples and foursomes drank beer out of bottles, laughed and talked, and occasionally glanced at the sports news on ESPN on the televisions bolted to the walls around the dining room.

Our conversations drifted as we waited for our meals to be brought to the table. My mother and Boyce reminisced about the old bar that used to be down the road, the one with the older woman who belted out tunes on the piano, the songs growing raunchier as the night grew late and more drinks were thrown back. I heard the story of how my mother and father met, in a bar in Louisville. He was at another table, and she thought he looked like Omar Sharif in Doctor Zhivago, so she bought him a drink and had it sent over from her table across the room.

We spoke of the devastating accident her twin sister and brother-in-law had been in, and the potential outcomes. We left a lot unsaid, growing quiet and  shaking our heads in disbelief and discomfort at the possibilities. The chatter in the restaurant grew louder as the minutes clicked by.

When our meal came, the conversation came to  a halt. I think each of us was happy to focus on something other than the reason we were there, in Louisville. I cut into the crispy fried fish fillet I had ordered and savored that first bite. A forkful of creamy macaroni and cheese followed. And finally, I tried the dish I’d been looking forward to since I cracked opened the plastic menu and saw it listed under Side Dishes:  stewed tomatoes.

I lifted a spoonful of the stewed tomatoes and, carefully, taking care not to drip the juices onto my shirt, I put the spoon in my mouth. If my mother or my uncle was speaking to me at the moment, I didn’t hear. All of my senses were focused on those sweetened tomatoes at that moment. And if someone told me that my eyes had closed while I tasted them, I would not be surprised.

When my father served stewed tomatoes at dinners when I was growing up, I viewed the dish as a punishment for something, probably for being his child. His preparation of them was simple. He opened a can of stewed tomatoes, dumped the contents into a saucepan with a plop, and turned the electric burner on medium high. When they were warmed through, he scooped up two or three whole, plum-sized tomatoes, and ladled them onto each plate. They looked like bloody organs, something that belonged in a hospital’s pathology lab, not on our dinner table.

I don’t recall what Dad’s stewed tomatoes tasted like, only that they were awful. Each meal that those tomatoes accompanied inevitably resulted in me and my brother sitting at the dinner table, after the sun had set and well after my parents were long gone into the living room to watch television, as we struggled to clean our plates. “Because I said so, that’s why.”

I learned to swallow stewed tomatoes whole. It was easier than the alternative, which was to taste them.

These are not my father’s stewed tomatoes. When I returned from Louisville, I recreated the dish I tasted at Cunningham’s Creekside. I cringed when I added the sugar, but the recipe would not be as delicious without it. The sugar provides balance to the acidity, a necessity for taming the flavors, for evening them out.

And even though these are not my father’s stewed tomatoes, I’m pretty certain he’d prefer my recipe to his own.

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Southern-Style Stewed Tomatoes

Yield: Serves 8-10

When I tasted the stewed tomatoes at Cunningham's Creekside in Louisville, Kentucky, I immediately asked the waitress if I could have the recipe. She checked with the chef and came back with the ingredients list: canned stewed tomatoes, sugar, and bread. I gussied the recipe up a bit more, but not by much.

These stewed tomatoes are excellent all by themselves, but if you really want a great lunch or light dinner, serve them over creamy, perfectly-salted grits.

Ingredients:

2 cans (28-ounces each) whole peeled tomatoes
3 slices stale white sandwich bread, crusts removed
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
3 tablespoons light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
1/8 teaspoon ground pepper

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Using a strainer, strain one can of tomatoes, reserving the liquid for another use. Place the strained tomatoes into an oven-safe 2-quart casserole dish. Add the second can of tomatoes, including the juice. Using clean hands, crush the tomatoes between your fingers, leaving the tomatoes in large chunks. Tear the bread slices rough pieces and add to tomatoes. Stir in the melted butter, light brown sugar, salt, and pepper.

Cover the casserole dish and bake for 45 minutes, until the tomatoes are tender. Season to taste with additional salt and pepper, if needed, and serve.

Inspired by a dish at Cunningham's Creekside in Louisville, Kentucky.

The post not my father’s stewed tomatoes appeared first on The Merry Gourmet.

Sherry and my mom talk by phone almost daily, and sometimes they talk more than once per day. When my mom hears her twin sister’s voice on the phone, the miles between Florida and Kentucky shrink like a rubber band snapping back into place.

Last Wednesday, my mother talked to Sherry around 2:30 in the afternoon. And later that night, closer to 7:30, Sherry’s youngest daughter called my mother. Sherry and Quinn had been in an accident, a bad one, and both had been life-flighted to the University of Louisville’s Hospital in downtown Louisville, the only Level One Trauma Center in the region.

The next morning, my mother and I flew to Louisville. We spent the next four days alternating between University Hospital and the Marriott on Jefferson Street. Our days were spent in brown plastic hospital chairs, and we alternated between my aunt’s bedside on the 9th floor and my uncle’s bedside in the 8th floor intensive care unit.

My mother, nearly beside herself with worry on the afternoon we arrived, calmed a little more each day after seeing that her twin sister would be okay. Sherry had two pelvic fractures and lots of bruises, including a half-dollar sized purple one on her left lower lip. Over the days we were there, she made great improvements. On the first day, the day following the accident, my aunt was barely able to move without agonizing pain. By the time we left, she had taken her first shaky steps with a wheeled walker and two physical therapists steadying her.

The family held vigil around my uncle’s bedside. Uncle Quinn’s injuries were devastating – bleeding in and around his brain, multiple fractures, including a compound fracture of his left lower leg — and he never regained consciousness after the accident.

The nurses — each one a true angel disguised in cotton scrubs — helped my aunt into a wheelchair at least twice per day so that she could sit by her husband and stroke his hand. We watched the monitor above his bedside, paying attention to which voices raised his blood pressure or which types of music dropped his heart rate. When my uncle coughed or yawned, the ventilator sounded its video-game beeps in annoyance, and we watched, hopeful.

I watched my cousins deal with the agony of waiting on doctors, waiting on tests, waiting on news. I watched them deal with pain of not knowing. I watched my aunt as she talked with her husband, as she winced in empathy, feeling his pain as the nurses shifted his head and body so he could face her.

Mom and I left Louisville on Sunday, and after a flight cancellation and delays due to bad weather, we made it home that night. But though our bodies were physically in Florida, our hearts were still at University Hospital in Louisville. Our hearts were with my Aunt Sherry and with my cousins as they coped with the ramifications of this accident and with the very likely possibility of my uncle’s death.

Quinn died tonight, around 5:15 pm. He has left behind his wife of nearly fifty years, his three beautiful children, two grandsons, and four granddaughters.

He has left behind a family who love him, always.

The post an accident appeared first on The Merry Gourmet.

With these breakfast foods to choose from, and from start to finish, the morning meal – that most important meal of the day, as they say – is over in about ten minutes. A hurried breakfast is great for efficiency on a school day, but come the weekend, rushing through breakfast leaves me feeling dissatisfied and incomplete.

Breakfast was my father’s specialty. On most weekdays, like my kids often will, my brother and I ate cereal with milk. Occasionally, we had oatmeal, and I have fond memories of a Cream of Wheat phase. But on more than the occasional weekend, Dad would decide that it was time for a full, hot breakfast. Those mornings were special.

My father’s breakfasts weren’t fancy – no eggs benedict or Belgian waffles or chocolate chip pancakes – but being Not Fancy was exactly what I loved about them. He cooked eggs, usually over easy, always preferring a runny yolk to any other kind. Sometimes he served eggs over a mound of buttery grits. From my dad, I learned that nothing quite compares to the taste of that first mouthful of warm, creamy yolk scooped up with a spoonful of grits. On other mornings, he crumbled breakfast sausage into a saucepan of thick, cream-colored gravy, and he served the sawmill gravy over warm biscuits.

To this day, when I spot sawmill gravy and biscuits on a breakfast menu, I think of my father in my parents’ old kitchen, stirring the gravy in the Revere Ware saucepan.

My favorite breakfast was French toast, though, and my dad’s was the best. His ingredients were neither unique nor exotic – eggs, milk, a small amount of sugar, a healthy dash of cinnamon, and perhaps a few drops of vanilla. And unlike more modern, epicurean versions of French toast, which call for brioche or challah bread, his recipe (only in his head, never written down) used sliced sandwich bread (but never white bread). And to top it off? Warmed Aunt Jemima syrup.

This French toast casserole is not my father’s recipe, but the flavor profile is similar to his more traditional version. Most French toast casseroles I’ve tried are too sweet, either loaded with sugar in the batter or drowned in a sweet streusel topping. I much prefer a just a hint of sweetness, enough that a light drizzle of maple syrup on top complements and enhances the flavor but doesn’t overwhelm the taste buds. This casserole was just right.

And I think my dad would have really liked it, despite the fact that I fancied up the bread and used real maple syrup.

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Overnight French Toast Casserole

Yield: Serves 8.

Cook Time: 55 minutes

I have mixed feelings about French toast casserole. So many versions are too sweet, too soggy, too dry, or too dense. This one is none of those things; it's just right. If you're not a fan of cinnamon (and who ARE those people?), feel free to cut the amount in half or omit entirely.

Ingredients:

1 large loaf (14-16 ounces) challah bread
8 large eggs
2 cups whole milk
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3 tablespoons light brown sugar
1 pinch coarse salt
Confectioners' sugar
Maple syrup

Directions:

Butter a 9 x 13 inch casserole dish. Cut or tear challah bread, excluding the end pieces, into 1-inch chunks and spread evenly in the dish.

In a large bowl, combine the eggs, milk, buttermilk, cinnamon, nutmeg, light brown sugar, and salt. Whisk together until smooth, then pour evenly over the bread chunks in the casserole dish. Using the back of a large spoon, press the bread down into the custard so that each piece of bread is moistened. Cover with foil and refrigerate for 12 hours or overnight.

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Bake the casserole, still covered with the foil, for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake for another 20-25 minutes, until puffed and set and lightly browned on top. Serve with a sprinkling of confectioners' sugar and warm maple syrup.

The post breakfast memories, and a recipe: overnight french toast casserole appeared first on The Merry Gourmet.

Eventually, it became easier.

We woke early in the mornings, eating our breakfast on the patio of our east-facing one-bedroom villa. Each morning, we watched the sun slowly emerge from the horizon and rise over the mangroves and over the grey-blue water of Pine Island Sound. We lounged about, reading the New York Times or watching the mangroves for signs of life, until mid-morning, when we donned swimsuits and slathered on sunscreen.

The days were spent at the pool or at the beach or wandering the marina, watching the manatees and dolphins and ogling the yachts. Though the temperatures dropped into the chilly lower-60s, the kids took advantage of the heated pool and the hot tub, while Sam and I claimed lounge chairs and sprawled in the sun’s warmth. I read and I occasionally thought about napping, but I never did. I didn’t want to miss anything.

We wandered the beaches and the rocky inlets, searching for the seashells to take home. Sam hunted for the elusive unbroken (and unlived in) conch shells. Oliver picked up smooth pieces of chalky sand dollars and any shells that resembled a pattern – this one that looked like a giraffe, that one that looked like a leopard’s hide. Madeline searched for shiny shells, or big shells, or cute little curvy shells. I preferred the pink-hued scallops, so perfectly symmetrical and delicate. It was a treasure hunt, and we became hooked.

We had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Pringles by the pool. We ate pepperoni pizza and licked scoops of mint chocolate chip or cookie dough ice cream at the local pizza slash ice cream parlor. The grown ups drank fruity cocktails by the pool, garnished with pineapple triangles and orange wedges and bright red maraschino cherries. We shared a slice of coconut cake from the Bubble Room as a mid-morning snack.

I didn’t call my mom to check on my father one single time. (I felt guilty for this, later.)

For those several days at Captiva, I allowed myself to give in to the crashing of the waves on the beach, the rustling of the ocean breezes through the palms and mangroves, the screeches of the nesting ospreys defending their young, the laughter and squeals of the children in the pool. I became absorbed in the blue water of the Gulf of Mexico and in the pinks and whites and yellows of the seashells beneath my feet. For those days at Captiva, I was fully engrossed in my family.

It was perfect.

Leaving was hard, and we dragged out our last day as long as possible. This spring break had been a real one for me, a true intermission from our lives back home.

On the almost-5-hour drive home from Captiva, we stopped at a citrus stand off the interstate. My husband adores grapefruit, and the yellow mesh bags of Ruby Reds called to him from their bin. He listened.

Pound cake was on my mind that final weekend, and I knew I wanted to incorporate those beautiful grapefruits. Pound cake is always comforting, easy, and no frills. The simplicity of the dessert matched the tone of my week at the beach — flip-flops, t-shirt, wet hair, no make-up. Easy and relaxing. And the touch of Ruby Red grapefruit in the pound cake and in the glaze was the pineapple slice in the fruity cocktail.

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Ruby Red Grapefruit Pound Cake with Grapefruit Glaze

Ruby Reds are the sweetest of the grapefruit, and their flavor is subtle here. Don't have grapefruit on hand? Feel free to substitute orange or lemon.

Ingredients:

For the Pound Cake:

1 cup (7 ounces; 200 grams) granulated sugar
2 tablespoons Ruby Red grapefruit zest
2-1/4 cups (9 ounces; 215 grams) cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 sticks (8 ounces; 227 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
4 large eggs, room temperature
1-1/2 tablespoons fresh-squeezed Ruby Red grapefruit juice

For the Glaze:

1 cup (4 ounces; 120 grams) confectioners’ sugar
2 tablespoons Ruby Red grapefruit juice

Directions:

Prepare Pound Cake:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees and place oven rack in center position. Butter a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan and place it on a cookie sheet.

In a small food processor, to make the grapefruit sugar, process the sugar and grapefruit zest until well incorporated; set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and grapefruit sugar on high speed for 5 minutes. Reduce speed to medium and add the eggs, one at a time, beating for 1-2 minutes after each egg is added. Add in the grapefruit juice and mix until blended. Reduce mixer speed to low and add in the flour, mixing just until incorporated. In order not to overmix the batter, you may wish to fold in the last of the flour. Spread batter evenly into the prepared loaf pan. Bake the cake (on the cookie sheet) for 70-75 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. If the cake is browning faster than you’d like, cover the cake gently with a piece of foil.

Let cake cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes, then turn cake out onto the rack to cool completely. Serve plain or with grapefruit glaze.

To make ahead: Cover the cake in plastic wrap and store at room temperature overnight.

Prepare the Grapefruit Glaze:

Whisk together the sugar and grapefruit juice. Pour glaze over cooled pound cake. Slice and serve.

The post a true spring break, and a recipe: ruby red grapefruit pound cake appeared first on The Merry Gourmet.