I'm getting older too

Re: the title of this post, I've got "Landslide" on the brain, probably due to a "Glee" episode I watched last night. And apologies in advance if writing about lunch coop all the time is getting old. But this post is about getting old(er) so maybe that's a good thing.

Last night, for lunch coop, I cooked up a spinach barley gratin (a riff on a Deborah Madison recipe) accompanied by Baked Miso Onions. I first had these onions at Laurie's house--in the first apartment she shared with Will, her husband of almost 15 years now. It was in Swarthmore, PA across from the ball fields.

I think the recipe is from "Laurel's Kitchen" a cookbook that seemed a little old and hippie even then. I fell in love with the onions, begged for the recipe, and have been carrying it around on a pink sticky note tucked into an old wooden recipe box ever since. I have brought that wooden box from apartment to apartment to apartment and every few years I pull out the recipe and make miso onions and marvel at their rich complexity and sweetness.

When I think of things like this I am acutely aware of getting older. Of having friends who have been my dear friends for 20, 30 years. Of being the kind of wise old soul who has a darn good recipe for every occasion. Of having a sticky note that is as old as my interns.

Baked Miso Onions (a la Laurel's Kitchen?)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Peel and cut 4 Spanish/sweet onions into quarters
Mix 4 tbsp red miso paste, 4 tbsp olive oil, 3 tbsp tap water and 3tsp dried thyme in a bowl
Place onions in a casserole dish and pour the mixture over the top
Cover with foil and bake for 35 minutes
Don't eat them now.
Put them all in a tupperware, pour the liquid from the pan over the onions and let it all sit in the refrigerator overnight.
Then eat them the next day, heated up, over brown rice, or noodles, or polenta, or...spinach barley gratin.

Lunch Coop update

As promised, I figured I'd check in about lunch coop and let you know how it's going. Mostly, it's pretty awesome. I go days on end without thinking about what's for lunch. I show up at the office knowing that someone will feed me, well.

But then there is that one day of scramble--and despite our google doc calendar, I have found it really sneaks up on me. Both times I stayed up way too late (and then slept in instead of making my morning gym journey) making food for myself and my coop buddies. We call this ACCOUNTABILITY. It is both the engine that drives the coop and the thing that is a royal pain in the arse.

I've cooked twice so far & both times I started my menu by thinking of my larder. First up was a giant batch of red lentils I had lying around. I picked a red lentil coconut soup from 101Cookbooks and then decided that would go really well with naan. Homemade naan. Because, hey, why keep it simple when you could keep yourself up til 1 am frying griddle bread and covering your entire kitchen with flour? Both were--dare I say it--delicious. I did struggle with portions though--7 is a very awkward number of mouths to feed.

Next time around I decided to tackle the bag of red quinoa I had. I was also inspired by a tweet from @MollieKatzen about a winter fennel/orange salad she made. Hence:

Fennel/Romaine/Ricotta Salata/Blood Orange/Pickled Onion Salad
and
Quinoa/New Potato/Roasted Carrot/Cumin/Shallot thingy

The salad is pretty straightforward (I made a vinaigrette with blood orange juice and white wine vinegar and nice olive oil); the quinoa thing went as follows:

I boiled the potatoes
I sauteed the shallots in olive oil and cumin
I roasted the carrots in olive oil with salt & pepper
I cooked the quinoa with water
I tossed it all together and added a little more salt

It was super simple but I actually liked it. And out of fear of not making enough, I basically drowned us in salad.

Lunch co-op

For years I have been tossing out this idea to co-workers: a lunch co-op in which we each make one giant pot of something just one day of the week and share it. That way I am doing same amount of cooking but instead of being stuck eating the same thing every day, I have variety. Even at my office, where nearly everyone makes their lunch and it is all very tasty looking, people balked.

Last week I published a piece (on both WellandGoodNYC and Civil Eats--spread the love) about my friend Christine. For five years now she has been making lunch with her friend Joanne. They get together on Sunday and make six servings of two different dishes. They shop together, cook together, split the cost--and they eat really well and really affordably.

Christine emailed me that she "hoped the piece would inspire some people" to follow in their footsteps. Well guess what, Christine: I reintroduced the lunch co-op idea to my now-entirely-new-bunch of fellow staffers, and they bit! 7 of us are launching our food-coop next week. The ground rules are as follows:

• Food must be vegetarian, though meat can be provided on the side
• No tunafish salad, please
• Food shouldn't be too spicy
• Food should be mostly from scratch
• use farm-fresh ingredients WHEN POSSIBLE
• There is a cost ceiling of $5 per person per meal (or $35). People should not feel they have to spend that much, but for now that will be the upper limit.

Updates to follow.

Bits & Pieces

1. My friend John is famous! John is a great cook and a great guy. I just randomly found this piece about him on Apartment Therapy. He's too modest to have sung it from the rooftops, natch.

2. I sing from the rooftops. I wrote this piece on Gristle, a book edited by Moby, all about the negative impacts of industrial meat production.

3. Well and Good NYC covers what to bring for lunch. I bring my lunch almost every day--as do most people at my office. I love that I work in a place where that's the norm.

4. Just ate my first ramps of the season, at the end of a long, hard day. Thanks, Deena, for bringing them to me, and for 4 years of friendship & laughs (& for getting all of my "Friends" and "Seinfeld" references).