Week Four: The Story

If you could put every warm feeling of winter -- wool mittens, your favorite sweatshirt right out of the dryer, the warmth of a coffee cup on your hands, the steam of tea -- and pair it against the coldest day of the season -- just miserable with such a bone-aching chill that it takes every iota of strength, courage and iron-will to get out of bed --

You have those two yin and yangs juxtaposed against each other?

Good.

Now just recall how truly, almost other-worldly that warm feeling is when you finally get out of that cold and...

Well...

Then...

You'll have some kind of idea as to how fantastic the vegetarian stuffing filled chard purses were.

Hold on. I need a moment.

Feel free to entertain yourself with this.

Okay. I'm ready.

Pre-leek-tied purse.

The stuffing turned out really great, especially with the warm savory mouth of the chard. I'll admit, in lieu of butter, I opted for a nice healthy dollop of (You guessed it) bacon grease to saute my vegetables in. The bacon grease added an unbelievably savory and subtly smoky flavor.

I'm sorry Meghann; I know you were hoping I wouldn't 'ruin it with bacon' but what can I say? The little blue bowl of warm bacon grease just spoke to me and the greedy little fat kid in me who would kill for that umami taste and texture just couldn't help herself.  Trust me, considering my growing waistline and the fact that I'm supposed to using this cooking experience to be uhm, healthy and sustainable (Which okay, bacon grease isn't healthy but I've got a solid argument that it does, indeed fall into the sustainable, oh-so-Portland tail-to-nose cooking ideology), she's definitely getting a time out in the corner (Followed by another early a.m. ten mile run).

Yeah, you can get an idea of
how small my kitchen really is.

Sidebar conversation aside, the purses were, I'll admit, kind of a pain to make. I'm actually pretty baffled that Epicurious/Gourmet suggested it as an appetizer. I mean, as much I love cooking and entertaining and wowing guests with pretty looking and amazingly tasting food, I'd have to have my arm twisted pretty hard to make these as more than just a meal (Which actually, they're quite filling and can easily stand alone as a hearty vegetarian dish -- hint, hint Piper, Ariel and all you vegetarians and vegans out there. To make it vegan, just use olive oil and swap the recipe's chicken broth for vegetable broth and perhaps add an extra pinch of salt to make up for the flat flavor of veggie broth). After all, one bunch of chard, which was about eight leaves thick, yielded six small-to-medium sized purses.

While a pain in the rear, they were still so so so worth it.

Really, had I chard in my fridge right now, considering I've still got half a loaf of stuffing...yeah, I'd definitely make them again. Right here, right now.

The great thing about that would be the fact that prep time would last no more than 20 minutes (as opposed to the 90 minutes I spent during round one) and, knowing what I know now (See tips below), I'm pretty certain they'd be even better. 

This one was special.
It needed a lot of leeks.

If you do make these (Which I so so so so SO recommend), keep these tips in mind:

1. Blanch your chard one leaf at a time. Pat dry them immediately after, otherwise, as I talked about before, the water will start to break your leaf down faster than a Portlander can put a bird on something and call it art.

2. Dry your blanched leeks asap too, for the aforementioned reason.
3. Make the stuffing ahead of time. It's not that time consuming to chop a bunch of veggies, but combined with everything else, you could save yourself a solid hour when you're hungry for some winter loving by making the stuffing ahead of time.

4. Use bacon grease. Like really. It's delicious.
5. Get creative with the stuffing. Really, my stuffing was more of a what's-in-the-fridge concoction. You can really play with the flavors, omitting the sage and Craisins for a less-Thanksgiving taste, adding paprika or curry for smoky, curried flavors, adding meat or a par-cooked grain like quinoa for extra carbs. 

Crossword Love

Some call it love. Some call it an obsession. I call it an absolute necessity.

The crossword puzzle is an indulgence I get -- no, have -- to partake in every morning, thanks to the year long subscription to The Oregonian that my parents so lovingly got me for Christmas. Everyday I plan out at least 30 minutes of coffee and crossword time....so yes, during the week when I'm waking up at 4 and 4:30 in the morning to run before work, I'm also figuring in a solid crossword and coffee session.

I know, I know, I already hear people gawking that I wake up THAT early JUST to do the crossword.

But I can't help it.

I've tried -- like today, when I simply woke up, laced up my Nikes with my building key tucked tightly in the tongue and headed out my building door into the early morning darkness without caffeine running through my blood and crossword clues running through my head. It was a good run -- heck, it was a great one (10 miles before 6:15? Yeah, it was real good). But here I sit, with nothing to do at work (Literally nothing. It's been like this for three days now and my writing fingers are itching with idleness), feeling slightly amiss because I have yet to complete any crossword puzzles.

In fact, my little Oregonian is still wrapped in its blue plastic sheath, begging me to read it and not succumb to the diabolic lure of Internet news. I actually think I can hear it sighing, holding back weepy tears from my desk drawer...

"Read me." "Open me." "Do me." "Finish me."

Hmmm. Somehow that turned slightly pornographic.

[Insert commercial break]

My love for the crossword puzzle grew, thanks in large part to the boring classes I had during my college years at the University of Portland.

IMPORTANT CLARIFYING NOTE: Not ONCE did I EVER EVER EVER pull out a crossword puzzle during an English class.

That being said...

Had I never been forced to take Biblical Traditions from a professor who adamantly called me Annie the entire semester (But then mysteriously called me Amie a year and a half later on a random campus pass-by), I probably never would have learned to fold the newspaper just perfectly to cleverly camouflage it amidst my notebooks. Were it not for freshmen level communication studies classes I took as a fifth year, I wouldn't have learned the codes of the crossword (For example: Abbreviations in a clue means an abbreviated answer. And, not Or, adds an "S" to a name. You get the idea).

Nor would I have learned that an "aerie" is an eagle's nest, that Ella Fitzgerald is a jazz legend, that Erma Bombeck is absolutely awesome (Okay the crossword didn't teach me that but her constant appearance in the grid piqued my interest to put my Google skills to work) or that Nikola Tesla was a rival inventor of Thomas Edison.

I don't think I would have learned any of that in my theology or communication studies classes either.

I guess I like the crossword so much for the simple reason that it gives me something to do. It's a time-wasting past time that's actually productive -- I'm learning (as aforementioned factoids clearly prove evident), working my brain and, on the glorious occasion that I fully finish a puzzle, experiencing a glorious rush of accomplishment and pride.

It's dorky, I know. An obsession, of course. But few things are as satisfying as unsheathing the newspaper, flipping through to the crossword puzzle and burying myself in the black and white boxes while I wake up over a hot cup of steaming coffee.