I spent a fair amount of time with friends and sometimes  acquaintances turn out to be friends.  As usual, we talk about food.

One of the evenings, three of us were to eat Thai food at Spice Club and walk over to see, “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” in Niantic Cinema.  Because one of us hurt his back, we ordered pizza and I made a salad.

I like to make the salad dressing because I don’t like too much vinegar, but I wasn’t sure what might be available to make the dressing.  There was a lemon in the refrigerator and the only vinegar was balsamic.  I am tired of that, so I used the lemon.  I asked if there was fresh garlic.  There was, but it was in a plastic bag in the crisper of the fridge.  It was sad and tired, but I found two cloves that were good enough.  I also mentioned, not that anyone asked, that garlic doesn’t want to be in a plastic bag nor in a refrigerator crisper (and neither do lemons, by the way).

So we talked about grocery shopping.  Neither Gil nor Max love grocery shopping as much as I do.  Then again, maybe no one likes to go grocery shopping as much as I do.  I always go with a list, but sometimes I actually make the list while I am parked in the lot of the supermarket, i.e., I just want to go grocery shopping and pretending I had a  list means that I must go grocery shopping.

On one of my five-times-a-week supermarket jaunts, to get two tomatoes and a quart of Lactaid, I saw rhubarb and bought six ruby-red stalks and some anemic strawberries.  I had  frozen strawberry juice from last summer.  I also have lots of Deborah Jensen’s crumble mix  in the freezer.  So I made three strawberry-rhubarb crumbles.  Friends ate one, and I froze two, unbaked.

Here’s the recipe.

To make rhubarb: 2 pounds rhubarb, washed, trimmed at both ends and cut into 1-inch pieces. Place rhubarb into a bowl and add one-half to one cup of sugar, 2 tablespoons cornstarch and, if you like, one-half teaspoon of pure almond extract; stir together.

To prepare strawberries: Buy one pound of strawberries, remove leaves and part of the core. Wash them in a colander, halve the berries and put them in another bowl. Add a little sugar, toss them and let them sit on the counter for a few hours (or overnight in the fridge).

To make a crisp, use the following recipe.

Deb Jensen’s Perfect Crisp Topping

Yield: makes around 5 cups (put the rest in two small plastic bags, freeze them and save for another two crisps)

1 cup flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup oatmeal (rolled oats)
1 cup walnuts or pecans
1 cup almonds or pine nuts
1 and one-half stick (8 tablespoons) butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Add all ingredients into a bowl and mix together with nice, clean hands.  Place the rhubarb and strawberries in a buttered ovenproof glass or ceramic gratin (8″ by 8″ or a 9″ x 12″) and top with enough crisp topping to cover.  Bake until rhubarb bubbles, about 30 minutes.

About the author: Lee White (left) is a resident of Old Lyme in a section of town where she and her house are the oldest members.  She has been writing about restaurants and cooking since 1976 and has been extensively published in the Worcester (Mass.) Magazine, The Day, Norwich Bulletin, and Hartford Courant.  She currently writes Nibbles and a cooking column called A La Carte for the Shore Publishing newspapers, and Elan, a quarterly magazine, all of which are now owned by The Day. 

To paraphrase from Philip Roth’s “Love Story,” what can I say about a winter that simply won’t go away.

Last Wednesday I shoveled five different times, just to allow me to get from my front porch to get my newspapers.  And the same number of times so I could get to my garage.  I failed.  The snow was so heavy I was exhausted.

Friends were able to visit me for dinner Sunday, but they had to clomp through now-hardened moguls.  When they left Sunday night, it was snowing again.  Weather reports now say Thursday and Friday, there may be sleet, snow and freezing rain.

On Super Bowl Sunday, Joan Gordon brought me a terrific meatloaf she made the day before.  We had sandwiches on good rye bread, salad and dessert while we watched the Stupid Bowl.  I ate the rest of the meatloaf over the next few days.  It is superb.

Lenny Schwartz’s Market Street Meatloaf (adapted)

Yield: serves 8

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

Three-quarter cup finely chopped onion

Three-quarter cup finely chopped scallions (white part and 3 inches of green)

One-half cup finely chopped carrots

One-quarter cup finely chopped celery

One-quarter cup finely chopped red pepper

One-quarter cup finely chopped green pepper

2 teaspoons finely minced garlic

3 large eggs

One-half cup ketchup

One-half cup half-and-half cream (Joan used sour cream)

1 teaspoon cumin

One-half teaspoon nutmeg

One-quarter teaspoon cayenne pepper

Salt and pepper to taste

3 pounds lean ground turkey

Three-quarter cup breadcrumbs, toasted and crumbled (Joan uses whatever is in the bread box)

1. Melt butter in large heavy skillet over medium low heat and add onions, scallions, carrots, celery, peppers and garlic.  Cook stirring often until moisture has evaporated, about 10 minutes.  Set mixture aside to cool, then refrigerate it, covered, until chilled, 1 to 2 hours.
2. Beat eggs, ketchup, half-and-half, cumin, nutmeg, cayenne, salt and black pepper in a bowl. Add ground turkey and bread crumbs.  Add chilled vegetables and knead with your hands until well mixed.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
4. Form into loaves or one big loaf and place on a rimmed baking pan.  (You can cover the baking sheet to avoid cleanup.)  Bake until loaf is cooked through to about 160 degrees (about 45 to 50 minutes.  Let loaf rest for at least 20 minutes.

Sweet  Thoughts 

There is almost nothing sweet about my pantry, refrigerator or freezer.  Oh, they’re pretty enough and I keep them clean inside and out.  But when I look, I find not one sugary something to crave my sweet tooth.

This, of course, is reasonable.  I am down many pounds at this point and I have another 20 to go.  I’m afraid that if I had some homemade brownies or Girl Scout cookies in the freezer, I might eat them without thawing them.  If there were Newtons or jelly beans in the pantry, they would be, figuratively, toast.  There are pints of ice cream in both freezers,but ice cream was my husband’s siren song, not mine.

Of course, I can cook sweet things in a New York minute, like my cooktop chocolate pudding.  That would be fine if I would eat just one cup, but I usually eat all four ramekins.  Or make the recipe for a microwave chocolate cake in a mug.

But I figured if I make something truly luscious that I could have “one of” and then give the rest away, I might be happy enough.  So I did have one, gave all the rest away and I’m keeping this recipe.

Oatmeal Sandwich Cookies

“A Good Appetite,” by Melissa Clark (New York Times, page D2, January 22, 2014)

Yield: 36 cookies

Three-quarter cup sweetened coconut

1 cup unsalted butter

2 tablespoons honey

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

1 and one-half cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoons sea salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

4 teaspoons ground cinnamon, divided

3 cups rolled oats

One-half cup dates, pitted and chopped (actually, buy Sunsweet dates, pitted and chopped)

5 tablespoons granulated sugar

For the filling:

6 ounces cream cheese, softened

6 tablespoons mascarpone

3 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar

1 and one-half teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Toast coconut in a rimmed baking pan until lightly colored and fragrant, 7 to 10 minutes. Cool. Raise temperature to 375 degrees.
2. In bowl of mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter until light. Beat in brown sugar and honey and beat until very fluffy, about 5 minutes Beat in vanilla.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk flour, salt, baking powder and 1 teaspoon cinnamon. With mixer on low, beat flour mixture into butter mixture until combined. Beat in dates and coconut.
4. Line 3 baking sheets with parchment or Silpat. In a small bowl combined granulated sugar and rest of the cinnamon. Roll heaping tablespoons of dough into balls, then roll them in cinnamon-sugar. Transfer to baking sheet, leaving 1 and one-half inches between balls. Bake until golden brown, about 15 minutes. Let cool in pan 2 minutes, then transfer to wire rack to cool completely.
5. Make filling: With a mixer, beat in cream cheese until smooth.  Beat in mascarpone, confectioners’ sugar and vanilla. Scrape down sides of bowl.  Sandwich about 1 tablespoon filling between two cookies.  Repeat until done.

About the author: Lee White (left) is a resident of Old Lyme in a section of town where she and her house are the oldest members.  She has been writing about restaurants and cooking since 1976 and has been extensively published in the Worcester (Mass.) Magazine, The Day, Norwich Bulletin, and Hartford Courant.  She currently writes Nibbles and a cooking column called A La Carte for the Shore Publishing newspapers, and Elan, a quarterly magazine, all of which are now owned by The Day. 

Cinnamon apple cake

Another glorious September on the Outer Banks. Last year’s week was a little busier, with Richard’s mother and her two little dogs, and Ralph’s sister and brother-in-law visiting for a few days.

This time it was just us. I slept late every morning ‘til almost 8 a.m. With a teeth brush and  a comb sliced through my hair, I’d go upstairs, say good morning to Ralph and Richard and give a pat to Ethel, take a  can of V-8 and walk onto the deck. What to do, what to do? No newspapers to read, Later, I’d curl up on the couch to read my e-mails, see if anybody’d called, pull out half a dog cookie (Ethel liked to hide them between couch cushions) and read for a while. Eventually, we’d all consider the beach (and I the pool) and maybe have  lunch. Ralph showed me how to count carbs instead of calories and I wound up losing almost 4 pounds on vacation!

While on the beach or pool, I would figure out dinner from the fresh and frozen food I’d taken with us. Pasta twice with two different sauces (Bolognese and a fresh tomato marinara with pepperoni), meat loaf, a roasting chicken that we ate two different ways and grilled chicken that Ralph turned into salad for a couple of meals. I had taken along vegetables I’d either frozen or had bought at Trader Joe’s in Connecticut. We ate salads every day. And I’d bought lavash: few carbs, lots of vitamins and nutrients. We ate like royalty. I went into town once with Richard so we could pick out a cake for Ralph’s birthday. Ralph never went into town at all.

There will be another September Outer Banks vacation next year and I am again invited. On our last morning, I took a few pictures as the dawn broke over the ocean’s horizon. September can’t come soon enough.

Next week my North Carolina housemates will come to dinner with three new friends of mine. I will make pad Thai (good for Ralph’s carb counting, fine for Richard who doesn’t eat seafood and nut-, seed- and corn-free for one of my friends). And we will finish with this apple cake, given to me by my friend Deb Tyler.

Cinnamon-Apple Cake

Adapted from Cooking Light magazine, January, 2000

1 and three-quarters cup sugar, divided

6 ounces regular or low-fat cheese cream, softened

one-half cup butter, softened

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 large eggs

1 and one-half cups all-purpose

1 and one-half teaspoons baking powder

one-quarter teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

3 cups chopped peeled apples (Barbie uses more and so do I)*

cooking spray

Yield: 12 servings

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Spray an 8-inch springform pan (or 9-inch springform or square pan; with 9-inch pan, reduce baking time 10 minutes)

Beat 1 ½ (one and one-half) sugar, cream cheese, butter and vanilla at medium speed of a mixer until well blended (about 4 minutes). Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition; set aside.

Place flour, baking powder and salt into a small mixing bowl and whisk together. Add flour mixture to creamed mixture and beat at low speed until blended. Remove bowl from mixer. Combine ¼ (one-quarter) cups sugar and cinnamon. Add 2 tablespoons cinnamon-sugar with apples in a bowl, then add to batter. Pour batter into pan. Sprinkle with remaining cinnamon mixture.

Bake at 350 degrees for one and one-quarter hours or until cake pulls away from sides of pan. Cool cake completely on a wire rack.

*The recipe calls for Rome apples. I use whatever I have, but remember that much of the liquid is from apples, so don’t use all Delicious apples or other apples that are a bit dry.