Poll: should sarah emily attend polenta school?

I've discussed my polenta quest before here. so far, I haven't really discovered anything revolutionary, other than the polenta croutons I had at dinner this summer. now I've found the perfect solution to my dilemma - but I don't know if I should do it. The Cambridge Center for Adult Education is offering a winter course called, "The Possibilities of Polenta."

Discover the rich, delicious possibilities of a Northern Italian staple food — polenta. As versatile as pasta, there are several types of polenta (white and yellow, and coarse and fine). You will prepare and feast on polenta accompanied with three delicious toppings — a hearty sausage sauce, a delicate white sauce made with gorgonzola and marscarpone cheeses, and a tasty onion sauce. We’ll also try fried polenta. Learn how to use polenta as a side dish to entrees or as a meal in itself! Feel free to bring your own wine.

it's $56 for a 2.5 hour session. this seems like the opportunity I've been waiting for, except I'm not feeling as enthused as I think I should be. please help me make this decision. basically, if enough folks think it's worth my time to go, I'll do it. or if people think that going to a polenta class is stupid, I'll take that into account too. help please?

blogs for the animalistic among us

we forgot a blog of the month. oops.

here at leisurely breakfast, we don't really do much with meat. sarah elisabeth has been known to serve up a rack of such-and-such on occasion, but we just don't live very meaty lifestyles. this translates to our blog: if you're looking for carnivore advice, we're not your ann landers.

this month's (tardy) blog is simply recipes, a site that not only has a full range of recipes, but some of the most beautiful pictures of meat dishes that I've ever seen. the photos of all the dishes are gorgeous and also make me wonder how many sets of plates Elise actually owns. the recipes range from simple to complex, but there's really helpful commentary throughout the directions so that you're not just left alone with your list of ingredients and the "after" photo. I read this and get really jazzed about cooking, which is what a good food blog is supposed to do.

special shout out to the rosemary lemon rhubarb spritzer. I now cannot wait for rhubarb to be in season.

lilac sunday

one of boston's not-so-hidden treasures is the arnold arboretum. it is 265 acres of botanica located right in the city. I would like to someday visit the arboretum every day for a single year, because I am pretty certain that I would still not see everything that there is to be seen at the end of those 365 visits. if you find yourself in boston with nothing to do - or wish to blow off your already scheduled plans - I highly recommend that you trot over to jamaica plain and go exploring.

each year, the arboretum hosts Lilac Sunday. there are several types of lilacs in the arboretum (see for yourself here) and you can go on a tour of the flowers or you can buy treats from the vendors and enjoy morris dancers, musicians, and the weather. sarah elisabeth and I chose to have a picnic.

now, those of you who read the answers to our leisurely quiz know that sarah elisabeth and I would pack pretty much the exact same thing on a picnic/road trip. lilac sunday was an opportunity to indulge. we packed pesto, a fresh baguette, fruit (pears), lemonade, tomato, cucumber, swiss cheese, salami, and cookies. it was amazing.


just to be clear, the pesto should be enjoyed liberally. here's a photo taken later in the picnic process. you can see a) sarah elisabeth's tasty treat, and b) we go through a lot of pesto. you should too:

amazing! pesto makes everything better! also, we sat next to mormons! lilac sunday was delicious and educational.

the (macro)biotic woman

come january 1, I'm back on the macro wagon. I fell off during the summer when I decided that it was more philosophically sound to fully partake of my farm share and eat the local deadly nightshades (otherwise known as potatoes and tomatoes and peppers) than to avoid them and eat foods grown outside of my neighborhood farm. but now the farm share is over, the rules have been bent, and I'm so far outside of macrobiotic guidelines that it's a bit of a sham to even claim the title for my own.

I got into macrobiotics about a year ago through a book that had been recommended to sarah elisabeth. two things struck me as I studied the basics of this diet:

1. macrobiotics is a lifestyle choice, not a diet. it's a philosophy that manifests through food but is actually about the way a person chooses to live her life;
2. macrobiotics is pretty much exactly what my nutritionist had me doing when I was prepping for my back surgery - and that period of my life was the healthiest I think I've ever had.

the description of macrobiotics was so sane and so familiar - creating a diet that is balanced with a person's life and the world around her - that any sort of extremes were diminished in face of the larger picture. (I will admit, however, that it didn't hurt that I had just discovered I was lactose intolerant. cutting out all dairy is much easier when eating it gives a kid crippling gas.) plus the people who were teaching me about macrobiotics, like my friend robin and jessica porter, were so normal when explaining the details to me. yes, there was talk about the yin and yang of foods, but all of it was delivered with a shrug and a take-it-or-leave-it attitude. it was the most rational food talk I'd heard in a long time.

macrobiotic eating is hard to describe to people who have never heard of it, especially because there are some parts of macro living that are guaranteed to raise the crazy flag. like the fact that many people insist that macrobiotics can cure cancer. I don't believe that (not many folks do, it turns out). but I do believe that what I eat should be a balance of foods that are good for me and good for the world around me. I do believe that how I eat is more than just the food on my plate.

this is probably the most straightforward explanation of macro eating and life that I've found. in addition to the macro food pyramid, it also suggests that fresh air, a good night's sleep, and singing are key parts of macrobiotic life. any dietary guideline that tells me that singing a song is an important part of a healthy lifestyle, well, you've got my heart right there.

getting saucy

my cooking can arguably be described as variations on a theme: I cook some vegetables up and serve them on brown rice or whole wheat pasta. sometimes I throw some polenta in there but mostly I don't. however, even I sometimes want a bit of variety. and that's where the sauce comes in.

I don't like heavy sauces because the whole point of my cooking is that I want to know what my food tastes like. but I do want a sauce that will make my veg taste like super exciting versions of themselves. and, if possible, I want to make it myself.

there is an art to the sauce. I am aware of that, although I have no idea how to access that art. for me, sauces are still in the lab stage - I mix some things together and hope that nothing blows up. (I've finally learned to do my mixing outside of the dish in which I'm cooking.) but I like this experimentation. I don't get a white lab coat - a long-standing dream of mine, but I do get to feel like I'm creating a dish versus enabling one.

last night's sauce recipe: 1 healthy teaspoon of red chili paste, 1 healthy pinch of brown sugar, and 1 slow pour of soy sauce. mix in a glass. mix with the carrots, broccoli, and red cabbage over medium high heat. get a little reckless and splash some red wine out of your glass into the pan. enjoy over brown rice.