woodshed

it's cold and rainy so i can bring back my tweed dress.  i know my head is obscured.  i like it that way.

today read susan howe again.

slowly devouring her.

i now feel sufficiently prepared to begin a ph.d program.

made dinner already, because i had food that needed cooking.

no writing as of yet.

taught online courses, comforting and encouraging students about their topic choices.  one wants to write about the tiny house movement!  hurray, because that means i don't have to read about video games and violence, how evil the federal government is, or the nfl.

sidebar:  i mentioned to my tiny house betopic'd student that no one seems to be examining this so-called tiny house movement. don't most people in the world already live in tiny spaces?  i totally get the desire to keep things simple, believe me, but i just find the whole thing weird--mostly white, middle-class people fantasizing about living in darling little trailers and such.

okay.  i don't know if i'll get to write anything new today on account of the number of pieces of new music i have to woodshed between now and kid time and rehearsal time.  today felt like a battle in my head:  if i don't cook dinner, the food in my fridge will go to waste and we'll have to scrounge for dinner (we've been doing that a lot lately).  if i do cook dinner, i'll have to choose between writing and practicing.  if i don't practice i'll be humiliated tomorrow night.  if i do practice, i'll be putting my writing at lower status than everything else i do today.  if i don't make dinner, i'm a bad mother and citizen.

suddenly the entire world of possibilities is in flux.  is there any there there? etc., etc., etc.

oh, shoot.  that sounds really whiny and privileged.  i guess it is.

so i'll leave just leave you with these equally overwhelming notions from howe:

"the margin submerges phonic substance.  a mother's thread or line is ringed with silence so poems are"

&

susan howe/jakobson:

"why do certain works go on saying something else? . . . . jakobson says: 'one of the essential differences between spoken and written language can be seen clearly.  the former has a purely temporal character, while the latter connects time and space. while the sounds that we hear disappear, when we read we usually have immobile letters before us and the time of the written flow of words is reversible.'"

&

"a poem can prevent onrushing light going out."

birthday dinner season

meyer lemon tart.  georgia buchert made the stunning crown for me, and it's become our birthday crown.

we have eleven family birthdays in january, february and march. 

what are you people gettin' up to in april, may and june?

birthday dinner season is in full swing at my house.  today was cecily's family birthday dinner.  i'm always really curious about what my people will ask me to cook for their birthdays--i finally get to know how they really feel about certain dishes.

some of them have predictable favorites:  moses always wants spaghetti and meatballs.  christian always wants a classic chocolate cake with no frosting.  eva frequently requests beef stroganoff. 

catsup chicken, broccoli with daddy's dipping sauce.  i bought a cheaper rice this week to see if it really made a big difference.  it did :(.  have been spoiled by a much more delicious rice.

cecily surprised me by asking for something new this year: two family staples::  the meyer lemon tart from alice waters' & lindsay remolif shere's chez panisse dessert cookbook (a classic cookbook you might add to your collection if you're into that kind of thing,) & mark bittman's  minimalist ketchup chicken from the new york times, a fantastic, garlick-y comfort food i discovered a few years ago that is very popular chez exoskeleto.

(a note on the tart:  meyer lemons are sweeter than eureka lemons.  i use the two meyer lemons called for in the recipe PLUS one fairly large eureka lemon.  i always want less sweet, more tart, and more lemon flavor in lemon desserts.  i need to continue working on making this tart a little tarter, but this alteration is a step in the right direction.) 

what do you want for your birthday dinner?

i want chicken under a brick, lula's curry fries, and the tart cockaigne from the joy of cooking.  

my birthday's in july, so heads up!

re-engergized parenting: practicing deliberateness

salt lake temple east doors

as the mother of a brood, spread out over a lot of years, i'm worried about parental burn-out.

i'm such a different mother to moses and cecily than i was to eva and ingrid.  for instance, we didn't own a t.v. when eva and ingrid were little.  and there was no internet, really, unless you count dial-up.  this means they spent the majority of their free time reading and in imaginative play.

also, they spent most of their elementary years in oakland and seattle, whereas mo and cec were born and raised in utah.

the east doors of the temple have never been opened.  they will only be opened by jesus during the second coming.

on monday, we took the kids on an outing to salt lake city, and it hit me how few outings we've done with the littles as compared with the number of cool things we used to do with the bigs.  in seattle, we had a zoo pass, we went to carkeek almost weekly, and lake washington on walks and bike rides almost daily.  we went to concerts and events, museums and parties, plays, lessons, the science center, the children's museum, and the aquarium.

now we simply spend too much time indoors, too much time with individual screens.

the view from the joseph smith building, tenth floor. this is a must-see if you're touristing in salt lake.

i'm older now.  i have less energy, and more demands on my time, so i have to be deliberate. i have to practice to keep my quality of parenting up.  being tired has it's upside, however.  i'm mellower, i don't try to micro-manage my younger kids like i did with the older ones, i'm not as critical, i enjoy the kids more and worry less, and i have a good sense of what's important and what's not.

keep start quit (ksq) is a mid-semester evaluation i sometimes do with my students if i think a class isn't going as well as it could be.  it helps me figure out what the problems are.  so here's my attempt at a mid-life parenting evaluation:


keep

--having family dinner every night
--teaching the kids to cook
--kids' daily checklists
--one on one dates with the kids
--family home evening
--reading out loud together
--playing the favorites game
--date night for parents

start 

--turning off the internet for a few hours a day
--attending international cinema at byu together
--planning holidays and vacations more carefully--prioritizing this
--a family mission statment
--involving the kids more in problem solving
--group reading time (we all read our own books together)
--more day trips

quit

--lazy or thoughtless parenting
--criticizing
--too much screen time
--spending time and money on anything that doesn't fit with our family's values
--being distracted during family time

moses loved the austrian-made hand-crafted furniture in the joseph smith building

mission statement

i know it's gross and corporate-y, but i like the idea of having a firm vision in mind of my purpose in this life, and what i want to seed in my children before they leave my home.  i'll try to come up with a better title for this than 'mission statement' (candland asplund family articles?  statement of purpose?) but in the mean time, here's what i want to start with:

Our family cultivates and values curiosity.

dear readers, i want to know your thoughts on rejuvenating yourself when you start to get parental burn out (when i do this, my kids moan and say, "mom's doing her new-leaf-ish thing again.")

i'm also curious about words, phrases, etc. that you would put into a family mission statement.

coping by cooking

chilled coconut cucumber soup with dungeness crab

when i can't deal with existential uncertainty, i frequently take down my big bamboo chopping block and my messermeister chef's knife and start chopping.  i'm in love with vegetables, and prepping them floods me with a sense of well-being.

putting together a meal satisfies my need for something finite and contained when my head is going to the far ranging places i've tried to forbid it from wandering to.  when the mind is out of control, i can choose my pan, my high, low, or medium heat, my sliced, diced or minced onion, and so on.

grilled marinated mushrooms & zucchinni, deborah madison's pita bread

i've already (over)shared that the past couple of months have been dark and difficult.  my cooking has slowed down a bit. it's been that bad.  but i have managed to keep at least a couple of nice meals a week coming to the table.

sockeye salmon grilled with pernod & sage leaves

to reduce the stress during a hard period, i added rotisserie chicken night, inspired by my little brother who encouraged me to eat a rotisserie chicken with delicious rice, with my fingers, phillipines style,  once a week.  he told me it was the most comforting meal possible, and he might be right.  being my mother's daughter, i had to add a salad, or on the really bad nights, a sliced cucumber with lime and salt, inspired by my sister katie.

i was looking through old photos and found these shots of a dinner party i prepared with my friend alice in seattle one summer, using a beautiful book she gave me called good fish by becky selengut.  all recipes use sustainably sourced fish.  the salmon and grilled mushrooms are things we always eat with alice and jim in seattle.  the grilled mushrooms are the best food on the planet, and it doesn't matter how many i make, they're gone instantly.

i'm starting to feel my culinary energy returning.  what is everyone cooking these days?  does cooking help you cope?  if not cooking, then what?

final decisions

after much rumination, the super bowl menu for 2013 goes like this:

*homemade whitecastle-style burgers

*sweet potato fries & curried fry sauce

*apple walnut slaw

*chips & guacamole

*root beer floats

*salty chocolate chunk cookies


not that i care AT ALL about the super bowl, but it's an excuse for a party & some kitchen time.

anyone else cooking tomorrow?

i always miss emily this time of year.  one time she made the most delicious whoopie pies ever for the super bowl.  i can't recreate them.

list

holiday family & friends time:

georgia buchert made this beautiful crown for me.  i was so touched.  this pic doesn't do it justice.  i'll try to get a better one.

1) omg.  food.  out of control food.

2) prime rib & brussels sprout, nativity, very sketchy pick-up rendition (omg.  out of control melismas) of "for unto us a child is born,"  buche de noel, and christmas crackers on christmas eve.

3) matching swiss nightgowns for me and all the girls.

4) thoughtful "experience" gift certificates (dim sum, play lists, shopping expeditions, pedicures, thrifting and vintage store shopping), cool, creative gift-wrapping jobs & hand embroidered cards.

5) turkey dinner at bam's on christmas day.

6) christmas day migraine.

7) pitch perfect with my sis at the dollars.  yes!  see it.

8) boxing day locust salon featuring:  candy cane cake by ingrid, baked brie with fig and cranberry by kathryn, carrot-jicama salad AND hand made crown by georgia, cheese ball and last minute table arranging by bonnie, olives, cheese and nuts from the belnap-jensens, lots of baking and cleaning by amelia, magical drum solo by greg, stylophone virtuosity by steve, and prepared piano by christian.

el gallo giro is one of my favorite provo restaurants.  check out their molcajete.

9) over-the-top take out from el gallo giro for lunch today--handmade guacamole, molcajete, pollo with pickled pink onions, 29 handmade corn tortillas, nopales, mole rojo, sangria, and, yeah.

10) the hobbit--loved having moses' running commentary, as he sat on my lap for most of the movie, and obviously it was his favorite movie he'd ever seen since it looked exactly like a video game, but, dude, i hate cgi.  it seriously looks like a piece of crap.  sorry fans.

the opening salvo

homemade yogurt

the asplunds have begun to arrive.  almost everyone is here now--we're just waiting for emily, adam, and new baby charlie to get here next week.  bammy assigned each family to do a dinner, and tonight's my night.  since i'm feeding 20 +, and many of them are vegetarian, i opted for the locust salon dal, rice, raita, and naan.

fresh ground spices are best, but if you're not up to the extra steps, just go with already ground.

today i went to bollywood market to pick up supplies, and a few new cooking tips.  here's the recipe i use for raita, that i've cobbled together from various trips to bollywood market.  i'm sure indian cooks would die at how i've bastardized it, but it still tastes good.

grapejuice from our garden

today was a super productive day:

1) finished grading final portfolios.  now i just have to tabulate and post grades.
2) finished christmas shopping.  i resolve to not step foot in a single store again between now and christmas.
3) made yogurt.
4) got neighborhood christmas treats--our homemade grape juice--ready to go.
5) made dal & raita for dinner.  just about to start the rice, with black cardamom, cinnamon stick, and cloves, as per bollywood market directive.

diced cucumbers.  love the colors.

here's how i make my raita.  tomorrow i'm going to try a tomato version.

lara's raita

32 oz. plain yogurt
1 english cucumber, peeled and diced
1-2 handfuls of cilantro, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely grated
1 t. cumin seeds, toasted on the stovetop and crushed in mortar & pestle (or just use some pre-ground cumin)
1 lemon, juiced
1 t. salt
cracked black pepper
1/4 t. sriracha (you can omit.  sometimes i like it a bit spicier, so i add the rooster sauce)

add cilantro on a sliding scale, according to taste.

mix ingredients a few hours ahead of serving and let sit, covered & refrigerated, so flavors can come together.  or obtain something eva and anna have dubbed "second day swag."

the final product.  resting in my fridge right now, waiting for guests to arrive.

tomorrow i hope to get my dal recipe posted, as i've had a few requests for it, but it's not written down yet.  so.  wait for it.

legwear:  black pointelle tights

inspiration:  bollywood market

looking forward to:  feasting with the family

silent family dinner

sunday dinner at bam's is the best.  matt always sports an untied bow tie.

tonight we sat at the wednesday family dinner table, eating silently, listening to radiohead, each of us lamenting a kind of hard and boring day.

bammy's chicken marbella & fab hair.

but we did it anyway.  we sat and supped.  i made dinner, got everyone together, and ate. and we talked.  a little.

the view from bam's deck.

some nights are so happy and loud, some nights stressful, some nights surprising or funny.  you never know.  & you'll never find out if you don't do it.

here's my little plug for sitting down with your family every night you can.  & a plug for making that happen as often as you can.  it's a small but significant anchor in the day, and it puts everything in it's place.

sunday dinner in fall.

i know julie eats frequently in the living room of her amazing  city.  i eat in my suburban kitchen.  either way, it's the sitting, the talking, and the being together that counts.

i love to know what people eat for dinner, what they talk about, what time they eat, what they listen too, any details, small and large about this quotidian event.  i want a giant list of dinner details.  dinner for one, dinner for two, dinner for ten.

so share if you have anything.  anything at all.

go ahead & make my day a little less boring!

sabbath day candles

favorites

our friends with green thumbs and excellent taste brought us a basket of beautiful herbs and peppers from their garden.  i'm grateful for people who can grow food.  that skill has eluded me.

the 44 oz. maverick cup in the background tells you everything you need to know about our family's commitment to juxtaposition.

so make me a deal:  when we're living in a post-apocolyptic world, you grow it & i'll cook it, okay?  i'm pretty good at cooking in weird circumstances and with skimpy ingredients, almost as good as i am at killing plants.

thanks heather and kevin!

all summer i've wanted to do a candlelit italian dinner outside, and today was finally the day.  ingrid is leaving for college tuesday morning, so this was our farewell dinner: portabello mushroom lasagna, spinach salad, glace carrots, homemade vanilla ice cream, peach crisp, lemonade.

the kids love these carrots

i wanted to make this mushroom lasagne, but this recipe was too pricey (i'll get to it later, right after i cash my macarthur check), so i downgraded to ina garten's recipe, which was still pretty delish. especially with a few sprigs of fresh thyme from that gorgeous herb bouquet added to the mushrooms and the bechamel.

farewell ingrid, august

the whole family was together tonight, plus a few of our favorite friends.  it was a blazing hot day today, but right before dinner, a thunderstorm rolled in and we got a gorgeous summer storm that brought things to the perfect temperature, plus made it dark enough for candles even though we ate at 7 & it was still light out.

i love you, alice waters.

one more thing:  peach crisp and homemade ice cream.  first of all, i only ever use alice water's crisp recipe.  it's undoubtedly the best one out there, and i've been using it for years.  second of all, you definitely want an ice cream maker.  i love the simplest vanilla with a reduced amount of sugar so the flavor of the cream is the center piece.  which is what you want with really good peaches.  nothing to distract from the beauty of that brief-lived summer ecstasy.

never use any other crisp topping.  it's all about the roasted almonds.

sitting in my back yard eating peaches and looking at the mountains after a rain storm. come visit me in august, and that's what we'll do.

homemade ice cream is a whole different subject.

(rum & maldon sea salt, as this blogger suggests, is so not necessary.  fun, i suppose, but i think it would just get in the way.  also, i double the topping recipe because i'm a topping whore.)

Nectarine and Blueberry Crisp
Adapted from the Chez Panisse Café Cookbook and Chez Panisse Fruit

½ cup almonds
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
a pinch of salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter

5 ripe nectarines, pitted and cut into 1 inch pieces
1 cup blueberries
¼ cup sugar
3 tablespoons unbleached flour
zest of one lemon, chopped fine
1 tablespoon aged rum

For the Topping

Preheat oven to 375 F. Toast the almonds until they smell nutty and are slightly more brown, about 7 or 8 minutes. Chop the almonds to a medium to fine consistency. Combine the flour, the sugars, the salt and spice in a mixing bowl. Add the chilled butter in pieces and mix with your fingers until it becomes mealy. Add the nuts and mix until the flour mixture holds together when squeezed. Put aside. (The topping can be prepared up to a week in advance and refrigerated).

For the Crisp
Mix the fruit in a medium-sized bowl and then add the sugar. Taste and adjust for sweetness. (*Note, don’t over sugar the fruit—there’s something quite beautiful about a semi-sweet crisp. Don’t be afraid to let the fruit express itself in its truest form.) Dust the flour over the mixture and stir gently. Spoon the topping into a small cooking dish is just big enough to hold the fruit. Mound a small amount in the center of the dish. Then, gently add the crisp mixture on top. Lightly push the crumble on top of the fruit mixture.

Place a cookie sheet on the middle rack of the oven (to catch any overflow juices) and put the crisp dish on top. Bake in the oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until the top is lightly browned and the fruit juices are thickened and bubbling. The delicious smell of baked fruit will help you know when it’s close to being ready.

Serve with rum flavored whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. Finish the ice cream with a sprinkle of Maldon sea salt.

the rubble of our feast

hoagies, potato salad, crudite, chocolate chip cookies

trying to get every last drop of summer.

one more day until school starts for me and the two small children.

tree climbing at huber grove.

looking at this list, i have yet to:  1) hike timp, 2) take a road trip to southern utah, 3) buy a new pioneer bonnet, and 4) serve a fancy italian backyard dinner with candles.

today we had a picnic.  i wanted to go to southfork, but christian suggested huber grove in midway, and i'm so glad we went.  we haven't been this summer, and i had forgotten how cool it is.

the creamery.  snake creek ran through the cellar, keeping the dairy cool.  it's built of pot rock, volcanic rock prevalent in midway.

huber grove is a homestead from the 1800's built by mormon swiss immigrants.  the homestead is filled with fruit trees, aspen trees, a cottage and a pot rock creamery, and snake creek runs through the property.

Add caption

best of all, the homestead is covered in little plaques with excerpts from huber's journals and poems he wrote.  and quotes like this, that casually suggest a dramatic and amazing lifetime: "when huber was in vienna, he spent evenings at the vienna opera, when he was not imprisoned for his faith."

or this:

bees!

moses and i walked the little trail near the creek, dense with horsetail, and read up on the flora and fauna of the homestead, courtesy of the wasatch state park.  moses asked me afterwards if i had enjoyed our "naturous" walk.  ingrid wrote down quotes from the plaques in her journal and read snippets of the poems in german to us.

moses' ninja pose on "naturous" walk.

lula climbed a tree.

we ate.  we showed anna from cambridge a beloved place of ours.  since my mom grew up in midway, it has a special pull for me, and for the kids, who've spent many summers and vacations there.

anna from cambridge.

every time we have a picnic, i think of c. thomas asplund's beautiful poem, seasonings.  christian's father was such an amazing poet, and he didn't have time to write nearly enough poems in his foreshortened life.

II

The smallness of it all makes one wonder;

the sitting on a smooth bank

in the river smell and sun

and ants and grass

tickling up the sleeve.

The dry kiss

and the moist kiss.

The baby reeling through the grass on reckless legs

and you

stretching, head back amid the rubble of our feast,

reaching beyond me for the tiny sun

blink

                        you are gone with the flick of an eye

                                    blink

            gone are the empty cartons of a summer day

                        blink

            gone is the shameless sun.

            Suddenly my child stands before the tiny sun

            a giant shadow before the tiny sun

            and I can see that in his reeling quest for age

                                    he has stolen my years

                                    and shatters in the prism of  my tears

                                    and with the tiny river I am young no more.

plenty season

i dig ingrid's orange lipstick with the vintage '70's maxi my friend alice made & wore in the actual '70's.   it has tiny buttons all the way down the back and butterfly sleeves.

the produce is so abundant that i was hard-pressed to use it all before it languished.

baba ganoush, salad and lula's green goddess dressing.

there were aubergines, two big ones, so i made grilled eggplant and baba ganoush.

there were avocadoes about to die, so lula made a green goddess dressing to go with our salad of greens, peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes.

taylor makes a beautiful plate

the requisite famous utah peaches and corn, which a person feels desperate to gorge on before they're gone.

utah peaches & corn are legendary

& a half-gallon of cream to be used (i've been making ice cream like crazy this week).

honey vanilla ice cream.  i have a crush on my new ice cream maker.

fingerling potatoes to be roasted.

adorable baby potatoes

salmon and steak on sale, but so many vegetarians.  we grilled it yesterday and served it cold with the salad, which was nice on such a hot day.

a crush on the grill, too.

i love sunday here, with all the dresses, the roses, the after-dinner bike ride to my favorite spot on locust lane, to an empty field where the buildings clear out and you can see the valley lighting to the west and the mountains to the east.

and a crush on sunday dinner.

it's the sweet spot of the world.  the navel of the world.

the sweet spot of dinner--grilled peaches & homemade ice cream.

today was the day i knew summer would wane.

how much longer?

today i felt like i dropped into the sweet spot of the season,

the sweet spot of summer.

& like it couldn't get any better.

mormon comforts

sorry i'm such a spazzy photographer, but here's finnish dish.  she's not pretty, but she's good!

luckily, i had already prepared to cook one of my favorite childhood comfort foods for dinner tonight.

then i saw joanna brooks' book of mormon girl giveaway with a bonus stitchery piece* in the offering to boot.  (the embroidery reads:  "never underestimate a mormon girl."  amen to that.)

synchronicity?

i'm sure the holy ghost prompted me, guided me to purchase the ingredients at the market this morning to make a little thing called finnish dish with the enormous summer-sweet cabbage in my crisper.  pretty sure the h.g. wanted me to get right on the task of winning a copy of the expanded version of book of mormon girl. 

(even if i don't win, this gives me the excuse of going on and on about one of my beloved topics:  home cookery.)

this was a dish i loved as a girl, and rediscovered as the cook for a large family on a budget.  moses told me tonight it was the most delicious dinner he had ever eaten, right after we had a slightly freaky theological discussion, the likes of which only a seven year-old could devise.

isn't the definition of a classic comfort food the thing you liked to eat more than anything in the world when you were seven, starving after a day of running around the neighborhood shirtless, and worrying about if you will miss your mom when you die and go to heaven?

my mom was a better than average cook.  in fact, she was rather well known for her rolls, sweet rolls, and banquet-like sunday dinners.  her food heritage included a grandfather who was once the state beekeeper of utah and an avid gardener, a mother who used herbs and tinctures harvested from the environs, aunts and a grandmother who cooked whole grains and sweetened with honey.  so we had a health food influence to our mormon cuisine. so, no soupy casseroles for us (besides, my dad hated casseroles.)** we were lucky that my mom was mostly into whole foods even before "whole foods" was a phrase in common parlance.

to me, this recipe falls in line with the health food tradition, because, believe it or not, ground beef was not anathema to health food in the '70's.  i've built on the tradition by adding more vegetables (specifically mushrooms) and less beef, and even have a vegetarian adaptation for my two vegetarian children. plus, i like that it follows the commonsensical word of wisdom guideline to "eat meat sparingly".

i've also built on the deliciousness tradition by adding some butter and using my beloved koshihakari sushi rice instead of. . . non-special rice.  you could leave some of the butter out, or eliminate it all together if you're that opposed to pleasure.

finnish dish

i don't know that this dish actually has finnish roots, nor do i know if it is really a mormon dish, but it seems like it is because there are a lot of mormon dishes that retain the name of a national origin long after the dish has morphed into pure americana.  maybe it's finnish because it's like a deconstructed cabbage roll?  i have no idea.  i'm curious if anyone else grew up eating this.

the key to this dish is slicing the vegetables finely and caramelizing everything just bit.  also, we grew up eating it with ketchup.  i now serve it with fresh tomatoes on top instead, because it benefits from a little acidic zing.

1 lb. ground beef
1 medium yellow onion, sliced into thin half-moon circles
1 small head cabbage, sliced as thin as your knife skills allow
1 lb. brown mushrooms, sliced
4 T butter, 2 for mushrooms & 2 for beef and cabbage
S& P to taste

2 c. good short-grained rice (uncooked)
4 c. water
2 T. butter
1 t. salt

*put rice on to cook.  combine water, butter, salt in sauce pan and bring to boil.  after rice comes to a boil, stir, cover, turn heat down to medium low, and cook for 24 minutes.

*meanwhile, heat large skillet to medium high.  begin browning beef.

*meanwhile, in a separate medium skillet, brown sliced mushrooms in 2 T. butter.

*when beef is browned, add sliced onions and butter.

*when onions have softened, add cabbage.

*when vegetables and meat are a little brown and caramelized, add browned mushrooms.

*season to taste with salt and pepper.  make sure you do this well.  your dish doesn't have that many elements, so they all need to be good.

*serve over rice.

here's the vegetarian version for ingrid and lula.  i added snow peas and sweet red pepper, because that's what i had.

* i need to win this for ingrid marie asplund, who loves rozsika parker's the subversive stitch, is the oxymormon columnist (a column she devised) for the bryn mawr college news about mormons and feminism, and who once gave this amazing sermon in church about mormons, vegetarianism and seasonal eating, which was later picked up for publication in the fabulous edible wasatch.

**embarrassingly, i was once asked to bring funeral potatoes to a, um, funeral luncheon, and i made potatoes gratin from scratch, because i really didn't know there was a canned soup version, nor did i know that it was the expected variety for a, um, mormon funeral.  it can take a lifetime to learn all the rules!