Buy Me Some Peanuts and Crackerjack ... and Definitely a Hot Dog

Last night, with a light breeze lifting the warm summer air and the smell of dust and leather in the air, Chef Matt and I sat behind home plate at the new Target Field, taking in one of the greatest pleasures of summer: an outdoor baseball game.

I love baseball, partly for its history, partly for its beautiful simplicity, partly for the utter glee that sweeps across a stadium when a home team ball sails over the centerfield fence.

Mostly, I love how baseball appeals to all of our senses. If you're a baseball fan, the wonder of the experience lies in the crack of the bat, the smell of the grass, the feel of a glove that has been broken in just right, the sight of a deep outfield diving catch, and of course, the taste of baseball fare that has been a part of the sport since the great Babe Ruth became a legend.

Whether sitting on coarse wooden bleachers or almost-cushy stadium chairs, I never feel quite settled in to the game until I have a hot dog in hand, a stripe of ketchup on one side and mustard on the other.

There is something particularly wonderful about baseball hot dogs; when I bite into a fat juicy dog, I feel transported back to a time when all stadiums were open-air and Hank Aaron was home-running into history. I will always choose a hot dog over any of the dozens of new options at ballparks; a Cuban sandwich just does not exude "baseball" in the same way.

The other thing I cannot leave the ballpark without is a chocolate malt, served with the flat wooden spoon that threatens tiny slivers with every bite. The first game I can remember attending was the summer of 1984, Cubs vs. Expos at the incomparable Wrigley Field. The Cubs won, and I ate a chocolate malt. It was a fine moment for a little girl, to stare in awe at the wall of ivy and hand-operated scoreboard while digging in her own personal malt, that perplexing but perfect combination of chocolate and malt -- not quite ice cream, but better.

The delightful thing about traditional baseball food is that the basics have remained largely unchanged for decades, much as the game itself is remarkably the same as it was in the era of heroes. True, there are now bright lights for night games, and beer is eight dollars a glass, but if I want peanuts and crackerjack, those foods immortalized in "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," I can get them.

The Twins lost last night, but I left the ballpark as giddy as always, excited by the bats, the grass, the gloves, the impossible plays made to look effortless, and by the stadium fare that gives me a thrill now as much as it did as a five-year-old girl. And that is the magic of baseball.

When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Mayonnaise

Yesterday, parenthood and I were not on good terms. A screaming baby amplifies any stressful situation, but when you add in two older kids flapping at each other in the back of a shopping cart, and walking in circles looking for help in an otherwise silent store while people stare at you, shaking their heads in irritation, it is enough to push a mommy to the edge.

The moment that pushed me over the edge, however, was when I was struggling to just get the hell out of the store. A kindly old lady asked me about my howling baby, and I smiled faintly and explained that he had just had some shots, and she said, with very sweet condescension, "Well, you should have just gone straight home, then."

Piling my hot, sticky, hungry, cranky kids in the car, while the old lady's scolding rolled around in my head, I could feel that parental hysteria starting to take over. For me, the only cure for such hysteria is a distraction. Since Chef Matt was at work, running around the block or reading a book in silence were out.

Instead, I made mayonnaise.

I did not set out to make mayonnaise, actually. I passed a little farmer's market after the store debacle and bought a bag of fresh peaches for a pie. The idea of rolling and pounding dough sounded like a perfect release, as did tossing my post-partum diet out the window ... again.

At home, I consulted Mastering the Art of French Cooking, to see if Julia Child had any other delicious uses for peaches, and I came across a recipe for a rice and beet salad. Conveniently enough, I had beets that needed roasting and rice on the docket for dinner, so I put the pie momentarily on hold. The salad recipe called for one and a half cups of mayonnaise, but somehow I think that Julia Child did not intend for me to use Miracle Whip. So I flipped to the beginning of the book, and made some mayonnaise.

If you have ever made mayonnaise, you will know that it is a race against time and the stamina of your whisking hand. A failure to continually whip tiny trickles of oil into egg yolks results in a broken, sad little sauce. A successful mixing of said ingredients, achieved by five minutes of uninterrupted whisking, results in a creamy, slightly lemony sauce that might even be too fine for a potato salad.

So I whisked for five minutes, while my toddler relieved our dining room cabinet of its contents and our preschooler pleaded, with increasing volume, to watch Dora the Explorer and our baby drifted in and out of fussy sleep. And when my mayonnaise was just like Julia said it should be, I felt instantly better.

The rest of the night, I whipped around the kitchen like the whisk itself. I finished the rice and beet salad, which sounded rather unappetizing the whole time I was assembling it, and in the end was delightful; I should always trust Julia. Then I made a peach pie with a lattice-top crust and a French silk pie with Oreo crumbles.

Everyone has their own form of "do" therapy, whether it is gardening or exercising or socializing, and honestly, cooking is not always my first choice. But I find that the wonderful formula of measure+mix+cook=tangible, edible product is sometimes the best way to be distracted and rediscover my center. I can think hard and fast about the task at hand, focus my attention, and emerge from the kitchen with balance reinstated and patience unearthed.

Not to mention that we also end up with pies and fantastic mayonnaise in the house, which would probably impress that old lady quite a bit more than my parenting skills.

And in Far Second Place, the "Other Woman"

I was discussing potential topics for future blogs with Chef Matt, and he, always ready with helpful ideas, suggested that I blog about how handsome he is. While I was grateful for the advice, I thought perhaps an entire entry gushing about the extraordinary good looks of my husband might make people want to gag just a little bit.

I felt a little bad about laughing at his suggestion, although it was, by far, not the most ridiculous idea he's ever had. So I thought it was only fair that I concede and share, not my syrupy admiration for his fine looks, but my admiration for his ability to be a good husband, despite the "other woman" in our life: the kitchen.

Restaurant life is, actually, much like an illicit affair, but one that is conducted quite out in the open. Matt is gone for long hours, sometimes home later than expected. He reads about food at every chance, texts and calls his co-workers about dishes and schedules and frustrations, checks restaurant menus online, and talks restaurant life all day long.

And he is not alone. This business is notorious for swallowing up its devotees, and very often, they love it. So many chefs are sadists who live for the thrill of the beat-down of a Saturday night rush, the challenge of unexpected disasters, and the conquering of irate eaters. When the smoke clears and the chaos is over, they lean against their flattops and pause for a breath, euphoric and slightly drugged from adrenaline. It is a high, for certain.

This can make for very difficult relationships. Chefs often top the list for highest divorce rate, and truthfully, I can see why. Waiting at home can be a lonely life. But the ones who have the business in their blood are attached like sinews to bone, allowing elusive perfection of their craft to stand between them and their loved ones.

Except for my chef. Even though he does see his line cooks more than he sees me, I know that the "other woman" doesn't stand a chance. Matt makes time out of no time and never leaves any doubt as to what is really the driving force of his days. His heart, though it beats just a bit faster when in the same room as some sumptuous cut of meat, is always at home with me.

Other wives might roll their eyes a bit if their husband ever declared, as mine does: "I love you more than osso bucco." But for me, knowing how much my chef loves osso bucco and all the other quirks and wonders of the business, that compliment is proof, beyond doubt, that he loves me quite a lot and that the "other woman" will continue to sit, tapping her feet, waiting for him to call.

In a World Where Art Class is Cooking Class

No matter how much I might like to be, I am not an arts-and-crafts sort of person. Elbow macaroni is meant to be eaten, not glued to paper plates or strung in a necklace, and I do not think I am even capable of summoning the patience needed to make a placemat out of construction paper strips. The extent of our art projects does not generally go beyond a box of crayons and the occasional sticker.

At our house, we work in a different medium, one that I think is just as interesting as paints and glitter and slightly more functional. When I want to engage my preschooler in a creative activity that does not involve the possibility of marker drawings on my walls, we make a mess, and usually something edible, in the kitchen.

Our daughter is at the age where she loves to help but is not much help. She drags a dining room chair over to our center island and demands to pour and mix while I measure and chop. The majority of the flour does end up in the bowl when I pass over the measuring cup, but as we progress, the mechanics of making food always become less interesting to her than inserting a licked finger into the sugar and pressing little indentations into the butter.

The end results are sometimes better than others, but the journey there is always a success. Perhaps baking and cooking are not traditional "art forms," and perhaps when she gets to kindergarten she will be a bit perplexed by Elmer's glue. She will, however, have an early understanding of the lovely precision of baking -- instilled by a exacting mother -- and the way that a proper order and careful attention to measuring can result in a baked good with excellent texture. She will also understand the artistry of cooking -- demonstrated by an inventive father -- and how the blending of experimentation and knowledge can produce profound meals.

I never want my daughter, or my sons, to have memory of a time when they were not allowed to help in the kitchen. Even our toddler, who is currently one percent helpful and 99 percent destructive, stands at the island and munches on Cheerios while we work. They will be trained as artists from the beginning, but their tools will be spatulas and wooden spoons, and someday, paring knives and zesters.

My daughter will never present me with an elbow-macaroni necklace, and she will probably never see a watercolor paint until she gets to school. Instead, she will, with flour smudged on her pretty face and batter glommed in her hair, eat a chocolate chip cookie that was the product of her mildly dextrous mixing, baked while she traced designs in a pile of sugar spilled on the counter. To me, that is the best kind of artistry: the kind you cannot hang on the fridge.

Sometimes We Pretend to Be Fancy Eaters

The other night, Chef Matt and I uncorked a bottle of wine from our trip to Napa Valley, one that we had been eyeing ever since I was able to imbibe again: a tempranillo from a family owned Sonoma winery, Robledo. It was gorgeous -- robust, full of dark fruit, with aromas reminiscent of some ancient Spanish vineyard where the grape was born.

It would have been fitting to pair such a fine wine with an equally fine appetizer as we made dinner, maybe roasted poquillo peppers stuffed with goat cheese, or a dense foccacia dipped in 10-year balsamic vinegar. At our house, however, it has become the norm to pair elegance with inelegance, so we saw nothing strange about sipping a beautiful red wine while munching on plain ruffled potato chips.

Like the person who buys a 900-square-foot plain Jane house and installs a professional gourmet kitchen, we inject bits and pieces of excellent into our menu of otherwise ordinary in an attempt to pretend that most of our meals don't originate in the Campbell's Soup Cookbook.

Our sad, tiny pieces of generic sandwich bread do not taste quite so dull when transformed by fancy homemade jams or gourmet slabs of cheese. Our elbow macaroni and marinara bakes taste a little less like a college meal when mixed with bits of steak and topped with Panko bread crumbs.

Even when we create elaborate meals with high-end ingredients, there is always an element of our Poor Man's Pantry that I want to casually eliminate when I am describing the dish, or at least mumble it quietly out the corner of my mouth: slow-cooked, pulled-pork stroganoff with sauteed kale and sweet cippolini onions and ... shhhh ... cream of mushroom soup. Or, smoked salmon and scrambled egg fajitas with fresh dill sour cream and ... don't tell anyone ... Imitation American Cheese Food.

Such motley cooking habits remind me vividly of a scene in the movie "Sideways," when the main character sits in a fast-food restaurant, eating onion rings and drinking the rare, perfect bottle of wine that he has been saving for the absolute right special occasion.

I think the lesson is that every occasion is the right one for luxurious foods, no matter what you see fit to pair it with. Drinking a rich tempranillo with potato chips may not be classy or a practice endorsed by celebrity chefs, but the reality is that most of us do not have the available funds or particular palates to support singularly ostentatious eating all the time. Saving a bottle of champagne or an expensive prime rib for just the right moment is a lovely idea, but sometimes it is more enjoyable and memorable to create that moment out of thin air, even if it means you have to add a little Imitation Cheese Food to make it happen.

The Secret Food Life of Parents

When I was young, little made me feel more betrayed by my parents than the early-morning discovery of empty Dairy Queen cups in the garbage. The lingering residue of creamy soft serve and tiny bits of chocolate, still clinging to the skinny red spoons, launched an indignant fury: I was deceived, and by the people who love me most. 

Kids are not dumb. Although it might take them longer, they do eventually put two and two together. Two empty Dairy Queen cups + I did not receive any ice cream = my parents got Blizzards after I went to bed. 

And at least in my childhood world, there were few greater treats than a trip to Dairy Queen. To be sneakily sidestepped by my parents in their selfish quest for ice cream that they did not have to share with their beloved flesh and blood was simply the worst kind of low-down dirty trick. 

I remember very clearly finding evidence of late-night ice cream or popcorn or other treats and, lower lip extended, wondering why I was not included. My sister, either because she in more in tune with such sneakiness or because she had a better nose for the smell of microwave popcorn, was more apt to get out of bed and confront my parents in the midst of their treachery, while I slept on, unaware.

This is, of course, a treachery that Chef Matt and I now engage in on a regular basis, making me the most evil kind of hypocrite. How many times has my poor preschooler called down to me with some sort of sleep-stalling excuse and I have had to hastily swallow a mouthful of Oreo Blizzard to answer her?

Our kids are still a little too young to catch on, so we have a few more blessed years of the patient waiting for a bedtime all-clear before Matt ventures out for an evening treat that the little ones will never suspect. Someday our kids will discover the long red spoons in the garbage and accuse us of exclusion, but for now they are blissfully clueless. 

Now that I am seeing this undercover Dairy Queen quest from a parent's point of view, I absolutely see the logic of such deception. Nighttime ice cream for kids can only lead to unwanted sharing. Sometimes, I think, parents deserve a treat that they can enjoy without the experience descending into feeding time at the zoo. 

Selfish? Maybe. There is something vaguely naughty about after-dark ice cream, much like wine before noon, and after a day of temper tantrums and befouled clothing, it is only too fair for a parent to selfishly indulge. So much like our children may someday hide their cigarettes and speeding tickets from us, I am getting my trickery in now as we wait with bated breath for the silence at the top of the stairs before dashing out for a little secret, deceitful ice cream. 

A Summer Onslaught of Vegetables

I must confess: we are not that into organic food. That might seem strange for two people who love food like we do, but we eat corn-fed beef and non-organic tomatoes and regular old milk, and we are perfectly fine with that.

The idea of organic food, however, is a fine one that we finally bought into. This winter, my colleagues asked if Chef Matt and I wanted to buy into a CSA (Community Sponsored Agriculture) share. We had resisted in years past, partly because of the upfront cost and partly because we were unsure if we would be able to consume all the vegetables that came in a weekly box.

But this year, in the pit of despair that is February, I perused the list of vegetables and fruit and could suddenly smell sweet summer breezes and feel watermelon juice running down my chin. I called Matt and pitched the idea to him, and he agreed before I could finish rattling off the many varieties of leafy vegetables. It was very much a "you had me at rainbow chard" moment.

Last week, our first box arrived. I was a little stumped: how does one cook a turnip? how does one eat that much lettuce? what, precisely, is a pea vine? But, motivated by the upfront cost and the sad sight of food in the garbage, I resolved to use it all. When in doubt, Matt said, saute in butter and garlic.

First, I made a layered summer salad with romaine, green leaf lettuce, scallions, pea vine and basil. The bouquet of greens tasted like fresh air, even through a veil of mayonnaise, cheese and bacon. Tonight, I whipped together a homemade sweet and sour dressing, and tossed it with baby bok choy, scallions, French breakfast radishes (sauteed in butter and garlic), and parmesan cheese. The greens had that bright, heady taste of something that has been recently plucked from the earth, still warm from the sunshine.

Undoubtedly, the flavor and freshness of something organic and recently harvested is heavenly. Our non-organic way of eating is not likely to change, but the CSA will inject a little new life into our summer menus, with its heirloom tomatoes, varieties of peppers and eggplant, and lovely exotic foods like kohlrabi and rutabaga.

The weekly boxes, unfortunately, do not include any sort of macaroni and cheese, so it is unlikely that our children will eat any of it, no matter how luscious. I suppose that means more rainbow chard for us ... whatever that is.