World, meet my latest infatuation. I am hopelessly smitten, and you should be, too.

In case the pictures aren’t enough to rope you in, I made a list spelling out all the reasons to love.

1. No kneading.
2. The recipe uses part whole wheat
3. The dough can sit at-the-ready in the fridge for several days.
4. It tastes awesome—chewy and tender.
5. It’s flexible—top it with everything, or nothing
6. It’s bread without turning on the oven!
7. (Which means I can now make bread even if the power goes out!!!)

And that pretty much sums it up.

The other night, I made pesto flatbread by topping the finished breads with pesto (from our first big basil picking!), fresh Parmesan, and some mozzarella and then slipping them back on the hot-but-turned-off grill for a couple minutes.

The cheeses didn’t melt all the way, so next time I might slip the breads onto a piece of foil and then put them in the lidded, turned-on-low grill for a couple minutes.

Grilled Flatbread
Adapted from the July 2012 issue of Bon Appétit

3 cups warm water
2 ½ teaspoons yeast
4 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/4 cups whole wheat flour (I used pastry)
2 tablespoons kosher salt (I used Diamond Crystal)
½ cup sour cream

The dough:
Dissolve the yeast in the warm water. Stir in the flours and let rest for 20 minutes. Add the sour cream and salt and mix vigorously. It will be quite wet.

Let the dough rise at room temp for about an hour before covering well with a plastic shower cap and refrigerating.

Shaping and grilling:
Very important note: when shaping the dough, you need to do two things: flour it to death and move fast.

Fire up the grill—you want it to be about 400 degrees. (I really have no idea on this part. The directions say a “medium-hot fire,” so whatever.)

Snowball a baking tray with flour. Flour your hands. Flour your hands again. Scoop out a handful of the chilled dough, using a scissors or sharp knife to separate it from the rest of the dough. Plop the dough onto the tray, flour the dough well and press it into a flat mass, about 1/4 inch high. Repeat until you have all the flatbreads you need. Put the leftover dough back in the fridge.

Oil the grill.

Quickly, and with lots of extra flour so the dough doesn’t stick, scoop up the flatbreads (one at a time, of course) and lay them on the grill. Close the lid. After several minutes, the breads should be bubbly on top and, on the bottom, brown with flecks of black. Flip, and grill for another minute or two.

Allow the breads to cool for a couple minutes before eating.

Yield: 8-12 flatbreads, depending on the size.

This same time, years previous: red raspberry lemon bars, angst over my daughter’s reading, raspberry lemon buttermilk cake, angel bread

Monday morning I got an email from my editor saying that she needed
my column by two that afternoon because, due to the July 4th holiday,
they’d be running the Flavor section a day early. I spent the morning
furiously writing (my husband took the kids) and sent it off with seven
minutes to spare.

Also, I’m completely out from under The Play’s Cloud. I don’t miss it or think about it much anymore, so that feels good.

In other words, I’m all sorts of liberated this week.

But
back to the column. In it, I wrote about a book I read and how it’s
changed my perspective on eating. I didn’t make all my points in the
column, though. I couldn’t—I didn’t have enough time to hone my
thoughts. Plus, I had too many ideas for the allotted 600 words.

The main point (and you better go read the column
first if you’re to have any idea of what I’m talking about), one that I
think I’m just beginning to catch on to, is that we (North America?
Mennonites? Just my family?) eat for both pleasure and to fill ourselves up, yet food has a primarily utilitarian purpose.

Much of feeding my kids involves me saying, more or less, Just get it down.
They are to eat the peas because they’re green, the beans and rice
because they’re nutritious, the oatmeal to fill them up and give them
energy for the day. It tastes good, too, but to dwell too much on the
flavor seems snobby.

While the French eat for
fulfillment, too (obviously, they’re human), they also put high priority
on enjoyment and flavor. Dinner doesn’t get slapped on the table—it
gets portioned out, discussed, appreciated. Food is to be savored. The differences between the two approaches are small, yet profound.

I
was explaining these ideas to my mother and she said, “That’s a really
sophisticated perspective of food. Starving people can’t eat like that.”

“But we’re not starving,” I said.

That exchange, right there, perfectly sums up the tension: I
feel guilty about eating well. In fact, maybe I even eat like starving
people—quickly and too much—because I don’t know how to handle the
bounty.

The funny thing is, I’ve been taught it’s
fine—virtuous even—to spend hours upon hours growing, preserving, and
cooking my food. Yet, somehow, spending much time eating it is
sumptuous and excessive.

Of course, I’m not French and
I’ve never been to Paris (or even Europe), so all my information is
second hand and therefore probably skewed. But when I serve French-style
meals to my family, they are well-received, even with the “adult food” emphasis, so I do think I (as a pseudo French person)
am on to something.

We had a French-style lunch
yesterday. Just my younger son and older daughter were present, and
since my daughter was gone all last week and this was the first time she
had one of these meals, I asked my son to explain the rules to her.

“No fussing,” he said. “And you don’t have to eat everything.”

(Several times, he’s accidentally said “curses” for “courses,” as in, “What’s the next curse, Mama?”)

First course: Greek cucumber and tomato salad (with green olives instead of black)
Second
course: red beans over a mix of brown rice and quinoa (with toppings of
sour cream, cheese, and salsa), and some tortilla chips
Third course: apple slices and peanut butter
Fourth course: molasses cookies

It’s
all normal food, leftovers and such. But the genius lies in serving
only one thing at a time, with the veggies being first, and actively
discussing the flavors—why they are paired up together and so on.

With
meals like these, there’s a little more planning involved, but that’s
mostly because I’m not used to laying out meals in this manner. Also, I find
I’m thinking about vegetables and fruits more—they’re not simply a side,
they’re the star.

Last night’s supper:
First: a cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers salad
Second: grilled flatbread with pesto
Third: watermelon and cantaloupe
Fourth: good cheeses (a creamy buffalo and a smoked sheep) from NYC
And after the sun went down: ice cream cones

There
was a cake recipe in that book, so of course I made it. The author
claims it’s so simple that French kids make it all the time. It’s
low-maintenance, for sure, the only tools required are a whisk and one
bowl, but it took me three cakes just to get a feel for it.

The
first cake: I bought two six-ounce containers of yogurt and then, like
the recipe said, used the empty yogurt containers to measure the rest of
the ingredients. But I think that method led to inaccurate
measurements—the resulting cake was too dense and dry. However, it had
great potential, we all agreed.

The second cake: I
converted the measurements to standard cups and made the cake again.
Yummy, but the bottom of the cake had a single, thin layer of
denseness—not doughy and not un-done, just a little line of heaviness.

The
third cake: I turned to the web. There are tons of yogurt cakes out
there, mostly from bloggers who read the book and then made the cake (a
lá Yours Truly). I chose one that was simple and clean-cut. It had an
extra egg, less sugar, and some nutmeg, but was still heavy on the
bottom. We preferred the second cake.

So
then, rather than make a fourth cake, I decided that the little bit of
heaviness (and it really is hardly noticeable) is just how it’s supposed
to be. The cake itself is delicious: mildly sweet and noticeably tangy
from the yogurt and with a unique crumb—moist, dense, chewy, and springy.

French Yogurt Cake
Adapted from Bringing Up Bébé by Pamela Druckerman.

1 ½ cups plain yogurt, preferably full-fat
1 ½ cups sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 scant cup flavorless oil, such as canola
3 cups flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt

Whisk together the yogurt, sugar, eggs, oil, and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients and stir to combine.

Pour
the batter into a greased, 10-inch springform pan (or two round cake
pans) and bake at 375 degrees for 35-45 minutes or until the top is
cracked and an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

This
cake is great served plain, with a cup of coffee, or with whipped cream
and fresh berries. Also, I think it would be fabulous crumbled into a
bowl, topped with sugared strawberries and drowned in milk.

This same time, years previous: butchering chickens, in their words, sauteed Swiss chard with a fried egg

Last week, we split the fam up three ways: two kids to camp, two kids with my mom and dad (at our house), and me and my husband to New York City.

Almost immediately, our plans got foiled.

The plane that was to take us from our regional airport to our connecting flight in DC hit some birds on its way in, so we had to wait for an hour for the mechanic to come which meant that we missed our connecting flight and had to live in the airport for several hours.

But then the next day we went to Ellis Island and I read all about the immigrants who traveled for, oh, like weeks and weeks and weeks to get to where they were going and about the families who got detained for years, and I was all like, Ha! Three hours in an airport? That’s NOTHING! 

Perspective—it’s bloomin’ amaz-za-zing.

While in the city, we immersed ourselves in the Broadway show lottery culture, but after losing out twice, we gave up and bought tickets for The Phantom. Which was good and impressive and all (fire! swinging chandeliers! opera! disappearing acts! exotic costuming!), but—and this might sound nearly blasphemous—it made me realize how much I really really like The Blackfriars. (Though I still have a deep and abiding hankering to see Once. The two tickets that were left were over 200 bucks a pop—it just wasn’t happening).

I took my husband to Carmine’s … twice. The sheer quantity of food they served us nearly traumatized him. We ate our fill, brought home the leftovers, and fed a half dozen more people—and that was just from one order.

We walked over the Brooklyn Bridge, got lost, and then found what we were looking for: Grimaldi’s Pizza. We had to stand in line for half an hour, but it was totally worth it. Some of the best pizza evah.

In Times Square, I stared at the topless woman (with her nipples painted red) and the guitar-strumming man wearing only his whitey tighties. In Central Park, I stared at the man doing ballet-type stretching exercises and the woman with a napkin tucked into her shorts that read “Sex—Five Dollars.” In the subway, I stared at the giant rat snuffling over and under the tracks. (Okay, so I only “stared” at the rat. I “glanced discreetly” at everything else.) (Except the man in his undies—I do believe I stared at him.) (But everyone else was, too, so it was okay.)

Neither my husband or I wanted to sit in the grass in Central Park. It felt so dirty, like a million dogs had probably pooped on it (it mattered not one wit that their owners had probably immediately scooped up their droppings with a plastic bag afterwards). And then we laughed at ourselves for being such grass snobs. Chicken shit on our feet? No problem. City dog poo? Ew!

My husband thoroughly enjoyed his first (real) visit to NYC. I, too, enjoyed myself, but I was also a little surprised to feel myself getting bored with the place.

Wait! Before you throw up your hands and run away in disgust, let me ‘splain!

The first time I was in NYC, I was fully engaged in exploring, absorbing, observing, surviving. It was new and challenging, and the whole place kind of blew my mind. The second time I was at a conference. This last time, it was like the first time, but without the edge of newness.

What I realized was that there’s not much to do in the city (as a tourist, of course) besides taking it all in. (And to think that the city folks come to the country and cry, There’s nothing to DO here!) While in the city, I wasn’t creating or producing, just being and seeing, which can be a lot of fun and relaxing and all that, but after awhile it gets kind of dull.

The only time I got engaged enough to have an actual exchange was when I was making a purchase, and there sure isn’t much long-lasting fulfillment in consumerism. Oh yeah, and the other time I switched from taker to giver was when I offered to take a family’s picture for them. A little thing, no? But it made me feel totally different—much more alive.

Friday morning we showed up at Port Authority bus terminal to meet the kids we’d be chaperoning for the Fresh Air Fund.

Some parents stayed on the other side of the barrier up until the last minute, just to watch their kids. Some kids and mamas stayed locked in embraces for long stretches of time, just savoring being in each others presence. Watching all these little kids leaving their families, I teared up, repeatedly. The sadness, even when mixed up with eager anticipation, was physically painful. (Of course, there were many kids hopping around with pure, giddy excitement, too.)

The bus ride home was uneventful, except for the tractor trailer tire that blew out just as our bus was passing. It sounded like a bomb went off. I could feel the hole in my chest.

Note: we still need host families for this summer. There are lots of city kids anxiously waiting and hoping they’ll get to spend a few days in the country this summer! Next trip dates for our area are July 31-August 10.

This same time, years previous: berry almond baked oatmeal, cottage potatoes, fruit cobbler, orange julius