Mr. Handsome turned 36 on Friday.

Doesn’t he look thrilled about it?

Oh wait. He’s falling asleep now. The excitement must be too much for him.

He hates having his picture taken. I begged him to hold still for these shots and so what did he do? He made a series of annoying faces! I had to threaten to clobber him. Then I called him some bad names. And then he closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep. The nerve of him! At least then he was still.

Look at those massive hands of his.

Worker hands, I call them. Rough, calloused, and capable, there’s nothing soft about them. I’ve always claimed they were my favorite thing about him, appearance-wise.

Oh, looky. Now he’s gone and put his hood up.

What does this—his dislike of being photographed—say about him? That he’s shy? Embarrassed? Insecure? Evasive? Aloof? Impatient? Or maybe he’s distrustful of cameras, believing that they somehow allow the photographer to see his inner soul. Which I can see just fine, no camera necessary. I thought he already knew that.

Despite his apparent imperturbable, cool, and diffident demeanor, Mr. Handsome is gifted in The Art of Agitated Running Commentary (TAARC). Here is just a small sampling of what that means. (The background is that the Baby Nickel flamboyantly and generously took a purple marker to our brown carpet.)

Mr. Handsome, upon discovering the latest artwork: “WHAT?! [Sharp intake of breath.] What happened to the rug? [Huffy-mad expulsion of air from lungs.] I have kids and they mess everything up! [Exasperated sigh, and calmer.] You know, I go into people’s houses and they have clean painted walls and no holes in their furniture. [Defeated sigh of resignation.] Someday when we’re eighty years old and smell like mothballs, we’ll have that, honey.”

Only forty-four more years to go. You’re almost halfway there, sweetie pie.

About One Year Ago: Apple Pie.

After my chard spell this spring when I ate it till it was coming out my ears, I pretty much went cold turkey on the stuff. I totally ignored it for the months of July, August, and September and let it do its own thing out there in the garden, which entailed growing small, fresh leaves in the stalk centers while the large outside leaves turned brown and developed holes. It’s not very exciting, the life of chard.

I don’t know what happened last week, but all of a sudden it hit me: I needed to eat chard, lots and lots of chard. I had it for supper one night, a big ol’ pile of it stirred around in a kettle with a bit of butter and some tempero and then topped with grated Gruyère. Food for the gods, that’s what it was; it made my heart sing. I had the same thing again for lunch the next day, but for supper I got creative and put it into a soup with fresh ginger.

I wasn’t actually planning on making that soup, at least not right then. I had my heart set on a big pot of lentil sausage soup, but when I added the package of bulk sausage to the kettle of chopped onions and garlic, I discovered the meat was bad, so sad. After chucking the pot’s contents and taking a couple minutes to adjust to the idea of supper without lentil sausage soup, I recalled the green soup recipe I had read about on Heidi’s blog. I had already bought the ingredients for it when I went to town earlier that week, so it would be only a simple matter of thawing the chicken broth, chopping the veggies, and simmering the soup. Simple enough, I figured.

I could not have been more thrilled with the results. The greens were tender-soft, the ginger gave the soup a sweet bite, the soft chunks of sweet potato added color and heft, and the broth whispered soothing, calming words to the low-grade cold I had been battling. I hoarded the leftovers, not wanting to share a drop with anyone else, which was a relief on their part, I might add, seeing as no one else in the house cared for the soup. Even so, I still felt possessive.

Green Soup with Ginger
Adapted from 101 Cookbooks

Heidi said that pureeing the soup was an option, so I tried it with a small portion. Mr. Handsome and the kids liked it better that way, but I much preferred it in its un-blended form, the veggies floating free, the textures and colors all distinguishable and, in my opinion, the better to be savored. However, if you don’t care for the texture of cooked greens, then I suggest you puree it. But taste it before you blend it up—you may be surprised.

Replace the chicken broth with vegetable for a vegetarian soup.

1 large onion, minced fine
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large bunch of chard, chopped (leaves washed and the bigger stalks removed)
8 ounces spinach, fresh or frozen, roughly chopped
3 tablespoons of minced fresh ginger
4 cups chicken broth
2 medium-sized sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed (fairly small)
1 teaspoon salt
black pepper
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

Caramelize the onion in the olive oil—this will take about thirty minutes.

While the onion is caramelizing, put the broth, greens, ginger, potato chunks, and salt in a soup pot, bring it to a boil and then reduce the heat. Allow the soup to simmer, covered, for about 30 minutes, until the vegetables are quite tender. If desired, thin the soup with some water. Add the caramelized onion, and black pepper and, if needed, more salt (I used another half teaspoon). Stir in the lemon juice and serve.

About One Year Ago: A little story involving both cornbread and money.

Have you heard the news? Gourmet magazine is shutting down.

Even though I’ve never subscribed to the magazine and have opted instead to snatch the issues off the library stacks and photocopy the recipes that appeal to me, I’m sad. There is something special about a once-a-month magazine, each new issue a scrumptious present for every food-loving subscriber (or borrower) with its seasonal recipes and stories. And while I can find lots of that information on the web, there is something uniquely satisfying about taking a thick, sleek magazine up to bed with me, flipping through all the glossy pages to the end of the magazine to finish off an article or find that caramel corn recipe, and, when tired of reading and ready to turn off the light, allowing the magazine to flutter-smack its way to the floor where it will stay till I scoop it up in the dusky morning light before tip-toeing down the stairs to make my cup of coffee. I’ll miss that.

While I don’t go for all the magazine’s recipes, it certainly has opened my eyes to the wide variety of flavor combinations and has given me quite a few delicious recipes (here’s one, and another, and another, and still another).

The magazine has given me some duds as well, the most recent one being the apple pie with cheddar crust that I tried last week. I’ve never been a fan of cheddar cheese with apple pie, though I love apples and popcorn and cheese for a Sunday night supper, so I decided to give the recipe a shot—maybe slipping the sharp white cheddar into the crust would be just the thing that would sway me, turning me into a classy apple-pie-and-cheese-eater. Alas, the pie was good, but it resembled more of a baked apple in a cheese crust type of thing—it wasn’t pie, sweet and spicy, how we think of it. The kids didn’t really like it, and I forgot about it so it molded. The chickens appreciated my efforts, though.

A couple months ago I tried another of Gourmet‘s gourmet pie recipes, the peach caramel pie. I didn’t like that one either. There was too much crust and the flavors were ho-hum. I much, much preferred my peach tart. Gourmet wasn’t doing too good a job on their pies, as far as I was concerned.

But then, in the same issue as the apple cheese pie, there was a recipe for pear butterscotch pie. Figuring that one pie out of three had better turn out okay, I decided to try it. And guess what? My efforts finally paid off! Simple, sweet, fruity, gently spiced, buttery, not-to-juicy and not-to-dry, the pie was all around delightful.

Whatever am I going to do without Gourmet? I don’t know. My future library trips don’t seem quite so thrilling. Ah me, and oh well. I do know that whenever I make this pie, or any of the other yummy recipes I have gleaned from its glossy pages, I will think fondly of the mother of all food magazines and of the few years that I got to savor it.

(I do have quite a few photocopied recipes that I still haven’t tried. That’s something, no?)

Pear Butterscotch Pie
Adapted from Gourmet magazine, the September 2009 issue

3 pounds pears, peeled, cored, and each pear cut into six wedges
½ cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon butter, cut into little bits
1 beaten egg mixed with 1 tablespoon warm water
white sugar for sprinkling
1 recipe of rich butter pastry, divided into two disks and chilled
accompaniment: vanilla ice cream

Place a baking stone on the bottom rack of your oven and turn the oven to 375 degrees.

In a small bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar and spices and add to the sliced pears. Sprinkle the vanilla and lemon juice over top. Gently toss to coat the fruit. Let the fruit macerate for 15 minutes or so while you roll out the pastry.

Fit the bottom pastry into a 9-inch pie plate, allowing the extra dough to hang over the edge. Pile the pears in the pie shell. Dot the pears with the tablespoon of butter.

Roll out the second disk of pastry and position it over the fruit. Remove excess pastry (too much crust and you’ll overwhelm the fruit; too little and the crust will burn before the pie finishes baking) and crimp the edges together. Cut several air vents into the top crust, brush the top crust (including the crimped edges) with the egg mixture, and sprinkle liberally with sugar.

Bake the pie for 30-45 minutes, checking every fifteen minutes or so, and placing some foil around the edges of the pie if the crust is darkening too quickly. When the pie crust is golden brown and the juices are bubbling, remove from the oven and cool to room temperature.

Best eaten, the same day it is baked, with vanilla ice cream.

About one year ago: Sweet Rolls.