• About Judith A. Ross

Shifting Gears

Shifting Gears

Tag Archives: food

A Recipe for Love from the Men in My Life

12 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by judithar321 in adult children, marriage, meditation

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Daily Plate of Crazy, food, love, Morocco, Pizza, Shakshuka, Valentine's Day

Shakshuka photo

Shakshuka

It has taken me half my life to associate food with love. For many years, especially when I was a young, single, working woman, food was fuel consumed with a large dash of guilt, and I closely monitored my intake.

But recently, I’ve realized that morsels of edible love have been coming my way for a long time—most of them prepared by the men in my life.

It started with my dad, who would cut my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches into four precise pieces. “Triangles or squares?” he would ask.

My relationship with my father was a rocky one and I often found him difficult to be around. But whenever I envision those tender triangles of grape jelly and creamy peanut butter layered between two slices of Pepperidge Farm white bread, the negative feelings fade away, and I feel cossetted and adored.

Once I became the mother of two young boys, the “food as love” concept was delivered more forcefully through a traditional Mother’s Day breakfast in bed.  One year, “fortune” muffins were on the menu. A soggy slip of paper baked inside one of them announced in a penciled scrawl that I was “The Best Mother in the World.”

These days, that message of love, folded into a heaping cup of caring, is delivered with more subtlety via elaborate meals cooked by those same boys, now fully launched adults. Shakshuka—a spicy mélange of vegetables, feta cheese, and eggs—and crusty homemade pizza are among their specialties.

They absorbed this technique from my husband, who has also delivered a steady stream of edible love notes throughout our long marriage. There have been more pots of chicken soup to cure a cold than I can count, and for much of our time together — especially after the boys arrived — he has taken on what I once viewed as the daily drudgery of putting a meal on the table.

At first, cooking was a novelty. A rich minestrone soup or homemade brownies were a way to impress boyfriends, and, I naively thought, get them to take me seriously. But once I’d hooked my man via quiche and a curried mushroom soup, the novelty wore off when we became ensconced in family life. It was no longer fun to deal with food through the nausea of pregnancy and later through the film of fatigue and time pressure that came with combining work and kids.

But lately, there’s been a shift. I no longer get defensive if I don’t have an answer when asked, “What’s for dinner?” (What kind of wife/mother was I that I didn’t have a week of menus at the ready?) Now that we both work from home and it’s usually just the two of us, I look forward to the discussion — and even manage to plan a few meals in advance.

Homemade pizza and shakshuka are on regular rotation. They are my favorite meals, because when my husband and I are kneading dough, or chopping herbs and feta, it’s as though our sons are here too. I’m surrounded by my men, cossetted and adored all over again.

The Recipes (Shakshuka and New York Pizza)

The first time I ate shakshuka was in my older son’s Brooklyn apartment. He moved around his compact kitchen with ease, chopping and tossing ingredients into the pan like a pro. Watching him do all the work was incredibly relaxing. It was the best breakfast I’d had in a long time. Later, he sent me the recipe, which came from the New York Times.

Younger son is a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco, where all baking takes place over a gas flame inside a blue box. Oven temperature is gauged by eye. Pizza is not readily available there, and he often makes it when other Peace Corps volunteers arrive at his door. Recently, he sent us this recipe for New York Style pizza. The dough is best, he says, when it’s left to rise in the refrigerator for three days.

The Pizza King, photo courtesy of Kitty O'Riordan

The Pizza King, photo courtesy of Kitty O’Riordan

This post is part of a series on Food and Love over at Daily Plate of Crazy.

Travel Lessons

20 Monday May 2013

Posted by judithar321 in adult children, environment, friendship, health, inspiration, travel

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

baking, cooking, culture, desert, food, Morocco

ruins with sunspots

The last few mornings I have reluctantly pulled myself from a dreamy, pleasant sleep. It’s not so much the dreams that I want to hold onto, but the peaceful, satisfied feelings they leave behind.

a sign

Maybe they are my way of remembering Morocco. For almost two weeks I was blissfully free of my usual, and (fortunately) mostly mundane worries. Day followed day, each unique and memorable in its own way, allowing me to use my brain and senses in ways I rarely do at home.

0-view from above

I started keeping lists of words in the local Berber dialect, along with lists of names. When people told me their name, they often told me what it meant. Karim, the name given my son, for example, means generous.

vocab list

Two different Moroccan cooks showed me that you can make delicious food with just a bowl, one simple knife, the right ingredients, and two strong hands. No measuring cups or fancy appliances required.

couscous

Couscous

daily bread

Daily bread 

By the way, in case you are wondering, I have several photos and videos of these cooks in action, but I can’t share them here. That’s another thing I learned. Putting your image online is considered shameful for Moroccan women — it is interpreted as showing yourself in a way that is not appropriate.

Moroccans grow a lot of their own food and they even know how to farm in the desert.

Young date palms

Young date palms

Desert wheat

Desert wheat

hand-wheat close up

As we were driving over the Atlas Mountains at the beginning of our long journey home, Paul turned to me, and said, “Wherever we decide to go next, I want to have a reason for going there. There has to be something specific we want to see or do.”

I knew exactly what he meant. Travel will never be the same again. We will no longer be content to just visit a country’s museums, stroll along its streets, or loiter in its cafes without some other goal in mind. Whether our objective is to learn a new language, take a cooking class, or understand a specific event, we won’t be satisfied to simply scratch the surface.

If Morocco taught us anything, it’s that finding common ground with people from other lands and cultures, no matter how insurmountable the language barrier may seem, is worth the effort. We will carry Morocco’s people in our hearts always, just as we will forever be grateful to the one who brought us there.

Karime

Mid-day at the Oasis*

29 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by judithar321 in adult children, environment, friendship, health, inspiration, travel

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

family, food, gardens, Morocco, oasis

1-featurephoto

My son’s home in Morocco is right on the edge of an oasis. You only have to walk out his front door and turn right to step into an amazing landscape.

Karsten walks through the oasis on a daily basis. On this day, we were going to a friend’s house for lunch. We walked across a streambed, alongside an irrigation trough, and underneath a grapevine. Paul was a bit under the weather, so I had my son to myself that afternoon. After a year of missing him, it was treasured time.

2-acrossoasis 3-Let's go! 4-follow_irrigation 5-undergrapevine

We passed groves of date palms and olive trees.

6-oasis trees

7-olivegrove 8-olive

Like every other meal we were invited to in Morocco, this one included extended family. Our host’s parents, sisters, and nephews all joined us. A shy, but impish 4-year-old giggled as he rolled around on the floor with his djellaba-clad grandfather. After a delicious lunch of cous cous, we went outside and into the family’s walled garden.

wall

The small figs that go into savory dishes, like cous cous, grow here. (Click on the photos for a closer look.)

ekuran

As do dates. In the U.S., dates come separated in a plastic tub. In Morocco, you buy them in boxes and they are still attached to their stems. Until this garden tour, I had no idea what they looked like on the tree. These dates will be ready to pick in a few months.

dates

There were almond and pomegranate trees. The red flowers are pomegranate blossoms.

almondtree

pomegranates

At the end of the day, our host and his father walked us back across the oasis and home.

*I couldn’t resist.

Essaouira Blues

21 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by judithar321 in adult children, environment, friendship, travel

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Essaouira, food, Morocco

doorsonside4

It has been a little more than a year since we dropped our son, “Karim,” off at Boston’s Logan Airport where he began his journey to Morocco as a Peace Corps volunteer. While modern technology has kept us well-connected, we yearned to see him in person and experience a slice of his life there.

Our reunion took place in Marrakech, a crazy, bustling place. We walked to the old medina through unmarked streets that were filled with scooters and exhaust-spewing cars — this is a developing country after all. Between the sights, sounds, and smells, and the joy of being with our son again, it was a lot to take in. The camera stayed in Paul’s knapsack.

The next morning, we climbed into our rental car and headed to Essaouira, a beach town. Much less intense than Marrakech, it was a good place to start our journey. Karim has friends there, who are also in the Peace Corps.

The name of the riad where we stayed, Les Matins Bleus, reflected the town’s color scheme.

LesMatinsBleus1 lesMatinsBleus2

blue door arch3

shutters-towel5

bluewyellow5a

Tourists’ jackets also reflected the decor.bluecoats

The blue carried to the waterfront, where Paul took over camera duty and captured the fishing boats.

boats0

1boat 2boat

At the docks you can buy fish directly from the fishermen. Then, back in the medina, stop at the market for vegetables, before taking these purchases to a restaurant where they grill your food to perfection and serve it to you with bread – which also functions as your knife, fork, and spoon.

Eating in Morocco is a communal event: not a lot of cutlery or plates required.

fish1 fish2 fish3

The next leg of our trip took us back towards Marrakech and over the Atlas Mountains to my son’s site in Tinghir, where the real adventure began.treegoats1

goats0

Goats grazing in a tree on the road to Essaouira.

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