We braved the heavy rains and buses with the girls today to make a trip to One Girl Cookies over on Dean Street. It’s a charming, inviting storefront and Dawn and Dave, the owners, were kind enough to email us and invite us over for a chat. Not a bad way to spend a rainy afternoon. With a tour of the kitchen, some treats from their wonderful line of 2-bite cookies, and plenty of advice and encouragement, we left their cozy shop dreaming of the possibility of owning our own space one day. Although I am sure it complicates business operations (mainly costs and overhead), all we could see was how easier life would be if we had access to a kitchen whenever we needed to bake without having to watch the clock and haul supplies and food back and forth to our hourly rented commercial kitchen. But one step at a time…and we’ll have to pay our dues. They gently warned what I’ve been thinking a lot about these days: sustaining this momentum that we seem to be riding on recently. While there have been a flurry of activity lately, the challenge is to keep it going long term.

Lots to chew on, but one of the nicest things to have come out of starting this business is the myriad of people we have met. We used to go out a lot before we had kids and socialized with other foodies in the restaurant biz, getting comped meals at 3 star restaurants and the like, but when Mark started working days, that sort of thing stopped since chefs tend to socialize late at night after the restaurants close down. We haven’t felt a part of the food scene in a long time so it’s been really nice to get re-acquainted, but from a totally different perspective and even on a more local, Brooklyn level - lots of small artisan bakers, chocolatiers, and specialty food producers. Everyone has their own story and path to how they got there, and everyone has been so supportive of each other. Makes you want to keep on going.

I’m a huge fan of really fresh ricotta cheese. One of my favorite desserts to make back in my restaurant days was a small portion of ricotta from Dancing Ewe Farm surrounded by a pool of fresh cherries in syrup. The cheese needed absolutely nothing added to it - it was sweet, milky perfection, the epitome of fresh. So I was naturally quite intrigued when I heard that Salvatore Ricotta was going to be sold at the Brooklyn Flea. I actually had a minute last Sunday to make it to their table and bought a container. My Mother bought one of their fresh cannoli, but I can’t report on that - it lasted all of about 2 seconds. When I opened the cheese at home I found it was not your usual ricotta. It is much smoother and creamier, almost like a lighter version of mascarpone, but still with the characteristic fresh ricotta flavor. I could have eaten it all right out of the container, but decided to use it to top off a salad to go with tonight’s roasted salmon. I mixed in just a bit of salt, pepper and olive oil, and made a nice quenelle for the top (3 months removed from restaurant work and I can still make a perfect quenelle!). The salad itself was mixed greens, endive and haricot vert, with a quick lemon-mustard vinaigrette. It was pretty good, but I must say that the ricotta was the star. It would have been fine all by itself, but the flavor of the small amount of olive oil that I added shone through brightly. Fresh ricotta seems to make a great vehicle for other flavors. I can’t wait to try it again with a bit of white truffle oil, mmmmmmmm…….

Now that things have settled down to a more manageable pace, I’ve realized that I’m feeling a little down these days. I think it’s the isolation of work and cookies. It’s literally all I’ve been doing for the past few months and while I’ve been in touch with hundreds of people through email, I’ve had very little social interaction. The thing about being self-employed, through multiple fronts, is that the work doesn’t end. I already know this since I’m quite used to the freelance lifestyle, but now it’s compounded by the fact that Mark and I share an additional business together and baking is just a small part of the business. There isn’t much free time to decompress or hang out with friends. I’m also realizing that we just haven’t had a day of fun in a long time. Not alone, not as a couple and not as a family. We’re thinking of taking most of saturday off…the weather may not cooperate…any ideas?

For whatever reason I didn’t get to take a walk yesterday so I made it a point to take a break and pick Mia up from school and spend a few hours in the park with the 2 girls and our friends. We had intentions of a nice, relaxing picnic on the grass, but we never got there as we took a pit stop at the playground. Just as well. Picnics are not really relaxing anymore ever since Mia decided it was ok to sprint across the meadow and keep running, despite my calling after her. And with the 2 of them? I suppose it’s just easier to be in a fenced-in playground. It’s interesting to watch the 2 of them play in the sandbox - they are such different personalities. Mia dives in and pretty much buries herself with handfuls of sand, while Claudine likes to stand outside the rim of the sandbox (and not actually go in) and carefully shovel sand into a bucket. Ah, love them both.

We had a rare treat of take out last night and Lani, my mother-in-law, had the excellent idea of making poached eggs with leftover saag paneer this morning. Soooo good. It’s been quite a while since we’ve had Indian food. There is a fairly decent place for take out in the neighborhood, but I know it doesn’t hold up for true Indian food enthusiasts. When I lived in the East Village during my art school years, dinner on 6th street was a staple - again, I do realize that Indian food on “Indian row” doesn’t quite cut it, but back in those days, it was cheap and so good, especially if you were a vegetarian. A few years later when I met Mark in Olympia and the years we lived in Portland, he used to cook Indian all the time - to the point where I got sick of it. He doesn’t cook Indian that much anymore and it had been quite some time since we’ve had a taste of the spices and flavors, so it was a real treat from the usual dinners he’s been making lately of pastas and roasts. Sometimes you just need a break away from something to appreciate it again.

You would have never guessed from Sunday or today’s weather that sandwiched in between those 2 days was a cold, bitter and rainy oddball of a day. Despite the bad weather, Mia was a trooper and trudged her way up the hill to school and back, a rather longish walk if you’re walking with a 4 year old. The sun, however, is back, dazzling and bright and it’s supposed to creep back up 20 degrees warmer than the previous day.

Things have calmed down a little bit this week, which is a nice relief, though there was still a flurry of packing and trips to the post office yesterday. I need to turn my focus back on work and I admit feeling a moment of panic yesterday when projects and orders seemed to pile up, but today I feel calmer (for no reason, really. Nothing has changed). There have been many moments lately when Mark and I have looked at each other and said “this is crazy!” and “what are we doing?”, but we need to take in the calmer moments as they come, despite how short they may last. Mark’s back in the kitchen today filling some special orders. I’m going to do some work and then take a walk in the afternoon. There’s supposedly a new second hand clothing shop in the neighborhood where a kid’s clothing store used to be. Maybe I’ll check it out.

Sometimes I find it hard to believe that I was a vegetarian for eight full years. I started eating meat many years ago after a trip to Paris where I somehow found it hard to find a good meal - I guess I just didn’t know where to look. Anyway, after the trip I decided to begin making exceptions to my diet when the circumstances warranted it, and now here I am, years later, cooking meat-based dinners for my family almost every day. Today’s dinner, however, is something relatively new for me - a roasted beef. As a former vegetarian I am sometimes intimidated by the various cuts of beef, scared that I will pick the wrong one and end up with some chewy, inedible slab of meat. Normally I’ll choose a pork roast which is not so complicated, but today I felt adventurous and chose a rump roast. It had a nice layer of fat on the top, which I don’t remember seeing too much of, and it turned out to be a good choice. Nice and tender, rare in the middle - it was definitely a nice change and perhaps even better sliced for sandwiches tomorrow.

Roasted Rump Roast with Garlic (serves 6 with leftovers)

1 beef rump roast, 3-4 pounds
6 medium cloves of garlic
1 large onion
Salt and Pepper

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Take a small knife and make six deep holes in the roast at well-spaced intervals. Stuff a whole garlic clove into each hole as far as it will go. If there is a layer of fat on the top of your roast, score it diagonally both ways with a sharp knife so the fat will render more evenly. Slice the onion into 1/2-inch slice and lay them in the bottom of your roasting pan. Season the roast with salt and pepper and place it in the pan. Put it in the oven and cook it 30-35 minutes per pound - my three pound roast was medium after 90 minutes. Let it rest for 10 minutes before slicing.

Yesterday was perhaps the best mother’s day in recent years. It was nice to be at the Flea with the sun shining (also gave all the food vendors something to think about as the sun could be potentially tricky for all the chocolate, cupcakes, cookies and marshmallows). At about 3:30 pm, my parents, my mother in law and the girls arrived along with the return of sunshine which had gone into hiding for a few chilly hours. Claudine had a ball running around the school yard of the Flea with her newly acquired skill of “running” (which is still a stiff, fast walk - but she is fast). As expected when there are grandparents around, Mia managed to successfully coax her way into 2 ice cream cones and a large cookie, giving her the most intense sugar rush and crash that she’s probably ever had in her life. Later that evening, back at the house, we had a huge sushi platter dinner, a nice clean palette cleanser from all that sugar. I hope everyone had a lovely mother’s day as well.