Rainy spring days with a chill in the air means it’s a perfect day for a tea party. The girls are enjoying hibiscus tea with thin, crispy, sesame cookies right now, a favorite rainy day activity.

We’re back at my parents’ house this weekend and the morning light always looks like this. Since we live in the city, we take advantage of these weekend breaks where we can pretend that we live in the suburbs for a few days and do all our big box shopping (target, costco, etc) to stock up on stuff. The kids ran around the yard today while my dad prepared the soil to do his yearly planting for his vegetable garden. He’s an amazing gardener and grows plentiful cucumbers, tomatoes, green and red leaf lettuces, peppers, tender Japanese eggplants, cantaloupe melons, and perilla leaves. He even has a persimmon tree that yielded 70 plump persimmons last fall with the sweetest, most delicate flavor I have yet to taste in a store-bought persimmon. We eat from his garden all summer long.

My dad is retired now (mom still works like crazy), but manages a commercial property that they own and volunteers at various organizations around town. He still, however, does a little business on the side that he was able to retain when he closed his store down. You see, he owned a wig shop for 25 years on 58th street between Lex and Park before he closed his store 6 years ago when the rents got too crazy. It’s an odd business to be in, but apparently quite popular in the early 70s when he set up shop. As you can imagine, being a seller of wigs and eyelashes provided a modest living, but he had a few celebrity customers that once in awhile provided a big boon. One of the celebrities was Diana Ross. She used to drop 10 grand at a time and when it happened every couple of years, he’d come home excited and exclaimed “Diana Ross called today!”. We’d then celebrate with a nice dinner out or a special treat. Well, guess who called today and had my dad bounding up the stairs in a good mood?

I think it’s funny and charming that she still places her orders from him, 6 years after he closed down shop. Nice to support the small business, literally, and if anyone knew that some of the wigs and lashes worn by Ms. Ross was purchased from a retired, (not yet) elderly Korean man out in Long Island, they’d probably get a chuckle too.

On this week’s trip to the grocery store I noticed something I hadn’t seen before – pork riblets. They were on sale so I bought them out of curiosity. It turns out that they are the meaty end cuts of regular pork ribs, some quite small, but others rather large. I decided to make barbecued ribs so I made an easy marinade using some tamarind paste as the main flavor and let them marinate overnight. The next day they got a slow roast in the oven, followed by a quick sear in my grill pan, brushing with extra marinade until they got nice and crisp. I was amazed at how tender they were, and despite how much the riblets shrank during roasting time, they still were plenty meaty, even the small ones. I can’t wait to try it at a real outdoor barbecue this summer!

Tamarind Barbecue Pork Ribs

3 pounds pork ribs (or riblets)
1/4 cup tamarind paste
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, pressed
1 Tablespoon salt
1 Tablespoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin

Mix everything together in a large bowl. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Transfer the ribs and marinade to a baking dish. Cover with foil and bake for 2 hours. Transfer the ribs to a plate, and pour any leftover marinade into a small bowl. It will be separated, so whisk it briefly until emulsified.
Heat up your grill, or grill pan. Oil it lightly, then put on the ribs. Cook on medium heat for a few minutes, then brush with marinade and turn over. Repeat until all then marinade is finished. Serve immediately.

It’s past 1 am and this is how I’m feeling after dropping nearly 1k for packaging and supplies tonight. Those of you who have gone through the experience of start up costs will probably laugh at me, but I’m feeling numb from how quickly the money was spent: business cards (on the cheap, no less), labels (9 different kinds), boxes, ribbon, tissue paper, packing material…I admit I’m feeling a little pit in my stomach, wondering what the hell we’re doing when we need to be financially careful. I mean 1k is like 1 month of COBRA. Did anyone see the headline article on CNN about the woman who went from steady paycheck to food bank in 2 months? Argh….

Ok, the Golden Girls are on late night TV now. Time to shut everything down and go to sleep.

…and all of a sudden, we have a brownie. We weren’t ever thinking of making brownies as part of the business, but I’ve been wanting Mark to try an espresso brownie with a homemade dulce de leche filling, and lo and behold, it’s awesome! Mark makes the best birthday cakes and one of my favorite flavors that he made for Mia’s 3rd last year was a chocolate cake with dulce de leche filling and buttercream frosting. This brownie captures that flavor and is dense, rich and packs a caffeine punch (not to mention sugar), but the brownie base isn’t overly sweet so it doesn’t overwhelm the dulce de leche. We may have to incorporate the dulce de leche into the brownie, rather than as a filling once we start to think of packaging and shelf life, but for now, we’re pretty happy with the results.

Ever feel like you’re in the movie Groundhog’s Day? I think anyone with kids might feel this way more often than they’d like because kids love eating, reading, playing and talking about the same things over and over again. I get that most kids thrive on consistency and routine, but some days just feel like a repeat of the last. This morning the kids wanted pancakes again for the third time in a week. When you’ve got a really picky infant and a less picky preschooler (who used to eat EVERYTHING) who is a little more picky these days, well…what can you do? At least we threw in some strawberries.

It’s funny how quickly you adapt to change once you’re faced with a sudden disruption in routine. The house is messier than it’s been in quite awhile (well, for us – I admit to being a total neat freak) and I’ve been spending way too much time in front of this screen. I’m the kind of person who needs to make the bed each and every morning, but lately, there are days when I just don’t bother. When I had the kids all to myself 3 days a week I was much more energized to keep the house in order and this was my built in free time, away from work and away from the computer. I was motivated to schedule playdates, socialize and organize activities, but now that Mark is home, I find myself falling into a routine of turning this machine on first thing and launching into work straight away, often without a break till dinnertime. Freelance is like that. It can be nonstop for weeks or months if you’re lucky, then suddenly, work dries up and there’s nothing.

We managed to keep afloat the lean times because there was one of us with a steady paycheck with health insurance and a job that could be left at the workplace. Now that we have started this business, I worry about how it will impact the kids since life and work is now getting even more blurred and we’re both distracted and thinking about business. When I didn’t have adequate childcare I stressed over needing to respond to client emails and phone calls during the day when I didn’t have anyone to cover me. Now that I have coverage 7 days a week, I worry that I’m ignoring my kids altogether because I have so many deadlines and I’ve been needing to work every day. I made the decision to stay freelance for the last 5 years so that I could have more time to spend with the kids, but it’s not easy to achieve the perfect work/life balance if you’re a working parent of any kind no matter what your work situation is. Our life seems so much more hectic now that we’re both home, which comes as a bit of a surprise, and it’s overwhelming to think that it will get even more so once we do launch this thing out in the world. Is anyone else in the same situation as we are? With both parents self-employed?

It is not often that I actually make a dessert at home, which some may find hard to believe, but as a pastry chef I always chose to leave my work at work. Now, seeing how I spend most of my time at home, I do get the urge once in a while. I couldn’t resist making this sorbet the other night. We had a few delicious mangoes that were quickly getting soft so I decided to puree them, mix them with sugar and yogurt, and run it through my ice cream maker. It tastes pretty much like a mango lassi, so much so that I was wishing that I had some Kewra essence, the traditional flavoring for the drink. It was great even without it, as the mangoes were as nice as I have seen for a while – not quite as good as Hawaiian mangoes, but good enough to make me want to fly there to get some.

Mango Yogurt Sorbet

2 cups pureed mango, from 2 large mangoes
2 cups whole milk yogurt
1-1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Whisk everything together until smooth. Process in your ice cream maker. Freeze for several hours before serving.

People always ask how we manage to keep within our food budget. One thing that I do is to take just a few minutes each week and actually plan every meal. Normally that means one night is pasta, one is fish, one is chicken and so on. I find it much easier to avoid buying unnecessary items when I have a detailed shopping list. The trick is to think of tasty variations within each category so we aren’t eating the same thing every week.

Tonight just happened to be chicken night so I decided to make my favorite yogurt curry chicken. It’s basically a simple tandoori chicken recipe baked in a home oven, but a bit of planning is key, as the chicken really needs to marinate for at least 8 hours. Perhaps more important is a really good curry powder (I like to make my own). Curry powder is not the traditional tandoori chicken seasoning, but I use it anyway because it’s both easy and delicious. A quality curry powder, however, makes all the difference. The yogurt and curry combine to form a delicious soft crust for the chicken, a welcome change from whatever boring chicken I might have made last week. Serve this dish with basmati rice and any Indian style vegetable dish.

Yogurt Curry Chicken

2 cups whole milk yogurt
2 Tablespoons curry powder
1 Tablespoon salt
1 chicken, cut into pieces

Whisk the yogurt, curry powder and salt together in a large bowl. Add the chicken and toss to coat. Refrigerate for at least 8 hours, preferably overnight.

Preheat the oven to 375. Remove the chicken from the marinade and place on a foil-lined baking sheet. Brush any remaining marinade over the chicken so it is coated with a thin layer. Bake until golden brown and completely cooked, 45-55 minutes. Serve immediately.

I had a hard time falling asleep a couple of nights ago after a long day of cooking and watching the kids. My thoughts eventually drifted to marshmallows and how I’ve not been very happy with my first test batches. The texture turned a bit chewy after a few days and the flavors seemed to fade. Then, out of nowhere, I had an idea that might address these problems and I was actually tempted to get out of bed and try a batch (but no, the sound of the mixer at midnight would surely wake the kids!). I did make a batch first thing when I got up that morning and I am pretty thrilled with the results so far – light and fluffy in texture and subtle, smooth flavors, even after being stored for a week (and counting). I’m not going to divulge my new technique as some things need to be kept secrets, but I will say that I used typical marshmallow ingredients and combined them in a different way to produce the improved product. This particular batch is caramel, which is something special in itself – think of an untoasted marshmallow infused with a toasted marshmallow flavor.