My Green Thumb

My garden is a thing of, well, chaos and insanity. I like to plant and grow stuff, but I don't much care for reading about all the little things you're supposed to obsess over, like amount of sunlight, soil quality, deadheading, and generally coddling the little tender shoots. I like to plant the stuff and occasionally water it, and yank out the weeds when I remember to. I have a small kitchen garden with herbs and a few kid-friendly vegetables like cucumbers, string beans, and peas.

So far this year, the tarragon I planted last year is coming back in force, way better than it was at any time last summer, and it's only spring. I love tarragon, but I'm having trouble thinking of ways to use this bounty. So far my ideas are:

• Stuff it into a whole fish and grill
• Put it in chicken salad
• Put it in salad dressings
• Add it to Mark Bittman's vinegar chicken recipe
• Mash it up with shallots and olive oil and make a sort of pesto to spread on chicken and fish

I once had a cocktail (at this fancy cocktail bar in Vancouver that made a big fuss about using fresh fruits and herbs in all their drinks) that used fresh basil. I wonder if there is a way to incorporate fresh tarragon into a drink.

So if anyone has any brilliant ideas for what to do with a lot of tarragon, post them!

Soft Pretzels: Food, Craft, or Both?

Mr. Gateau is constantly working late or going on business trips, leaving me with the two petit Gateaux to care for, entertain, and amuse. Thus, finding ways to combine nourishment with fun is a win-win for this exhausted mother (the other win-win is the website I found containing scans of all the local take-out menus). It occurred to me that it would be fun and tasty to make soft pretzels. And I was right.

Pretzel dough is great because, although yeasted, you don't let it rise until you've shaped them, so there is a lot of instant gratification, if you want it, along with getting to squish it with your hands and/or punch its lights out, which is a nice perq, if, for example, you spent your entire week at work saving your clients from themselves. If you don't want to shape them right away, you can stick the dough in the fridge overnight. Shaping them is like working with springy clay, and the more you squash it and squeeze it, the more integrated and workable it becomes, which is excellent with a five year old. Also, you get to use a pastry brush to paint them with egg wash, and sprinkling happens. We just used coarse salt, but you can get all fancy with parmesan or sesame seeds or cinnamon sugar if you want to.

I had only a cup of white flour left in the house, so it was 1/3 white and 2/3 whole wheat, which turned out fine, and I feel less diet-guilty for cramming them into my mouth at regular intervals since they came out of the oven last night. Which means we'll have to make more soon. Real soon.

The Things I Do for Cookiestuffs

Ok, folks, it's time to close down the blog, because I have found the most disgusting candy ever in the history of mankind. It's called Mallow Fries, and that's right, it's marshmallows (or, rather, "marshmallows") in the shape of french fries in a McDonald's-looking sort of container. See in that photo where it says "Great Tasting Marshamallow"? It's a venomous lie from start to finish. The "marshmallow" is like nothing you've encountered on earth, unless perhaps you're a chemist working for the UPS Store trying to develop new types of packing peanuts -- it's sort of sub-Circus Peanuts-grade stuff that reminded me of that chemical foam you use to fill in spaces when you're installing pipes. Ew.

Plus! It comes with candy ketchup! Yes, that's right -- candy ketchup. Sour candy ketchup. I mean, WTF? Who puts sour anything on french fries? Anyway, it's basically sour Karo syrup with red flavoring. I really don't even like to think about it.

I ate this stuff. For you people. It was even embarrassing to buy -- I'm pretty sure the Walgreen's girl was sort of averting her eyes and biting the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing her ass off at me as she rang it up. I hope you feel duly guilty.

Cocktails: The Entire Point of Warm Weather

I've been hitting the cocktail shaker again, now that it's reliably warm and I'm not pregnant. Here are some of the hits so far:

• Sunny Blue Sky Cocktail (vodka, Hpnotiq, pineapple juice)
• Blood Orange Cosmopolitan (vodka, Cointreau, Rose's Lime Juice, blood orange nectar)
• Mojito (with fresh garden mint)
• Pretty Dirty Martini (vodka martini with Kalamata olive juice and olives, touch of vermouth)
• Tropical White Wine Sangria (fruity dry white wine, assorted frozen fruit, such as pineapple, mango, peaches, berries, touch of fruit juice, touch of soda, good glug of brandy)
• Pink Grapefruit Margarita

Sensible Advice

When Mark Bittman is on the money, he is on the money, and today he devotes his Minimalist column in the New York Times to excellent advice about how to equip a kitchen quite adequately for $200, $300 if you want to add some nice-to-haves. I myself always fall for the good looking/prestigious temptations, and yet I reach for my old Farberware over my All-Clad more often than not, and get tons of use out of the sheet pans we got at Costco 9 years ago.

Contrary to Bittman's view, a bread machine is nearly indispensable in my house, because Mr. Gateau has perfected his whole wheat bread recipe and hasn't missed a week in at least five years. I know Bittman insists you can just as easily learn to make your own bread by hand, but with our non-freelance-writer schedules, there is a big difference between dumping some ingredients in and letting a machine do the rest, and going through kneadings, punching-downs, and baking.

And once in a while I do pick up nifty equipment recommendations from watching TV chefs. After watching Nigella Lawson quickly mince herbs with a mezzaluna, I got one, and find it incredibly useful for herbs, garlic, and other items I may want in a fine mince (such as shallots for Mark Bittman's awesome vinegar chicken recipe).

Top tips from today's column: get a good pair of tongs (I love tongs!) and don't bother buying more than one pot lid, as it's a hassle to hunt down the correct size one and you can just use the same one or a plate or whatever anyway.

Not just for hippies anymore

Listen, I know yogurt isn't the most exciting subject on earth. In fact, I think most yogurt is highly overrated. The increased availability of Greek-style yogurt (especially the Total with a little compartment of honey) and whole milk varieties are good developments, but most yogurt is either insipid or overloaded with food coloring and other junk. If you're feeding your kids blue yogurt with candy sprinkles because you think it's "healthy," you should really consider switching over to something sweet but honest, such as Kozy Shack pudding, which kicks all kinds of ass (especially the rice pudding and chocolate varieties).

However, there is one yogurt that I seriously crave, and apparently so does my entire town, because almost every time I go to the one store in town that sells it, they are fully stocked in all flavors except for the one I want. I speak, of course, of Emmi Swiss Premium Lowfat Yogurt in the amazing Pink Grapefruit variety.

It's lowfat but really creamy, has a great grapefruit flavor with little flecks of fruit in it, and comes in a pretty pink container. I'm sure the other flavors are good, but I don't even care to try them. Seriously, if you can find this stuff, you should buy as much of it as you can find on the shelf. And then send it to me.

Dogs on the Grill

It was another beautiful weeked, and that called for grilling. On Saturday, I put together some really tasty chicken kebabs -- the chicken marinated in lots of lemon juice, olive oil, oregano, rosemary, and basil, and I used small whole tomatoes, zucchini, red onion, yellow pepper, and mushrooms to make the kebabs. It's a one-dish meal, and also gets us to eat more vegetables than certain ones of us otherwise might.

Yesterday we just did up some beef hot dogs with toasted buns, but I also threw some hot Italian sausage on, and it was great. I wasn't sure what to dress it with, so I had it plain, but I think some sauteed onions would have been nice, or even maybe an aioli.

I also concocted a ridiculous girlie cocktail out of vodka, a bit of Hpnotiq blue liqueur, and a tiny splash of pineapple juice, which came out a beautiful sky blue color and was tasty.