California Dreamin

It's that time of year when I wonder how on Earth I've managed to live in the Midwest all these years. To not see the sun for, like, 39 days straight would certainly crank up anyone's seasonal affective disorder. But the infernal succession of ice, sleet, snow, slush, melt, snow, ice, sleet is a certain counterindication for the little Vitamin D capsules I add to my battery of supplements this time of year. The groundhog used to provide some solace, but the last few years spring is delayed well past his groggy worst-case scenario.

Our attempts to eat within a tristate "local" radius yields little more than squash and beets this time of year, of which we have eaten plenty. Oh to be in the land of year round citrus and greens growing in your own backyard! So while the organic broccoli at Trader Joe's is Californian and looking wan, it's among the many other not-squash-or-beets that must round out my diet. Perhaps someday I'll do some canning and try to really live it old-school, but until then my only truly local and seasonal food options are venison and racoon scampering out of the woods and into the nearest 4 lane highway. That reminds me, let's hear it for dried beans!

An additional food challenge is the 21 month old who lives with us. This baby who up until recently so gloriously counted among her favorite foods tabouli, goat cheese, and salmon will, to take today for example, only eat crackers, bread, toast (apparently its own category of food), O cereal, and waffles (plain, don't even try to sneak a fruit in it or on top of it). She does get on kicks for a certain food and these foods are seldom local or in season, but like heck if I don't go to the ends of the earth to find organic seedless grapes this time of year if it's The Thing she's decided to permit past her lips. The most recent kick had been for raspberries but without warning the kick ended and I was left with two containers which I have been enjoying in the mornings with yogurt, my summertime breakfast cutting a little swath of comfort through this bleak season.

Other food friends that have helped to beat the blahs lately are--

-Humboldt Fog goat cheese paired with an earthy red, a chance to enjoy some new-to-me varietals out of South America, much more booming than my usual Loire preferences, but with this cheese they're perfect

-Homemade waffles smeared with melted chocolate

-J's tomato-tarragon soup

-This Amish cottage cheese from Iowa-- the best cottage cheese I've ever tasted! It was twice as good the week we had some very ripe, sweet pears.

-An-Mok stone ground wheat crackers. Since crackers are V's go-to food I've been exploring all kinds and this brand is really tasty.

-Lima bean-fennel soup

While we're in exile a few months longer from any foodie destination whatsoever, it remains homecooking every day, all the time. This, coupled with the gluten-minimal, dairy-now-somewhat-permissible, almost entirely vegetarian stipulations have brought my game up a notch, I must say. A few memorable meals include fried plantains with mojo and garlicy black beans with avocado tacos; polenta (the first time I've ever made it) with a ragout of zucchini, spinach, garlic and shallots, tomato-basil sauce and pecorino romano cheese; slow roasted salmon fillets on a bed of fresh tarragon.

It'll be June before our CSA share kicks in, and hopefully it will be slightly sooner than that that we will be returning to the city and to the land of restaurants I actually want to eat in and well-supplied, non-corporate grocery stores.

Until then, I'm taking my Vit D with a hearty helping of flax and keeping my picky eater enthusiastic about helping in the kitchen by letting her "chop vegetables" with her own cutting board and knife... a butter knife.