I’m the gloomy addressee of yet another flimsy postcard announcing the regretful demise of a magazine. This time it’s Cookie, and it makes for the third one this year to go bye-bye (following my beloved Domino at the first of the year and, later, Gourmet).

Why am I so bummed? Notwithstanding that this points again to the general sad state of print media, Cookie was a bright resource in this age of modern parenting, full of pretty things and smart writing. Reading it felt like indulgence, not like I was boning up on parenting know-how.

I’ll probably miss the cooking articles most, the way editors emphasized real cooking for real kids who eat real food. I’ve clipped as many well-written recipes out of Cookie as I have any food magazine.

My favorite column was the one that sketched out dinners like a road map (called “So You Have…”). It would start with a photo of something at the center — avocados, wilted greens, eggs, whatever you might have handy — and point the way to three possible meal outcomes. It was dinner-at-a-glance, positioned to make any busy mom feel like quality homemade was possible in a snap. Cookie’s food coverage — indeed, the bulk of it’s articles — were practical and intelligent with the aesthetics to match.

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It’s been cold, right? Thick-sock-wearing cold. Huddle-under-a-blanket-with-a-book cold. Even put-that-fireplace-to-use cold.

And I like it.

Know what else I like? Polenta. Specifically, when it’s cold enough for cooking polenta over a hot stove, steam in your face and those thick socks on your feet. I like all that stirring and watching the great golden bubbles rise to the top and audibly pop.

To my left, Quinn is populating a pretend “California” with a bin’s worth of Polly Pockets (the requisite accessories and outfits included). To my right, Emmie is puffing and piping clarinet scales.

Me? I’m stirring to the stories in Nicole Krauss’ “A History of Love”. No, it’s not the same as reading huddled under a blanket, but soon I’ll be tucking into this polenta, which might be better than than the blanket part.

Make it:

Grab a medium-sized saucepan. Stir 1 tablespoon kosher salt and 1 2/3 cups coarse polenta into 7 cups cold water (cold water means fewer lumps). Add a couple small bay leaves and bring it all to a boil, then add a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil. Reduce heat to medium low and stir — continuously so the polenta won’t stick — for about 30 to 40 minutes, until the polenta is thick and pulls away from the sides of the pan (and watch where you put your book — don’t let it get too close to the burner, especially if it’s from the library). Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. If, like me, you feel so inclined, add a handful or three of freshly grated Parmesan.

I was in a friend’s kitchen the other day, where she was teaching a class on soups. We gushed and mmmm-ed our way through bowls of butternut squash and red pepper soup, and we all voiced the same confession: We reviled squash as kids.

I can’t say it’s much of a revelation that every woman in the room hated squash as a child. Consider it’s usual back-then presentation: bland bowls of hot and stringy orange glop, hardly more appealing than my baby sister’s jar of Gerber. What 8-year-old wants to eat baby food?

Squash isn’t the only thing we collectively recoiled from as girls that we’ve since come to like. We didn’t like boys so much, then, either.

But, thankfully, just as boys grew more likable, so did squash. There are countless inspirations out there for using the seemingly countless varieties: velvety butternut soups; halved acorns glazed with maple and stuffed with grains; mini-pumpkin fondues and salads of simple greens topped with roasted cubes of your favorite, fill-in-the-blank squash.

High on my list of squash preparations is this one. It’s bound to reform any hold-out, anyone with lingering squash hatred that squash is indeed sweet.

Yesterday I had one of those looking-at-myself-from-the-outside moments, when I was wearing my apron and baking loaves of whole grain bread and nice voices were rising from the spot on the floor where my kids were playing together (nicely!) and I had a soothing piano concerto on in the background and my husband was off scrounging for eggs from our co-op chickens and I thought:

How did I come to this life?

How did the high-school me, who never would have covered up a cute shirt with an apron, come to this?

How did the college me, who ate cold cereal and Twizzlers for dinner and was hopelessly devoted to both Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and Lenny Kravitz, come to this?

How did the early-married me, who in her corporate-ladder haste attempted omelets with Eggbeaters that had been in the fridge for ages, come to this?

I have no idea how these things happen, these growing-up things that bring us to care about where our bread comes from, that broaden our tastes in everything from eggs to music, but I admit I think it’s nice. And I’ve saved all the pieces of old me that I care to have around — the me that likes cute shirts, for example. And Lenny, though not my first choice anymore, remains kind of hot.

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I’m a little out of practice. My laptop died in early October — just like that: Poof! — and in the wake of its demise I lost a good year’s worth of my computer-code-encrypted self.

I went through a kind of amnesia. Who am I? And what am I supposed to do now that I can’t tote my little computer companion (computanion, anyone?) around all my waking hours? I’ve had to resort to this dusty old desktop, which groans its way out of hibernation each morning and is rather mean-spirited toward any kind uploading, downloading, or plugins. That has meant that blogging, and especially blogging with pictures, is a little less feasible, i.e., not as fun.

But I’ve found that in lieu of tap-tap-tapping away superfluously on a keyboard half the day, there are many other really wonderful things to do with my time. For instance, I’ve discovered that my girls are pretty dang cute. And I’ve been reading books, those bound materials in which words are printed on paper pages.

And I quote: “Paper (noun): a substance made from wood pulp, rags, straw, or other fibrous material, usually in thin sheets, used to bear writing or printing, for wrapping things, etc.”

One bit of paper I’m going to miss along with many of you is Gourmet magazine. When I heard all the way back in early October that Conde Nast would be ceasing publication, I immediately regretted not picking up, for a mere 25 cents an issue, all the back issues I’d seen at the library recently. My little library, and likely yours too, sells back issues of all kinds of magazines, and when I’d walked past the stack of Gourmets, I’d eyed them with curiosity but not exactly longing.

The next time I stopped at the library, I immediately went to the 25 cent racks, but by that time the rack was selling issues of Bon Appetit. I did a little digging and turned up a single leftover Gourmet, from January 1986. The cover features a stack of straw gondolier hats in Venice, and a quick flip through the issue reveals tiny type and an awful lot of black and white.

The photography was less than stellar back then, and each dish was so tightly and symmetrically arranged, posed in spotless silver serving ware, graced with garnishes that themselves were like little works of art. It makes me glad that my Gourmet-reading years were the Ruth Reichl ones, the ones when the teams of photographers and food stylists and editors realized how much more appetizing a pudding could seem when a spoon had already lifted a bite from it, when tableside crumbs from crusty bread were left to be photographed (indeed, positioned to be in the picture) and dribbles of soy sauce could be seen on parchment.

I know the magazine celebrated high living, but its last several years were hardly out of reach. The travel and some of the ingredients, maybe. But it nevertheless gave me a simple awareness of the world of food that is out there, and that, combined with issues full of accessible recipes, elevated my cooking.

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[Recipe: Whole-Wheat English Muffin Bread]

I know: It’s not pretty. But pretty was not the point. Thankfully, my goals had more to do with substance than with outside appearance.

I just wanted to bake a loaf of bread. I wanted aroma. I wanted a medium-crisp crust that gave way to a springy and delicate crumb. I wanted something appropriate for a mid-afternoon pick-me-up, something that could hold its own equally well with a light slick of chunky peanut butter or a skosh of honey.

Summing it up, then: I was after taste, texture, warmth — all those qualities, yes, but not beauty.

And that’s a good thing, especially since this is often the type of outcome we can expect when we delegate: the results might not exactly meet our unremitting standards. (Take, for example, when you give your kid the job of cleaning the bathroom or making their own bed.)

I delegated the making of this loaf to my bread maker. It’s an appliance that hasn’t seen a lot of action lately, because I’ve been trying to do the bread-baking thing with my own two hands. But today I was in the mood for this specific recipe, and besides, there was definitely something liberating about dumping all the ingredients into the metal bowl and letting something else do the work for once — and then having it taste really, really good.

Even if the result wasn’t much to look at.

Whole-Wheat English Muffin Bread for the Bread Maker

adapted from KingArthurFlour.com

1 teaspoon vinegar
1/2 cup water
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons butter or canola oil
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 1/2 teaspoons granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour (I used a combination of white & red whole wheat)
2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast
cornmeal (optional)

Program your machine for basic white bread, light crust. Midway through the second kneading cycle, check the dough; it should be soft, smooth and slightly sticky. Adjust the dough’s consistency with additional flour or water, if necessary. For a true English muffin effect, remove the dough after either the final kneading or before the final rise and roll it in cornmeal. Place the dough back in the machine to rise and bake.

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Like the rest of America, I’ve reigned in my shopping habit — at least when it comes to clothes (and I use the word “clothes” in the broad sense, to include boots and bags and scarves and cosmetics and the occasional have-to-have-it throw pillow discovered on errand for any of the above).

So while my closet has never been lonelier, my pantry has become quite the diverse crowd: I’ve redirected my shopping energy from boutiques to purveyors of food, particularly ethnic. As far as my bank account and far-off retirement is concerned, this is a good thing; rather than dropping $60 on a t-shirt with a jeweled neckline, I’m dropping $2.69 on enough cardamom for a year of Bollywood film fests.

What’s more, I’ve found that browsing the aisles of Lee-Lee (my local Asian market that also has aisles dedicated to Brazilian, Indian and even Scandinavian specialties), list in hand but open to suggestion, still gives me that shopper’s satisfaction: the heart-thrill of the hunt, the sheer joy that accompanies discovery. For example, today I learned that in other countries, bulgur is sold in grades, from fine (#1, for, say tabbouleh) to coarse (#4, for pilafs, etc.).

But, just as I must when clothes shopping, I’m forced to make hard choices: jumbo green favas or smaller brown ones? I can’t just buy it all; there must be limits. Yes, we need to eat in order to survive, but an entire collection of Vietnamese condiments is to nourishment what a certain supple berry-colored leather hobo is to being clothed.

And so I chose, against my curiosity, not to buy the Long Life Buns* in the freezer section. My sister, via text message, talked me out of it. “Want some Long Life Buns?” I wrote. “They’re hot pink!”

“What is a Long Life Bun?” she shot back. “And what had to die for it to be hot pink?”

*Turns out Long Life Buns, also known as Birthday or Peach Buns, are steamed buns served on someone’s birthday and often peach-shaped, and are supposed to bestow long life upon the eater.

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[Recipe: Oven-dried Tomatoes]

It came, finally. How long did I wait? About one year — one impatience- and anticipation-fraught year. By means I will forever be oblivious to, Amazon.com secured for me and shipped to me my very own copy of Ottolenghi: The Cookbook.

And how do I love it? Well, we might as well count the ways.

1. It holds the directions to a juicy, sweet-sour rendition of oven-dried tomatoes (my new favorite way to use up the last of the summer crop; see recipe below).

2. I now know what nigella seeds are and, by definition, what Labneh is, although I haven’t found any locally yet (to wit: it’s an Arab cheese made by straining yogurt so it loses most of its liquid).

3. It’s one cookbook that’s going to keep me guessing, chock-full as it is of curious ingredients (like the aforementioned, but also Camargue red rice, green tahini, purple-sprouted broccoli).

4. It also prominently features a few of my favorite things, like couscous and feta and pistachios, sweet potato and coriander and rocket (that’s arugula, to us statesiders).

5. It’s got delightful uses for the pomegranate molasses sitting in my fridge that I never know what to do with and the rosewater I bought but never opened. Here I come pistachio and rosewater meringues!

6. It takes me (mentally, culinarily, at least) to far-off places, and stokes that fire we sometimes call wanderlust to actually go to far-off places. Sometimes I feel that if it weren’t for cooking, I’d never get anywhere.

Oven-dried Tomatoes, the Ottolenghi way

(from Ottolenghi: The Cookbook)

These are good enough to just drop into your mouth after they cool. They’re even more marvelous in grain salads (like couscous) or on sandwiches.

16 large, ripe plum tomatoes, cut into halves lengthwise

2 tbsp muscovado sugar

2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Arrange tomato halves on a baking tray, skin-side down and sprinkle with the sugar, olive oil, vinegar and several grinds of salt and pepper. Place in the oven and bake for 2 hours or until tomatoes have lost most of their moisture.

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[Recipe: Smoked Salmon & Chevre Strata]

Oh, to be a mannequin. They’re the ones outfitted in smart layers right now, in cashmere-blend cardis and scarves that float just so, in tight turtlenecks beneath tailored dresses.

Meanwhile I’m still trundling out the long, hot days in desert classics: shorts and tissue-thin tees and flip flops. It’s too hot to even wear sandals, to have more than that slim arch of plastic across the top of the foot.

If I weren’t so interested in survival, I’d go to autumn-fashion town. But since I’d hate to sweat to death just because I prematurely donned my riding boots, I’ve decided to cook in layers.

Yes, we did finally get around to food, didn’t we? A fascination with fashion can only get you so far. Eventually you get hungry.

I’m always looking for new ways to use the bounty of eggs available to me, and here’s a new one: strata. A strata — layers of egg custard, cheese, filling and cubes of crusty bread baked in the oven — is easily among the most elegant of savory egg dishes. It’s got the flexibility of an omelet, in terms of filling choices, but it’s got far less pomp and an attractive rusticity. It may look a little thrown together, but in truth it’s a constructed and considered dish — perhaps a little like your favorite fall outfit.

Smoked Salmon & Chevre Strata

adapted from Gale Gand’s recipe in House Beautiful

5 cups of cubed rustic bread, crust on
1 C grated mozzarella
10 large eggs
1 quart 2 percent or whole milk
1 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp kosher salt
8 oz smoked salmon
4 oz crumbled chevre
1 tbsp chopped tarragon

Butter or spray a 9 by 13-inch baking dish. Spread out the bread cubes in the dish and sprinkle with cheese. In a large bowl, whisk together eggs, milk, mustard and salt. Pour egg mixture over the bread and cheese. Layer smoked salmon on top, then dot with chevre and sprinkle tarragon on top. Gently swirl the fillings with a spatula into the rest of the mixture. Cover and chill for at least 4 hours and up to 24.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake strata for 1 hour, until the mixture has puffed a bit, is golden brown and set (shake the pan gently to check for shimmying uncooked custard, Gand says). Tent the dish with foil and continue to cook for a few minutes if the strata isn’t set and is browning too quickly. Let cool for 5 minutes, then cut into squares and serve.

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