A Walker in the Suburbs

I’m sipping a cup of caffeinated tea as I write this post. I haven’t been doing this much lately. Sipping caffeinated tea, that is.

Some years ago, in an attempt to check the headaches that were plaguing me, I cut caffeine out of my diet. It seemed to help. Although I’ve never drunk coffee, I’ve imbibed in enough high-test tea to expand and contract those blood vessels plenty.

Switching to herbal or decaf teas calmed things down on the vasodilation/vasoconstriction front, so I’ve kept it that way for years. Then I discovered Trader Joe’s cha tea, a caffeinated product, full of spices and flavor. It made my daily cup of decaf taste like brown water. And so the slow slide began.

Or is it a slide? Maybe it’s a return to normalcy. When I gave up caffeine I worked all the time and slept poorly. Things are easier now. Maybe I can sneak in a chai or two. At least that’s what I’m hoping. And so far, so good.

(Detail of a Trader Joe’s chai tea box. No free tea was received in exchange for this review!)

I didn’t resolve to eat more fruit this new year. But the resolution is emerging anyway, doing an end run around me.

Apples, pears, bananas and clementines have always been a given. And peaches when they’re in season. But now I’m adding blueberries, grapes, kiwi, papaya, mango and strawberries. Fruit salads are more fun, so I’m making more of them.

I’ve always been a vegetable girl. Nothing against fruit, but I never craved it. Something has shifted, though, and I suddenly see the value of sweetening plain yogurt with berries. Or fashioning a salad of papaya and avocado. Or throwing a few blueberries in with the arugula. (Does anyone else hear an old-fashioned car horn when they say this word? A rooo ga lah.)

So along with the perennial “don’t worry so much” and “get more exercise” resolutions, there is another, one I didn’t ask for: Give fruit a chance.

They are unfairly maligned to be sure, these remnants of yesterday’s feasts. Put away by tired plate-clearers and dish-washers, they rest in every cranny of the refrigerator.

What will become of them? I know what will happen to mine. One of my favorite meals in the world is a turkey sandwich. I will be eating as many of those as I can the next few days.

Also in my fridge is an entire casserole dish of untouched stuffing. There were three of them yesterday, and this one was never put out.

As for the Brussel sprouts salad (loaded with apple, pomegranate seeds, dried cranberries and roasted almonds), that will be savored as long as possible.

The best part of leftovers is how easy they’ll make tonight’s dinner.

(No pie leftovers, of course.)

Yesterday, after I’d read as much of the newspaper as I could handle, and while listening to smooth jazz on my “Sunday station,” I heard the kitchen calling. It doesn’t call very often, so when it does, I try to listen.

First, I made a casserole, then I baked a quiche. And finally, I whipped up some granola. Nothing “went” with anything else. Nothing was supposed to. One dish was to give away, another to use up some leftovers. The granola was to replenish my supply.

The menu items aren’t important, though; it’s how I felt preparing them, what a few hours in the kitchen can do for a body (and a mind) when the body and the mind aren’t on deadline. There is something — much! — to be said for the whisking of eggs and cream, for the rolling of piecrust dough, for the slow stirring of a white sauce.

It gives one time to think, to gently unravel thoughts that may have gotten tangled earlier in the week. I won’t be spending today in the kitchen; that’s for sure. But I treasure the time I spent there yesterday.

(This time, I cleaned up as I went along.)

This morning I was up before daybreak preparing a crockpot dish for dinner tonight. It wasn’t like I had to rake the coals and start the fire, but the recipe did require a prodigious amount of chopping, and given the attention it gave to a meal hours away, I did feel a bit like a pioneer woman.

This is veering dangerously close to an earlier post about the habits of cookery. But it also brings to mind the fact that time spent in the kitchen is often time spent in one’s own head.

I don’t mind spending time in my head, depending upon what’s rolling around in there. This morning it was mostly thoughts of how I was making dinner before I even had breakfast. Luckily, donuts have arrived, so all is well.

With a new year and the pace of life picking up, I did something I’ve been meaning to do for weeks: I made granola. Nothing earth-shattering about this except the way I felt when I was making it, which was hungry. Very hungry.

It dawned on me as I stirred the oats, nuts, flaked coconut and other ingredients, that if I lived even 100 years ago, certainly 150, I would usually have had to bake, boil or toast my breakfast. There would have been no instant oatmeal, no cold cereals to pour into a bowl with a splash of milk (or not), no containers of yogurt at the ready. I would often have been hungry while preparing a meal.

As it stands now, much of my food is “fast food,” since I often get by with salads assembled or leftovers reheated. And if I’m preparing a meal and already starving, I just dip into the cupboard for a handful of almonds and the pangs are staved off until hot food is on the table.

What struck me this morning is how instantly gratified I am in the kitchen and how rare this condition is throughout human history. It’s an awareness I’d like to keep in mind. And I will … once I dig into the granola.

Luckily, I heard it was National Chocolate Day before yesterday ended. But I didn’t hear about it before writing yesterday’s post. So this tribute is one day late — but just as fervent.

As it turns out, it was the radio that gave me the news. I was on my way home from the grocery store — with five dark chocolate bars and three bags of chocolate Halloween candy (in case there are leftovers).

Chocolate: where do I start? That it makes every day a little bit better. That it is a tonic, an anti-depressive, a panacea. That it is the perfect mingling of sweetness and fullness on the tongue.

Luckily, I had some of my current favorites on hand to celebrate last night, a knock-off brand of M&M’s. Which means I consumed chocolate with a thin candy shell, perfect for portion control. Because if there’s one thing I know about chocolate, it’s that you must control it … or it will control you.

Already afternoon and no post! It’s as good a time as any, then, to write about granola.

I do as little cooking as possible these days, preferring to make large quantities of something and consume it for days. Granola fits that bill. A sweet-and-savory delight — made from a recipe supplied by my sister-in-law — this concoction has become my breakfast yogurt complement of choice.

It includes generous quantities of oats, coconut, seeds, nuts and dried fruit bound together by equal measures of olive oil and maple syrup. It seems to hit all the right taste bud notes.

Even though I skipped it today — I have to ration myself — it’s good to know it will be waiting tomorrow. After all, it’s the breakfast of champions … or something like that.