This week's Co-op menu: Sopes

This week's menu was inspired by the abundance of tomatillos in my garden. OK, what I really mean to say is that the tomatillos completely took over both my gardens this year, trampling everything in their path and weilding their cloaked fruit like some sort of demented weedy monks. The funny thing is, I remember thinking back in May, "Gee, I forgot to plant tomatillos. I'm bummed I won't be able to harvest any." Evidently, the tomatillo gods heard my lament. I have truckloads to harvest.

lime and charred jalopeno

And so this menu takes advantage of an abundant crop yet again. And I thought it would be fun to try my hand at making sopes, a dish that I had the privilege to learn to make with some friends from Mexico City a few years ago. Fair warning here: this was not a speedy dinner. There are a number of components to make but a few can be done the day before and the side dishes: rice and jicama-orange salad, are pretty effortless. And I love these kinds of composed dishes for a few reasons. They are modular, so there's almost always something even picky eaters will agree to. They can be vegetarian or not, and the meat is not the centerpiece, but rather a garnish. Finally, they are fun and delicious and a little bit festive and who doesn't like a little party in the middle of the week, right?

Sopes for 12 with black beans, chicken, salsa verde and queso fresco.


Sopes

There are a few ways to make these and the video here is most like what I do: seared in a cast-iron pan, not fried in oil.

2 cups masa harina (found at any mexican grocery store)
4 cups hot water

1. Add the water to the masa and stir well. Cover and let sit for about an hour (Note: I found my dough stiff and dry, I would probably add more water or let it sit for less next time).
2. Heat a cast iron griddle or frying pan. I painted on a thin layer of oil but it isn't really needed.
3. Divide dough into 24 balls. Shape and flatten them and then toast them on the griddle about 2 min per side or until they are golden and crispy.
4. Remove from heat and let cool until you can handle them. Then push the edge of each sopa into a rim (watch the video if this doesn't make sense!). It's ready to fill!

Black Beans
I cook mine from dried beans, but you can also use canned.

2 cups dried beans, soaked overnight.
1 medium onion halved
5 cloves of garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
1tbsp cumin
bay leaves


1. Drain the soaked beans and then cover with fresh water to 3" above the beans.
2. Add all other ingredients and bring to a slow simmer until desired tenderness.
3. Add salt and pepper to taste at the end of cooking.

The beans can be prepared in advance and refrigerated, just rewarm before serving.

Salsa Verde
This is a loose and fast recipe because it's very forgiving of proportions.

Tomatillos (I made enough to fill the cast iron frying pan three times)
2 white onions, peeled and halved
1 jalopeno
1 bunch cilantro
2 limes
salt (I also use a vegetarian "chicken" broth powder that works great instead of salt)

1. Heat the cast iron pan. Add tomatillos, onion and jalopeno and char them on all sides.
2. Dump it all into a food processor, throw in the cilantro, lime juice and salt. Pulse to desired consistency (I like mine a little chunky).

Poached Chicken
This is entirely optional, the meal is really satisfying without it, too. I chose to simply poach my chicken but you can roast it. Or use chorizo, which is a more traditional topping. For this recipe, I used 2.5 lbs chicken total.

To assemble the full meal, place black beans, shredded chicken and salsa verde on your sopa. Crumble queso fresco (or feta) on top and garnish with cilantro and another squeeze of lemon.
Serve with white rice and a side salad of sliced jicama and orange wedges.

This is what dinner looks like

This is what a happy diner looks like

How to survive the work week tip #1: the dinner co-op.

If the Peanuts character Pig Pen were a time of the day, he would be my dinner time. That's what it most looks like when when we all crash land at home at 6pm. Amid dropped bags, clothes, and dirty tupperware, we try not break down while half of us need attention and the other half need dinner, and there is neither to go around. One day, a neighbor approached me with the idea of creating a dinner co-op: a few families would agree to share meal preparation for a few days a week. One day each week, each family would prepare the meal for the other two and deliver it.

Let's see, with one night's preparation, we got three nights of food (and leftovers).I was sold.

It's been four years we've been doing this now. And it wouldn't be an overstatement to say that this changed our days dramatically. We come home on dinner co-op nights and can play together, sit and read books, whatever else besides scramble to burn rice while two children sob at my feet. It's sane, it's lovely and I can't recommend this enough to other families scrambling to juggle kids, jobs and some semblance of healthy eating.

And did I mention delicious? Because that's the bonus: this food is good. Really. Damn. Tasty.

A few friends have asked what I cook for dinner co-op so I will start posting my weekly menu and link to recipes when I can.

This week's co-op meal: Navy Bean, Goat Cheese and Artichoke Casserole and Oven-roasted fingerling potatoes and brussels sprouts. This casserole is savory and rich and has a limited lifespan because the ingredients can be pretty pricey when not in season. But the herb garden is still producing and leeks are abundant at the market now and I cooked the beans from scratch which is a good way to make this a little more affordable given that I was cooking for 12 portions. As for brussels sprouts, what can I say? I have a love bordering on unhealthy for crucifers and these ones are cute. There's no resisting a cute crucifer.

Navy Bean, Goat Cheese and Artichoke Casserole
(adapted from this recipe and modified to serve 12).

4 ounces bread crumbs
2 cups dried navy beans, soaked overnight, cooked and left in their liquid (or alternately, 4 cans of beans)
4 teaspoons chopped fresh or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
4 teaspoons chopped fresh or 1/2 teaspoon dried rubbed sage
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
8 garlic cloves, minced and divided
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
6 cups chopped leek (about 6 large)
4 teaspoons chopped fresh or 1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 (14-ounce) cans artichoke bottoms, drained and each cut into 8 wedges
10 ounces crumbled goat cheese

Preparation

* Preheat oven to 400°.
* Drain beans in a colander over a bowl, reserving liquid. Add enough water to liquid to measure 2 cups. Combine beans, thyme, sage, pepper, and 2 garlic cloves.
* Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add 6 garlic cloves, leek, rosemary, salt, and artichokes; sauté 4 minutes. Stir in bean liquid mixture. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat. Spread half of bean mixture in two oiled 11 x 7-inch baking dishes, and top with half of goat cheese. Spread artichoke mixture over goat cheese; top with remaining bean mixture and remaining goat cheese. Combine the breadcrumbs and 2 tablespoon oil; sprinkle over goat cheese. Bake at 400° for 25 minutes or until lightly browned.

beans, beans, the magical fruit...

Oven-roasted fingerling potatoes and brussels sprouts.

This is more guidance than recipe but I trimmed and halved two pounds brussels sprouts and put them in a pyrex dish with a healthy glug of olive oil and sprinkling of salt and pepper. In a second pyrex I did the same with tiny fingerling potatoes and roasted both at 400°, Brussels sprouts for 25 minutes and potatoes for 35 min. I sprinkled the sprouts with lemon juice and mixed the two together.

Can it be a month already? We sit on the back patio tonight, watching lights wink on around us. It's been an incredible adventure to pack ourselves up and go for the month. We dove headlong into the challenge and the beauty of adventuring as a family. And I'll admit, sometimes we were in over our heads. Some days, the goal was to survive. But on other days, many other days, it was sublime. And mind-expanding. Even as we settled back into city life, there's still so much to see. I'll confess to a guilty pleasure: strolling through the neighborhoods, peeking above stone walls and through wooden gates to hidden garden spaces, peeking into home interiors, admiring tin roofs (five colors in view just outside this window). Now my son joins me in this fantasy game. Which house would you want to live in? What's your favorite door/garden/bicycle? Couple that with a promise of an ice cream cone and I have a co-conspirator for hours. We work our way through the city like this. In our herky-jerky sort of way, we end up seeing a lot more.

morning walk in our Reykjavik neighborhood.

And yet, despite my fantasies of running away to European countries, I know we're at the end. As darkness creeps back in to our days, life back home creeps back in to our reality. There is the rest of my life waiting for me, pieces I love and miss and need to get back to.
The little ones have (finally!) giggled themselves to sleep, enjoying the new normal of shared bedrooms and even beds. Jake and I reflect for a moment in the welcome quiet and even now, in the thick of fatigue and sleep deprivation, we are overwhelmed with gratitude at having this opportunity. It's too easy to think of all the things we couldn't do the way we were used to as travelers. But then, I think about the little boy who is learning to love travel and beginning to understand how much world there is beyond his city, I think about how we've learned to be together as a family, I've seen a little girl discover that, while she still hates baths and showers, she rather likes geothermal pools. I've seen the start of the friendship between siblings that hopefully will last a lifetime. And that's in addition to volcanoes, glaciers, whales, puffins and geysers. And, oh, we've gotten to see a lot of those. Just a few more photos to tell the story of the last few days of our road trip from Myvatn to Rejkyavik. Like paradise. If your paradise runs on the icy, volcanic side, that is.

turf home of the highest altitude farm in Iceland

Seyðisfjörður in the distance. We fought the urge to break into "The Sound of Music" when we stopped here.

The culture house at Seyðisfjörður

The glacier lagoon, Jokulsarlon

The famous Dettifoss Falls

The eponymous Geysir.

ordinary moments in an extraordinary place.

Only fifteen days ago we arrived on this litle farm tucked into a spectacular peninsula ringed with pseudocraters and lava pillars. It's not at all an exaggeration to describe this place as other-worldly. In fact, a couple of nights ago, a film crew was flying helicopters over our farm taping footage for an upcoming Ridley Scott movie about life on another planet. Accordingly, these last 15 days have felt like a surreal dance between ephemeral and eternal. In some ways, our life has been no different: we wake up (too early, always too early), feed everyone and the kiddos and I play, plan, work and argue together, along with the other three children staying here until last week). We all have lunch together, then there's some version of nap, reading, quiet time. Then dinner, play and sleep. Some days, Jake calls a family day and we get in a car and travel for the day to hike, explore and relax together. It's the everyday rhythm of life with two children under 5.

Only with a twist: our daily outings have been hikes to volcanoes and Dr. Seuss-worthy lava fields. Snack is frequently dung-smoked char on cave-baked bread or skyr with rhubarb sauce. The rhubarb sauce is homemade from colossal rhubarb growing by the lake behind our house. Milo can identify the species of midge that lands on his sweater (Plumosus, look at his antennae, mama!). The neverending daylight and all the vaulting ambition that comes with it. When I hang laundry to dry, I have to make sure the sheep won't eat it.

Today, we hiked over a couple of hills before dinner to catch up with "our" sheep, the mama and her lamb, and chat with them for a while, feeding them stalks of fresh angelica. Then we headed to some of the students' experimental plots to check on how many midges were in the traps. We walked along the lake, nibbling on wild sorrel leaves and looking for the arctic tern chicks that were patrolling this stretch of lakeshore last week. Kyra picked buttercups and put them all under her chin. She doesn't know why yet, she has just seen us do it. It was magical, in some ways exactly what I'd hoped for this trip to be: an opportunity to be out in nature a lot, to feel a relationship with a place and its plants and animals. To let them wander outside without our needing to hover nearby. To get used to walking and hiking. I watch these children seemingly growing before our eyes at the dinner table, brimming with these new experiences. I feel grateful and awed that we can do this together as a family.

And yet, it's required moments of digging deep for reserves of patience. Rainy days are hell when you live in a place where children lying on the floor skeeves you out and the sofa smells suspicious. While I have joked about wanting the farmhouse life, pitching headlong into 24-7 children, with jetlag, 15 other roommates and days of laundry, breadmaking and child-tending stretching before me left me feeling occasionally, oh, insane. And that's with an amazing husband who has been working hard to balance the field and the family (I do not envy him that task). But, I knew those days would probably happen, and we have been trying to go easy on ourselves when they do. Bad parenting moments definitely didn't get left at home...

In two days, we roll out of here to tour the country along its famed ring road and then land in Reykjavik for another three days. I am already starting to miss it here and yet am excited we get Jake to ourselves for a whole week. And there are glaciers to see, parks to play in, swimming pools to visit, strange foods to eat. And a lovely flat with a not-terrifying bathroom in a beautiful city. But most important, there is adventuring to be done as a family.

Musings

Some random Iceland-related thoughts I've been mulling lately

There is a bag of Doritos in the pantry. The flavor is "Cool American".

The owner of this farm and her 86-yr-old mother live in the basement of the farm and their flat smells a bit like greasy boiled mutton. As a result, I think we are starting to smell a bit like greasy, boiled mutton.

It feels decadent to go to bed in broad daylight.

Lava rocks hurt like hell when you fall on them.

I have yet to meet an Icelander who does not make art. I think this is a beautiful thing.

While I get that it's nature out here and shit happens, I still want to shoot the black-headed gull that has picked off the sweet tiny ducklings in the lake behind my house. Do I really need to witness every death?

Thanks to a 4-yr-old's mispronouncement, we coined a new cocktail: brandy, Ginger ale and muddled lime and basil makes a Fizzer.

The Farmhouse wife gig has been fun, but man, when I get home, I am going to kiss my high heels and eat sushi for a week straight.

In Iceland, you can't go far without eventually coming to water. And in the last few days, we've had the chance to experience water in its most sublime: whales, waterfalls and wicked hot springs.

Can you see the giant humpback?

Jake and I got out one evening this week to catch a sunset whale watching cruise in Husavik. The boat ride alone was worth it: an achingly serene and clear night (one of only two so far this trip), views of distant shimmering glaciers, the ocean swelling and heaving as we bob on its surface like the shorebirds around us . I absolutely love that feeling of moving with the ocean, it feeds my inner seagull. But the whales were quiet. Two humpbacks surfaced now and then, revealing a blow here, a dorsal fin there, just a tease of their enormity that lies beneath the surface. We watch, quietly delighted. They disappear for a long moment. Then, just like that, a leviathan literally dives out of the water completely, head to tail, twists a half turn in the air and crashes back into the sea fifty feet away from us. People gasp and duck. It feels just that close. It happens again, and again and again. Two whales, four jumps and then silence again. Shit, these animals are big. I love to be so humbled by the scale of this living creature. The show is done, they've tired of entertaining us and our boat turns around and slowly heads back to the tiny port of Husavik.

Dettifoss

Canyon rainbow (photo by Milo)

Basalt columns

We also took a family day trip to visit what are probably two of the crowning jewels of northeast Iceland: Asbyrgi Canyon and Dettifoss Falls. Dettifoss is a 45m-high waterfall in Vatnajökull National Park in Northeast Iceland, situated on the Jökulsá á Fjöllum river, which flows from the Vatnajökull glacier. Asbyrgi canyon was formed by glacial flooding of Jökulsá á Fjöllum river now located several kilometres away. Icelandic legend has it that the horseshoe-shaped canyon is a hoofprint left by Sleipnir, Odin's eight-legged horse. No surprise that this is the heart of the land of hidden folk who are said to reside among the 100m-high canyon walls of Asbyrgi. We hiked the mystical birch forests and pretended to float elven boats in spring ponds. If you have ever seen the Sigur Ros documentary "Tak", Asbyrgi is where they held the midnight outdoor concert. I so wish I had been there. It must have been an absolutely magical experience to hear their ethereal music in such an ancient place full of spirits.

Descending into the ass-crack of the earth

The ass-crack kinda gave me vertigo

Can you see Jake pushing Europe and North America apart?

Last night after little ones were asleep, we stole away to hike to a hot spring cryptically referred to as the "hidden fissure". The hidden fissure is aptly named: it is literally a widened and perfectly cooled spring in a deep fault in the earth that you reach by scrambling down 30 feet of cliffs into a chasm. And you definitely don't think about earthquakes while you do it. What you do think about is how glorious insane it is, how one hand is touching Europe while the other clings to North America, and how, even though you just spent an entire cold, rainy day indoors with five kids and needed two drinks to unwind from it, this is a pretty damn awesome trip you're on. That's what you think about.

cheers,
Helen

Still a small world even when you're on the edge of it.

beachcombing

collecting spiders

primrose (I think)

Akureyri

Warsaw Pact

midnight sun

And just like that, eight days have slipped by in this delerious place of eternal daylight. Just as subtly, we've slipped too into our own new rhythms, and I am reminded again of just how flexible people, especially little people, can be in the face of change. It's encouraging considering the panic I felt when I realized we'd be all sharing the floor of one bedroom for four weeks and we would be putting kiddos to bed in broad daylight, amid the dinner conversations of fifteen other people wafting in through paper-thin walls at the SAME TIME in the SAME ROOM. All of this new to them. And I'd be lying if I said it didn't melt into pandemonium the first couple of days. "Sleep", like "nighttime", was a very fluid concept around here for a stint. But adapt they have and we have really enjoyed listening through those paper-thin walls as two little siblings talk one another to sleep each night.

This weekend the family tagged along on a lake sampling trip to Vikingvatn, the Viking Lake. The drive took us through winding cliffs along the bay of Skjálfandi. We pulled off at an unassuming spot, braced ourselves against the penetrating northern wind and peeked down on a large puffin colony nestled in the cliff walls below us. I was embarassingly giddy. They were just so RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF US! After months of talking and reading about them it was positively thrilling to see the little sad clown faces so close, their comical roly poly little bodies almost crash landing into the waters below. For a moment, I held Kyra close and pointed to the islands on the horizon. "It's 4 degrees in July," I whispered into her ear, "and there is the arctic circle. We are standing on the edge of the world." Fascination succumbed to numbness and the anxiety of having small children perched near the edge of a 300-foot cliff. We reluctantly tore ourselves away and held an impromptu picnic inside the car before heading down the cliffs to the field site (in search of midge larvae - more on that in a future post).

We closed the week last week with a road trip to Akureyri, Iceland's second largest city and the northern regional center, to catch some local music. And by local, I mean Icelandic musicians and some guy from East Lansing, MI playing polish wedding music sung in Icelandic. Varsjárbandalagið ("Warsaw Pact") were a terrific and quirky cast of characters that reinterpreted classic Icelandic folk music with klezmer and Balkan influences. They reminded me a lot of Madison's own Reptile Palace Orchestra and I know Reptile had an Icelandic drummer once upon a time and wouldn't you know it the bands knew each other and we all had friends in common. Small world, indeed.



Until next time,
helen

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Via Soulemama

The world outside my windows

"What modern technical noises - for that matter, what music, even Bach - can compete with the music of water, river and fjord, constantly in motion? To extend that metaphor, what artwork that you hang on your walls can stand up to the splendor of the light that enters this house? It is good that humans labor to make beauty out of light and sound and language, but we must also practice a certain modesty in the presence of our superior - the world outside those windows." Bill Holm, The Windows of Brimnes

We all tend to see the world around us through windows of some kind, whatever boxes we place around our perception of the world. But literally speaking, I think the best introduction to this adventure of ours is to show you what really lies just outside the windows of this little farmhouse called Kálfaströnd.

The view as I write.

Here is a satellite image of the Kálfaströnd peninsula and on the bottom left you can see the three buildings of the farm. The farmhouse is the little dot nearest to the water.

The view out our bedroom window

The beauty of this place lies not in the what of it (though there is plenty of quaint in this old, moldy little building) but in the where of it. There is just a bigness to the Icelandic landscape and every little wooden window beckons you to take a look, to soak it in.

I find myself forgetting my thoughts, forgetting the sentence I had begun as I watch a lenticular cloud settle over the crater south of the farm.

Today, I poured coffee into the french press and forgot to put the plunger in. I was watching the ewe outside, hobbling under the weight of a tragically damaged and distended uterus, protectively herding her lamb from an oncoming car. Even though she didn't have much life left in her, she was still compelled by her biological imperative: to care for that child. The lamb herself had a disconcerting habit of parking beneath the bedroom windows and coughing loudly. So much going on, can you see why it's easy to forget that coffee?

No neighborhood cafe, but we do have these.