Lauren and I were an unlikely pair from the beginning.  I decided to study abroad in Austria my junior year of college and while I was brave enough to board a plane and fend for myself in youth hostels for a few days prior to the start of my program, I was still naïve and “fresh off the farm.”  I thought bib overalls were acceptable for my initial introduction to my peers with whom I’d be spending the next six months.  American students from all over the country met in the “U-bahn” (train station) for the first time, and from there journeyed into the mountains for our orientation and opportunity to choose our roommates.  It was January, and I showed up in capri bib overalls, and proceeded to sit on the cement floor of the train station in order to play with the pigeons until the rest of the students arrived.  I remember Lauren sauntering past me with her city-stride, dressed in black from head to toe, except for her dazzling diamonds and animal print jacket.  I realize that memory is subjective and tends to seriously age with time, but I’m positive that she had a city attitude and her Long Island accent spoke disdain of my small country world and pigeon friends.  I didn’t like her. I didn’t want to live with her, and I’m positive that I was at the bottom of her list.  We had the weekend in the mountains to choose our roommates, and as fate would have it, we choose the same couple of girls to live with, and therefore got stuck with each other in the process.  The following Monday we moved in to a 6th story flat in downtown Vienna and my room was next to hers.

Our Austrian shenanigans were fast and furious–we settled in as quickly as possible and before we knew it we had ten days off in the middle of February.  I don’t remember exactly how or why we made these plans, but Lauren and I decided to travel together; I think it’s possible that everyone else had plans already and we by default decided to “friend up” and tackle Europe.  We bought Eurail passes, and we spent ten days traveling–Brussels, Interlocken, Paris, Barcelona…we ruled the world, until I got really sick in Barcelona and had to get back to Vienna to get to a hospital that took my insurance.  Lauren stayed by my side, tried to help me see the humor of being admitted in to the maternity ward, and came to visit me repeatedly until I was released.  (I obviously wasn’t pregnant, but my German was poor and apparently what I thought meant stomach ache had other meanings.)

Those ten days of February sealed the deal for us, as we traveled together the rest of the semester and even booked a trip to Turkey at the end of the program because neither one of us was ready to go home.  I remember saying goodbye back in Vienna–we both promised to keep in touch, and I knew that it wasn’t the cliché farewell that so often happens.  I knew that I’d get her to the farm to go muddin’ and ride the combine, and I knew that I’d buy some new clothes and go to New York.  As different as we were, I knew that our values were similar, and that would be enough to be friends through the distance.

Lauren did come to the farm one summer, went muddin on a four-wheeler, roasted hot dogs and marshmallows and learned all about the tractors and combines.  She showed me around New York one spring and introduced me to her friends.  She flew to Illinois for my wedding and Nicholas and I attended hers in Long Island.  After I moved to Texas, we met in Florida a couple of summers for girls weekends and I flew to New York to visit after her first child, Jake was born.

Last weekend I went to visit her beautiful family and met her newborn–Leah Rose. Although we don’t talk on the phone every day or see each other frequently, we always pick up where we left off with a sense of comfort and ease that I feel with very few people.   I’m so thankful that we both went on an Austrian adventure 13 years ago and got stuck in the same flat, and I’m even more thankful that we continue to make the effort to keep up with each other in spite of the distance and chaos of busy lives.

I feel a bit like Nick Carraway these days, who declares in the beginning of The Great Gatsby that he “had a familiar conviction that life was beginning all over again with the summer.” Piece by piece, life has most certainly begun over again this summer, and the reinvention factor feels really good.

It’s the same thing I love about teaching. Every year begins with a freshness and sense of reinvention. Students don’t have to be the same person they were the year before, and I don’t have to be the same teacher–Every August holds a sense of renewal and we all get to improve on last year in whatever way we see fit.

This summer has given me a sense of renewal in many ways, as we measure our moments differently now–we’ve redecorated our life, one piece at a time, in order to nest and live the way we want. The farmer’s markets, Braves game, dinners with friends, and laughs with family have filled our free time and are just a taste of the forever that is our end game now. (Nicholas and I still don’t have enough time together, but I suppose that will always be my complaint.)

I especially feel reinvented in the kitchen–a fresh space has given me the inspiration and courage to try new recipes and entirely new foods, without being afraid of what my mom would call “a flop.” I’d rather try something new, make alterations if need-be, or even throw it away, before remaining in the rut of making the same 4-5 dishes over and over again as I once did in San Antonio. And since my main TV outlet has been the Food Network, I feel even more empowered to play with food. I usually spend a couple of hours on Saturday or Sunday working on my food board for the week, and I’m trying religiously to avoid a recipe repeat unless I make a significant alteration; while we’ve cooked up a variety of new morsels lately, I have two favs to report in on from this past week and know that based on what I created for this next week’s food board, I ought to have a couple more to share come next weekend. 🙂

Hefeweizen Hummus

The idea came from watching the Food Network, of course, and I ended up using the recipe here for my base http://www.philly.com/philly/restaurants/recipes/123198893.html. That said, I altered the recipe, so you could give the original a try, or try my creation:

Ingredients:
2 16-ounce cans chickpeas, drained
1 1/2 cups Blue Moon
1 tablespoon lemon juice from fresh lemon
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons olive oil
Olive oil for frying
1 cup flour

Process:
Blend or food-process 1 can chickpeas with 1/2 cup of beer, 1 tablespoon lemon juice and 1/2 teaspoon salt until smooth. Add 2 cloves garlic and 3 tablespoons olive oil and continue blending until smooth. (The actual hummus is done; now you are making the fried chickpeas for the top.)
Put enough olive oil to cover the bottom of a skillet on medium-high heat while you create the batter for the second can of chickpeas. In a medium size bowl mix remaining 1 cup beer and 1 cup flour with a fork until smooth. Add the second can of chickpeas. Using a slotted spoon, remove chickpeas, shake the excess batter off, drop into hot oil, and cook until golden brown. Remove them with a slotted spoon, place on paper towel and salt. Top the hummus with the fried chickpeas and serve with naan or pita chips.

Pork Tacos with Lime Mayo

This idea began with a steak taco recipe from May 2013 Cooking Light. We had left over ribs, however, and I wanted to shred the pork for the tacos instead. Essentially, we took tortillas and warmed them right on the grates of our gas stove–then I smeared about a tablespoon of the lime mayo, added the shredded pork (season it how you wish) and topped it with sautéed peppers and queso fresco. The most important thing was the lime mayo, and all you have to do is mix the following ingredients:

Lime Mayo:
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 teaspoon grated lime rind
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon water

I hate speaking in front of people–in fact, I can hardly introduce myself in front of a small room of fellow teachers. I get so nervous that my hands start to shake, my speech impediment from 3rd grade returns and I even default back to saying that my name is “Julie Rocke,” even though I’ve been “Julie D’Amico” for ten years. I’m not sure how I ended up in the profession of teaching, considering the confession I just shared. I always get super anxious before the first days of school, but once I’ve met my new students and begun a lesson, I find my groove and it’s all good.

This year is no exception. I haven’t slept well in a few weeks–I wake up in a cold sweat, anticipating a new school year, a variety of preps and being the only “new teacher” in a department of 30+ English teachers. I’ve already begun the crazy dreams of forgetting to get dressed for school, showing up an hour late, or failing to plan anything for the lesson. Just when I thought my anxiety was going to turn me into a completely insane person, Nicholas reminded me of the amazing video that my last class of students made for me. At the risk of being super corny or conceited, I wanted to share it–as it has reminded me that I’m good at what I do. I know how to work with kids, and even though I might lose sleep over beginning over again, there is a whole class of students who thought I did a pretty okay job in their lives, and that gives me the courage to do it again this year.

My mom was our 4-H leader for the majority of my middle school and high school years, maybe even all of them?  That being said, all five of us kids took a ridiculous number of projects to the fair each year in order to “make the best better” and all that jazz.  If you’re not familiar with 4-H, you should check out www.4-H.org, as it’s really an incredible nation-wide program to help kids become more well rounded.  And by well-rounded I mean, become an aware member of the community, but more importantly,  learn life skills like cooking, baking, sewing, taking care of animals, launching homemade rockets–you get the idea.  Essentially, 4-H promotes the DIY, and has been doing it for more than 100 years–long before “green” was a buzz word and DIY was a trendy acronym.As an adult, I’m most thankful for the baking skills I learned, and though I’ve lost my aesthetic touch, I can still make a pretty mean batch of cinnamon bread.  My mom taught me with painstaking patience to make her version of coffee cake, which has simple ingredients, but requires the patience of a saint, as its sticky gooey madness doesn’t have exact flour measurements, and when I finally think I have the right stickiness, I have to sit back and let it raise for an hour, before buttering, cinnamon-ing, and sugaring the layers to make bread, a tea ring, or rolls.  Making bread together in high school is one of my fondest kitchen memories, as my sister was long out of the house and the boys only tramped through the kitchen long enough to shovel food in their mouths.  Baking was just for us, and I loved the time with my mom and the sweet comfort of cinnamon that blanketed our time together.

Yesterday, a new friend came over to learn to make jam; we canned 36 jars of peach and strawberry jam (and have about 100 more oz in Tupperware to can).  I’ve been wanting to make my mom’s cinnamon bread all summer, and in honor of the 4-H fair this week back home, I decided to stir up some flour and test this old recipe for the sake of nostalgia and desire for jam pairing. Nine loaves later and one slightly misshapen tea ring the verdict is out–I still got it! The bread is sweet, and soft; eating is like being teleported for a moment, and I’m 16 on the front porch again, eating warm bread and spending time with my mom.  Visually, my bread is a train wreck and would never win my once coveted purple ribbon at the fair.  It looks like a two year old shaped and rolled it; I’m clearly a little rusty with a rolling pin.  My brother, Jeff, used to sample my coffee cake, eat nearly every slice, and then with a puzzled look on his face demand that I make more because he wasn’t quite sure if the ingredients blended quite right.  If he were here, he’d eat a few loaves and then tell me he’s not sure about my shaping skills—maybe I could make another batch to practice. This is a recipe that will always make my heart smile with memories of my roots on the farm; to this day, my mom serves her famous bread and cinnamon rolls every time we go home.

Mom Rocke’s Coffee Cake

Ingredients:

1C water
1C milk
1/2 C sugar
2C flour
2 packages yeast
2 eggs
1 stick softened or melted margarine (I use butter)
1t salt

Directions:
Combine the water and milk in a small class bowl or measuring cup and heat for 2 minutes in the microwave.  Meanwhile, mix sugar, flour, and yeast together in your mixing bowl (I use my KitchenAid).  Add the warm liquid from the microwave to your flour mixture and continue to beat.  Add the eggs, margarine or butter and salt.  At this point, I’d beat for another minute or so, and then switch to your dough hook, as it’s about to get messy with the flour.  At this point, you have a sticky dough mixture that should be entirely blended, and my mom’s recipe reads “add enough flour for soft sticky”-haha.  This equates to about 5-6 cups of flour.  Add one cup at a time, and let the hook knead/blend so that you can gauge if you need to stop adding flour.  You want it to be slightly sticky to the touch, but not so gooey that you couldn’t handle it.  Leave in the mixing bowl and allow to raise for an hour in a warm place.  I usually preheat my oven and leave the bowl on the stove.

After an hour, the dough should have about doubled.  Punch it down, and lay it out on a floured area.  I usually cut the dough in half with a butter knife, roll out each ball to a 9×12 type shape, then spread warm butter and cinnamon and sugar on the dough.  Roll your dough, and decide what to create—cut the roll in halves or thirds to have loaves, or slice in one-inch pieces for cinnamon rolls.  Or take the whole roll and create a circle to make a tea ring.  Bake at 350 for about 25 minutes.  Towards the end, run a little warm butter over the tops of your loaves and they will brown up really nice.  Let the bread cool on a rack and serve with fresh jam. 🙂

This is a great recipe to make for the holidays and serve with butter and jam or make into French toast.  I also like to make loaves and jam for a homemade Christmas present, as it’s a nice variation from the store bought present or gift card.

Happiness is being Italian…or marrying into an Italian family full of great cooks works, too. I remember little from my first few meetings with Mom and Poppi, as it’s masked with the memory of nervous jitters and the hazy veil that being in love had dropped over my eyes. I remember two distinct things–a sense of unconditional love, and the aroma of meatballs and marinara.

The second time that I came over for dinner, Poppi was fashioning an old Italian apron with hand smears of red sauce across his belly. He hugged me as if I’d always been his, and immediately started in with marinara samples and little tips. At this point, I was only 22 and had never made a bona fide red sauce–my version of “spaghetti sauce” meant smuggling a jar of my mom’s canned tomato sauce from the cellar or buying whatever red sauce was on clearance. Furthermore, my experience with pasta was pretty much limited to elbow macaroni and spaghetti noodles; who knew there are a hundred plus ways to design a noodle? Poppi talked me through his marinara, which has essentially two “secrets” I wouldn’t have guessed–you must use peeled Italian tomatoes (the canned beefsteak tomatoes aren’t going to cut it) and the recipe calls for sugar.

I love that my first memories of Mom and Poppi involve the kitchen and the sharing of recipes, as it was an immediate comfort zone of taste-testing, laughter and messy aprons. I knew being a part of this family was going to be a life changing adventure; ten years later, I find myself savoring our time together and anticipating a chance to cook together again. This Friday, in fact, he’s coming over while Mom is on a craft excursion in Macon; I don’t know what we’re cooking yet, but I’m sure we’ll create something fabulous served up with a few old stories of New Jersey. The thing about a great recipe is that it can live on forever, like heirlooms and faded photographs. Instead of just putting it on the shelf to dust once a week, however, recipes get to come alive in order to be experienced and loved over and over again–and in those moments, the stories and memories associated come alive again, too. I know that every batch of red sauce I ever make will be a connection to Mom and Poppi, the love they so freely gave me, and the acceptance into their family long before they knew much about me.

Here are my favorite two recipes of Poppi’s–I want to keep the integrity of the recipes “Poppi’s Way” so I typed them exactly as they are in our family cookbook. Beneath, I noted a few things that I do differently.

Poppi’s “Marinara Sauce Fresca”

Ingredients:
2-3 T Extra virgin olive oil
1 large yellow onion, diced
8-10 cloves of fresh garlic, minced
2 T sugar
1 T salt
6-8 leaves of fresh basil, chopped
3 28 oz cans of Italian Plum Tomatoes

Directions:
Use only a stainless steel sauce pot. Cover the bottom of the pot with Extra Virgin Olive Oil, turn stove onto med-high heat. Sauté onions until they are transparent, then add garlic and sauté until soft. (Do not brown.) Add tomatoes, sugar and salt and simmer for about 5 minutes. Blend all ingredients using a hand held electric wand until smooth. Add basil leaves and let simmer on medium heat for 45 minutes. Taste sauce for sweetness–add more sugar if necessary. Cook your favorite pasta and enjoy!

**Alterations–I like to use 2 onions instead of one, and I prefer the sauce a little chunky, so I don’t puree it until smooth. I also throttle back on the garlic, and typically do about 6-8 cloves. I often double this recipe and freeze in smaller portions; it keeps really nicely in the freezer.

Poppi’s “Mamma Schiraldi’s Italian Meat Balls”

Ingredients:
2 C whole milk
4 large eggs
1 small can of tomato sauce
1/2 C grated Romano cheese
1/2 C parsley (dry or fresh)
2 t ground black pepper
1 t salt
2 C seasoned Italian Bread Crumbs
3 lbs ground beef

Directions:
Mix all ingredients except ground beef. Wisk well and let rest for about 10 minutes. If mixture is too dry, add milk and if it is too wet, add breadcrumbs. Add ground beef and mix all ingredients by hand until thoroughly blended. Create meatballs out of the mixture–the size is up to you. Place meatballs in a greased (use Pam) baking pan. Then add 1/2 water (to reduce shrinking and eliminate burning) and bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Check for doneness by cutting meatball in the middle.

**Alterations–I don’t use the tomato sauce, prefer half ground beef and half Italian sausage or pork sausage, and add a clove or two of minced garlic. I also broil the meatballs the last 4-5 minutes so that they are nice and brown. After I pull them out of the oven, I drop them into my red sauce and let the flavors marry for at least 15 minutes.

The other redeeming quality of making red sauce and meatballs (as if you need another) is that day two meatball sandwiches continue the Italian celebration.

On a recent road trip to our and uncle’s lake house in Tennessee, my husband, Nicholas, and I swapped stories about our favorite childhood meals, some of which are only delicious in the awesome nostalgia of a childhood memory recollected aloud. Nicholas grew up in North Georgia, and loved his mom’s queso–served up to his crew of nerdy gamer friends who would haul their enormous desk-top PCs to his house for the weekend. He raved about Poppi’s breakfast frittatas, and his impeccable red sauce and meatballs that I’d like to think I have now mastered. I grew up in central Illinois, where the one-dish-meals (casseroles) typically ruled the dinner table a couple nights a week, in between the meat-potato-vegetable suppers. I remember “helping” in the kitchen as early as kindergarten, and by the time I joined 4-H and started cooking and baking simple dishes for the fairs each summer, I’d become privy to the Midwestern mom’s secret weapon–Cream of Mushroom Soup. My kitchen dilemma as a 23 year old married woman was that my husband despises casseroles and doesn’t do mushrooms–especially in a canned, cream version.

Ten years later, I think the two of us can crank out some pretty awesome food together, often using tips or recipes from our mom’s kitchens as inspiration. The kitchen in our townhouse is my new favorite place, especially if he’s in it, helping me create a new recipe or recreate something we had at a local restaurant. Our latest mission? Napoletana pizza. We first had this type of specialty wood-fired pizza at Dough Pizzeria in San Antonio, and couldn’t get enough of it–http://www.doughpizzeria.com/.     And now, at the risk of sounding cocky, I think we’ve got this one nailed down pretty well. A jaunt to the Grant Park Farmer’s Market last week inspired the idea, as I secured fresh buffalo mozzarella and pancetta for our toppings. When Nicholas came home with a new grill complete with a pizza stone, the challenge was on. One scorched pizza as our newbie food-foul was enough of a lesson. He lowered the heat on the right burners where the pizza stone is, upped the left to burners to high, and the result was a perfectly cooked, crisp crust with gooey cheese and crunchy pancetta on top in about five minutes. Delicious is the understatement of the century, and I’m a little concerned about the waistline of my summer dresses. But I think a thicker mid section is a small price to pay and am excited to play with new pizza recipes, like barbecue chicken with gouda cheese.

Old friends get to live on forever. In this case, my favorite childhood dog, Cubby, and my “adopted grandparents” Wilson and Irma Speight, constitute dear, old friends.

Cubby was an obnoxious puppy we got in order to replace the hole in our hearts and lack of holes in the yard after our first dog, Skunky, passed away. I don’t know who came up with dog names in our family, but trust me, I’d have gone with something more intellectual like Plato or Socrates, but Cubby it was. I was never a dog fan, and preferred the multitude of stray cats that literally littered our barns in the winter time. Lucky for Cubby, however, she was my dad’s pride and joy and soon became a significant part of our “adopted grandparents'” life.

Wilson and Irma were an older couple, sans kids, who lived at Snyder Village, the assisted living/nursing home in Metamora. They had a little cottage on the East side of the “village” and essentially had no family to speak of. My dad and Wilson were “ham buddies” which meant that they talked on the ham radios together–this is not a weird meat reference, it’s like fancy walky-talkies that require a license and mastery in morse code. Wilson must have been in his low 70s when I first met him, and was this quirky old man who wore plaid golf pants a little too high, with a worn leather belt and mis-matched polo shirt. This was his uniform for every single occasion. Irma was the sweetest grandmother figure any young girl could be lucky enough to encounter, and as the result of not having her own children, she treasured us Rocke clan like we were her own.

One year, my brother Jeff adopted them as a 4-H project. I know this sounds bizarre and inhumane, but it was a bona fide project and he had taken a liking to them, but I don’t remember the exact story there. What I do remember, is that after he started visiting them and inviting them to events, they became a part of our loud, eccentric family. They were super quirky themselves, which only added spice to the holidays on the farm. Wilson never had his hearing aids turned up high enough and we had to shout across the table and wait for his loud “what?! what did you say?!” while Irma quietly tsked at him for being unruly. The truth is, they were a refreshing add-on to our family, and the best part was that they began to unexpectedly “drop by,” though that’s not really an accurate phrase when you live on the outskirts of town. Regardless, they would randomly show up at the house, and we no longer had warning, as our guard dog was too busy eating store bought dog treats and therefore neglecting her post. Cubby had found new friends, we loved the refreshing comedy and perspective they brought to our table, and they had found a new reason to be excited about life.

One year, just when I thought I would be resigned to home made clothes forever, Irma bought me an outfit from The Gap for my birthday. You would have thought someone had bought my way into heaven. I think I was a freshman in high school that year, and of course, was struggling to fit in. It was a blue and white checkered blouse with ruffles across the chest and a cross tie around the waist. She matched it with white shorts and a chocolate brown leather belt. I was so shocked that she had picked out something so trendy, and when I commented she said, “Honey, I didn’t pick it out. I just walked it and asked them what the cute girls are wearing this year.” I remember being so flattered by her honesty and generosity, and wore that outfit until the seams burst with my college 15.

Irma got Alzheimer’s and passed on quite a few years ago now, and Wilson followed soon after. I don’t think he knew what to do with himself without her. My eyes still overflow when I think about them, or use the beautiful china that Irma left me, but I’m so thankful that our lives crossed paths and we enhanced each other’s worlds for a decade or so. I know that my life is richer for having known them, and I’d like to think that their world was a little better for having the Rockes as part of their family. I started using their china every chance I get as a celebration–Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, a new recipe, the 4th of July, my birthday–any chance to get to talk about them and feel them still with me.

I take my hair color very seriously, which is not something inherited. I’m not sure where I got the wild idea to change with the seasons each year and sport blonde in the summer, browns or coppers in the fall, full blood-red in the winter and then gradually back to blonde in time for the warmer temps. What I do know, is that my mother’s two feet of thin, straight hair has never seen a salon, much less been colored. I used to beg to be her “stylist,” even through high school and college, occasionally cutting a couple of inches of dead ends, giving her a scalp rub, or my favorite—weaving her long locks into two fine braids to hang down her back.

This week I realized that I was in dire need of a stylist, which normally doesn’t happen, as I’ve had a standing appointment every five weeks with my friend/stylist in Texas. I’ll gladly eat leftovers, pack my lunch, and shop at Plato’s Closet or Target clearance, so long as there are funds for my almost monthly hair color. The dilemma in Atlanta is that, well, who wants to pay downtown prices, especially when there’s no “teacher discount” or friend hook up? And, at the risk of sounding really superficial, finding a new colorist is cause for significant anxiety. If I had to choose between a great doctor or reliable colorist, I’d choose the colorist every time (and then self-medicate). This is serious business. Needless to say, I postponed the inevitable, in lieu of sun bleaching at the pool, until this week when I had to face hair reality. After a conversation with friends about supporting local business, I booked my color at “Relish,” my neighborhood salon, just diagonal from our town house and prayed I didn’t get the newbie. And, as usual, my anxiety was for naught, as this morning’s scalp rub with rosemary and lavender and nearly perfect blend of caramel and honey blonde highlights was a pretty incredible start to my day–and even a fraction of the cost I was expecting. Maybe I got a jam discount, as I was quick to swap recipes with Erin, my new colorist, and promised to bring some by this afternoon before I go to the farmer’s market to partake in the peach festivities. Regardless, all is right with the world again. As for my mom? She just doesn’t know what she’s missing. She’d be stunning as the grandma with violet-red hair.