These days, I’m cooking more often and feeling more adventurous. I’m getting inspiration and ideas from recipes about how to pair flavors and textures, but I’m feeling bolder about reworking the recipes to my own tastes (and especially to match the contents of my refrigerator).

In Haitian Creole, there’s a word that represents the flexibility and resourcefulness of the Haitian people. The word is degaje (pronounced day-gah-ZHAY) and it means “to make do.”

So this week’s episode of Sunday Sous is all about making do with what happened to be in my fridge last night. The Arteest and I returned from a glorious weekend in Ashland with his family, seeing a Shakespeare play and enjoying the sunshine. By the time we got home at 9 pm, there was zero chance I was going to make any grocery store runs…but I still wanted to do a little cooking, in my Sunday night tradition.

PITA CHIPS
First I made a quick batch of whole wheat pita chips to use up some pita that was leftover from last week. This literally takes ten minutes from start to finish: cut each pita into eight wedges and separate the two layers to create thinner, crispier chips (for a total of 16 chips from each round pita). Spread out, rough side up, on a cookie sheet. Spray lightly with canola or olive oil spray. Sprinkle with kosher salt. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 7-9 minutes, until crisp. Remove and cool, then store in an airtight container. These are our favorite way to eat hummus or mehumarra, but also great on their own.

TANGY ASIAN SLAW
I opened the produce bin and found a half head of green cabbage, some cilantro, a green bell pepper, a bag of carrots. I whipped up a big batch of Asian slaw with a dressing comprised mainly of rice vinegar, sesame oil, ginger, lime juice and brown sugar; shredded the cabbage and carrot in the Cuisinart, finely chopped the bell pepper and cilantro, and tossed it all together with a handful of peanuts. Yum!

WHOLE WHEAT PASTA WITH GARLIC, MUSHROOMS AND TOMATOES
Then I noticed a neglected Rubbermaid container with a handful of tiny tomatoes and 3-4 mushrooms. I sauteed some garlic and onion in olive oil, threw in the sliced mushrooms, and simultaneously boiled some whole grain spaghetti. Added the chopped tomatoes to the mushroom mixture at the end, and tossed it all together with the pasta, fresh ground pepper, some fresh grated parmesan, and about 1/4 cup of the pasta water.

It felt great to use up the odds and ends of things that were lingering in the crisper, and to have a head start on lunch and dinner for today. And everything I made was tasty and relatively healthy. I can feel myself slowly but surely letting go of the need for perfection, and embracing the joy of making do. So go forth, my friends, and degaje!

Thanks to a tequila headache induced by Molly’s stronger-than-I-expected margaritas this afternoon, I’ve pretty much been a lump on a log this evening…but I managed to get through my ironing pile (aided by last week’s episode of Glee on Hulu) and fulfilled my Sunday night cooking ritual by making my current favorite curry recipe: Chicken Curry with Sweet Potatoes.

Like so many of the cooking genres I like (including soups and quiche), curry is pretty forgiving. Once you figure out the ratio of curry powder, aromatics (onion, garlic, ginger, etc.) and coconut milk that works for your palate, you can throw in all kinds of vegetables that may be loitering in the bottom drawer of the fridge. This recipe helped me use up a bunch of carrots that were starting to look bendy, and a lonely sweet potato that wanted to belong to something.

I love that moment in curry making when the oil is hot in the pan, and you get to throw in exciting ingredients like minced garlic, chopped shallots, chili paste and curry powder, and then stir them together and see (and smell!) the beauty that emerges. It’s like fireworks for the senses.

Curry, though, is not for the faint of heart or wimpy of tastebud. If you prefer your meals tame and predictable, turn right around and go back to spaghetti with red sauce! This recipe here – it brings out the big guns like fresh ginger, lemongrass, and the abominable FISH SAUCE.

Fish sauce, ladies and gentleman, is not to be trifled with. It changes everything about your curry, so you best not leave it out, but if you’re like me it will require a healthy dose of courage each and every time you open the bottle and stand over the stove, poised, ready to splash it into the pot. Fish sauce is scary. And once you work up the nerve to stir some of that mysterious amber liquid into your bubbling pot, your courage will not be immediately rewarded…for the most offensive smell will waft up into your nostrils and make you rue the day you darkened the door of an Asian market. But don’t give up hope…not yet. Stir it in, wait a minute, and taste your curry. Mmmmmm…yes. The fish sauce has worked its dark magic and you are ready to dig into the best curry yet.

Last night I decided that a quiche would be the perfect way to use up a bunch of asparagus that had one foot in the grave, and a surplus of cheddar cheese. (Safeway had Tillamook baby loaves for $3.99!) I looked at a few recipes and then essentially created my own, which I must say turned out very well. Yum!

Quiche gives off a slightly fancy, high tea vibe – but the dirty little secret is that it’s very easy and very, very flexible. Use any basic pie crust (mine, below, is adapted slightly from a friend’s recipe, and is the easiest “cheater crust” ever). Use eggs, Egg Beaters, or a combination. Use whatever milk you have around (I hear you can even use buttermilk, cottage cheese or ricotta…haven’t tried those yet). Use just about any veggies, herbs and/or meat as filling that you have lying around. And use just about any cheese that’s firm enough to slice or shred.

Quiche is a great proteinaceous vegetarian option, can be served warm or cold, and packs well for picnics or workday lunches.

Without further ado, here is my “Sunday sous” recipe of the week!

Asparagus Cheddar Keesh*

Mmmm...Keesh.

Crust:

1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1/2 cup canola oil
1/4 cup cold, nonfat milk

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix dry ingredients together in a 9″ pie plate. Make a hole in the center and pour in oil and milk. Use forks or a pastry blender to mix together; once combined press dough into plate with fingertips and flute edges. Pierce with a fork in several places. Bake in middle rack of oven for 10-15 minutes. Remove from oven and set aside to cool.

Filling:

1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 onion, chopped
1/4 red bell pepper, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
8-10 stalks of asparagus, cut into 1″ pieces
1 Tbsp fresh herbs (I used thyme)
sea salt
fresh ground pepper
paprika (I used Penzey’s Smoked Spanish Paprika)
2 eggs
1/2 cup egg whites or Egg Beaters
1 cup nonfat milk
4 oz. medium cheddar cheese, in thin slices

1. Steam asparagus until bright green and just tender. Remove from heat and set aside.
2. Heat olive oil in a saute pan over medium heat, and add onion and garlic. Saute 3-4 minutes and add red pepper. Continue to saute, stirring frequently, until peppers are tender. Add asparagus and herbs to pan and remove from heat.
3. Arrange cheese on top of cooled crust in an even layer, covering bottom of crust completely.
4. Spread asparagus mixture on top of cheese, forming an even layer over the cheese.
5. Lightly beat eggs in a bowl with a whisk; add egg whites/Egg Beaters and whisk. Pour in 1 c. nonfat milk and whisk. Add a sprinkle of salt and fresh ground pepper. Pour egg mixture over asparagus mixture.
6. Sprinkle top with paprika and bake on middle rack of 375 degree oven for 35-40 minutes. Remove and cool on wire rack. Quiche may be served warm or cold. Serves: 8.

*Yes, I know it’s spelled quiche, but isn’t it a lot more fun this way?

I do love spontaneity – the spur of the moment trip to the beach, the last minute dash to go see a movie that starts in 20 minutes, the late afternoon urge to invite someone over for dinner.

But…when it comes to Sundays, I’ve found this groove that just works for me, and I really, really like it. It starts with sleeping in a bit – sometimes until nine o’clock – because I can. Then the Arteest and I get ready for church and head out to the pub (yes, our church meets in a pub) about 9:45ish. After church, we usually round up some friends or a newcomer and have lunch together somewhere. Then we head home and spend the afternoon relaxing and doing little projects around the house.

Most of the time, my Sunday afternoons are given to cooking. Cooking is therapeutic for me when I have time to relax and get all Zen-like about chopping, stirring, even cleaning up. To complete the geek-out kitchen experience, I listen to podcasts of The Splendid Table and think about food and new recipe ideas while I’m cooking.

Sometimes I am having so much fun that I go overboard…a week or two ago I made four large main courses in one afternoon. That’s A LOT of food for me and the Arteest to try to get through in a week!

Today our afternoon was comprised of a lot of painting and home improvement projects, and then our monthly neighborhood potluck, so I didn’t get started with my cooking ritual until 7:30 or so. I’ve still managed to make a lemon herb roasted chicken with roasted potatoes and sweet potatoes, a loaf of Dutch oven herb bread, and a jar of cilantro-lime vinaigrette.

I’ve also made a list of menu ideas for the week, given the ingredients we have in the fridge and some new things I’ve been wanting to try. (On that note, does anyone have a great recipe for curried chickpeas you’d be willing to share?)

Cooking on Sundays makes me feel content, settled, grounded, thankful. It makes me feel like I’m doing something productive and even a little creative that directly benefits my family. I guess it’s really the best of what a ritual should be – something meaningful and comforting that helps us focus on what matters in life.

Fast forward a week or so, and I found myself this morning wondering what God had planned for the $300 in my daypack. Tomorrow will be the last regular day of clinic, and I still hadn’t had an opportunity to use the money. Sitting on the roof in a plastic adirondack chair, I whispered a brief prayer before eating my bowl of instant oatmeal: “Lord, would you show me how to use this money today?”

A couple of hours later, I noticed a tiny, tiny baby at Rachelle’s table. Little Jeanel was born 20 days ago, and on his seventh day of life his mother died. Since then, his family hasn’t been able to find a wet nurse. His aunt has tried to give him formula using a cup (they didn’t have a bottle), but he’s barely eaten anything for the past week. Today he weighs five pounds. We were sending them home with a bottle – the last one we had in the clinic – and a couple of canisters of formula. But how long would those containers last? I can’t imagine how much formula it will take to keep this baby alive until he is able to eat solid foods.

I ran upstairs to ask Pastor Delamy if it was possible to purchase formula in the country. “Yes,” he said, “we can buy it…it’s very expensive.” I nodded, as he went on. “But life…life has no price. I will work very hard to help babies like this.”

I told him about the money, and asked if we could invite the baby’s aunt to come back to the clinic every month to get more formula. Pastor Delamy agreed, and promised to use the money to make sure there will always be formula for baby Jeanel. Another teammate is contributing $200 as well, and Pastor Delamy said that this money will go a long ways to help baby Jeanel and other babies like him, whose families are struggling to keep them alive.

One of the first patients of the day was a smallish, friendly looking man with a quiet smile. He carried a tattered book in one hand, and said he was a teacher from Gonaives. After talking with the doctor about his various symptoms: fever, gastrointestinal pain, etc., he added, almost as an afterthought: “And when I eat, I can feel something crawling up my throat.” He said it matter of factly, as if everyone has an abdomen full of worms just squirming around inside them. Unfortunately, around here pretty much everyone does. On the bright side, we had already given him a dose of albendazole, the de-worming pill we give every patient at the clinic.

We saw a 17 year old girl, tall and lanky and beautiful, who came in with her mother. When Dr. Joe asked her, “Sa gan?” (What’s wrong?), her hesitant sideways glance toward her mother indicated she wanted her mom to answer the question. As it turns out, she is suffering from chronic bedwetting. After an ultrasound confirmed there was nothing obviously amiss in her abdomen, Dr. Joe conferred with Dr. Harold, a pediatrician, and offered the only treatment they could think of, which was to tell her that every night right before she goes to sleep, she should think about being woken up by a full bladder. Hopefully, this will have the same effect as when you know you have an early morning meeting, and your body involuntarily wakes you up several times before the alarm goes off, to make sure you don’t miss your appointment.

Then there was the young woman on Margaret’s table, holding herself and rocking back and forth, bereft. She lost her five year old son and her 19 year old sister in the earthquake in January: just saw them disappear before her eyes. Their bodies are buried under a building and cannot be retrieved. Since then, she has been beside herself with sorrow. She described wandering off, making foolish decisions and saying she couldn’t be trusted with scissors. She’s afraid she will do something to harm herself. Her heart is broken, she said. Margaret cared for her so compassionately, listening, comforting her, telling her that her feelings of sorrow and depression were normal, and that someday, although it’s impossible to believe now, it will be a little bit easier to go on living. She asked the woman if she could make sure to have friends or family around her when she felt like hurting herself, and she prescribed some medicine that might help her through her depression.

And an old woman on Dr. Joe’s table pulled down the bodice of her dress to reveal a breast that was deformed by cancer. This is at least the third case of breast cancer we’ve seen in the past two days, not to mention the cervical cancer and rectal cancer, the eight year old girl newly diagnosed with HIV, and so many other heart breaking stories that leave us at a loss. We can’t fix everything. We can’t eliminate suffering, or death. It’s challenging to send very sick patients away, knowing that their future holds more pain and sadness.

Sometimes I think that living with the concept suffering is more challenging for us, as North Americans, than it is for the Haitians whose lives have been riddled with agony and loss for as long as they can remember.

A farm assocation? I’d never heard of such a thing here in Terre Blanche, and though many people here do try to raise crops like millet for subsistence purposes, I’d hardly call the small, barren plots of land “farms.” But we were curious, so Jonathan, Linda and I joined Bob and one of the Haitian workers who walked down there with us to check it out. As we approached the trail to the gathering place, there was a big sign in Kreyol, the letters painstakingly spelled out in glitter and glue. The sign said something about the Fanm association of Terre Blanche, which actually means woman rather than farm. Now I was intrigued…what is a women’s association, anyway?

Most of the village seemed to be there, sitting in a large circle with the women seated prominently in the front row, children and then men standing in the back. The presenters, standing in the front speaking into a crackly, whiny PA system were Haitians who had clearly traveled here from somewhere else. One of the visiting women wore tight jeans, pink high heels, a form fitting top and free flowing hair – nothing like the dresses, headwraps and dusty shoes worn by the women of Terre Blanche.

As soon as the presenters noticed us loitering in the back, one of them came to fetch us, and asked us to come sit in the front as honored guests. We still weren’t quite sure what we had walked into, but now we were obligated to become part of the festivities, like it or not. We reluctantly filed to the front and sat adjacent to the presenters, one of whom was speaking to the crowd about something health related. Eventually, with some translation, we realized she was speaking about children’s growth and the nutrition needed at different phases of development.

A brochure fluttered from a table to the ground in front of us, and Bob picked it up and tried to decode the meaning of the Kreyol. It was an educational piece about SIDA (the Kreyol word for AIDS), complete with photographs of the genitals of, as Bob put it, “people who have problems.” Yikes.

Next the presenter began interacting with the crowd, asking all of the women to stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down, raise their right hand, left hand, right hand, in some sort of Simon Says game. The women complied and there was a lot of laughter as they tried to follow the rapid fire instructions.

The best part was when the presenter convinced one of the older Haitian women to come up and dance in front of the crowd. This woman in her simple white dress and traditional headwrap strutted to the center of the circle and began, accompanied only by the music in her head, to gyrate and sway, spin and wiggle in a completely captivating dance. Her village went wild, cheering and laughing as she confidently moved her body around and around, sticking out her butt and playing to the crowd.

Two other women hopped up and joined her, and the cheering crescendoed. I was howling, doubled over in laughter at this glorious display of life, joy, laughter. I can’t imagine middle aged women in the U.S. doing something like this without feeling self conscious or silly. Here, to be alive in your middle years is something to celebrate in and of itself. And as the family association of Terre Blanche marked International Women’s Day, it was an apt display of the strength and beauty of Haiti’s women.

Apparently humanitarian relief groups are automatically booked into the center section, last rows of the plane. We craned our necks across the aisle, squinting into the sunlight to try and catch a glimpse of the new Port au Prince amidst the rubble. Those who were able to see anything mostly saw hundreds of blue rectangles scattered across the landscape – what appeared to be a gratuitous number of backyard swimming pools to the suburban North American eye were actually tarpaulins being used as makeshift tents.

Once on the ground, we were ferried a quarter mile down the tarmac from the usual arrival hall where the damaged building was gated by shattered glass doors. We waited in line with Haitians returning home, other aid workers, and an actor from Band of Brothers whose name I can’t remember (no idea why he was in Haiti, but it’s always fun to recognize famous people in unexpected places), and coasted through customs with only a brief intermission while the customs agent randomly opened one of our 18 boxes. To his great surprise, the box he opened was full of stuffed animals.

Piling into three vehicles, we sat awkwardly waiting while school aged boys loitered outside the car and asked for help, pointing at their bellies. Wanting to help but knowing the chain reaction that one benign granola bar passed through an open window could set off, we smiled, shook our heads, and were most relieved when cargo and passengers were finally all loaded and we could begin what would be a seven hour journey.

We wound our way through one side of the capital city, noticing how much was the same: roadside markets with trinkets for sale, barefoot children, cinder block houses with tattered metal roofs, colorful tap-taps laden with one too many passengers. And then, in the midst of what would seem to be an average Port au Prince street, the remnants of a two story building, pancaked and abandoned. Or an ad hoc encampment with a few dozen tents and a sign posted at the entrance asking for food, water, medicine. In the midst of ongoing city life were these severe reminders of the destruction that is around every corner. Our route took us through the “better” side of Port au Prince, and we’ve had no opportunity to see what the worst truly looks like.

Farther out into the countryside in barren, hilly fields we saw hundreds of tents spread out for acres and acres. Along the national highway, countless truckloads of rubble, just piled mound after mound after mound. What does one do with the remains of a city? What can be done with an ocean of crumbled concrete?

Making a lasting positive change on a macro-level meant countless small decisions on the micro-level. Through it all, I maintained one beloved vice: Diet Coke, my daily companion.

It didn’t matter that the Arteest started calling it “Diet Death” and recounting factoids he’d read here or there about how the soda would lead to my eventual demise. All that mattered was it was cheap, available, contained caffeine, and had zero calories. And, much to the amusement and puzzlement of most of you, I actually like how it tastes.

But, all good things must come to an end, and all vices must eventually go the way of the dinosaur. While the science on the subject ranges from inconclusive to concerning, the most compelling research suggests a possible link between soda consumption and bone density loss in women, leading to higher rates of osteoporosis for women who drink three or more cola-based sodas per day. (For details, read this article.) I’m planning to live a long, healthy life to keep up with my younger husband, and I have no room in my plans for osteoporosis!

So 2010 is the year I will kick the Diet Coke addiction. I’ve already started reducing my daily intake (current maximum is two cans in a day), and I’m aiming to winnow it down to zero dependence by the time we leave for our trip to Haiti in March.

Here’s to good health and no withdrawal symptoms!