CLICKBAIT

I'm not going to tell you how thrilled I am for the comeback of high-waisted jeans.

How many times in the past week I listened to the new Adele song.

That I can do 15 pushups.

I'm not going to tell you how proud I am of my son for talking shit about Trump on the playground.

How gratifying it is to watch my kids load the dishwasher without being asked.

How often I think of my daughter's birth: those first few moments, feeling her heart beating through her neck and fingertips and shins.

I'm not going to tell you how motherhood is the most fulfilling experience ever.

Instead, I'm going to tell you about the gutted feeling that washes over me when I sit in the car, flipping through social media apps on my phone, waiting for soccer practice to end.

How three times over the past month, I have given up on my messy house, my marriage, my book, my everything, driven to the mall, and bought grey sweaters for the California winter we will never have.

How I woke up last Monday to the W.H.O. news story about the possible connection between eating processed meats and cancer and immediately went out for a bacon cheeseburger.

I'm going to tell you how during a recent morning scramble, I yelled at my son with such intensity that he ran away and I thought he was gone forever.

That I cried during the school earthquake drill, imagining the chaos of the big one.

I'm going to tell you how sometimes my body feels completely turned off, done, retired.

I'm going to tell you how often I take a deep breath in order to stay at the table.

How often I bake cookies in order to stay awake.

How, as a parent, you never get to step back or unfurl or move on or detach.

I'm going to tell you about the homeless man I see every Tuesday afternoon next to the I-580 onramp who holds up the I will take anything you can give me sign, his sad drunken eyes boring so deeply into mine that I have to look away and pray for the light to change because I can't bear what I am thinking: he is somebody's child, he is somebody's child, oh fuck, he is somebody's child.

(Stuffed with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups)

(Stuffed with Junior Mints)

I have made these cookies six times in the past ten days. I have handed them out to women in bars, children in cars, friends at dinner parties. They are so fun to make, ridiculously sweet, and way over the top. They make people smile and grab and moan.

Sometimes a bit of candy escapes while they are baking. Don't panic. Just make sure to cool them on the sheet pan.

Don't overcook them or you will be sad. This happened with batch #3 and my daughter and I agreed that life is too short for dry, over-baked Nutella cookies. 

I have just started reading about Nutella and palm oil and deforestation. I wish I could tell you that these cookies work beautifully with other chocolate hazelnut spreads. But I haven't tested out any of them out. Please let me know if you make these cookies with a Nutella alternative. I am learning along with you.

CANDY-STUFFED NUTELLA SUGAR COOKIES 

printable recipe

makes 10 big cookies

My daughter found this recipe online last year. We have searched and searched but we can't find it again. I have modified it a bit, but, if it looks familiar, please let me know. I would love to give proper credit to the original recipe writer.

You can stuff these cookies with almost any kind of candy. Or nothing at all. On their own, they are crispy on the outside and gooey on the inside. But when you stuff them, they become mystery cookies. Here are a few ideas for the filling: 1/2 Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, 3 Junior Mints, 4 mini marshmallows, 1 Special Dark Hershey's chocolate bar. PLAY!!!

ingredients:

1  3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon kosher salt

2 sticks unsalted butter (1 cup), soft

1/3 cup white sugar

1/2 cup dark brown sugar

3/4 cup Nutella, room temperature

1 egg

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

candy of your choice (see headnote for some ideas)

1/3 cup white sugar, for rolling cookies

directions:

Whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

In a standing mixer (or by hand), cream the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar for two minutes on high speed. Scrape down the sides. Add Nutella and beat for another 20 seconds on medium speed. Scrape down the sides. Add the egg. Mix on medium for 5 seconds. Scrape down the sides. Add the vanilla and mix for another 5 seconds on medium speed. Scrape down the sides. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture and mix on low speed until almost all the flour in incorporated. Scrape down the sides. Add the second 1/3 of the flour mixture. Mix on low until almost all incorporated. Scrape down the sides. Add the final 1/3 of the flour mixture. MIx on low until the final traces of flour just disappear. Don't overmix! Chill the dough for an hour if you have time (not necessary but it will make the assembly a bit easier).

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Line 2 sheet pans with parchment paper or Silpats. Pour white sugar (for rolling) on a plate. Divide the dough into 10 equal-sized pieces (about 2  1/4 ounces each). Tear a ball of dough in half, press candy in the center, cover with other half of the dough, roll in your hands until you can't feel or see the candy filling. Roll the dough ball in the white sugar. Place on the sheet pan. They spread quite a bit so leave several inches between each cookie.

Bake for 7 minutes. They are done the moment the center melts and starts to settle down. Let the cookies cool a bit on the pan and firm up because if you move the cookies when they're too warm, the candy might ooze out the bottom. The cookies are best eaten within a few hours. They are also really good frozen (late at night with red wine).

If you freeze the baked cookies and then thaw them, they will still taste good but they will lose they're glorious crispness. A better option is to freeze the stuffed cookie dough balls after you have rolled them in sugar. Freeze the balls of dough up to 6 months in a Ziploc bag. When you bake off the frozen balls, you should turn the temperature down to 350°F and bake them for a few extra minutes.

LET'S START WITH DESSERT

Nutella Crêpe Cake

Biscuits with Summer Berries and Whipped Cream

Pea and Bacon Panzanella with Warm VinaigrettePasta with Summer Corn, Slow-Cooked Tomatoes, and Garlic Confit

I've been saving my stories for the book that I'm writing. Most of them, at least. A few have slipped their way over to Food52 (see above).  I've posted one of my early summer favorites below.

Once my manuscript is turned in, I'll be back here with lots to say. Just keep chanting you can do it, you can do it, Phyllis, you can fucking do it.

Thanks. It helps. A lot.

xoxo

P.S. You can find me posting excessively over on Instagram. And sometimes I have a few things to rant about on Twitter or Facebook.

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After a weekend away and some heavy-duty denial about the fact that it’s officially June, I wake up early Monday morning to find the rest of my life sitting on my chest. This unfamiliar weight scares me. 

I make my coffee, paw around in the freezer, pray that there is something I can MacGyver into two school lunches. Frozen peas land on my jet-lagged son's head. Lamb bones fall onto my bare toes. And before I can stop it, an avalanche of unlabeled freeze-burned Ziplocked scraps slides down to the floor.  

I shove it all back into the freezer, heave my body weight against the door, and lock the chaos back in. 

And things don’t improve. 

It is the kind of morning where my son cries because his daddy will miss his Ninjago-themed sleepover birthday party. It is the kind of morning where I drop my husband off at the airport, lean in for a long deep kiss, and say goodbye for the entire summer. My heart aches so much that it is hard to turn my head over my shoulder to change lanes. I find myself driving down the freeway singing along and sobbing away to John Cougar Mellencamp. 

It’s only 11 AM. 

Bird by bird. 

I open the freezer. I face my future. 

Ten years ago, if you were scrounging around in my freezer for a stick of butter, you would have run into a placenta, a dozen bags of breast milk, some very stale pot, and lots of New York Super Fudge Chunk. Period. 

Now you’ll find enough tortillas to open a Mexican restaurant, fancy-ass square ice cubes (small, medium, large), lardo, bacon, bacon, bacon, two uncooked short ribs from this year’s Super Bowl party, fresh horseradish, a smorgasbord of pastries, pesto, egg whites, my neighbor’s homemade lemon curd, mini pissaladières, brown butter cupcake brownies, chocolate chip cookies, pulled pork, garlic confit, slow-cooked tomatoes, soup, pizza, pizza, pizza. And that, my friends, is just the beginning.  

Starting with the short ribs, I begin cooking the next six meals that will go into my kids’ bellies. I sear off the frozen meat in bacon fat, toss in some onions, garlic, and anchovies. I deglaze with wine while the meat is still in the pan. I break all of the rules. And then I add some gooey balsamic and a large frozen block of diced tomatoes. 

I throw the mess into the oven and forget about it until the smell brings me back.

I lift the lid. I shred the meat. I pick out the fatty bits. My heart rate slows down.

Braised Short Rib Tacos

THE FIRST TIME

I am 18. He is 20. I am two months away from moving to New York City to dance my ass off. He is visiting California for the first time. We are counselors at a French camp. I wear frosted lipstick and cutoff Levi's. He wears light blue eyes and strong legs. I don't remember the campers, the face painting, the sing-alongs. I do remember the fumbly first kiss behind the redwood tree. He holds my gaze for so long that I have to turn away so as not to self-destruct. He plays the trumpet with such abandon and excessive spit and smiles that I want to bottle up his spirit and take it with me off to the big city. He chats up any stranger walking down the street. He eats everything. He drinks too much. He feeds me. He challenges my atheism. He talks dirty. He flirts with my 42-year-old mother. He picks me up, throws me in the air, spins me around.

After a few weeks, I find myself kissing him goodbye in one of those dramatic airport farewells. As he walks away, blowing kisses and mouthing je t'aime Phyllis je t'aime, I hit the ground, sobbing hysterically. These are the snail mail olden days, so no emails or photos or sexts. Not even a phone call. Just weeks and weeks of pining before the next tracing-paper-thin Airmail envelope arrives with promises of how someday we will meet up again.

The following summer, I fly up up and away to Belgium. I land and meet his parents and siblings and cousins and best friends. They wrap me up in love and frites and tartes aux pommes and moules and beer. At long last, he and I stumble home to his apartment somewhere deep in Brussels where Jazz musicians live in 1989. It is a funky rambling mess of rooms with huge windows, nooks and cranies filled with books and music, and a bed so high up in a loft that I'm scared I will fall to my death while looking for the bathroom in the middle of the night. I sleep belly-full heart-content deeply.

I wake to an empty bed and start floating about the apartment, flipping through LPs, peering in closets, sniffing bottles of Drakkar Noir. When I find the lipstick and photo evidence of a female companion shoved to the back back of a drawer, I slide to the floor and try to soften my seizing heart, to unscramble my churning belly. And just when I've decided I'm ready to make my way back to Berkeley as that loser who convinced herself she totally had a Belgian boyfriend but really didn't, he bursts through the door with fresh croissants and the newspaper.

He kisses my shoulders. He makes me coffee. He kisses each finger. He searches the refrigerator and finds cheese and jam. He kisses my cheek forehead nose mouth. And then we scramble giggle our way back upstairs to tumble about some more in that crazy loft. And then back to the dining room where he tucks me into my chair with a napkin and the newspaper. And then a lot of slamming around in the cupboard until ah je l'ai trouvé and bam he places this mysterious jar of chocolate spread on the table. He feeds me a fingerful. I sip my very strong coffee. I gesture feed me more please now don't stop. He moves too slowly so I grab the jar and take over.

(24 years later, I'm still eating Nutella out of the jar. But this year, I've been playing around a bit by throwing it into ice cream. Creatures big and small have been digging it.)

CRUNCHY NUTELLA ICE CREAM

printable recipe
The Nutella must be room-temperature.

ingredients:

6 egg yolks

1 cup half & half

1 cup room-temperature Nutella (for the custard base)

pinch kosher salt

2 cups heavy cream

1/4 - 1/2 cup room-temperature Nutella (to swirl through at the end)*

directions:

Whisk together yolks, half & half, Nutella (1 cup), and salt. Set aside. Add a few cups of ice to a large bowl. Put a smaller bowl in the larger bowl. Place a fine strainer on top of the small bowl. Set aside.

Heat cream until right before it comes to the boil (it will bubble along the edges). Turn off heat. Slowly slowly super slowly whisk hot cream into the Nutella/yolk mixture. Pour mix back into pot and stir constantly on medium heat until until it thickens slightly. For some reason this custard thickens quickly so be vigilant. It's ready when you draw your finger along the back of a wooden spoon and your finger leaves a trail. Turn off heat. Pour custard through strainer into the small bowl. Add just enough water to the ice so that the cold water rises up to the level of the custard. Stir occasionally. When cool, remove from ice bath and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for several hours.

Place your ice cream container in the freezer, preferably something long and flat like a loaf pan so that it's easy to swirl in the Nutella (see note below). Churn the ice cream according to manufacturer's instructions. Fill the frozen container up halfway with ice cream. Drizzle half of the Nutella (1/4 cup) all over the surface. With a fork, swirl it through the ice cream. Break up large blops of Nutella because once frozen they are hard to chew and make the ice cream challenging to scoop. Cover with second half of ice cream. Swirl through second half of Nutella. Freeze for a few hours or overnight.

*A quick note about the Nutella. Feel free to follow the directions above. But lately, I haven't been swirling it through the ice cream because it's just too sweet for me. I use half as much and just add the Nutella to the top. Try to drizzle it over thinly (a honey dipper works great)  so that you don't get large chunks of frozen Nutella in any bites.