Good Things 2020: Week 21

by Sam Tackeff | May 25, 2020 | Uncategorized

Good Things – I’ll start with the lamb. Last night for dinner I made a meal that easily was in the top-five dishes of the year. In the morning I took some lamb stew meat, and coated it my Turkish dry rub spice that my grandmother (z”l) made for me.

This batch is probably a decade old and still has KICK. I have bags of various “vintages” – lately I’ve been trying to go through the older ones, but even though everyone is obsessed with good fresh spice, these seem to last forever. It’s heavy on cumin, oregano, chile, some coriander, and who knows what else.

One key to success in my kitchen is that if I don’t feel like being fussy, a heavy spice mix and TIME will always do the trick. I let it marinate all day and then roasted the meat in the oven at 400. Maybe about 25 minutes? I tend not to worry too much about temperature and time, just keep an eye on things. I cooked until it was done enough and I was hungry enough to pull it out and eat it. The lamb stew is fatty enough that you can’t really over cook it, so I keep things relatively flexible when I go in to cook. That’s how I cook most often these days.

The final treatment: served it over rice with tomato, fresh mint – while I try my hardest to avoid food waste, the fresh leaves were pulled from a generally withering stalk shoved accidentally in the back of the “crisper” drawer. Last up – I mixed a little Trader Joe’s European Style Nonfat yogurt (it’s Straus!) with some dorot garlic cubes and topped with some pul biber for that final Turkish kick. Perfection.

I’ll be honest here, the past few weeks have put myself and many around me through the wringer. A family member has been in the hospital – non-COVID, thank goodness, work has been demanding (for which, truthfully, I’m grateful!), many in my communities are grieving, and everyone around me is struggling in their own way. Good Things isn’t a highlight real, but my specific practice of noticing and observing the good – even during the darkest of times. I was particularly touched over the past few weeks by the people who reached out to let me know that it matters. (And as always, you, you reading this – you matter to me.)

Good Books. I know that many of us voracious readers have been struggling to sit and READ over the past few months, our focus zapped from too many hours on Zoom, or time spent connected to devices. (Let’s be honest, I have a library book from January that has been sitting 3/4 of the way read in my office.) I’ve found however that I’m craving books again, and have been taking advantage of my long walks to listen to more audiobooks than my normal routine.

I’ve been enjoying Bob Iger’s book – The Ride of a Lifetime. I’m an unashamed Disney fan, and the book was pretty riveting. (I did some vision casting with my women’s leadership group this weekend, and let it be known that if I could serve on any corporate board, Disney is at the very top of the list. #superbowlgoals)

After a phenomenal coaching session with my good friend Stephanie Stiavetti, who is building her coaching practice, I picked up a copy of The Empath’s Survival Guide.

For work, I’ve been reading a variety of books to kickstart my workday. I find a few chapters of a business book is generally enough to kick start me into productivity for the day. This week was The Team That Managed Itself (Christina Wodtke), Matt Mochary’s The Great CEO Within, and I’m starting off on Andy Grove’s High Output Management and David Epstein’s Range. (I’m always heavy on systems and processes!)

A quick note on long walks in the neighborhood – I’m so thankful to have my little walking buddy back in action after a winter bout of disc issues and a LOT of house rest pre-COVID. Watching him explore the neighborhood is such a joy. (For those who asked, baby-geese are still doing well!). And here’s a quick peek at my dream Wisteria.

{Good Eats} I already shared the perfect Turkish Lamb dish – but that in itself was a bit of a theme – with the same spice mix, I made a pot of Turkish zucchini, stewed with onion and tomato.

There was a GLORIOUS tuna melt on a bagel – the bagels are Whizzo’s which I get in my farm share, and I mixed in a little bit of Trader Joe’s Garlic Spread as the mayo, and a spoonful of my dad’s copy-cat Flo’s Sauce: a spicy onion relish that reminds me of summer in Maine.

Another standout dinner: in support of good things, I convinced my brother to order the Xi’an Famous Foods Chili Oil – and we shared an allotment. I made noodles with chili oil, vinegar, and baby bok choy, and I ate it gleefully as a late night meal.

My Bean of the Week was Rancho Gordo Large White Limas. I cooked them with a large piece of ham from my Walden Meat Share, and they found themselves happily participating in MANY different meals this week. 

I think the favorite treatments were:

• as a large lunch salad with Gotham Greens Basil Caesar, fresh tomatoes, and Dorothy’s Keep Dreaming cheese
• with leftover striped bass (cooked with a mix of garlic mayo and mustard), over arugula with lemon
• with fresh Valicenti Ramen with pesto, arugula, lemon and parmesan. SO GOOD.  

Odds and Ends: Good Foods that Weren’t Meals, Per Se.

I’ll give another shout out this week to The Humble Roasted Potato, which I ate by itself with a variety of dipping things on a handful of occasions this week.

And another nod to my favorite late night snack: Cottage Cheese with salt, pepper, and good peppery Bariani Olive Oil.

And the perfect prepared food: the Cafe Spice Chicken Tikka Masala.

And finally, my dessert of note: the end of a container of Ben and Jerry’s Justice Remix’d: Cinnamon & Chocolate Ice Creams with Gobs of Cinnamon Bun Dough & Spicy Fudge Brownies – a flavor, that also serves a good cause: benjerry.com/justice –  the flavor and action campaign dedicated to criminal justice reform.

With that, I bid you adieu until next week. Here’s to a very good week!

xo Sam

Good Things 2020: Week 20

by Sam Tackeff | May 17, 2020 | Uncategorized

Some moments, 2020 feels like an endless bizarre loop, other moments I’m jolted out of the dream sequence with something new – good, bad, or otherwise. It’s a weird sensation. Time is doing funny things – the endless March, a non-existent April, somehow we are past the halfway point of May. It’s all a little unsettling, so I’m doubling down on routine with a dash of adventure and hoping for the best.

This week was my birthday. I had some reservations about a birthday during this pandemic, but all in all, I toasted myself to a year of getting older, wiser, and making it through. I shucked some oysters, literally and metaphorically. I took a stab at a list of hopes and dreams for the year – one for each year that I’ve been alive, and somehow made it to about 16 before giving up on list making. I’ll come back to it this week if I get the chance, it seems like a nice way to focus my thoughts.

I’ve been pausing to snap photos of the blooming flowers in the neighborhood at every turn. I rescued a Weigela from destruction in a neighbor’s discard pile. In one of my daily loops, I stop to say hello to the family of geese – each day counting to make sure that the five little ones are still together. Last week on my walk a coyote darted right past me, so I’ve been checking in each day and hoping for the best.

The Garden Commences! One of my generous birthday gifts was an allotment of plants from my mother – with a nod to my brother who generously dropped them off.

We started this week with herbs: the planter got four parsleys, dill, and the first of the basil. In the pots: lemon verbena, lemon balm, swiss chard, kale, rosemary, and mint. In the two long planters, three types of thyme in one, three rosemary plants in the other. I have early girls and sungolds, and variegated nasturtium ready for planting once I find the self watering planters of a certain size this afternoon. A strawberry plant is waiting to be hung up.

More to come in the next few weeks: a trip to Russo’s and Mahoney’s, weeding the back plot, and planting potatoes and other hardy herbs that won’t require much watering back there. A few more flowers: dahlias and others that I’ll be able to snip for blooms as the summer progresses. It’s a good beginning.

While I try not to collect too many material things, I did get myself a few small gifts: a new signed copy of Joe Yonan’s Cool Beans from Celia at Omnivore for inspiration for my Rancho Gordo hauls, and a new painting of the ocean from my friend Judith.

{Good Food} The one consistent thing has been my farm share, home cooked meals, mostly simple. I’ve not had the patience for much elaborate cooking. My dad made me a batch of Flo’s sauce, an onion-relish to eat on hot dogs, or with eggs, or in tuna salad. My brother picked me up a handful of treats at Sevan: stuffed grape leaves, pastirma, and kazandibi (my favorite pudding), as well as the small green Turkish plums that I love with fish.

• Oysters. I picked up 8 Wellfleet oysters, and set about shucking them at home. It’s been a LONG time since I’ve done my own, and was relieved that it really wasn’t much of an ordeal.
• Ham and Cheese and Egg Pasta. Too lazy to make myself a carbonara, I made thick cut Canadian bacon, egg, cheese, and arugula with lemon, and tossed in some fresh Valicenti spaghetti.

• My “bean of the week” was Rancho Gordo black caviar lentils. I cooked them with an onion and two bay leaves. They had a variety of different iterations. First: with tomato, feta, and cucumber. Then they got lovingly tossed into palak paneer with yogurt. Another bowl had pesto and a few soft boiled eggs.

• Roasted potato with garlic aioli. I’m of the firm belief that there’s nothing wrong with an entire meal being a potato every so often. Potatoes are too far oft maligned, which is disappointing because they are bursting with nutrients, taste good, and there are so many wonderful varietals! On one evening I roasted a filling amount, and ate potato gleefully with garlic aioli and some of my dad’s Flo Sauce. No greenery in site.
• Lemon Pudding: Sticky Toffee Pudding Co. A notable dessert. It’s a nice lemon sponge with a tart curd. Served with a spoonful of vanilla ice cream. I absolutely adore this brand, and freeze the single serve desserts for emergency cake whenever needed. (The Sticky Toffee and the Molten Chocolate are also perfection.)

I leave you with Bertram in our weekend office, planning the week ahead.

Here’s to a good week.

xo Sam