Yellow Plum Jam with Vanilla

For the past couple of summers, I've gone over to my friend Kari's house to pick yellow plums from her backyard. This tree gives and gives gorgeous, mellow yellow fruit. 

Last year, the tree almost went overboard with its generosity. Kari called everyone she knew to come and pick plums. Afterward, there were still more, as in falling-to-the-ground-and-attracting-bees-and-getting-squashed-underfoot-by-the-kids more. Desperately, Kari called the gleaners. They came, they picked, they handed her a receipt for the amount of fruit collected: over 500 pounds. From one backyard tree!

We actually went to pick our plums after the gleaners were done and the tree gave us yet another 50 pounds to take home, with more still visibly weighing down its generous branches. 

I learned something from bringing home 50 pounds of one type of fruit. It's a bit like winning the lottery, I imagine. After you get home, you have to take a moment to stand back and wonder at what to do with all the wealth that you've suddenly acquired. It almost feels like too much -- although the greedy pig inside you would never admit it.

Mostly, I made jam with the plums. All day jamming sessions that went late into the night for a couple of days in a row. Then I used the jam to make all sorts of things like cakes and cookies. But mostly, I happily spread the sweet-tart stuff onto buttered toast.

The main thing I took away from my plum jam-making is that it is a process. It's hard work, and you get really sweaty from all the boiling and boiling away that is happening. Your arm starts to ache from stirring to prevent scorching and skimming the scum off the top. If making more than one batch, you might also get snapped at here and there by a husband who is providing childcare to a toddler and wondering when you will actually be finished with your seemingly never-ending project.

It's not glamorous work at all, though you'd never know it from the final product, which sits innocently -- and at times, glamorously -- gleaming in small glass jars on your pantry shelf, like a girl who knows she is beautiful but who doesn't want you to think she realizes it.

Despite the involved process, the maker of things in me just loves putting up jam.

But a bit more about what I've learned. Jam must be made in modest quantities. With plums, especially, it seems the smallest batch that you can make without feeling let down by the fact that you only have six puny jars at the end of it, is best. 

Plums, especially the yellow ones from Kari's tree, are full of water. They have to be macerated first in sugar, softening their skins and leaving you with fruit basking in layers of golden syrup. Then, they have to be cooked down longer than other less moisture-laden fruit.

They mustn't, however, be overcooked, which is more likely to happen if you make a larger batch of jam. If the fruit is cooked too long, it loses the beguiling, fragrant quality that makes it so attractive in the first place, leaving only tartness and a one-dimensionality behind.

This year, I only took home 18 pounds of plums from Kari's tree (even as she attempted to hand me more). I made it all into jam. 

When you live in a place that rains nine months out of the year, a fragrant plum jam is most welcome on the darkest of winter's days. It is the best reminder of sweeter, warmer times when it was possible to spend a sunny afternoon with friends, reaching up into a giving tree to pluck its ripe, bloom-covered fruit. 

Yellow Plum Jam with Vanilla
This is a jam for anyone who loves tart flavors. The addition of vanilla gives the jam additional complexity and a lovely fragrance. We make a lot of vanilla ice cream during the summer months and always have spent vanilla beans sitting in a jar of sugar. That's what I used here. You can also probably use some vanilla extract added at the end, but that might not give as nice a flavor as the spent vanilla pod would. 

You'll also notice that this recipe does not contain any liquid or powdered pectin. I prefer not to use it, as I feel it gives the jam a murky taste. I generally prefer the clean, bright flavor of fruit with a softer set to a firmer-set jam with cloudier flavor.

Slightly adapted from The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook.

Makes 6 to 7 8-ounce jars. 

Ingredients
2 pounds, 3 ounces (35 total ounces) pitted and halved yellow plums (to be mashed/pureed)
2 pounds, 5 ounces (37 total ounces) pitted yellow plums, halved
1 1/4 pounds plus 3/4 pound white cane sugar
2 to 6 ounces freshly squeezed lemon juice, strained
1 spent vanilla pod leftover from other cooking activities, or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

Instructions

Day 1
In a large non-reactive bowl, layer the 2 pounds, 3 ounces of fruit with 1 1/4 pounds of sugar and 1 ounce of lemon juice. It is important to make sure each of piece of fruit is covered with the sugar and lemon juice. In another separate non-reactive bowl, combine the 2 pounds, 5 ounces of plums in the same manner with the remaining 3/4 pound of sugar and 1 ounce of lemon juice. For each container, press down a piece of plastic wrap against the fruit to prevent browning. Cover both bowls tightly and allow to macerate in the refrigerator for 24 hours. If you find that you can't get to it by then and need a little bit more time, that is fine as well.

Day 2
Place a saucer with a few metal teaspoons on it in the freezer. You will use this to test your jam later for doneness.

Remove plums from the refrigerator. Scrape the 2 pounds, 3 ounces of macerated plums into a large, non-reactive dutch-oven or other similar type of wide cooking vessel with high sides. Place over medium-high heat, stirring often until they soften, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and coarsely mash (I used a potato masher, but you can also use a food mill), breaking up larger chunks.

Add the uncooked, macerated plums. Taste the mixture. Very gradually add lemon juice as needed. Taste as you go. The flavor of the lemon juice should be present but not overpowering. The ideal is to be able to just detect the tartness of the lemon. 

Bring the jam mixture to a boil over high heat, stirring frequently with a large, heatproof spatula. Boil, stirring frequently until the jam thickens, 30 to 45 minutes. As the jam cooks, use a large stainless steel spoon to skim off foam from the surface. Discard. Scrape the bottom of the pan often. Very importantly, decrease the heat gradually as more and more moisture cooks out of the jam. Stir the jam slowly and steadily the last 10 minutes of cooking to prevent scorching.

When the jam is thickened, test it for doneness. Remove a spoon from the freezer and scoop a half-spoonful of jam with it then put it back in the freezer for 3 minutes. Remove and feel the underside of the spoon. It should be neither warm nor cold. If still warm, put it back in the freezer for another moment. When ready, hold the spoon vertically to see how quickly the jam runs. It is done when it is thick and gloppy. If it runs off the spoon, cook your jam for another five minutes, stirring, then test again.

Turn off the heat and don't stir the jam. If any foam remains, skim it off the surface. Add the vanilla pod by pressing it slightly down into the jam. Allow the jam to sit for 10 minutes, then pour the jam into prepared, sterilized containers (here's a nice how to), leaving behind the vanilla pod. 

Process the jars in boiling water for 10 minutes. Remove from water bath and place on a rack, with jars at least an inch apart. Allow to cool overnight without disturbing. This jam will last for one year.

The Lost Chihuahua & A Summer Cocktail

There's the saying that we should "pay attention to the signs." And then there are young children like my son, who are fascinated by the familiar, yet not always recognizable squiggles, lines, and edges written on an actual sign.

Two weeks ago, as we were driving past the lake by our house, Kingston pointed at a sign and asked, "What that say?"

This was one of several large yellow posters placed high up on telephone poles in the near vicinity. I'd seen them but hadn't given them much thought once I'd driven past.

I explained to Kingston that the sign in front of us was for a lost dog. Someone, maybe a family, had lost their chihuahua. Of course, I then had to explain what a chihuahua was, since he had never met one.

Over the following days, he became fascinated by the idea that a little black dog cherished by someone was gone, and that there was a person, perhaps an entire family, searching for it. 

He entered into this thought with the innate enthusiasm that is common to most three-and-a-half-year olds. For instance, he began to make up songs about the chihuahua and sing them loudly, not caring one iota where we were -- next to the dog treat section of Trader Joe's, in the library, at the park. Every version naturally included a rousing chorus that went, "Lost chihuahua, where are you?" (repeat at least twice)

Then, a day or two after his musical efforts began, Kingston informed us that he was a dog and that we should call him not by his given name, but by "Dog." As in, "Good boy, Dog," which we should say as we patted him on the head.

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Bedtime was also overtaken by the lost chihuahua, as together we wove ever-more elaborate tales about the poor, lost dog who was heartbroken over his separation from his beloved family, especially the boy who would snuggle with him every night in bed. How he missed his boy!

Such enthusiasm. What was it all about? What did it mean? 

Then last week, I was reading Maria Popova's wonderful, Brain Pickings, which featured a piece on the writer, Neil Gaiman. His insight on stories about animals and why children are drawn to them, resonated with me:

“Animals in fiction … are your first attempt to put your head into the “other” and to experience the other, the idea of another…

The most important thing that I think fiction does [is that] it lets us look out through other eyes … but it also gives us empathy. The act of looking out through other eyes tells us something huge and important, which is that other people exist.

[…]

One of the things that fiction can give us is just the realization that behind every pair of eyes, there’s somebody like us. And, perhaps, looking out through animal eyes, there’s somebody like us; looking out through alien eyes, there’s somebody like us.”

— Neil Gaiman

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Other people exist. There's somebody else like us. What Mr. Gaiman posits seems absolutely spot on.

I can't help but think of Kingston's fascination with the lost dog and the way he has taken to calling it the "poor, poor chihuahua." 

What if we could see the world as children again? Would we foster more empathy within ourselves if, as adults, we regularly practiced being a horse, a cat, or even...a black chihuahua? Would we end up being more loving, more fully realized human beings?

Could be. I say we give it a try.

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The Lost Chihuahua
My own imagination took over as I tried to think more about the chihuahua as a child might. The poor dog, separated from the people it loved needed a bit of comfort. Silly as this might sound, I thought it might like a cocktail to soothe its frazzled frou-frou soul. 

I thought it might find something bubbly like prosecco a suitable choice. Prosecco mixed with something fruity, maybe since it was living in this (our hippie) town, something "alive," possibly fermented. Maybe it would like a touch of an herb, say, a sprig or two of mint. 

This is how the Lost Chihuahua was found in the form of the perfect summer drink. While you are enjoying this light and fizzy beverage, don't forget to make a toast to the real lost chihuahua. Cheers!

Makes two drinks.

Ingredients
1/4 cup, homemade berry shrub (or substitute a purchased berry kombucha)
1 1/2  cups (14 oz.) Prosecco
two sprigs of mint, for garnish
a few berries of your choice, for garnish (I used alpine strawberries from my backyard)

Instructions
Pour half the shrub into each double-rocks glass already filled with ice. Add half the Prosecco to one glass, then the other half to the next glass. Give each drink a stir. Garnish with sprigs of mint and berries. That's it!

Snap Pea Salad with Red Chile, Feta, Mint and Lettuce

With all the beautiful produce showing up recently, it's been hard not to have salad on the brain. In fact, it's easy to start daydreaming about being Yotam Ottolenghi, the vegetable master, flipping all sorts of gorgeous possibilities around in my mind. Red chile? Snap peas? Feta? Yes.

There is much to hope for in a good salad. When seasonings and textures are in harmony and the freshest ingredients used, a salad can be invigorating. Uplifting, even. This is especially true on those hot days when we feel droopy to the point of not wanting to eat - or hope for - much of anything.

Salads can veer off into wild exuberance, with acidity, for instance, nearly taking over only to be pulled back from the edge by just the right amount of salt. Crunch can get piled on top of more crunchiness and crispness, each element steeped in its individual flavor. If they are put together right, a mouthful is bliss on a sunny day.

I know people like my neighbor, Heather, however, who dreads putting a salad together for fear of not doing it right or making it "too bland." I'm not sure where this fear comes from, but it must be set it aside. 

Those intimidated, would-be vegetable artists need to step up to the task of salad making with courage and determination. Not to do so would mean missing out on life.

"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people," writes the very wise Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird.

But really, when it comes to warm weather produce and what to do with it, this line could be rewritten as: "Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the salad."

This means, be brave and pull it together. Don't be afraid of making a salad with what you have. Don't worry too much about the outcome. Dare to let your veggies be great. 

Walk through the farmer's market or the produce section and grab what pleases you. If you are fortunate enough to be asked by a neighbor (such as mine) to water her garden while she is visiting Southern California or even have a small plot of your very own, pick what is ready and calling out to you. 

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Step back and gaze at the pile of things you have collected and thunked down on the counter. In what ways could they possibly be encouraged to live happily together?

Maybe just a dressing will do? The simplest one I can think of for a large head of lettuce washed, torn, and thrown into a bowl is made with the juice of half a lemon, a few glugs of good olive oil (twice as much as the juice) and a generous pinch of salt.

Knit them together with a quick, energetic whisking. If no lemon is in sight, a lime will work just as well. Or use a vinegar instead.

Taste as you go along. Make sure that you have yin to balance out the yang of your vegetables. If something is crisp, add an element that may be soft or silky. Tart? Add sour. Bitterness? Add sweetness. And so on. Just have fun with it and should anything go amiss, it can always be corrected. 

In the worst case, when you can't quite figure it out (with practice, this will happen with less and less frequency until it becomes a non-concern) you will at the very least, still have something fresh and healthy to eat.

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Snap Pea Salad with Red Chile, Feta, Mint and Lettuce
Our neighbors did ask me to water their veggie garden while they were away for ten days recently. They had plenty of snap peas, which I had to snatch away from Kingston, who ate them out of hand. I had the lettuce, chile, onion and a hunk of feta in the fridge already. Mint and tarragon were in my herb box on the back deck. So, this was a salad about using what I had. These, for me, are always the most enjoyable kinds of meals. Simplicity itself. 

Serves 3 to 4.

Ingredients
2 cups snap peas
1 small fresh red chile
1 small fresh banana pepper (optional)
1/3 cup crumbled feta cheese
6 or 7 Boston or Butter lettuce leaves (larger, outer leaves)
Fresh mint, enough leaves to make 1 teaspoon when roughly chopped
Fresh tarragon, 1 sprig, leaves torn off
1 teaspoon black sesame seeds, plus more
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt and pepper

Instructions
Cut snap peas on the diagonal into 1/2-inch pieces. Mince the red chile. Cut banana pepper lengthwise then again crosswise into thin pieces, about 1/8-inch each (if using). Roughly chop mint and tear or cut tarragon into small pieces.

Whisk together lemon juice and olive oil. Add salt to taste, keeping in mind hat the feta will add saltiness as well. Just a small pinch was enough for me.

Add torn lettuce pieces to the snap peas and peppers. Drizzle dressing over the veggies and scatter sesame seeds and then the feta. Add a grind or two of fresh black pepper. Toss salad gently but thoroughly with your hands or with tongs. Make sure all of the vegetables are coated with a bit of the dressing.

Serve in a big salad bowl or on individual plates. Scatter a pinch more of the sesame seeds over the salad before serving. Eat immediately.

Daisy's Gremolata Roasted Chicken

Is it weird for this post to be inspired by a psychotic?

I could have told you that it was inspired by the beauty of Spring and my overflowing herb box, currently bursting with the purple pom poms of chive plants, thyme, rosemary and sage. That would be true. It would also be the politically correct reason to write about a Spring gremolata roasted chicken.

That reason, to me, would be lovely but mundane. So, I'll tell you the other version of the story, which is that I'm mad about our local library, which lets me check out all sorts of books, from a visual explanation by Isaac Asimov about what happens after you flush the toilet (for the three-year-old in the house, of course) to guides on traditional fermentation methods (for me).

About three weeks ago, just because I suddenly thought of it (as in: "Why haven't I ever read that? I never saw the movie either."), I decided to borrow a copy of Susannah Kaysen's Girl Interrupted. I had no expectations, just a few vague images of young Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie in my mind, as I ran the bar code under the blue light of the scanner at the self-checkout desk.

I ended up being completely surprised by this book.

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Just as a side note, once you have been educated and trained as a mental health clinician and then spend many years actually practicing, there are certain ways of thinking that fortunately or unfortunately become innate to you. I've heard people, teachers in my academic program in fact, refer to this as THINKING PSYCHOLOGICALLY.

You might be talking to someone at a barbecue, someone you've heard things about, and based on those things, along with your actual interaction begin wondering what is really going on with this person. What could his or her diagnosis be? According to the DSM-IV TR (the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual), that is. I suppose this might be the reason why, when I used to tell people who didn't really know me or had just met me, that I was a therapist, they would either start asking me about a "friend" of theirs, or back away silently, while tightly gripping their cheese burgers.

Okay, so this is just to say that I still have a little bit of that thinking psychologically problem going on most of the time, even after not practicing as a clinician for three years now.

But let's get back to Girl, Interrupted, shall we?

The writing is lean, truthful and spot on. Whether Ms. Kaysen is describing a teenage girl having a breakdown after she finally realizes that half her face has been burned off or the suffocating lack of fresh air in inmate rooms, she doesn't flinch. She tells us about being a teen in a terribly alienating place and lonely situation with the clear eyes of time's passage and much empathy.

Even more, she is able to reflect on the entirety of two years spent in a mental institution in the sixties and its long-term effects on her life. Here's one: she couldn't get a telephone line installed in her new apartment and her former psychiatrist had to write a note to the phone company explaining that she was no longer crazy and in fact, reliable. At the same time, she still questions her version of the events. Was this how it really happened? Is her memory faulty? Was she just experiencing a more intense version of adolescence? Does she sound crazy after all?

There is a strange, sad and laugh-out-loud section earlier on in the book about her fellow inmate, Daisy, who only makes temporary, seasonal visits to the ward:

“Daisy had two passions: Laxatives and Chicken. Every morning she presented herself at the nursing station and drummed her fingers, pale and stained with nicotine, on the counter, impatient for laxatives...

Twice a week her squat potato-face father brought a whole chicken roasted by her mother and wrapped in aluminum foil. Daisy would hold the chicken in her lap and fondle it through the foil, darting her eyes around the room, eager for her father to leave so she could get going on the chicken.”

— Girl Interrupted, Susannah Kaysen

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Since I Google nearly everything these days, I couldn't help Googling Daisy. I found women and girls floating within the Internet vespers making suppositions about what was wrong with Daisy, what kind of diagnosis she might've had.

As I was immersed in their questions, I suddenly remembered one of my first supervisors at the psychoanalytic site where I trained telling us that psychotics often don't like to bathe. According to her, this was because they fear that they are washing themselves away, everything disappearing down the drain. Being dirty, having the concrete sensation of smelling one's own odor could hold together a person in psychosis, our unflappable supervisor explained. I remembered thinking about the strangeness of that and trying to understand it.

To me, it seems Daisy's chicken holds a similar function as the concept of a psychotic foregoing showering. Even in the parallel universe that is psychosis, the human instinct is to preserve the self that anchors us to actual reality. Daisy does that through the basics of the body: food, eating and yes, elimination. In a sense, the chicken keeps Daisy intact and alive, held together as some form of a human being.

So for those making claims that food is more than merely food, well. They are quite right. Food is memory, emotional sustenance. Food is what holds us together individually and communally. It reminds us that we are indeed bona fide human beings.

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Daisy's Gremolata Roasted Chicken

The question is, did Daisy's mother have some magical method of roasting chickens that made them entirely irresistible and worthy of caresses? Did she smother them in butter or oil? Stuff them with herbs? Unless one of us is able to speak directly to her, I suppose we will never really know. This very simple recipe delivers a crispy-skinned version which I hope Daisy would have liked.

Serves 3-4.

Ingredients
A 3 1/2 to 4 lb. chicken, hopefully organic and free-range
1/2 cup minced Italian parsley
Zest of one lemon, finely minced
3 tablespoons finely minced young garlic, white and light green parts only (or 1-2 cloves garlic)
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons clarified butter or ghee

Additional kosher salt and pepper
Additional parsley and young garlic greens, optional

Instructions
Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Rinse chicken. Pat dry and truss if you wish. Season all sides generously with salt and pepper, making sure to season the cavity as well.

Make your gremolata by combining the parsley, lemon zest, garlic, salt and pepper with clarified butter or ghee. Gently loosen chicken breast skin from the cavity edge using your fingertips. In the pockets you have created, one on each side, stuff with the gremolata.

Quarter the lemon and stuff as many pieces as you can fit into the cavity of the chicken. If there is additional room, add some parsley stems and if you have any, garlic greens are nice as well.

Place chicken legs-first into your hot oven. Allow to roast for 50-60 minutes or until the innermost part of the thigh reaches 165 degrees. Allow to rest for 10-15 minutes before carving and serving.

Smokey Sweet Potato, Collard and Cheddar Pancakes

April is an iffy month around here. For a few days at a time sun and warmth appears, fanning our hopes for the ultimate end of winter-like weather. Then, rain and coolness show up again, underscoring the basic changeable nature of our existence. 

That was the case a couple of weeks ago when I was driving down to Seattle with my husband and son. About 30 miles south, as we entered Skagit County, we headed straight into a storm. Ice pounded the top of our truck. Our windshield vibrated as it repelled angry chunks of hail. We watched cars in front of us skidding off the ice-covered road, a State patrol officer standing just beyond his vehicle to the side, as if waiting for the inevitable.

When we arrived in the Emerald City, the sky was almost cloudless, blue. The city was warm, filled with sunlight.

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Strange, but the person who popped into my head in the middle of that ice storm wasn't my mother, my brother, or any of my good friends. It wasn't a version of what one might call God. Instead, it was a teenaged girl from South Central.

I met Della about an eon ago, at my first paying job out of grad school, when I was just emerging from a dark time in my personal life. The job I got was as a mental health therapist in a Level-12 residential facility for pregnant and parenting teens in the middle of Los Angeles. At any given time, there were 60 adolescent girls and 30 babies and infants. The girls were monitored 24 hours a day.

As you might imagine, this was a recipe for frequent chaos, including nightly "incidents" forming a long list that was read to us by the Mental Health Director each morning. Sometimes girls would barricade themselves in their rooms, threatening to smash any remaining furniture not already pushed against the door. Or, they declared that they were planning to hurt themselves, maybe with a razor blade, a knife, whatever it took.

Other times, the disturbances were more along the lines of teenage pranks, such as when two of the residents collected enough packets of ketchup and mustard from the cafeteria to spell out "FUCK YOU" in huge letters across the door and window of the Facility Director's office.

I got to hear the girls' stories, either directly from them, reading their case files or talking to their social workers. Unsurprisingly, most of them had been abused, sexually and otherwise, sometimes by people they should have been able to trust, other times by strangers.

No matter what they had been through, they mostly acted tough as Teflon, even as they begged us to take them for walks off campus (they could only leave with a staff member) to the closest shopping destination, Smart & Final. There, still dressed in their usual pajama pants and slippers, they would buy oversized packages of Hot Cheetos and massive tubs of Red Vines. No matter what they'd been through, in some basic ways, they were still just teens.

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Della was a lot like the other girls. She had landed in foster care when her grandmother, who had been her caregiver, went to prison for shooting her husband after he'd beaten her for years. When Della became pregnant at the age of fifteen, she was placed in our facility. 

As her assigned therapist, I would go to see Della in her room, which she shared with her daughter, Soraya. Sometimes we folded clothes together, picked things up off the floor, and listened to music. For much of the time at the beginning of our relationship though, we hardly spoke at all. I would show up several times a week, rapping lightly on her door. She put up with my presence, even if it was one of silence. That was part of the deal with living there; they all had to tolerate such visits.

I kept showing up because it was my job, but in time I also grew to respect the gentle way Della spoke to her daughter, the patience with which she would work a small comb through Soraya's hair, even when she squirmed and squirmed. One day, while quietly dabbing Vaseline onto Soraya's scalp, Della suddenly turned and asked me if I wanted to learn how to braid hair. She meant black hair. I said yes and settled in next to them. From that day on, the bouts of silence between us began to lessen.

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During each of the Director's morning recitations of the previous night's chaotic events, Della's name rarely came up. She tended to stick to herself and focus on taking care of her daughter.

Then one morning I walked into our morning meeting to hear Della being discussed. She had been passing a petition around to demand a change in the cafeteria's food. We all happened to eat there, since it was difficult to leave the grounds for lunch. Our work days also typically ran well past dinnertime, so we usually just ate dinner with the girls in the cafeteria.

Della had spoken to the others. Her petition argued that the food being served was "too white" and that change was necessary. Most of the girls in the residence were either African-American or Hispanic and Della believed the food should reflect that. The menu should include things such as the sweet potatoes and collard greens her grandmother cooked for her and burritos, tacos and other more familiar items for the Hispanic residents.

We therapists were impressed by Della's efforts and in the end, the cafeteria menu was changed to reflect the demands of the petition (signed by nearly all of the girls). 

Della's petition might seem like a small thing. It wasn't. For someone who was used to being treated as less than, making a demand such as this took courage and some understanding that food provides us with much more than physical sustenance. It can also be a forceful signifier of who we are, where we come from and where we have been.

I'm still not entirely sure why I thought of Della that day, but I am glad that I did. She taught me a lot about what it takes to be a mother, especially under extremely difficult circumstances. Perhaps an image of her was etched long ago, deep within my brain, as a symbol of what it means to survive and continue on. 

I don't know where Della is anymore. But, I made this dish just for her.

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Smoked Sweet Potato, Collard and Cheddar Pancakes (for Della)

Makes about 10 3-inch pancakes

Ingredients
1 small sweet potato, cut into ribbons with a peeler or on a mandolin
1 bunch collard greens, tough stems removed, leaves rolled up and sliced into thin ribbons
1/4 head of a small green cabbage, core removed finely shredded
2 scallions, thinly sliced on the diagonal
1/2 cup flour (all-purpose or brown rice flour, for a gluten-free product)
1/2 cup aged cheddar, grated
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon (regular) paprika
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/8 teaspoon cayenne
1 large egg
1/4 cup water
Olive oil, for cooking the pancakes

To finish:
Additional salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste
Crème fraiche
Finely chopped chives or scallions

Instructions
Combine prepped sweet potato, collard greens, cabbage, scallions and cheddar in a large bowl. Set aside. In another bowl, combine flour, both types of paprika, salt and cayenne. Add flour mixture to the vegetables, and combine gently with your hands or a pair of tongs. You want to work the mixture through all of the vegetables. Beat eggs in a small bowl then add water. Add egg mixture to the vegetables and mix gently but well. Again, hands or tongs work well for this task. Allow mixture to sit for 5 or 10 minutes.

In the meantime, heat a skillet over medium heat (if you're in a hurry, or just more efficient than I am, use two skillets, dividing the veggie mixture). Add a teaspoon of oil to the heated pan and swirl. Add spoonfuls of the vegetable mixture to the pan, forming approximately 3-inch pancakes. Don't overcrowd them. Cook the first side for 6 minutes, flip and cook the other side an additional 6 minutes. Each side should be well browned. Continue doing this with the remaining veggie mixture until you have cooked it all.

Serve pancakes with any additional salt (if you feel it needs it), pepper, and if you like, a dollop of crème fraiche followed by an enthusiastic sprinkling of chives or scallions.

*Note: These pancakes do not crisp up all the way through, but remain (pleasingly) soft-ish in center.

Adapted from Marc Masumoto's Okonomiyaki recipe.