Summer Part 2: Your New Go-to Three Bean Salad with Capers, Mint, and Lemon-Yogurt Dressing

Thank you for reading Summer Part 1 if you did, and I'm sorry for not including a recipe. I assure you any wait or confusion will have been worth it. This salad is top notch yum! Plus all the fiber and vegetarian protein and compliments from your potluck compatriots! That's why I'm posting it here. Folks keep asking for a recipe, and I've tinkered with the ratios to the point where I'm proper chuffed* about it, so I figured I'd make a record here for all of us. And "all of us" is so many more than you'd think! Did you know that thishereblog -- in all its barely-updated replete-with-defunct-links-and-broken-JPEGS glory -- gets on average a thousand views per day? I have no idea who you are but I LOVE YOU. And you're welcome? Nobody comments so I don't know how it's working out for foodie-viewers, but I assume they keep coming back and who would have thought that this labor of love from the hip-deep-in-diapers era would have such sticking power? (Those babies are now teenagers!) Also: how many viewers would I have if I actually put some consistent effort into this beast? Also: who the heck are you? Overseas bots? (Likely, yes.) Mom?

Okay, I talked too much in my last post about not-beans, so let's just get to the beans now! 

  

Don't they look great and colorful and healthy? Perfect for your National Night Out block party or camping trip with your best friends' families or that detox, imperative subsequent to your recent overindulgence in booze-infused restaurant patio dining? Check check check!

It really is a punchy, next-level bean salad, and so far it has proven to be a crowd-pleaser, in quite a range of crowds. It's inspired by The Mediterranean Dish (the mint and capers) and Cookie & Kate's Sunshine Salad Dressing. Here's the recipe! You of course could use fresh-cooked beans instead of canned here - you just want a total of 4 to 5 cups beans, and a mix of textures and types is more delightful.

Three Bean Salad with Capers, Mint, and Lemon-Yogurt Dressing
Serves 8 or more as a side, 4-6 as a hearty main

Salad
1 15-oz can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 15-oz can cannellini, great Northern, pinto, or black beans, drained and rinsed
1 15-oz can garbanzo beans (chickpeas), drained and rinsed

2 1/2 cups: yellow, orange or red bell pepper, cored and chopped and/or shredded purple cabbage
1/2 English cucumber, chopped
2 stalks celery (leaves welcome!), chopped
4 scallions (white and green parts) or 1 small shallot, chopped
3 tablespoons capers, drained

1/2 teaspoon table salt
1/2 cup torn or gently chopped fresh mint (a little cilantro as well or instead would be good too!)

Lemon-Yogurt Dressing
1/2 cup plain yogurt (any % fat will do, Greek or regular)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil or other mild-flavored oil
3-4 tablespoons fresh-squeezed lemon juice (from 2 lemons)
3 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 clove garlic, pressed or minced
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

In a large serving bowl, toss all the salad ingredients except mint. In a lidded jar, combine all the dressing ingredients and shake until fully combined and emulsified. Pour dressing onto salad, toss gently. Allow flavors to marinate for at least an hour or so, then top with mint and serve. This keeps well in the refrigerator for a few days. It's a great make-ahead, but I'd keep the dressing separate if you're making it more than 3-4 hours before serving.

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* From Oxford Language Club: Chuffed is used more or less all over the UK, it seems to be decreasing in popularity, but is still in relatively common usage. Essentially, it is an expression of pride at your own actions or achievements. For example you could say ‘I’m feeling proper chuffed I won that.’ If you’re talking to someone else you can use it as such, ‘I bet you’re pretty chuffed you won!’

Summer Part 1: Writing and Reading

Hello, dear friends and fellow foodies. I have a recipe to share but I thought I'd throw in some writing updates and a few book recommendations while I'm here.* I hope you are all doing well and that your locale's experience of climate change and your community's presentation of sociopolitical polarization are not unmanageable. In Minnesota, we had a snowless winter (boring and brown) and have endured record-setting, event-ruining rains since spring. But our governor is running for vice president! And in my (liberal) circles, we're all pride and enthusiasm about that, with perhaps a thimble's worth of itchy misgivings. In my humble (liberal) opinion, Gov. Walz is compassionate and communicative, he's both a pragmatist and a consistently progressive, decisive leader, and he'd serve as a compassionate, communicative, pragmatic, progressive, and decisive VP. But man, national politics are ugly, and I wish we could just skip the next eighty-odd days. 

Well, now we've got that out of the way. ;)

On Writing: In the spring, I was lucky enough to attend a three-day writing retreat overlooking a glacial Lake Superior. Surrounded by naked birch trees braving North Shore gales, and dodging displaced earthworms as we navigated the grounds, we discussed, fittingly, fallow periods: those stretches characterized by what we used to call “writer’s block,” a phrase lately out of fashion amongst legit writerly folks. I appreciate the shift. The concept of writer’s block sounds more like a failure, by definition owned by the writer themself, no solution in sight. The fallow slant is more forgiving. Extrinsic. For me, the concept hearkens a mindful acceptance of the realities and responsibilities of adulthood, which are very often not conducive to nurturing one’s creative intuition or refilling the well. The fallow times in my life seem to be times of fullness, buckets and calendars overflowing with real urgent demands: laundry and lists and laundry lists and logistics and breakfasts and lunches and dinners, even elevensies on no-school days, along with bloody noses and strep throats and molting toes and Epipen refills and new insurance terms and practices and races and meets and games (and did I mention that I trained for (liberal) and completed a sprint triathlon in July, without dying?). Without generous pours of intention and discipline, real life – even when you quit your day job! two years and two months ago! – does not afford much space for writing to get better at writing. A frantic pace militates against a noticing mind and open heart. In my more dire moments, I fear I’ve been most creative when there’s been emptiness or brokenness – miscarriages, family dysfunction, emergency rooms, PTSD. I see it in others whose writing I follow, too. Craft tends to level up with the stakes, so writers get really good when they’re undergoing chemo or fighting over the custody terms in the divorce decree they didn't want. And so, short on cancer diagnoses and handcuffed to this pesky intact family, what’s a writer to do? … I’m trying to re-shift my focus to the glorious present. There is plenty to reckon with in even a non-tragic life. There is plenty to notice and memorialize in the mundane. To that end, I've posted some poems on my Substack, about love and mothering - the pillars of my own glorious present. And I keep plugging away at the bigger goals, erratically, inefficiently. Floundering as ever, but with some wins: I think my baseline ramblings have improved in quality and color; and I received my first acceptance letter (!!!!) for publication of a poem of mine in a small-press journal. (I then panicked and withdrew it. Some poems come with controversy.)

On Reading: This has been the summer of White women novels. And they were all worth reading, even if they do kind of blur. I finally read American Wife, by my hero Curtis Sittenfeld. It's a fictitious examination of the life of Laura Bush. Excellent, of course, couldn't put it down. I also read We All Want Impossible Things, by Catherine Newman, to tide me over until I can get my hands on a library copy of her newer book, Sandwich, which is getting a lot of hype. I liked it - it was quick, funny, character-driven, full of evocative five-sense food descriptions and focusing on that epic fraught incomparable love affair some of us are lucky enough to have with our childhood best friend (me!! I'm looking at you, Nic!). There was an emotional detachment to the writing that was arguably essential to balancing the story's tone with its subject matter (cancer, dying, palliative care, loss, grief). Nevertheless, I found it sort of alienating. I still recommend the book without reservation - it is solid writing, modern and pithy with glimmers of very relatable dynamics and Gilmore Girls-ish dialogue. I preferred the dying friend over the protagonist - staunchly moral, impatient and exacting in her expectations of others - like me! I also read Hello Beautiful - amazing first chapter and then... meh? And a few others! But the standouts of the summer so far are these:

 

 

I loved the book Fleishman Is in Trouble (have not watched show yet) and so had high expectations of Long Island Compromise (release date: July 9, 2024 - I'm so trendy). It did NOT disappoint. It's sweeping and unhinged, brimming with softball social commentary and riddled with crass, clever lazzis; it revolves around characters you simultaneously despise and adore and despise adoring (they are drastic distortions of our own worst privileged selves and that comes with a bite!); decades-old mysteries unfold and unlived lives fall apart (or do they?) and the whole unwieldy story is told with impeccable rhythm and precision and control, and it is HILARIOUS. Plus, the ending is just tidy enough with every tangent appropriately capped - no small feat, I can say with authority and by authority I mean experience trying and failing at such despite grueling efforts. It reminded me of a lot of some old favorites: Jonathan Tropper's This is Where I Leave You, Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins (all the heart emojis), Ann Patchett's Commonwealth, anything by Jonathan Franzen minus the misogyny. It is SO GOOD.

And then... The Bee Sting. Holy cannoli!! I'm not even finished with the book but I can't stop thinking about this disorienting, grim gambol tracking a well-off Irish family's experience of the economic downturn of 2008 and hurling full steam ahead to an uncanny dystopian existential far-off climate-changed cliff-fall of a future. It's 617 pages you can't stop turning... daunting to the masses, you'd think, and yet I waited nearly a year for my library copy. There are tons of thorough, smart reviews of it online, including a free one on Slate. Check them out! You'll know whether it's your thing. It's for sure mine, even though I am generally suspect of any book longer than 350 pages.

* I said I had a recipe but this got VERY LONG! Stay tuned for fiber aplenty and capers too!

A Very Nice Vegan Bran Muffin + other kitchen exploits

Well, good morning! It is bright and blue out my window, so I felt sort of gut-punched walking my littlest to the bus stop this morning, buffeted by an unanticipated onslaught of gusty, dusty nonsense. We're on the tail-end of a disorienting, disturbingly mild winter in Minneapolis: the driest, brownest, absolutely most boring one I've yet to experience in my score-and-some-change tenure here. I longed for snow all through December, January, and February - a little dusting to brighten up the oddly displayed dead and dormant everywhere; maybe a thicker blanket on the weekends so we could go sledding? As this point though, I'm over it and have traded in my winter-want for real spring readiness. Usually spring is sort of a hypothetical season in this part of the world but I figured after our non-winter, anything was possible. And that very well may be, but last week's upper 60s turned into to this morning's "feels like 5" and now the pros say we could get 20 inches of snow starting tomorrow night and into next week, or maybe a fraction of that in rain, or maybe nothing. And here I am, a proper Minnesotan doing what Minnesotans do best: lament the weather. (This paragraph and entire post are my writing warm-ups today. If you're interested in seeing what I've been writing and sharing elsewhere, please check out my recent ramblings on Writing It Out.)

When it's irritatingly cold out, I like to bake. Since the weather dipped last week, I've baked two batches of cookies and two kinds of muffins, and I thought I'd tell you about all four, and share the muffin recipe. 

First: Chocolate Chip Cookies. My middle child found this recipe and it's a crowd-pleasing keeper. We used a mix of milk and white chocolate chips, plus those crazy can't-stop-won't-stop seasonal salted caramel chips from Trader Joe's. Speaking of my middle child... here he is doing an impression of his mom.

It's true. I have always liked to rest my right leg on a tall counter and there is no place my hand prefers to be than holding a warm mug of coffee.

Second: cookie number two, and a mini-review of Amy Thielen's Company, a gorgeous, characteristically inviting cookbook full of decadent, homesteader-meets-James Beard recipes, most of which fall into my too-hard or too-carnivorous or too-many-ingredient buckets. I spent a couple weeks browsing my library copy, wished someone would concoct some of the too-hard treasures for me, and tried out a handful of recipes that seemed novel as well as manageable --- with mixed results. I tried a "ramen brittle" recipe that seemed so promising - a salad-crunch option that wasn't nut-based! Right out of the oven it was addictively salty-sweet delicious. But by the time it had firmed up and got tossed into salad, the clusters had gone jawbreaker on us, and while the flavor was good and interesting, it was not worth a dental emergency. Perhaps a different brand of ramen would not be so hazardous? (Insert shoulder shrug emoji.) I went on to have two successes: Apricot Snickerdoodles (a solid snickerdoodle dough recipe, but filled with a homemade jam made from dried apricots - SO, SO GOOD) and Parmesan Cream Dressing (from the "Winter Slaw" recipe), which was absolutely posh-restaurant-level exceptional and which I absolutely cannot wait to make again. 

Third: these Zucchini Muffins from Pinch of Yum. I make these often and invariably mess with the recipe and they invariably turn out great. This time, in an effort to make them lunchbox-worthy nutritious, I omitted the maple syrup, subbed yogurt for the oil, and added some protein powder. (Note: the recipe requires a VitaMix or something comparable.) 

Finally, the main course! Tim from Chicago, who spottily maintains a food blog of the same vintage as yours-truly's, recently recommended a bran muffin recipe that had been posted on yet another fine-aged blog circa 2011... I gave it a veganized go (and cut the recipe in half, because I literally don't have a bowl big enough to accommodate the full recipe's amount of batter) and am so glad I did! If you have buttermilk and eggs, go ahead and make the original recipe! But if you're interested in a vegan variation, you've come to the right place!

A couple notes:

- Batter should be prepared ahead of time, so that the bran, whole wheat flour, and oats can soak and soften. I soaked mine overnight and made six muffins this morning. 

- The batter can keep in the refrigerator for a week or more, so I plan to just make small batches of fresh-from-the-oven muffins every few days. I think the addition of fresh or frozen blueberries or dried fruit would be lovely, though I did not include those in this morning's production.

Otherwise, here you go!

Vegan Bran Muffins
Adapted from Sweet Sugar Bean
Yield: 18-24 muffins

1 cup boiling water
1 cup wheat or oat bran
2 cups soy or other milk
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar or distilled vinegar
1/2 cup applesauce
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1/3 cup ground flax seed
2 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups thick or "old-fashioned" oats
sunflower seeds, poppy seeds, flax seeds, sesame seeds, optional (for topping)

In a medium-sized bowl, pour the boiling water over the bran.  Let stand 10 minutes.  

In a very large bowl, whisk together soy milk and vinegar and set aside for 5 minutes or so. Add applesauce, oil, sugar, molasses, ground flax seeds, salt, cinnamon, and baking soda and whisk until thoroughly combined. Add flour and stir until just moistened, no more floury streaks. Stir in bran and oats. Cover bowl and place in refrigerator to soak for at least two hours, or overnight. 

When you're ready to make muffins, preheat oven to 350 and grease a muffin tin. Scoop the batter, until 3/4 full, sprinkle with seeds of your liking and bake for about 20-30 minutes, until the tops have risen and spring back when touched.

Tres Leches Rice Pudding (amazing *if you like* rice pudding)

I hate to include a caveat in the title, because this rice pudding is unequivocally absolute next-level rice pudding perfection, and I want to encourage anyone who has even the slightest interest in rice pudding to go make this yesterday and swim in its horchata-style glory. A caveat's inherent misgivingness sort of cuts against my zeal.

 

BUT. I want you to know that I wouldn't post anything here that wasn't worth posting! How can you trust me on that if I'm not totally honest?

The deal is this: I grew up eating rice pudding (and just a lot of rice, generally) and I love it and I love horchata and I love tres leches cake and typically I welcome an interesting mouthfeel, particularly if what's in my mouth is dead delicious. Moreover: I'm at a point in my midlife home chef / recipe connoisseur journey where it's tough for a recipe to surprise me, i.e., I wouldn't try it if I didn't have a pretty good sense of how it might result, and my sense is pretty reliable. Therefore: This recipe, adapted from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, was a no-brainer for me. To boot: The outcome wildly exceeded my fairly high expectations. And yet: Only two of our household of five appreciate this rice pudding, and I can only surmise that this division among us relates to some kind of misguided, essentialist, "it's a texture thing" rice pudding-aversion on the part of the losers (because, I assure you, the haters are the ones losing out here).

All that to mean: I don't want to pretend this is one of those bogus recommendations a la, "This will make a mushroom lover out of your mushroom-hating spouse!" Or, "Your family won't even taste the rice!"

This recipe isn't going to change anyone's palates. It will simply reward those with the right palate. 

My adaptations were minor: I adjusted proportions and "milks" based on what I had and what I like, and I thickened the pudding with a cornstarch slurry in lieu of an egg.

Tres Leches Rice Pudding
Yield: serves 8

2 cups cooked white rice*
2 tablespoons cornstarch, arrowroot, or tapioca starch
1 cup (8 oz) milk (any kind! I used plain soy milk; the original recipe recommends canned evaporated milk; any refrigerated cow milk would work fine)
One 13.5-oz can unsweetened coconut milk
One 12.5-oz can sweetened condensed milk
2 cinnamon sticks or 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste

To finish, if you'd like: fresh whipped cream, berries, a dust of cinnamon

Pour your first milk into a large measuring cup. Whisk in the cornstarch or alternative until there are no dry clumps.

Stir the coconut and sweetened condensed milks into the rice, then add the cornstarch-milk mixture and stir to combine thoroughly. Drop in the cinnamon sticks, or stir in the ground cinnamon. Place the pan on the stove and cook the mixture over low-medium heat, stirring every couple minutes so it doesn't stick or burn, until about 90 percent of the liquid is absorbed (about 25 minutes). Remove from heat, and carefully remove the cinnamon sticks, if you used those. Stir in the vanilla extract, then divide the pudding among 8 serving dishes. Deb suggests that you keep the puddings in the fridge until fully chilled, about 1 to 2 hours. And, practically speaking, of course that makes sense for a make-ahead dessert. But it ALSO makes sense to eat a (modest) bowl of this warm from the pot. It's a very decadent alternative to your morning oatmeal. You're welcome.

Dollop a spoonful of whipped cream on top of each bowl of rice pudding, top with some fresh berries, dust with ground cinnamon, then enjoy.

* If you are starting with dry rice, you'll need 3/4 cup uncooked white rice. Put it in a medium saucepan with 3/4 teaspoon salt and cover with 1 1/2 cups water. Bring to a low boil, cover with tight-fitting lid, and cook for 15 minutes, until water is absorbed. Remove from heat and proceed with recipe above.