Citrus Refresher Pasta, Birthdays, Smiles and Moving the Patreon Cooking Club to right here on Substack!
I feel the Spring vibes too, how about you?
Today is my daughter, Io’s 6th birthday and I will be spending it assembling a doll cake and hosting a large number of children to run wild and free and celebrate my fiery, creative and vibrant little person. I am so proud of her. And I have mixed feelings as is natural. Yes about her growing up, but also about this year and how I feel about myself as I have put her through a divorce. She is so resilient, and I know it is all for the best, but I still feel a lot of grief.
This week I am sharing a recipe for Citrus Refresher Pasta from my book, Good Enough which I think is so good at this time of year when we are still on the bare edge of spring. I am also excited to announce that I am moving the Patreon embodied cooking club classes to a paid subscriber feature her on substack so hopefully that will make it easier for more of you to join me. More Mini Retreats coming up, and the first ever Open Kitchen!! I go into detail about how to flip an egg. Keep the questions coming!
I also share a piece I wrote about smiling and jaw pain called A Smile Freed. I think it is better in spoken word so I’ve included an audio track as well. And finally, there is a link to a piece by Soleil Ho of the San Francisco Chronicle about the changes being made to the emergency funding of SNAP and how it’s affecting particularly those in expensive cities. This is important stuff. Hunger remains a long emergency in this country.
Moving the Embodied Cooking Classes from Patreon to a Paid Subscriber Feature here on Substack!
I am making some changes to the Embodied cooking club. As of the end of the month I will close down the patreon and move the weekly cooking classes to right here on substack starting the first month of April.
For anyone new here, I have been hosting a weekly live cooking class on Patreon once a week for a few months now, but I think it will be easier and more integrated for me to do it right here on substack. My hope is that this will create more engagement and allow us to really build a community around the practice of embodied cooking.
It will be just like it is now, once a week, 12:30pm ET I do a live cooking class, which you can participate in live or watch the recorded video on your own time. I send out the recipe on the Friday before in order to give time to collect groceries.
For anyone who is already a paid subscriber to my newsletter here or a patreon member you will automatically be given access to this new feature. For anyone who wants to join all you have to do is become a paid subscriber for access to my weekly cooking classes. I would so appreciate your support!
This last week we made Kuku Sabzi from a recipe by Samin Nosrat to celebrate Nowruz (Iranian new year) and Spring this past week and it was a delight—chopping all the herbs was sending me back to grass stains on my hands as a kid. Once you join you can request recipes or just concepts you want to learn and explore!
Over time I also plan to add more features for paid subscribers, but I will let you all know as that unfolds. For now, onward and upward!
Join me for a Mini-Retreat this Spring
Looking to really embrace the fresh new energy of the Spring? Feeling like you have to choose either self care or seeing a friend? Our last March retreat was so special and we all felt like we were shedding the last of the winter’s stagnancy to make way for fresh new growth. And sure, this is a metaphor, but when we do move our bodies together in time with our breath, eat and share together it becomes literal. Our bodies are built to process our experiences and move on, smarter, stronger and ready for the next good things.
Come join me and do it all, Saturday, April 22nd for a mini yoga retreat in my home in South Slope Brooklyn. There are also a couple spots left for the May retreat which will be celebrating parents, so sign up while you can!
Agenda
9:30-10: settling in with tea 🍵
10-11:30 meditation and restorative yoga 🧘🏼
11:30-12 Leanne cooks and shares embodied cooking practice.
12-12:30 Eat lunch and chat/share 🥗
12:30-1 final breathing and meditation
Float away into the rest of the dreamy weekend feeling released and connected.
Open Kitchen #1: How to Flip an Egg
I am so happy to present our first Open Kitchen, the feature where I answer your kitchen questions!
Here is today’s question:
“I'm old, but I still can't flip an egg. I've always loved eggs over medium, because I love a runny yolk, but not runny whites (gross). I've tried teflon, ceramic, & stainless steel pans. Plastic & metal super thin turners. I've heated up bacon grease, & splashed it into the tops, & I STILL can't flip an egg without breaking the yolk. Help!”
I feel this one needs to be answered in the form of a video. In short, there is a bit of technique which I describe and show, but mostly you must breathe and regulate your nervous system and believe you can do it. You have got this! Please let me know how it goes.
Please submit your questions for Open Kitchen through this form. The questions will be anonymous so no need to think twice about anything embarrassing. Remember chances are if you are wondering something or having an experience there are many others who are as well and when you have the courage to ask the question you help all those other people too.
Citrus Refresher Pasta
This recipe is from Good Enough.
TL;DR: Zest and juice citrus. Mix with basil, olive oil, salt, and cheese. Cook pasta and toss with citrus sauce. Top with romano, basil, and cracked black pepper.
Serves 4
Fine sea salt
1 lemon
1 lime
1 large navel orange
1/2 cup finely chopped fresh basil, plus more for serving
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 ounce romano cheese, finely grated, plus extra as needed
1 pound spaghetti
Freshly cracked black pepper (optional)
Put a large pot of water on to boil for the pasta. Generously salt the water so your pasta will get seasoned while it’s cooking.
Meanwhile, zest the lemon, lime and orange with a Microplane into a medium bowl. Place a strainer over the bowl. Cut the lemon, lime, and orange in half and use a citrus reamer, if you have one, to squeeze the juice out of them, allowing the juice and bits of citrus flesh to rain down into the strainer, which you can trust to catch the fleshy bits.
Note: Although the amount of juice varies, usually you will end up with a bit less than 1 cup of juice. If you think your citrus is not juicy enough, add a bit more, if you have it, so you have somewhere near 3/4 cup of juice total.
Add the basil, olive oil, romano, and 1 teaspoon of salt to the bowl and mix it all vigorously with a fork. Taste it and add more salt, citrus if you have it, or romano as you see fit. The sauce should taste really sharp and salty and make you salivate strongly.
Once the water is boiling, cook the spaghetti according to the package instructions until the pasta is al dente. Once it’s cooked, quickly drain the water and transfer the pasta to a large metal bowl. Add about 1 cup of the sauce and toss thoroughly with tongs, coating every strand. Add a bit more sauce if the pasta seems too dry or if you want it slooshier. Serve in bowls, topped with more romano, basil, and a healthy grind of black pepper if you like.
Note: You will likely have leftover sauce which you can save to use as salad dressing, dip vegetables, soak up with toast or drizzle over roasted vegetables.
A Smile Freed
This is a piece I created based on an experience of release I had recently. It is more of a poem and felt like it needed to be a spoken word format as well so please enjoy this little experiment.
I have held in smiles for fear of smiling at the wrong person. Giving the wrong impression.
I have held in my smile because it seemed too big and inappropriate.
I have held in my smile because I didn’t want the other person to know how much I liked them.
I have held in my smile because I didn’t want anyone to know how much I liked what was being said.
I have held in my smile to seem cool. To hide. To hide my big glee. Big joy.
To hide my big, wild enthusiasm. To hide my passion.
I am so turned on by life. By connection. By the earnest expression of something held so dear. I am turned on by this in my self. But I rarely let my passion flow freely through my mouth.
And the funny thing is these smiles that I held back did not leave. They stayed. Trapped. Held in my jaw as tension. Like a vice tightening and tightening. These smiles became pain and the crunching of teeth, receding of gums. These trapped smiles were so powerful they could crush bone and cause tension headaches and radiating pain down my neck and back.
Then one day my jaw began to hum. Vibrating freely almost like it was glowing.
And I knew.
It was time to smile. It was time for the smiles to break free. The heat of them melting the bars of their prison.
So I smiled. I smiled so big it hurt. I smiled so big my jaw was shaking. I was laughing. And my jaw said more more more.
The wider I smiled the more free I felt. The embarrassment flying around. All those thoughts that these smiles don’t belong simply out there. All at once all the passion and joy and bigness of all these trapped feelings just out there in all their totally inappropriate glory.
And it feels good. Good to be me. To accept me. To accept and celebrate those smiles because they are true. And truth is what I want. How I want to be. It is the only way to be. It is the only way to be free.
I chatted with the wonderful Soleil Ho for the San Francisco Chronicle about the rising costs of food coupled with the ending of emergency SNAP benefits. Her article (linked here) is illuminating. Unfortunately it is behind a paywall, and if you subscribe, wonderful. But if not and you want to read this one article you can get around the paywall through this link here.
I made the citrus pasta last night and it was AMAZING!! Perfect for a cold spring night in Minnesota and I can’t wait for the leftovers today. Thank you!