La Mamacita

I should be blogging, but I'm consumed by this.

Like Libbie, I have several cookbooks that I turn to regularly. I love Mollie Katzen, although my husband complains that she's too bland, and Deborah Madison taught me that there was more to vegetables than just broccoli and asparagus and that you can roast just about anything. Libbie has piqued my interest in Nigella Lawson, which may be my next purchase (Libbie, do you get royalties?) but my obsession with healthy food keeps me coming back to Eating Well.

I first subscribed to Eating Well in the early 90s when I was recently married and just learning how to cook. I liked the articles as much as the recipes, and began to look forward to seeing what Test Kitchen Director Patsy Jamieson and the other Vermont cooks would come up with next. When a new issue would arrive, I felt like my sister-in-law Anne feels when one of her favorite catalogs comes in the mail: "It's like a letter from a friend!"

But in 1999, Eating Well hit hard times. I started getting strange notes saying my subscription had expired (it hadn't), and when I ordered the magazine for my sister, it never arrived. One day, I received a letter saying that Eating Well was no longer in publication, and that I could choose from various other magazines to fulfill my subscription. My husband said I looked like I'd just learned someone close to me had died. And really, as corny as it sounds, I had. Somehow, that magazine was a perfect fit for me: The recipes worked, the articles fascinated me, and I loved its quirky New England NPR-listening, wine-sipping liberal humor. I was livid -- no warning? I pulled out my latest issue--it seemed jam-packed with ads. What was the deal? I actually wrote to the publishers, never to receive a response.

Until, that is, a couple of years ago. I happened to check Eatingwell.com, just for old time's sake, and there was a notice with the wonderful news that Eating Well was back! The first issue contained an explanation to loyal readers who, like me, never quite adjusted to life sans their favorite magazine. It explained that the food folks got tired of the tyranny of the business end of the publication and decided that they could no longer publish in good faith AND meet the demands of advertisers. The NEW Eating Well would have --gasp!-- no advertising!

Discovering that I had actually LIKED looking at the ads was a harsh realization for me, as it must have been for Patsy Jamieson and her colleagues when, a couple of thin issues into this high-minded atempt, they realized that they NEEDED advertising in order to stay afloat. So today's Eating Well has a large advertising base and the great health-oriented recipes that somehow ALWAYS work for me. What's more, they put a growing emphasis on meals that take a reasonable amount of time to prepare, which is more realistic for me. As a vegetarian, there are many recipes that I don't use, but I enjoy reading over them and cutting them out for meat-eating friends.

So, Satuday night my husband and I craved something different and tex-mexish, and I turned to my old friend. She didn't disappoint. I actually found this recipe (the potatoes, not the quesadillas) in her online offerings, not in the magazine. My husband and I put a movie on for the kids, opened a bottle of wine and did something we hadn't done together for a long time -- cook! It was fun ... and delicious. My 8-year-old actually cleaned her plate. Here's what we made:

Sweet potatoes with warm black bean salad and quesadillas.
Serves 4

You'll need:
4 medium sweet potatoes
1 15-ounce can black beans, rinsed
2 medium tomatoes, diced
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup reduced-fat sour cream
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro, divided
8 Corn tortillas
Grated Monterey Jack cheese


1. Preheat the oven to 425.
2. Scrub the sweet potatoes and prick them with a fork. Place them in a baking dish and bake until they're bubbly and crisp on the outside, about an hour. (For cutting time, Eating Well suggests that you can microwave them, but I prefer their flavor when baked).
3. Combine beans, tomatoes, oil, cumin, coriander and salt in a small saucepan; set aside.
4. Soften tortillas one at a time directly on the burner of your stove, turning them often with tongs, for about 30 seconds. Wrap the softened tortillas in a dishtowel to keep them soft until ready to use.
5. Once you've softened all the tortillas, place four of them on the bottom of an ovenproof dish or cookie sheet and top each with grated cheese (I put some canned chiles and cilantro on each before I added the cheese).
6. Place another tortilla on top of each one, and press down lightly.
7. When the potatoes are done, pull them out, decrease the oven temp to 400 and put the quesadillas in.
8. Heat the bean mixture 2-3 minutes or until heated through.
9. When cool enough to handle, cut each sweet potato lengthwise, press open to make a well in the center and spoon the bean mixture into the well. Top each with a dollop of sour cream and a some cilantro.
10. Pull out the quesadillas after 7-10 minutes (keep an eye on them!) and cut them into wedges.
11. Serve with salsa and extra cilantro and sour cream.


If you were in a real hurry to get dinner on the table, you could take Eating Well's suggestion and heat the potatoes and bean mixture in the microwave. That would free up the oven for the quesadillas, and you could probably get this baby on the table in 20 minutes or so...

My friend and neighbor Linda died last night. This did not come as a surprise; strangely, it was more of a relief. Her condition had deteriorated so rapidly, and she was in so much pain, that I I'm glad her suffering has ended.

Watching from outside as her husband and daughter have dealt with her sickness and death has made me dizzy. So many emotions and feelings have buzzed in and around that house: Profound disbelief, boundless hope, darkest fear, relentless frustration, unbelievable compassion, fierce loyalty and willing denial. I've heard that dying from cancer can seem like a rollercoaster, and surely the ups and downs over the past months have been terrifying and exhausting. But from my vantage point, the process lacked the cyclical nature of the rollercoaster and resembled more closely the strange, unfamiliar deceptions, twists and turns of a house of mirrors.

I last saw Linda on Friday March 10, just before I left to go out of town. It was two days before her 49th birthday, and she greeted me with what I thought was drug-induced raving: "Someone's been playing with my candy!" But after she kindly explained it, I realized she was joking. Her husband, she suspected, in his endless quest to ease her pain, had changed the timing of her pills. She looked weak, and sweat dripped from her forehead in rivulets, but otherwise she was lucid and funny and positive. I drenched a washcloth in cool water and rubbed the inside of her wrists and elbows, then put it on her forehead.

Linda's husband was caring for her tirelessly and singlehandedly with the help of various family members who took turns staying at the house and taking Linda to her treatments in North Carolina. During the past month, he hardly went in to work at all. Friends and family urged him to bring in a nurse, but he fought the idea and equated it with giving up.

During our talk, Linda's 8-year-old daughter came upstairs several times to change clothes, and each time Linda called her in to evaluate whether she would be warm enough. Weakened and bedridden, Linda's concern for her daughter never wavered. Each time, the 8-year-old responded with the same fake exasperation that I've heard so many times from my own daughter -- she was obviously enjoying her mother's attention.

I left thinking that Linda looked better; I was surprised and excited at the possibility that perhaps it had been the brutal rounds of chemo and radiation that had left her so weakened, and not the insidious progress of the disease. I knew the prognosis wasn't good, but I left sure I would see her again. Looking back, I can see that she knew otherwise -- each time I tried to plan something or express a hope for the future, she responded with silence or changed the subject.

The day after I left, she took a turn for the worse. Her husband took pictures of her daughter opening presents on Linda's bed on the day before her birthday. By Sunday, her actual birthday, Linda was too sick to talk. Monday morning, her husband laid her gently in the back of the car and drove her down to Duke to the specialist who was their last hope. He was not sure she would survive the trip.

Linda died last night, Thursday May 16. Today, as I missed her, I found my thoughts turning to her family. We watched her husband come home, looking exhausted and devastated. How lonely it must have been for him to walk in to his house for the first time as a widower. How strange it must have been for him to watch his daughter play, knowing that she won't feel the full weight of the day's events for months or years to come.

A group of neighbors spontaneously gathered in front of Linda's house tonight, sharing wine and talking quietly. Her husband came outside and joined us; her daughter played with the group of neighborhood children running in and around the group of parents. As the husband took a glass of wine and sat down on the steps next to his sister, his eyes filled with tears.

Watching him, I felt admiration for the unceasing love and compassion he showed over the past year. My heart ached as I tried to imagine the pain that will fill the days, weeks and months to come. But I also felt hope for a new beginning for him and for his daughter, a chance to step outside that house of mirrors and get right back onto that rollercoaster that we all ride day to day. And, looking around me, I felt grateful for the community of friends and neighbors who will help make the ride is as smooth as it can possibly be.