{"id":151958,"date":"2013-08-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-09T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gracious-khorana.45-76-20-142.plesk.page\/farro-risotto-purslane-pistachio-pesto\/"},"modified":"2023-06-26T17:12:17","modified_gmt":"2023-06-26T17:12:17","slug":"farro-risotto-purslane-pistachio-pesto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/localmilkblog.com\/2013\/08\/farro-risotto-purslane-pistachio-pesto.html","title":{"rendered":"Farro Risotto + Purslane Pistachio Pesto"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

\"Y75A8887.jpg\"<\/a>
\"Y75A8800.jpg\"<\/a>
\"Y75A8790.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is the beginning of a new series of posts, posts about what we really eat<\/em>. It is what it sounds like. This is the quick & dirty. The wholesome, the one pot. The clean out the fridge meals. The repetitive pesto meets whole grain but we don\u2019t care because it\u2019s so good meals. Because pistachio & purslane pesto isn\u2019t just any\u00a0<\/em>pesto.\u00a0This is put an egg on it supper. This is when it\u2019s just us & whatever was at the market, and I\u2019m tired and hungry. This series will happen about once a month and will include corners of our home, mundane vignettes from our life, and real meals from my table to you. This is what I actually eat. This is who we really are. Yes, I\u2019m a baker & thrower of f\u00eates, but more often than not I\u2019m girl in turban & overalls, barefoot standing on tables or basking in the glow of a computer screen whilst in the bathtub listening to Rachmaninoff. Or that Britney Spears song that I gather was written for a Smurf\u2019s movie? You know, whatever.<\/p>\n

This is me, late at night, writing to you, dear reader. I do not, despite appearances, subsist on waffle cakes & buttermilk biscuits alone. I rarely eat dessert unless I\u2019m developing a recipe (ok, so that\u2019s admittedly often) or it came in the form of a pint of ice cream from the drug store, and we eat, for the most part, vegetarian. Mostly because I\u2019m cheap, and I\u2019ve no interest in cheap meat. My usual dinner tactic is to take what I find in the market and apply one of the \u201cblank slate\u201d recipes or techniques in my arsenal, my cravings, and some pantry staples to it to create a light, seasonal meal of real, whole foods. Just an aside, but I think it\u2019s extra important that crazy people eat well. I\u2019m not joking. Nutrition is an amazing way to achieve mental clarity & peace, among a few other choice methods. Like meditation & yoga. And in my case the odd anti-epileptic mood stabilizer. Holistic like, you know.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Y75A8910.jpg\"<\/a>
We were driving home from the grocery store.<\/p>\n

I sleep more than a normal person now,\u00a0<\/em>I said. Not but a couple of weeks prior I\u2019d only been sleeping ever two days instead of every one. I have awful sleep hygiene, it\u2019s true.
<\/i><\/p>\n

You do sleep a lot.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I have so much trouble falling asleep. But when I sleep, I sleep. I love to sleep. I guess it is a lot like being dead\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

He laughed.\u00a0You sound so sad. So forlorn.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not,\u00a0<\/em>I said and meant it. It just seemed, for a moment, a shame to like that limbo. But my sleep isn\u2019t much like death. Buildings explode; I fall to my knees & feel gravel digging in; alien ships darken the sky; and Stephen Colbert regularly falls in love with me. I even got high with Michael Ruhlman once in my dreams. Not, it isn\u2019t really like being dead. Not that I would know much about that anyhow. I did read a few lines out of the Tibetan Book of the Dead recently. But that hardly makes me a qualified expert. And it doesn\u2019t propose blackness anyhow, not from what I gathered . I heard if you\u2019re afraid of dying, you should read that book. I\u2019m not afraid of dying, but we had it on our shelf, so I looked at it anyway.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Y75A8902.jpg\"<\/a>
I took a drag off his electronic cigarette (a habit I can\u2019t quite seem to break, though it\u2019s harmless to little more than my wallet) and turned onto Frasier, a road on the Northshore that runs by the river, past all the bridges & little shoppes, places to find locally wrought bijoux & or an excellent hot dog & fries with real Dutch Fritessaus. A couple stood at the end of the walking bridge as we drove past it, and they were both standing still, staring up at the sky. He did a double take.<\/p>\n

I thought those people were statues. Or like invasion of the body snatchers.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

And so on and so on as we drove home like we drive home every day, up Forest or down Tremont St. I sip coffee or coconut water as I drive. I\u2019m a consumer, an imbiber, a smoker, a sipper, a hair twirler, a knee tapper. I\u2019ve always got something in hand. I sip, and twist the wheel of my car hard. The power steering seems shot, and it makes a strange groaning noise that I mostly ignore. I turn past a million little ghosts of all the lives I\u2019ve lived here, from eating sticky buns at the Town & Country in patent leather Mary Janes to \u201csmoking\u201d candy cigarettes from the Mr. Zip, carving them into intricate shapes with my teeth, to walking to the coffee shop where I learned to smoke real cigarettes in my school uniform to the Walgreens where that same Town & Country restaurant once stood, where I now buy my fake cigarettes. And my cheap, secret ice cream. A whole life\u2019s trajectory from sticky buns to electronic cigarettes in a three block span of space-time. Stories written on top of stories, tapes recorded over tapes. They bleed through. You can never really write over them.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Y75A8358.jpg\"<\/a>
\"Y75A8329.jpg\"<\/a>
We work, he in his office & me in my \u201coffice\u201d (the bed, the bath, the kitchen counter, the porch\u2026). And then it\u2019s time for dinner. I love to make risotto style farro these days. I haul some chicken stock out of the freezer, melt it in a pot, watch the oil shimmer, the shallots sizzle, and I stir. I\u2019ve always loved to stir risotto. It seems like one of the few excuses in the world to do absolutely nothing. I am beholden to the risotto, to break it down, to make it creamy. I cannot step away. So I stir and breathe. At the very end, I put in a healthy amount of pesto. A handful of halved tomatoes, always lightly sea salted. A few extra gratings of Cumberland cheeseAnd then I fry a couple of eggs sunny side up. Water in jars. Afterwards we clear the dishes, usually work more and sometimes late into the night, but we always, always end each night in each others arms for a long moment in the dark before rolling off into our respective sleeping labyrinths beneath the ceiling fan.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

For something sweet with your savory, hop over to The Vanilla Bean Blog for a peach & blackberry cobbler<\/a> I made with a fistful of herbs in it and a sweet buttermilk biscuit topping.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Y75A8909.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n