Keeping calm is a skill that I’m still working on developing.

Alex has it down. He paces his work, and prepares steadily and thoroughly for class. These things keep him calm.

Me? I could pace my work perfectly, over-prepare for class, and still freak out over nothing. I’ve tried yoga, scented candles, and hanging seascapes on the wall of my bedroom. Somehow, the idea that something is supposed to calm me cancels the otherwise calming effect.

So it’s not surprising, then, that things that I don’t intend to calm me actually have the most calming effects. Like these cucumber sandwiches, taken from VeganYumYum. It makes no sense, but just thinking about how simple and pretty they are makes me smile and relax.

They’re so refreshing and light for summer — cucumbers always taste like spa to me. We set them out before a casual dinner for roommates, and though we initially thought they were too pretty to eat, one taste was enough to change our minds.

Ingredients (serves 6):
4 pickle-sized cucumbers (or 1 large cucumber cut in half)
1/2 whole wheat bagette, sliced into 12 1/2-inch rounds
4-6 oz. whipped cream cheese
salt and pepper (to taste)
flat leaf parsley (for garnish)

Instructions:
Using a peeler, begin to peel one edge of the cucumber until a flat surface is created. Then, continue to peel of very thin pieces of cucumber, and set aside. Repeat until you’ve peeled all of the cucumber. Spread thin layers of cream cheese over bread slices, then gently place cucumber slices over each slice of bread, overlapping cucumber slightly. Turn bread slices over, and use a sharp knife to cut around the edge of the bread to remove excess cucumber. Carefully turn bread slices cucumber-side up, and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with parsley and serve.

Oh my goodness, has it not been forever since we’ve posted?

School started — and it’s hard! We’ve been trying to keep up with cooking, but haven’t been quite organized enough to photograph and post everything that we’ve made. It’s an adjustment period, but we’re not giving up. With a little bit of practice in time management, we’ll be posting regularly again in no time.

In the meantime, here’s a variation on a delicious fruit salad that we first posted a while ago. My friend Em came up with it, reminding us of the gloriously unbeatable fruit/sugar/mint combo. It’s been a perfect dessert for us these past two weeks, since it can be done in about 5 minutes. Do this while peaches are still in season, and you’ll hardly need the sugar.

Ingredients:
12 oz Strawberries
3 peaches
1/3 cup mint
1 tbsp sugar

Instructions:
Clean and chop strawberries and peaches. Coarsely chop mint. Combine fruit, sugar and mint in a medium bowl and toss to coat. Serve chilled.

Why are these scones different from all other scones?

All other scones are crumbly and flaky, whereas these scones are moist and soft.  All other scones contain heaps and heaps of butter, whereas these scones only use 2 tablespoons.  And all other scones require intense preparations, whereas these can be made start-to-finish in under 20 minutes.

Truly, these scones perplex us.  We made them for the first time Saturday, and thought we did something wrong when the recipe produced these warm, chewy little scones.  But after reproducing them again yesterday, we now believe that they turned out precisely as intended — and we love them just as they are.

The recipe comes from a book that we’ve already touted as incredible: Bill’s Food.  His recipe is for plain simple scones, and we spruced them up on our second attempt with a pinch of cinnamon and a perfectly crunchy cinnamon sugar layer on top.

Definitely make these, but don’t expect your typical scone out of them.  They’re so much better than that.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups flour
2 tbsp powdered sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 pinch salt
1 tsp cinnamon (plus an additional 1 tsp for optional cinnamon-sugar topping)
1 tsp granulated sugar (for optional cinnamon-sugar topping)
1 cup milk (we used skim)
2 tbsp butter, softened (plus additional for greasing and optional topping)

Instructions:
Pre-heat oven to 425.  Combine flour, powdered sugar, baking powder, salt, and 1 tsp cinnamon in a large bowl.  Pour milk into mixture, and stir together with a fork.  Add softened butter, and knead the butter gently into the dough with your hands until dough is soft (add more flour if it’s too sticky).  Place dough on a floured surface, and flatten until it is a 1 1/2-inch disk.  Use a glass to cut out rounds, and place them on a greased baking sheet.  If you want, you can soften a bit more butter, brush it over the rounds, and sprinkle with a mixture of 1 tsp cinnamon and 1 tsp sugar.  Bake for about 10 minutes, until lightly golden.  Serve with anything, especially blueberry jam.

Here are some things we’ve learned since arriving in New York:

1. Dogs rule the city. Babies are second in command.
2. You can transfer from the subway to the metro without a physical transfer slip.
3. The Upper West Side is full of wonderful, teeming supermarkets, and the Upper East Side is completely devoid of them.

It’s nuts. Where do people who live on the East Side shop? We’ve been stalking the area around Mount Sinai in search of a decent food store (with decent prices), and the closest thing we’ve found is a Gristedes. If anyone knows of anywhere worth visiting, we’d really appreciate the guidance!

In the meantime, we’ve had to make do with canned beans. Just kidding – we wanted to use canned beans, and considering how much we like them, I’m not sure we could have found anything that much better.

The concept for this meal was burger and fries: the remix. I know that we usually blog individual dishes, but these go so well together that we couldn’t resist.  We did southwestern-flavored black bean burgers with a bright mango relish, and subbed baked yuca wedges for fries. The combination made a wonderfully surprising and filling vegetarian dinner.

Because we didn’t have much to do this afternoon, we ended up making the buns for the burgers as well. Though they were fun to bake, I’m honestly not sure whether they were worth the effort. Next time, we’ll probably just pick up a bag. That is, if we can find a supermarket.

Ingredients and Instructions:
(black bean burgers)
2 cans black beans
1 scallion, finely chopped
2 tbsp mayonnaise
3 tbsp panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp Tabasco sauce
salt and pepper to taste
1 tbsp olive oil
avocado, lettuce, tomato (optional fixings)

Rinse black beans. In a large bowl, mash beans with a masher or the back of a large spoon. Stir in mayonnaise and continue mashing until consistency resembles a very thick paste. Stir in cumin, scallion, panko, cilantro, and Tabasco. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Heat olive oil in a large pan, place burgers on the pan and cook about 3 minutes on each side, until burgers have browned. Serve with mango relish, and any other fixings (avocado, lettuce, tomato).

(mango relish)
1 mango, diced
1/4 tsp lime zest
1/2 red pepper, diced
1 scallion, finely chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
juice of 1 lime
salt and pepper to taste

Stir together mango and pepper in a bowl. Whisk together olive oil, lime juice, zest and scallion. Pour over mango mixture, stir, and season with salt and pepper.

(yuca wedges)
1 yuca, cut into wedges
2 tbsp
1/2 tsp cayenne
salt and pepper to taste

Fill a medium-size pot with water, and bring to a boil. Add yuca to boiling water, and cook for 5 minutes. Remove and let cool. Preheat oven to 375. Toss yuca wedges in oil, cayenne, salt and pepper. Place wedges on a baking sheet, and cook for about 40 minutes, or until outsides of wedges are brown and crispy.

Whenever there’s no picnic in our future (which is most of the time), we always come up with brilliant ideas for picnic dishes. Yet of course when we finally decide to have one, we end up staring blankly at each other, wallowing in our own inability to think of a single thing to bring.

We’re like: Seriously? We have to pack up food to go? Has that even been invented yet?

This all happened yesterday afternoon, after we agreed to meet friends in the park for a lovely dinner date. We love double dates to an embarrassing degree (if you want to go on one with us, the answer is yes, yes, yes!), and this one was particularly exciting because we were meeting my very close friend’s new boyfriend for the first time. No question – the dishes had to impress.

After leafing through our entire cookbook collection, we settled on making the three dishes that we’d come up with before we began searching. Our favorite was this pearled barley salad – a variation on one with wheat berries that we’ve eaten before.

The flavors are so citrusy and fresh, and it’s easy to throw together last minute. We imagine that the almost any grain would work here, even wild rice. Perfect for, well, a picnic.

Ingredients:
3 cups uncooked pearled barley
zest of 2 lemons (reserve 1 for juicing)
zest of 1 orange (reserve for juicing)
¼ cup olive oil
6 scallions, finely sliced
2 cups dried currants
1 cup cashews, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup mint, chopped
1/3 cup parsley, chopped
salt and pepper, optional sugar to taste

Instructions:
Cook barley according to package instructions (we put ours into boiling water, and simmered for about 40 minutes). Drain and let cool. Whisk together lemon and orange juice with zests and olive oil. Toss barley in dressing, and then gently stir in currants, cashews, scallions, mint and pepper. Add salt, pepper, and optional sugar to taste, and serve.

There’s a yiddush word, shpilkas, which roughly translates to “ants in the pants.” You could say that we both have a pretty strong case of it when it comes to recipes.

If there’s something we decide to make, we want to go out, get the ingredients immediately, and start cooking. If for some reason we can’t, I become agitated and Alex becomes agitated at my agitation. And so on.

This a dish that I’ve had shpilkas about for longer than usual. I love soba noodle salads, and the dish is on every to-do recipe list that we keep (and there are a lot of them – on each of our computers, in a recipe notebook, on post-its across our walls).

We adapted our recipe from a new cookbook that we’re addicted to called Bill’s Food. We found the book in Maine, and it’s perfect for us — one of those cookbooks where every single recipe looks irresistible, and not just because of the beautiful photographs.

We decided to make ours more vegetable-heavy since we’re  into equal-parts pasta/rice and vegetables salads.  This one was delicious, and took far less time and effort than expected.  Definitely add it to your recipe to-do list, and of course, let us know how it turns out!

Ingredients (serves 4):
2 small packages (about 450 g) soba noodles
3 cups napa cabbage, very thinly sliced
1 red pepper, very thinly sliced
6-8 radishes, very thinly sliced
2 chicken breasts
2 scallions
1/2 tsp black pepper
2 tbsp salt (preferably sea salt or kosher salt)
3 thick slices peeled ginger
1/2 cup light soy sauce
1/2 cup mirin
4 tbsp rice wine vinegar

Instructions:
Fill a medium-sized saucepan with cold water, and add ginger, scallion, pepper and salt. Bring to a boil, then add chicken breasts and stir. Turn off heat, cover pot tightly, and leave for 1 hour. Bring a second pot of water to boil, then add noodles and cook for about three minutes. Drain noodles, and rinse with cold water to cool. Whisk together soy sauce, mirin and rice wine vinegar to make a dressing, then toss about 1/2 of the dressing over the noodles to lightly coat. Add cabbage, radishes, and pepper, and stir. When chicken has poached and cooked through, slice into pieces and add to the soba salad. Add remaining dressing to taste, and serve.