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All week long I am thinking about ambition. The things we want and why we want them. The adjuration of enough.

I sit in the home of a poet and listen to him speak about choosing family over notoriety, quiet meals over the blustery pursuit of being widely known. I count the consequences of yearning for more - more opportunity, more visibility, more success, whatever success actually is. I think about how much more honest and unthwarted friendship means than a you-are-the-winner life.

Blustery pursuits. More and more. It can be dangerous stuff.

I'm still pondering Saturday morning, when I set out for the Bryn Mawr Farmers' Market, one of a number of marketplaces in the Farm to City network that celebrates local farmers and food artisans. (Farm to City markets can also be found in Rittenhouse Square, University Square, on East Passyunk, Girard, and Moyamensing, and in Havertown, Chestnut Hill, Swarthmore, among other places.) The temperature is a rare 70 degrees. The skies are blue. The air is breezy. The white tents in Bryn Mawr's Municipal Lot 7 have about them a carnival mood.

Pancakes. I took them for granted when I was a kid. Now that I am all grown-up with adult onset allergies to both egg and gluten, pancakes could have become a product of my past like so many other foods I previously enjoyed.

I’m telling you all this because I want you to know I’m not on some vanity diet. No, I really do have to get creative making meals due to my allergies. So cooking, for me, has developed into a creative, culinary exploration in both sustenance and science. All that said, if you are vegan, gluten-free, or egg-free…these pancakes are for you! Even if you’re not deploying a similar diet, I’m betting you like my latest creation, “Upside Down Day” Gluten-Free Vegan Pancakes. My pancakes involve two meals: lunch and dinner.

For Lunch:
In your juicer, juice two large handfuls of chilled, fresh organic kale, two stalks of celery, two green apples, two large basil leaves, and two large bunches of grapes picked off their vine. Serve the juice with a refrigerated celery stalk to keep it cold, or drink it down. Preserve your pulp in the refrigerator for your pancakes you’ll make later. Run to Whole Foods and buy the King Arthur Flour Gluten Free Pancake Mix and Egg Replacer. 

For Dinner:
“Upside Down Day” entails serving breakfast for dinner. Hubby is never home when we celebrate “Upside Down Day.” While he is a fairly good sport, I’m pretty sure he would suck all the life out of the occasion and dangle his fabulous homemade tacos in front of our kids’ noses instead. (Plus he’s not invited because it’s imperative he never witness my slothfulness firsthand). If you haven’t figured it out already, “Upside Down Day” translates to “Lazy-Mom-Doesn’t-Really-Feel-Like-Cooking-Tonight-Day.” We used to celebrate the event more frequently when my daughter was little and I’d serve up bacon and eggs for dinner. “Upside Down Day” is a rare, special occasion in the Gould house now that I can no longer eat eggs due to my allergy. I can’t even cook eggs without itching…something about airborne allergens and what not. Who knew?

Anyway, I digress. Back to making “Dinner”:
Mix the gluten free pancake mix following box instructions, except substitute the egg for the egg replacer (following those box instructions as well) and also substitute the cow’s milk with VANILLA Almond Milk or VANILLA Soy Milk. Mix in the leftover pulp (where all the fiber is) from your lunchtime smoothie. Add more vanilla soy or almond milk to play with your desired thickness. Pour your batter onto a HOT, lightly greased griddle. I used canola oil because I was out of rice bran oil, my new “go to oil” because it cooks at high temperature points. You know your griddle is hot enough if a drop of water dances off of the surface. Pour your batter onto the griddle. My pancakes poured thick and imperfect, and I quite liked them that way even though they took longer to cook. If you like yours thick too, avoid burning them by turning them frequently once the batter has set. Use a tablespoon to scoop out the batter if you have OCD and prefer a perfectly round pancake. My husband’s banana pancakes are always perfectly round. Again, it’s your night to be a sloth, because you’ve kicked your husband out so you can make my pancakes.

I served ours the conventional way, with Earth Balance natural spread from Trader Joe’s and a hearty drizzle of Canadian maple syrup. My twelve-year-old son loved them, and he’s fairly hard to please, plus he got servings of both fruits and vegetables. I got to be a sloth and he ate his greens. It was clearly a win/win. If you try them, be sure to check back. Oh, and Happy Upside Down Day!

Enjoy!

Over the weekend Whole Food Market attempted to earn a Guinness World Record for “Most Parmigiano Reggiano Wheels Ever Cracked” at the same time. Gillian Riley, author of The Oxford Companion to Italian Food weighs in on this cheesy affair.

An almighty crack.

As the Consorzio del Formaggio Parmigiano-Reggiano surges towards the Guinness Book of Records the thought of all those craggy wheels simultaneously rent asunder reminds us of Michelangelo’s labours at the rock face in Pietrasanta near Lucca in Tus-cany in the summer of 1518. He and his team were selecting marble for the tomb of Pope Julius II, and his titanic struggles with the obdurate raw material were as blistering as the clashes between the artist and his client. Using the strength within the marble to detach the desired lump was a prelude to releasing the form already latent in the block, described in a sonnet by Michelangelo:

Non ha l’ottimo artista alcun concetto
c’un marmo solo in sé non circonscriva
col suo superchio, e solo a quello arriva
la man che ubbidisce all’intelletto.

The greatest artist has no concept
that is not already present in a block of marble
beneath its outward form, and this can only be reached
by the hand that obeys the intellect.

The combination of hands on physical skills and sublime inspiration expounded in this sonnet are the qualities deployed in the making of Parmigiano-Reggiano. The great wheels contain the imagined essence of grass and hay and milk and the odours of pas-tures and fragrant byres, released by the tool of the cheesemonger, exploring fault lines in the mature cheese as the sculptor teases form and meaning from the rock. The large heart-shaped tool, a sharp point at the bottom and a stout handle at the top, will prize off a lump of cheese the desired size as accurately as the stonemason’s tools.

The crystalline graininess found in parmesan is umami, a natural flavour enhancer. The concept of umami was unknown to Michelangelo, although he enjoyed the effects of it when parmesan was used as a condiment or as an ingredient in many cooked dishes. This combination of various ingredients to get an enhanced burst of flavour is similar to his use of colori cangianti in the Sistine Chapel, where a loose application of con-trasting colours one on top of the other produces a shimmering intensity.

Although not rejecting Vasari’s claim that he had a mind above material pleasures, Michelangelo cared enough about his food and drink to jot down some menus on the back of a letter, probably during his time in Pietrasanta. These were Lenten menus so no cheese or eggs, [more maybe in some other blog…] Pasta and some sophisticated vegetable dishes, (braised fennel, spinach, a salad) with umami effect from salt herrings and anchovies, show an enthusiasm for simple but sophisticated eating. He would have enjoyed the full impact of parmesan at the banquets organised by Bartolomeo Scappi, where it was served as it often is today in chunks hewn from a larger lump. We too can enjoy the michelangelesque qualities of Parmigiano-Reggiano, towering as it does above all other cheeses as the artist towered over his contemporaries.

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At long last, I am very happy to welcome the WorldCat blog into the family. Many of you met Jasmine at the last Blog Salon, and if you haven't yet--you might have seen her on the road talking about social networking and WorldCat.

She just made her inaugural post to the WorldCat blog (full disclosure--I am on the WorldCat blog team, too.) with a classic Sesame Street YouTube video of Cookie Monster in the library. I love it!
(And after you watch it, you'll no longer marvel at why the library brand=books!)