She is, in a word, delicious.

Eloise’s debut involved its fair share of drama, humor, calamity, and, of course, good food.

For our little diva, the standard 40 week incubation was not good enough. It didn’t matter to her that the nursery was done, the freezer stocked, the baby clothes washed and put away, and that her future parents had already watched anything half-way decent on their DVR.

No, she was determined to stay put, simply taunting us with an occasional poke in the rib cage.

So we waited. . . And when we got tired of waiting, we hit the Internet, and looked up every last old wive’s tale we could find about naturally inducing labor.

I ate chicken vindaloo and drenched my food in hot sauce. I ate lots of tropical fruit. I took long walks and did a lot of goofy bouncing motions. I got a foot massage.

Desperate, I even schlepped to this pizza joint in Studio City for its magical salad dressing that has reportedly caused pregnant women to go into labor for nearly 2 decades. A few hours later, we rushed to the hospital with my overnight bag and a stop watch.

We were home by dinnertime. It was a false alarm.

At this point, my stomach was stretched to such impossible dimensions that I was nearly as long horizontally as I was vertically. After 9 months of soaking up the joys of pregnancy, I was anxious and cranky. I wanted to get this show on the road.

Meanwhile, my mother had already arrived from the East Coast to help care for the non-existent baby, jump-starting my husband’s already deteriorating mental state. Our apartment was a den of nervous energy, with all eyes focused on my bulging belly.

They ultimately preoccupied themselves with elaborate late-night baking sessions that filled our house with fresh bread, apricot scones, and several batches of chocolate chip cookies.  I took on a supervisory role from the vantage point of my desk chair while obsessively googling “inducing labor.”

Finally, on the morning of Wednesday, April 7 they awoke to find me happily waddling in the kitchen, making a well-rounded breakfast of soft herbed scrambled eggs, whole wheat toast and fresh berries. My mom asked why I had the sudden urge to cook.

“Because I’m in labor and they don’t let you eat in the delivery room.”

I’ll spare you the whole gory birth story – (except that in a wild turn of events, I ended up having to drive myself to the hospital, braving L.A. traffic and giving more than a few impatient drivers the finger as I waited out contractions in the turn lane) – and skip to the punch line. At 9:23pm, our beautiful Eloise entered the world in a delivery room overlooking the Hollywood sign and a giant shopping mall. Could it get any more L.A. than that?

Her birth was a bit harrowing, and she came out blue and gasping for air. They immediately whisked her away, and she and I were both surrounded by doctors at two separate ends of the room for a long time.  I kept trying to get a glimpse of her between the thicket of white coats and lab trays. It was an interminable wait before I could hold her.

But when they finally put that sweet baby in my arms, she looked up at me with these big, alert eyes. It was nothing short of electrifying! I instantly fell deeply, insatiably in love.

And it’s only gotten better ever since.

MFU died after a long struggle with brain cancer at age 67. He kept his humor and his appetite to the very end with last meals including meatballs, pizza, chocolate pudding and ribs. In fact, he liked to point out that after years of having doctors tell him that he needed to lose weight, it wasn’t his considerable girth that would kill him, and, thus, he had a final free pass to eat all the ice cream and sushi that he wanted. So there.

The morning that he died my mother called a favorite cousin crying, asking why this had to happen. Her answer was simple: “He was done eating.”

Peter also loved politics, the Patriots, Netflixs, order and symmetry, and independent bookstores. He had an absurdly bad memory – which meant if you had a funny story you could handily reuse the material over and over again – yet he never forgot to send a birthday card. As a lay wedding officiant, Peter proudly married over 50 couples – including John and me – offering up humor, wisdom and even a little poetry.

He had more than his fair share of quirks, including unique interpretations of social etiquette. It was not uncommon for him to disappear at 9 p.m. to go to bed even if the party was at his own house. He also assigned rather unusual nicknames to everyone, ranging from Panda and Satnik to Face and Dreidel Nose (the last one being mine).

Peter doted on his family and friends. He especially loved babies, following in a long family tradition of cheek pinching.  Less than a week before he died, he met his sweet nephew Fox and relished in the snuggling and delicious hugs.

Judging by my most recent sonogram, our baby could be a serious chunker. At the very least, the kid is carrying a decent percentage of body weight in his or her cheeks. He would have gone out of his mind.

MFU set the bar high for uncles everywhere. He’s missed everyday, but especially on the big ones.

Baby Watch Recipes

With our due date coming up tomorrow, we’re deliriously anxious to meet our son or daughter. John was talking in his sleep last night and I swear he was saying something like “out, baby out.”

I’ve been passing the time by baking and cooking up a storm, including zucchini bread, spicy chicken chili, bolognese sauce, roast chicken, garlicky potatoes, panzanella salad, oatmeal cookies and pear bread.

I’ve literally run out of room in my freezer.

Below are  links to a few of my favorite recipes from this week — consider it a gift from my overstocked freezer to yours:

Pear Bread

Chicken with Roasted Grapes and Shallots

Spicy Chicken Chili

My due date is less than a month away. Actually, in five days our baby will be considered full-term, meaning in spite of how we may feel about it, my doctor would find it entirely uneventful if our child decided to suddenly show up.

This is getting real.

We’ve spent the past 9 months focused on preparing for baby: We moved to a bigger apartment. I spent hours surfing the net for baby gear. We read baby name books. A friend taught us the art of swaddling – we bought idiot-proof swaddlers with Velcro as backup.  We took a birthing class at the hospital. I shopped at a store called “The Pump Station.” We took out a DVD from the library on soothing a crying baby. John assembled various contraptions meant to bounce, swing or vibrate our child. We even framed our favorite sonogram.

And now, it’s come to this – a “To-Do” list that’s limited to installing a car seat and packing a bag for the hospital. After that, we’re supposedly ready for baby.  How absurd is that?

I am deliriously excited to meet this little person who does back-flips when I take a hot shower and has a foot lodged in my rib cage at any given moment.  It’s just that pregnancy is the longest “coming attraction” of your life. So long, in fact, that in the midst of all the planning and purchasing and baby talk, it’s easy to lose focus on the main event.

For 10 years, it’s just been John and me. He’s been the primary object of my affection, recipient of my cuddles, and beneficiary of my culinary experiments. For goodness sake, I sometimes even call him “babe,” despite the fact that I swore I’d never use such a cheesy and nonsensical nickname for my husband.

And now baby will make three and our lives will be forever changed – for the better, I’m certain, but changed nonetheless. Suddenly, late-night TV fests and lazy mornings in bed feel rather poignant as we soak up our last few weeks as DINKS (Double Income No Kids).

Perhaps overly swept up in this pre-nostalgia,  I agreed to bake John his favorite dessert (even though my stomach is so large that I keep bumping into the kitchen counters). They’re a cross between a brownie and an oatmeal raisin cookie – soft and chewy, easy to handle, and rather addictive. We call them “Oatmeal Squares,” and I bake at least a batch and a half at a time so I can freeze some to try to stave off the mild depression that follows when we run out.

So, yesterday you could find me in my kitchen, nine months pregnant, barefoot and baking for my hubby one last time before both our worlds are turned upside down. Now all that’s left is waiting for baby.

Oatmeal Squares

Makes 16 2X2 ½-inch bars

John claims that he loves this dessert because the oats make it taste “healthy” so he feels less guilty about eating it in bulk. But he says the same thing about pie, so I’d be suspicious of his thoughts on this issue. Still, it’s not just John who is obsessed with Oatmeal Squares — I’ve found them to be huge crowd pleasers overall and I’ve given the recipe out more times than I can count.

Over the years, I’ve played around with this recipe a lot, adding dried cranberries, using whole wheat flour, or even chocolate chips. However, even though I prefer not to use margarine, replacing it with butter alone did not work — the bars just didn’t have that necessary chewiness.

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour (you can also substitute with all-purpose flour)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon salt

1 stick of margarine

1 stick of butter, cut into ¼-inch pieces

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup lightly packed dark brown sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 ½ cups rolled old-fashioned oats

1 cup raisins – or a combination of golden raisins and dried cranberries

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9X11-inch baking pan.

2. Stir the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt together in a mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, beat the margarine, butter and both sugars until creamy. Beat in the eggs and vanilla until the mixture is homogeneous and fluffy. Add the flour mixture to the egg mixture in 2 batches and beat until incorporated. Stir in the oats and raisins until they are distributed throughout the batter.

3. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and pat it into an even layer. (If you wet your hands first, the batter won’t stick to them). Bake until the top is golden brown and the edges are just starting to get crispy, about 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan.

4. Even though we call them Oatmeal Squares, you can cut into any shape and size bars you like. Keep wrapped tightly in aluminum foil for 3-5 days or freeze in Tupperware.

– Adapted from Dave Lieberman’s “Young & Hungry”

Once again, I apologize for the tardiness of my posting. Luckily, I come armed with lots of excuses.

First off, we spent a couple of cranky weeks packing our lives into boxes in preparation for our big move. Just when we reached the point where we were truly losing our minds, we escaped to Cabo for a long-planned trip with our dear friends Sonal and Nate.

The happy excuse for a vacation was Sonal’s triumphant victory over cancer.  She looked healthy and gorgeous, and we spent our days lounging by the pool, drinking margaritas (or fantasizing about them in my case), and eating these insanely good tempura-fried shrimp tacos.

When feeling nostalgic for our trip – and those tacos – I’ve turned to this recipe. It’s not quite as good, but it’s a heck of a lot better for your cholesterol and, sadly, when not on vacation, such things matter.

Anyway, a few days after returning home, we relocated about a mile east to an apartment in an old duplex with plenty of room for the baby, visiting grandparents, and even – behold! – a dishwasher.

A week of frantic unpacking, repacking, cleaning and painting ensued. We had the pleasure of scraping gum off the bathroom floor, taking down layers of faux animal hide curtains, and recovering the landlord’s long-lost bacon collection in the freezer.

I even got a chance to try out my new – am I dreaming? – double-oven with a variation of this chicken with roasted grapes and shallots recipe before we took off for New York City to celebrate Thanksgiving.

There my mom and I spent two full days locked up in the kitchen whipping up a feast of turkey, cranberry sauce, corn bread and sausage stuffing, mashed sweet potatoes, roasted brussels sprouts, and balsamic glazed cipollini onions.

All of this was followed by half-a-dozen desserts – including three pies, a tart, a cake and cupcakes – which, in retrospect, might have been a tad bit excessive for our group of 13.

Now, back in L.A., we’ve both been drowning in our work, our house of boxes, and mind-numbingly boring errands, like picking out shower curtain rods.

We’ve also made some important discoveries. For instance, I don’t have chronic indigestion – that’s the baby kicking! And those sweet, gentle flutters easily transform into karate chops, especially after eating a big meal.

The baby got a real “kick” out of this jambalaya recipe. Try it – you may like it too.

My Take on Mark Bittman’s Shrimp Jambalaya

Serves 6-8

The original recipe uses two pounds of shrimp, but I prefer to cut that quantity in half and add some spicy sausage (like chorizo) and diced ham to round out the dish. I also throw in some jalapeno pepper for extra kick.

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 cups sliced onions

2 cups diced bell peppers, preferably red or yellow

1 jalapeno pepper, minced

1 pound spicy sausage (remove casings if you like)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

4 cups chicken, beef, vegetable or shrimp stock

2 tablespoons minced garlic

1/2 teaspoon cayenne, or to taste

2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves or 1 teaspoon dried thyme

2 cups peeled, seeded and chopped tomatoes (canned are fine, drain first)

2 cups long-grain rice

1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined

1 cup diced cooked ham

Minced fresh parsley or cilantro leaves for garnish

1. Place the olive oil in a medium-to-large casserole or dutch oven and turn the heat to medium-high. Add the onions, peppers and sausage, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion softens and just begins to brown, about 10 minutes.

2. Warm the stock in a small saucepan over medium heat.

3. Stir in the garlic, cayenne, and thyme, and stir for about 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes and turn the heat to medium-high. Cook, stirring, for 5 minutes, or until the tomatoes begin to break up.

4. Stir in the rice, then the stock. Bring to a boil, turn the heat to medium, and cook, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the rice is tender and the liquid just about absorbed, 20 to 30 minutes.

5. Add the shrimp and ham, and stir. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, then raise the heat if necessary to cook off the remaining liquid. Garnish and serve.

– Adapted from Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything”

In a sense, that’s how I’ve been with this blog. I have been keeping a big secret and, frankly, I’m not a natural at keeping secrets. So, rather than risk inadvertently hinting at my news or letting it slip before I really should, I’ve been avoiding all of you.

What’s worse, as time passed, it became increasingly important to find a clever way to make my grand revelation. But the truth is, I’m tired. I’ve been working long hours, our house is a tornado of boxes and packing supplies, and I’m too cranky to be witty or cute.

So here goes: I’m pregnant.

In fact, this has been going on for quite awhile. I am now about half-way through my pregnancy, and thankfully, feeling great.

I had very little nausea in my first trimester, which meant unlike many pregnant women, this food blogger never stopped eating. Indeed, the sheer quantity of food that I’ve been eating is rather mind blowing. I may only be 5-feet 3-inches tall, but lately, I can out-eat any linebacker.

As for crazy food cravings and aversions – oh yes, my friends, those are real.

Early on, I became obsessed with ginger, which was odd since I’ve actually always disliked the taste – even the smell – of ginger. John, the dutiful husband and terrified father-to-be, sweetly purchased an assortment of ginger-related food products ranging from candies, to dried ginger chews, to flavored teas. I was thrilled – until a few days later when even the thought of ginger made me gag.

Similarly, although I wasn’t sick to my stomach, I was feeling permanently off-balance, like I was stuck on a sailboat in choppy waters. I discovered that fizzy water helped ease that sickly feeling. So again, John ran to the store, this time buying a car-load of sparkling water. Within a week, the sheer sight of Perrier made me want to hurl.

Even now, whole meals that I enjoy one day sound as good as dog food the next. Take the calamari feast that I wrote about in August. The meal was, indeed, delicious. Yet by the time I was ready to buckle down and write about it, I couldn’t even bare to look at the photos.

Which brings me to another bizarre truth about pregnancy – your taste buds truly change. In my case, I’m sorry to report it has not been for the better.

This became clear to me one night after eating dinner with a friend where I dutifully ordered a salad and then spent the night picking french fries off John’s plate. During the car ride home I remarked that I must have been craving something salty to eat all those fries. John shook his head in disbelief and then made an admission of his own.

Apparently, I’d been over-salting our meals for weeks. He’d been too afraid of the pregnancy hormones to bring it up, but it was getting out of hand. While I recalled a lot of olives, capers, and experiments with sea salt, I had absolutely no idea that I’d become such a lousy cook.

So, again, you can see why I have been a reluctant blogger for the past few months. It was truly in our own best interest at the time.

But now that my big secret is out in the open and I am eating like a truck driver, I’m ready to share my life and meals with you once again.

Let this next chapter begin!

Case in point: We were invited to a weekend away at the Three Forks Ranch, a luxurious retreat for fisherman, hunters and spa-goers alike on the Colorado-Wyoming border. We stayed in a suite nearly as big as our apartment (and with better closets!) that had panoramic views of the vast sky, surrounding mountains, and nearby Little Snake River, which weaves its way through the 200,000-acre working cattle ranch.

A main focal point of the weekend was taking our group of city slickers, dressing us up in waders and rubber boots, and sending us to the river for some catch-and-release fly-fishing. Personally, I excelled at casting a line while on land, but got a serious case of stage-fright on the river, screwing up my one close call at reeling in a fish by engaging in lots of squealing and erratic gestures with my pole.

John, on the other hand, was a natural, catching seven fish – each one bigger than the next. By the end of the day, the fish were practically swimming up to him in retreat.

Next, we were taken clay-shooting, which oddly I’d never come across in my East-Coast-liberal-Jewish-suburban-theater-camp-going upbringing. No matter, I showed no natural talent for it. In fact, after a full hour of shooting, I was no less unnerved by the noise or the kick-back from the gun, and there was lots more squealing and twitchiness.

As for John, he wasn’t just good. It was like he was born with a damn shot gun in his hand. It got to the point where I couldn’t help but wonder whether all those overseas trips that were ostensibly about recycling and composting were merely an eco-cover for his assassin duties.

Alas, between all the fishing and shooting and fumbling and screeching, we got to partake in activities for which I do have  natural talent – namely eating and kibitzing. Every night we joined our group, which was composed of a bunch of smart and charming journalists, and retired to the wood-paneled dining room for a three-course feast.

Despite our remote location, the meals were every bit as haute as you can find in a big city, with similar kinds of elaborate preparations and fancy flourishes. Perhaps that’s why my favorite meal was a bit more country, or at least its star ingredient was something you don’t find on a lot of L.A. menus – elk.

I found elk to be tender and far less gamey than venison. It was similar to beef and had a really appealing flavor. For the preparation we enjoyed, the chef – Katie Wilkinson – soaked the elk tenderloin in a brine of brown sugar and currants for two hours before rubbing it with a chile-coffee mixture, and roasting in the oven.

The end result made me regret my two misbegotten years as a teenage vegetarian.

Chef Wilkinson was kind enough to share her recipe with me. Yet, sadly, there’s not a lot of elk meat being sold at our local Trader Joes and Rambo-John wasted all that energy shooting up clay discs rather than stocking up our freezer.

Hopefully, you have a better elk-source wherever you live. This recipe is worth repeating.

Chile and Coffee-Rubbed Elk Tenderloin with Cardamom Rice and Currant Sauce

Serves 4

The following recipe is courtesy of Executive Chef Katie Wilkinson of The Lodge and Spa at Three Forks Ranch.

Elk Tenderloin

2 quarts water

½ cup salt

1 ½ cup brown sugar

½ cup dried currants

1 elk tenderloin, about I pound

1 cup ground coffee

1 tablespoon ancho chile powder

¼ cup brown sugar

Salt to taste

1 tablespoon grapeseed oil

Cardamom Rice (recipe below)

Currant Sauce (recipe below)

1. Combine the water, salt, brown sugar and currants in a large bowl to make a brine. Soak the elk tenderloin in brine for 2 hours.  While the elk is brining, combine the coffee, ancho chile powder and brown sugar in a bowl and set aside.

2. Remove the elk and rub with the chile-coffee rub.  Season with salt.  Heat the grapeseed oil in a sauté pan and sear the elk tenderloin on all sides.  Roast in a 400-degree oven for 12 minutes, or until internal temperature reaches 135 degrees. Let rest for 5 minutes before slicing.

3. To serve, place some Cardamom Rice on each plate. Place equal amounts of sliced tenderloin on top and spoon the Currant Sauce over the elk.

Cardamom Rice

6 cardamom pods

1 ¾ cups chicken stock

½ yellow onion, minced

1 tablespoon grapeseed oil

1 cup Arborio rice

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon ground cardamom

1 tablespoon lemon zest

Salt and black pepper to taste

1. Combine the cardamom pods and chicken stock in a pot.  Bring to a simmer, remove from heat and let the liquid sit for 1 hour. Remove the cardamom pods from the stock.

2. Sweat the onion in a sauté pan with grapeseed oil.  Add rice and stir.  Add the cardamom chicken stock and bring to a simmer.  Cook, covered on low, until the rice has absorbed the liquid.

3. Stir in the butter, ground cardamom and lemon zest. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Currant Sauce

2 cups veal demi-glace

¼ cup currants

1. Place the ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a simmer and reduce by one-quarter.

As they were cooing over the sandwich, Joan herself came out of the kitchen. Bob being Bob called her over to their table to rave about the sandwich and beg her to reveal her secret.

“It’s the bread, isn’t it?”

“Naw, you can use any bread really.”

“Then it’s the cheese. Something fancy and French, right?”

“Nope. You can make a good grilled cheese with cheddar if you want.”

“Then what is it? What’s your secret?”

“Butter. Lots of butter.”

There are few things in life that can’t be improved by adding ample amounts of butter. Grilled cheese ain’t one of them. You simply can’t be shy with the butter.

In our household, grilled cheese sandwiches – or paninis, their more sophisticated sounding cousins – have become something of a staple. Nothing is more satisfying after a long day than melted cheese and toasted bread. Plus, the basic cheese-bread framework can be a brilliant vehicle for using up the random remnants pining away in your refrigerator. Frankly, once you add slabs of butter and melted cheese, very little can go wrong.

Depending on my whim and ingredients available, I’ve been known to make such variations as mozzarella, tomato and pesto; cheddar with grilled onions and chutney; turkey with cream cheese, seven pepper jelly and red onions; ricotta with grilled vegetables and balsamic; or goat cheese with fig preserves and prosciutto.

On most evenings, I tend to make fairly involved meals – or at least ones with multiple steps, cookware, and a diversity of ingredients. But if I were to play to my audience, every night would be a grilled cheese night.

Take Tuesday night. John walked in the door late from work and ravenous. He looked tired and grouchy, like he’d be eager to pick a fight – that is until he got a glimpse of the plate that I had set out for him. I had made grilled Brie, apple and arugula sandwiches on individual demi-baguettes.

I thought the boy was going to weep.

“Sandwiches? I looooove sandwiches. Did I ever tell you how much I love sandwiches?”

This is, in fact, his mantra for grilled cheese night, followed by a big kiss and a dopey grin like a kid on Christmas morning.

He happily munched away – oohing and ahhing – occasionally coming up for air simply to repeat, “I looooove sandwiches. Did I ever tell you how much I looooove sandwiches?”

When he was done, he made a big fuss over staring at his empty plate and sticking out his lip in a ridiculously overwrought, pouty face.

“Are you really going to finish all of yours?”

He thinks the secret is in my bread-to-cheese ratio. I let him think that – but by now, you’ve figured out the truth.

It’s all in the butter.

Grilled Brie, Apple and Arugula Sandwiches

Serves 2

Since I don’t have a panini press, I use a grill pan. Then I take a heavy frying pan and stack it on top of the sandwich – and for extra weight – layer a semi-full tea kettle on top. It sounds insane, but it’s actually rather stable and allows for strong grill marks and some good smushing action to take place.

2 demi-baguettes (or a standard baguette cut into four, 6-inch slices)

1 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened

3 oz firm Brie

½ apple, cored and cut into thin slices

½ cup arugula

1. Slice each baguette nearly in half, keeping one side hinged to help hold the sandwich together. Slather both sides of bread generously with butter. If you’re feeling health conscious, skip this step. But know that your sandwich will suffer.

2. Cut the Brie into long thin wedges and layer so that no bread remains “naked.” Divide apple slices on top.

3. Heat a grill pan over moderately high heat. Melt remaining butter in the pan.

4. Cook sandwiches using the above mentioned stacking method, pressing down occasionally and turning over once, until bread is golden brown and cheese is melted, about 5-7 minutes total.

5. Tuck arugula into sandwiches, and dig in.

It’s the kind of heat that sinks into the walls and floorboards of our old apartment, turning our sweet home into some kind of ceremonial sweat lodge and its inhabitants into unwitting narcoleptics.

Lately, if we’re not asleep, complaining about the heat, or shouting over the noise of our rink-a-dink fan, we are probably in intense negotiations about what we’re going to eat. Clearly, in these dire circumstances, the last thing a sane person would want to do is use the oven. Even looking at the darn thing makes the leather on our club chair start to chafe.

Except, I’ve never been so good about boundaries. Tell me the object of the game is not to step on the cracks on the sidewalk and suddenly all I can think about is all those tiny cracks. Likewise, raise the temperature of my apartment to a balmy 110 degrees and all I can think about is baking.

John let the chocolate chip banana bread slide. After all, it’s his favorite. But then he laid down the law. No more using the oven. Period.

So, we spent the next several days eating elaborate salads, pasta dishes, and strange concoctions made out of the remnants of our fridge. I grew anxious to rebel. John must have been onto me because the moment I stepped foot in the kitchen he’d appear out of nowhere, asking, “Whatcha cooking?”

One Sunday night, my friend Celia and I planned to cook dinner together. I pitched her all sorts of elaborate menu ideas involving scallop rolls and strawberry-rhubarb pie.

“Naw, it’s too hot. Let’s just do something simple, like a salad.”

We met at Whole Foods and tossed assorted odds and ends into our cart, confident it would all add up to something worthy. Then we came across fresh black mission figs that looked ripe and plump, too good to pass up. We weighed our options of putting them in a salad or serving them with crème fraîche for dessert, when Celia suggested we stuff the figs with a strong blue cheese, wrap the whole thing in prosciutto, and roast it.

If you’ve never tasted the holy trinity of prosciutto, figs, and blue cheese you are doing yourself a serious disservice. The salty, richness of the meat is offset by the sweet, honey flavor of the figs, with the assertive blue cheese snapping the palate to attention. It’s an absolute magic trick in your mouth.

True, using the oven was risky. But so was subsisting off hush puppies and barbeque for two years in North Carolina, and we survived. We could handle this.

That night we ate a butter lettuce salad with potatoes, green beans and radishes and fresh cheese bread (after all, the oven was already on). But the meal started and ended with us popping those prosciutto wrapped figs like candy into our mouths.

Even when our apartment reached a shocking new height of discomfort, John didn’t complain. He just went back for seconds.

Prosciutto Wrapped Fresh Figs and Blue Cheese

Ironically, since we risked our sanity to make these, I’ve stumbled across several recipes that call for skewering fresh figs and cooking them on the grill. So, if you’re kitchen feels like a sauna even before you start cooking, consider using a backyard bbq or a grill pan to make this hors d’oeuvre.

I prefer to keep things simple, but you can get fancy by stuffing pecans in the figs too, or drizzling it with honey.

8 Black Mission figs

½ cup blue cheese, cut into ½ inch cubes

8 thin slices proscuitto

1. Cut an X in the top of each fig and open like a flower. Fill with a small cube of blue cheese.

2. Wrap the prosciutto around each fig, overlapping the edges.

3. Roast at 375 degrees until the prosciutto is a little crispy and fig is warmed through, about 10 minutes.

I love cookbooks. My collection has taken over nearly half our bookshelf, with the overflow stacked in a 5-foot leaning tower beside it. I use them as guidebooks, read them like novels, flip through them like picture books, and on occasion, use them to steady an uneven chair leg.

The limitations I’ve had with cookbooks are really a reflection of my own failure of imagination. I find it entirely daunting to dive into a recipe for a dish I’ve never tasted or cannot picture – or even pronounce. When I look at a recipe, I like to be able to visualize the whole cooking process all the way up to the end product and, admittedly, can get tripped up by the details.

Take calamari. Until recently, I’m not sure I’d ever seen it in its “naked” form, before it’s cut into little rings, breaded and fried to a crisp. I’ve always been fascinated about making it myself, especially some non-fried-and-dipped-in-marinara-sauce way. I consulted my cookbooks, which laid out several squid-related options, and eyed the fish counter at Whole Foods. And yet I never mustered up the courage to try cooking it at home.

Enter my friend Bryan. Although he was amusingly typecast in various Jewish roles during our time in college theater together, he is, in fact, a bona fide Italian boy. Thus, frying up some squid is apparently no more intimidating to him than sautéing a chicken breast is for me. I told him of my calamari fears and he gallantly offered to give me a lesson.

So, a few weekends ago Bryan and his handsome partner Brad invited us over for a hands-on lesson that begot a three-course calamari feast.

Our lesson began with the most challenging part of the meal: cleaning the calamari. Channeling his Italian grandma, Bryan first separated the tentacles from the sac. Then we stuck our hand in the exposed end of the sac and pulled out a cellophane-thin piece of bone that looked like a piece of clear plastic you’d find encasing a new Barbie doll, not dinner.

Then we peeled off any mottled skin enveloping the sac that the fishmonger missed. Finally, we let cold water run through the calamari “tube” and tentacles, and cleaned off any grime – but Bryan warned against getting too rough with the scrubbing or else we could inadvertently make it tough.

To avoid dreaded rubbery calamari, Bryan offered this pearl of wisdom: cook it quickly over high heat or slowly over very low heat. Anything in between is asking for trouble.

The easiest and most accessible of the three dishes we prepared was a starter salad of grilled calamari with roasted baby heirloom tomatoes over a bed of frisée. We simply took the cleaned calamari “tubes” and tossed them with lemon juice, minced garlic, red pepper flakes, and a few good swigs of olive oil, and let them marinate.

Meanwhile, we sprinkled baby heirloom tomatoes with olive oil and roasted them until soft. Right before serving, we got a grill pan very hot and grilled the calamari until they started turning opaque and had the beginnings of grill marks, a few minutes per side.

Then we sliced them into thin rings, plated them atop a bed of frisée with a few roasted tomatoes, and gave a final splash of olive oil. The result was a lovely composed salad, and the kind of thing that sounds awfully intimidating – grilled calamari! – but was really a snap to put together.

The rest of the night was a blur of squid-related gluttony, including homemade pasta with squid ink sauce and stuffed whole squid simmered in tomatoes. We probably each consumed nearly a pound of squid that night, which seems terribly disturbing right now, but tasted decadently good at the time.

And I can assure you of one thing — I’m no longer intimidated by a little squid.

Bryan’s Grilled Calamari, Roasted Cherry Tomato, and Frisée Salad

Serves 4

4 cleaned calamari “tubes”

Juice from 1/2 a lemon

2 cloves minced garlic

A pinch of red pepper flakes

Extra virgin olive oil

½ pint mini heirloom or cherry tomatoes

4 cups frisée lettuce

Salt and pepper to taste

1. Place calamari in a bowl and add lemon juice, garlic, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper and a few good glugs of olive oil. Leave to marinate while you prepare the tomatoes or answer e-mail.

2. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Halve the tomatoes toss lightly with olive oil on a sheet pan. Spread them out into one layer and sprinkle with kosher salt and pepper. Roast for 10-15 minutes, until the tomatoes are soft.

3. Get your grill on medium high heat. Once it’s hot, place the squid on the grill gently pressing down. Grill until they just turn opaque and you start seeing grill marks, a few minutes per side. Transfer to a cutting board and slice crosswise into thin rings.

4. Divide the frisée onto four plates and top with tomatoes and calamari. Drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper to taste.

Last week I told you about my peach and tomato discovery. Tonight it was a watermelon salad with feta, olives and mint.

I came across this particular combination in Mark Bittman’s recent treatise on his favorite 101 salads in the New York Times. Salad #38 caught my eye.

The directions call for cubing watermelon and combining it with roughly chopped mint, crumbled feta, sliced red onion and chopped Kalamata olives. Throw them all in a bowl and dress it lightly with olive oil and fresh lemon juice. Then dig in.

As improbable as it sounds, the combination of flavors really works. The watermelon serves as a sweet foil to the briny pungency of feta and olives. The mint adds a cool freshness and the lemon juice adds a bit of zip.

Somehow the whole thing comes off as savory and refreshing at the same time.

The various elements even look right together, like these ingredients have been hanging around your kitchen for ages waiting for you to get your act together and let them commingle already.

Strange bedfellows indeed!

Watermelon, Olive and Feta Salad

Serves 2 — although I happily ate it all by myself, thank you very much

Don’t take the amounts listed below too seriously. This is not the kind of dish that warrants careful measurement and calibration. Just eye-ball the whole thing and trust what looks good will taste good too.

About 3 cups of watermelon, rind and seeds removed, and chopped into 1-inch cubes

½ cup crumbled feta cheese

1⁄8 small red onion, very thinly sliced

½ cup kalamata olives, pitted, and chopped

1 bunch mint leaves, chopped

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

1-1 ½ tablespoons of lemon juice (about half a lemon)

Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Salt (optional)*

 1. In a large bowl, combine the watermelon, feta, onion, olives and mint. Toss gently with olive oil and lemon juice.

 2. Season with pepper and salt to taste. Serve immediately.

* Note: I can’t imagine adding salt to this salad since you have the feta and olives, but Bittman says it sometimes needs it and I trust him.