Showing your home?
April 1st, 2009 by Elizabeth Phillips
On New Year’s Day my younger son took his first steps. Within a few weeks, the idea of moving out of our cluttered bungalow exploded from abstraction to necessity. Unlike his mellow older brother, Solly barrels from place to place, tossing aside everything he lays his chubby mitts on in his quest for the next sensory experience. Suddenly, we needed more space and storage. Lower interest rates and a buyer’s market buoyed our optimism, so we began preparations to put our house on the market.
However, as we readied our house, dread crept into my outlook. Even after de-cluttering and making repairs and touchups, how would we keep the house realtor-ready with two little boys running around? I could imagine the call telling me that a ready buyer wanted to come by, just as we were finishing a big, messy supper. Laundry often covers my kitchen floor, and the house is almost always littered with racecars and crayons. How would we cope?
Friends came to the rescue with some good tips, which I’ll share in case you’re as oblivious as I was. One friend told me she kept a big basket in the house. When someone wanted to look, she’d dash around picking up and stow it in the car. Another did the same with laundry, driving around with half-sorted loads in her trunk. Our agent told us about a client she was showing a house to who, for some reason, opened a dryer. Out tumbled toys, papers — and clothes. We took the step of radically thinning the toy bins in the kids’ room, so that there would be less to clean up. (One nice surprise — the kids play better because they see what they have.)
The step that’s biggest for me? To avoid sinks full of dishes, we’ll be using paper plates, paper napkins, and convenience foods. This little-to-no cooking regimen might not be easy for me. I love to cook, and we try to keep it green in our house, using cloth napkins and as little packaged and processed food as possible. (If you read this column regularly, you probably know this. Maybe you find it a little annoying.) I may feel a little guilty, but we’ll all be a lot healthier if we come out of this alive.
Actually, I’m no stranger to some convenience foods, as long as the ingredient lists are short and they taste good. Cooking good food to share with your family means nothing if you’re too frazzled to enjoy dinner. This month, I’ll be dishing out dirty secrets of the Green Queen: my favorite convenience foods, and no-fuss dinners to make from them.
Every cook, especially one with small kids, should lay by a good supply of frozen vegetables. My 14-month-old practically subsists on a diet of frozen peas and shredded chicken. (His older brother’s more catholic tastes permitted liberal use of mixed frozen veggies, but Solly is a conservative.) While our house is on the market, I’ll be buying rotisserie chickens, microwave-steaming frozen veggies and tossing them with butter or olive oil. I can round out the meal with a plate of frozen sweet-potato fries — easy, tasty, and more nutritious than white fries. We also keep frozen edamame, blueberries, strawberries, and mangos around for quick snacks. All but the soybeans are great in smoothies.
Another easy meal from the freezer is fish tacos. Cook fish sticks or filets as directed on the package. While baking, stir together equal amounts of mayo and plain yogurt with the juice of half a lime, some salt, and a pinch of cayenne. Briefly (15-30 seconds) warm corn tortillas wrapped in a damp towel in the microwave. Each taco gets 1-2 fish sticks (or one filet cut into 3-4 pieces), a handful of bagged cabbage slaw, and a dollop of sauce. Avocado, jarred salsa, and a squeeze of lime juice add substance and flavor.
I’d be nowhere some nights without a bag of good quality frozen leaf spinach. Sautéed with garlic and butter or olive oil, it’s the perfect side. Toss this mixture with pasta and parmesan, it makes a quick supper.
My favorite quick spinach meal requires a teensy bit of prep and cooking. But it’s a one-pot meal, and its ingredients come from your pantry and freezer, so you’re in for a five-minute cleanup if the realtor calls. No garlic, either, so don’t worry about cooking smells. Despite the unorthodox ingredient list (at least in the orthodoxy of kids’ foods), our kids wolf this down. The flavor is earthy and savory and utterly delicious. I’ll be serving it atop brown rice — the kind you buy frozen in a bag and zap for a minute. Perfect
Spinach with Chickpeas
Adapted from Marcella’s Italian Kitchen by Marcella Hazan (Knopf, 1995)
Over medium heat, place the spinach in a pot with ¼ cup water and cook until it’s thawed or wilted. Rinse spinach in a colander under cool water to stop cooking, then squeeze out excess moisture. Put spinach, chickpeas, olive oil, ¼ teaspoon salt and 2 tablespoons of the lemon juice in a medium saucepan or high-sided skillet over medium-low heat and cover. Cook 15 minutes, until the spinach is very soft and no longer bright green. Add more lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste and serve over rice or couscous or tossed with a short pasta shape such as penne or farfalle.
1 large bag prewashed spinach or good quality frozen leaf spinach
1/3 cup olive oil
1 15 oz. can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
juice of 1 lemon
salt and pepper to taste