My sweetheart often jokes that I LOVE jars. While I downplay, like any normal person would, he might be right. I love good design and these things with the screw-tops--modular, clean, self-sealing, reliable--make me happy I notice design at all. I'm looking forward to these fabulous reusable jars becoming a form of currency during a post-apocalyptic cultural flowering, and for now they're pretty, in a rustic, Portland-isn't-actually-a-city sort of way.

Anyway, I've recently come across a couple rad desserts that both belong in jars: Chocolate Glissade, adapted from a recipe originally in a charming French children's cookbook, and beautifully posted on 101 Cookbooks, and Coconut Lavender Tapioca Pudding, a vegan miracle adapted from a recipe overheard in the student lounge at school. I imagine they'd be a hit, and hassel-free for the hosts, at a dinner party. Or a great way to treat yo self on the go mid-week. Both recipes are also very doable, despite their exotic names and ingredients.

French Chocolate Glissade (GF, lactose free, if you want it that way)

Not your ordinary pudding, this stuff is like eating from a chocolate bar without having to wait for it to melt in your mouth. This recipe contains raw eggs, though, so enjoy your walk on the wild side at your own risk.

2 eggs at room temperature
6 oz high quality (60-80% cacao) chocolate, finely chopped
1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons sugar
4 tablespoons coconut oil (or butter if you don't mind the lactose)
a pinch of salt
herb for garnish (I used red pepper flakes, because I'm fearless)

Separate the eggs, set the yolks aside, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and set those aside too. Create a double boiler out of a pan of simmering water topped with a metal bowl. Into the bowl, add the water, butter, sugar, salt and chocolate, stirring constantly until the ingredients are smooth and without lumps. Remove the bowl from the heat source, whisk the yolks into the chocolate and then fold in the whites. Pour into wide mouth half-pint jars (wide-mouth for access, friends, gotta be able to get to the goods) and garnish with your favorite chocolate-loving herb. Chill for at least a couple hours before serving.

Update: My oh my. What happens when a caffeinated dessert meets Lorraine during finals week? Maybe a little over-eagerness to spread the word about this awesome chocolate glissade. Please allow a correction: Instead of chilling this glissade, allow it to cool completely to room temperature before serving, especially if you're using the coconut oil option.

Coconut Lavender Tapioca Pudding (GF, lactose free and vegan, totally by accident)

If chocolate glissade were a person, it might unflinchingly return your gaze and demand to know your soul. In such a case, this tapioca pudding would be the type to invite you close, hold you comfortingly and let you wander off when you wanted. Some people are into chocolate; some people like a more easy-going dessert.

1/3 cup large tapioca pearls soaked in water for at least an hour and drained
1 can coconut milk
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon lavender, crushed
a dash of salt
a few whole lavender buds for garnish

Heat the coconut milk over medium-low heat, add the tapioca pearls and cook until they become translucent. Remove from heat, let cool a little, add the powdered sugar, lavender and salt and combine. Pour into wide-mouth half-pint jars, garnish with whole lavender buds and let set. Refrigerate if you won't be eating them within a couple hours, but if you do so, warm the tapioca gently before serving.

Friends, I've shared my love for egg tacos before, but they've really developed into something that deserves another post. Even before taking a turn for the amazing, egg tacos were (and remain) not only delicious but also quick and tidy--how long does it take to fry an egg? And how long does it take to clean up the cast iron after? The answers are 3 and 0 minutes, respectively. It's brilliant to have dinner started, eaten, and cleaned up in under 8 minutes. I know it's not ideal to cook and eat quickly; our physiology instructor made sure we understood the cephalic phase of digestion (digestion really begins in your brain as you think about what you want to eat, prepare it, take in the aromas and lovely sights of your food). However, naturopathic school is a guaranteed four years of irony, and sometimes a girl's gotta prioritize studying over food gawking, dear cephalic phase. So my beloved egg tacos, quick, tidy, protein-filled and gluten free have become the statistical mode in my kitchen.

Ok, so they're convenient, but a jar of fabulous plum chutney gifted by a friend took them from delicious to eating these will never get old. Yeah, chutney. Do you eat chutney often? It's a little rare in my food scene, so I wasn't sure how to use it at first; it hung out with tempeh, and starred in a salad dressing or two, before finding it's true calling as a flavoring in the egg taco. Not only does chutney increase the tasty factor, but it elevates the egg taco to truly American status--and I mean something pretty specific when I call a food "American".

What is American food? Instead of the term conjuring up images of hotdogs, hamburgers and potato salads, I posit that American food really boasts a more complex definition. It's food that is made of ingredients that are themselves already a processed food (for example, chutney and corn tortillas) and are likely to come from more than one cultural tradition (again, chutney and corn tortillas). American food is what happens when international shipping is undertaken on a currency-backed whim, and when ingredients from disparate cultural traditions hang out at the same grocery store. Suddenly, bacon-wrapped sriracha! Green tea mochi ice cream balls! Quinoa skillet bread! It's marginally more pride-worthy than hot dogs and hamburgers.

So here's my little American meal: corn tortillas from Central America; chutney from India with a stopover in Great Britain; parmesan from Italy; and fried eggs, from...who knows where the fried egg comes from? All topped with something colorful or fresh for the old cephalic phase.

I served them to my sweetheart the other night and we downed a half dozen in 20 minutes. Also very American of us.

In my world, the term "diet" relates to some kind of environmentally-, morally- or health-motivated conscientiousness about one's food choices.
There are so many diets being followed around here: vegetarian, pescetarian, vegan, specific carbohydrate diet, lactose free, gluten free, paleo, organic only, local only, any combination of these, level five vegan, of course, and countless others, I'm sure. There's just so much conscientiousness going on.

I know, I know, I take a tongue-in-cheek tone, but it's only because I feel firmly rooted in both sides of this strangely divisive line in the sand. It seems with diets you're either in or you're out. I offer my ramblings, but please, take them with as little or as much consideration as you'd like.

First, I'd like to applaud everyone who has made a choice to be careful about the food they eat. It's important for so many reasons and I'd never hope to undermine your good work. For some, diet choices are a life and death issue, for others they may be a deeply important preference, and for still others they may be a way of creating sanity in an insane food environment. Rock on everyone.

I, as a member of this awesome club, however, will take a self-depricating tone when I offer to others not of my particular dietary persuasion that I can be rather persnickety about my food. Only, I'm extra persnickety compared to your average conscientivore because I'm (seemingly) constantly changing my mind about what's in and what's out. Also, I never seem to neatly fit a category and sometimes instead offer up "vegetarian" or "vegan" as a shorthand explanation to confused, curious and well-meaning folks.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but people want to know what we persnickety eaters eat because people like to share food. It's one of the most important ways that people connect with each other. So it behooves me and folks in my situation to a) try to make our preferences understood, when asked, and b) try to see beyond the facts about the food and focus instead on the symbolism of the shared food--awesomely, it usually means "I like you."

So, with that in mind, a few years ago, and as an irreverent vegan anyway (I was vegan except for In-N-Out Burger on road trips) I developed what I later termed "the hospitality clause," whereby I would accept and happily enjoy any home cooked meals offered to me regardless of their content. It really came out of a need for the terms of my diet to be more flexible. During my vegan days, I needed some way to be vegan and still enjoy my mom's food. It was important to both of us.

I call it the hospitality clause because often the terms we use to define our diets feel like a contract that we make with the world--if I say that I'm vegan, then everyone around me expects that of me and holds me to it. The hospitality clause is an addendum to this contract that lets me eat anything that a well-meaning host graciously offers. It preserves my ability to say to the offerer, "I like you too."

If you know me, or if you've spent any time poking around SweetAllium, you know that being a student is a huge part of my life right now. I have the opportunity to reflect on this daily, during my bike commute to school. Maybe it's because my medical college is perched just perfectly so on a hill--a hill with a grade and contour that consistently forces me to question my motives for climbing it. It's perfectly summittable, but it demands my attention and redetermination every day.

Of course, the hill isn't just a hill, it's a metaphor for this whole project of becoming a doctor. This is a slog, I say to myself every day. Is it worth it? How much longer can I keep this up?

When I was twenty-one, my mom and I spent a summer bike touring from Paris, over the Pyrenees and across northern Spain to a small town called Santiago de Compostela. Our route followed the Camino de Santiago, a centuries-old pilgrimage route, traditionally completed on foot. There exists a whole infrastructure and culture around the pilgrimage; townsfolk along the way are genuinely pleased to witness the travelers' efforts, and fellow pilgrims offer encouragement and support as much as they can.

"Animo! Animo!" would shout the Italian pilgrims. Give it life, little bicyclist, give life to your effort. The French onlookers would shout, "Courage!", rhyming with the English word "garage" and lending the sentiment: Give it heart. Here's a little bit of mine. Give it heart!

The pilgrimage didn't feel like a slog, except for the day that we struggled toward the highest pass over the Pyrenees. We pushed our bikes up the paths on foot, even then gasping for air. The slopes were steep enough that we could hear rainfall from clouds that were meters downhill from us. I suspect (or hope) this is where we are in our medical program right now. Throwing our life and our hearts into the effort.

Courage, little pilgrim.