Three Things

Tomato sandwich season, five easy summer dinners for a busy week, and how to raise an athlete -- Olympian or otherwise

Greetings eaters and readers and happy tomato sandwich season! As you know by now, I’m a purist about them — I don’t want more than lightly toasted white bread (country or Pullman is ideal), a thin smear of mayo (only Hellmann’s or Duke’s pass the litmus test), sliced tomatoes (the best you can find), and sea salt. But somehow I still can’t shake the memory of the tomato sandwich above that Andy ordered for breakfast in Lisbon back in April. The tomatoes themselves were impossibly flavorful, laying atop a bed of tangy labneh on crusty bread with chives. The learning here was mostly the labneh — the Mediterranean strained plain yogurt with a cream cheese consistency — and how it lent the sandwich a hefty dose of protein, which to me instantly qualifies it for dinner. (I think it’s just the right thing to have the night of tomorrow’s book talk with Sandwich author Catherine Newman. Btw: For those of you who registered, look out for an email today or tomorrow morning with the Zoom Webinar link.) Lastly, here’s your reminder that Elle St. Pierre, my current Olympian runner crush, favorite third-generation Vermont dairy farmer, and new mom runs the 1500 today in Paris! I loved this instagram post describing how she stays motivated. GO ELLE! 🇺🇸 And now, your Three Things…

1. For Your Consideration: A Week of Easy Dinners

I’m up to my ears in work these days — all good, not complaining, etc. etc., but it means I don’t really want to think too hard about dinner until the last possible moment and I definitely don’t want to expend too much energy on creating it. So, in addition to that tomato sandwich, here are a few dinners I’m considering for the week: (Clockwise from top left) Lazy Man’s Ratatouille, which comes together on one sheet pan; Simple Pasta with Fresh Tomato Sauce because you can’t get more no-brainer; the Migas Tacos from Volume 1 of The Weekday Vegetarians which is basically just rich person’s scrambled eggs; and Steamed Little Neck Clams in a Corn-and-Tomato Broth, a low-effort high-reward DALS classic — just add the corn with the tomatoes during that last 2 to 3 minutes.

2. Summer Menu of the Week, Part 5

This week’s episode of my Summer Menu Series is brought to you by stone fruit season, a season I wish I could just set up camp in forever. Last week, we made Grilled Pork with Peaches, but you could switch out the peaches for plums or nectarines or even apricots. We’ve been making this recipe for decades and allow me to tell you something you already know: That it’s going to be significantly tastier if you track down a tenderloin from your most trustworthy butcher or farmer’s market vendor. I love how simple the recipe is, how the juice from both the fruit and the meat join forces for the sauce, and how quintessentially summer it looks and tastes. We paired it with a cheddar, fresh corn and basil polenta — the recipe for that is below. The recipe for the pork is over on Cup of Jo.

Polenta with Cheddar, Corn, and Basil
Serves 4

2 tablespoons butter
4 cups vegetable or chicken stock
1 cup finely ground cornmeal
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar
kernels from 2 ears sweet corn, uncooked
generous handful of basil (about 8-10 large leaves), shredded

Grease a shallow baking dish (or a cast iron pan, which is what I had) with 1 tablespoon butter. In a medium soup pot, bring the stock to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and gently add cornmeal in a stream, whisking constantly so there are no clumps. Continue whisking for about 10 to 12 minutes until polenta is thick and pulls away from the sides of the pot. Remove from the heat and stir in the remaining butter, 3/4 cup of the cheese, corn kernels and basil. Pour the polenta into your prepared baking dish. (We used a cast iron pan.)

When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 425°F and top polenta with the remaining cheddar. Bake for 25 minutes until warmed through, top is slightly golden, and cheese is bubbly.

3. DOs and DON’Ts for Nurturing Your Kid’s Talent

When I’m watching Elle St. Pierre or Trinity Rodman or Noah Lyles or even those intensely speedy badminton players compete in Paris, I can’t stop thinking about the hours and hours of training they have put in to get to where they are. It reminds me of a story I ran on the blog over a decade ago, when my kids were just starting to get into competitive soccer and cross country running. The advice was from The Little Book of Talent, and the writer was Daniel Coyle, who has since published two more books about environments and habits that breed success — not only in the world of elite sports. I loved his humane, sensible words then, and I still love them now. (Particularly his thoughts on reframing the struggle, which has been the true legacy of sports for our daughters.) Here are four of Coyle’s DOs and DON’Ts when it comes to nurturing your kid’s talent in the most positive way possible.

Don’t: Praise kids for their abilities.
Do: Praise kids for their efforts.
Why: When you praise kids for their abilities, you diminish their willingness to take risk — after all, we’re status-oriented creatures, and why would anyone who’s been labeled “talented” risk their status? When you praise kids for their efforts, on the other hand, you increase their willingness to take risk, to fail, and thus to learn. One useful phrase to use in praising kids is to say well done. It conveys appreciation, without calling anybody a genius.

Don’t: Fall for the Prodigy Myth.
Do: Reframe struggle as positive.
Why: Yes, different kids learn at different rates. Yes, some kids take off like rockets; others linger in the belly of the bell curve. The thing to remember: this isn’t a sprint.The majority of prodigies flame out, and the majority of successful people come from the anonymous ranks of average Joes and Josephines. What helps is to understand that the moments of intense struggle are really the moments when learning happens fastest. Those moments aren’t pretty — it’s when a kid is reaching toward something new and missing — but they’re fantastically productive because it’s when the brain is making and honing new connections. Your job is to find ways to celebrate those moments of struggle.

Don’t: Pay attention to what you kid says.
Do: Pay attention to what your kid stares at.
Why: Most kids are reliably inept at expressing their inner feelings. So don’t put pressure on them to express them, because it tends to speedily diminish whatever interest they might’ve felt. Instead, pay attention to what they stare at. Staring is the most profound act of communication that kids perform. Staring is like a neon sign saying I LOVE THIS. Watch for the stare, and follow where it leads. One of our daughters got interested in violin because we went to a performance of a teenage bluegrass band. She stared. We didn’t say much. We bought her a violin, and took her to a lesson, and she was into it. That was five years ago; she’s still playing.

Don’t: Celebrate victories.
Do: Celebrate repetition.
Why: Too many kids (and parents) judge their progress by the scoreboard, instead of by the amount they’ve learned. Victories are their own reward. They do not need any extra emphasis. Celebrating repetition, on the other hand, is not done often enough, because repetition has a bad reputation. We frequently connote it with drudgery. In fact, repetition is awesome. It’s the single most powerful way the brain builds new skill circuits. So make it cool. Doing a hard task ten times in a row is great. Doing it a hundred times in a row is freaking heroic. So treat it that way.

Agree? Disagree? Anything to add?

Have a great week!
Jenny

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