Garden Vegetable Spread

Seattle fall — the gold of the maples and the gray of the sky together. Amazon this week. Sprint planning Tuesday. Two hours of meetings I could have been a Slack message.

Hana, 2, on a step stool stirring miso into broth. She knows the order. She is bilingual already in food vocabulary. Jisoo FaceTimed Tuesday. We made doenjang jjigae together — me in Wallingford, her in Haeundae. Eleven thousand miles. The same soup.

Kabocha squash simmered in dashi-soy. The fall on the plate.

Drove to Bellevue Saturday. Karen was tired. I brought soft food. She ate.

The week held. The kitchen held. The two cultures shared the counter.

I sat at the kitchen counter at six AM with a notebook and a cup of green tea. Writing time before the house wakes. The pre-light hour is the only writing hour I trust.

I read a thread on the Korean Adoptee subreddit Saturday. Some posts brought up old anger. Most are people figuring it out in real time. We are not unique. We are a community.

Hana left a Lego on the kitchen floor. I stepped on it at two AM. Standard.

Sprint review at Amazon Friday. Two hours. I could have been on a podcast.

I texted Jisoo a photo of the kimchi in the new onggi pot. She replied with the thumb-up emoji and a Korean-language critique. The duality is the gift.

Reading at night. A novel by a Korean-American writer about a family in 1990s LA. I underlined four sentences. The underlining is the marking-of-the-territory of the soul.

Yoga Tuesday morning at the studio. The forward fold released something I had been carrying in the shoulder. The mat is the mat.

The newsletter went out Sunday morning. The opening sentence took an hour. The piece took five. The piece was what it needed to be.

Rain on the porch all afternoon Saturday. The Wallingford rain is its own weather. I sat with a book and a tea and did not move for two hours.

Therapy Tuesday with Dr. Kim. We talked about the parents — the two sets, the one living, the one gone, the one who became real after thirty years and the one who was real my whole life and is now gone. The work is the layered work.

The shiso on the south fence is fragrant and unruly. I brushed past it taking the compost out and the smell stopped me. The smell is the country. The smell is Jisoo's apartment.

A blog reader wrote about her own adoptee experience. We exchanged three emails this week.

My Korean is improving. Slowly. Painfully. Conversationally adequate now. I can argue about kimchi proportions in two languages, which is a milestone in any marriage between mother and daughter.

Sunday farmers market on Wallingford Avenue. The kabocha at the Asian vendor's stall. The shishito peppers. The brokered conversation. We bought too much. We always do.

Jisoo sent a photo of the dol the kids did for our visit last summer. The photo went on the fridge.

The Capitol Hill apartment kitchen is small. We make it work.

The kimchi crock was bubbling Saturday morning when I checked. The bubbling is the right bubbling. The fermentation knew what it was doing.

I made coffee at seven. Hana ate cereal at seven-fifteen. Min wandered down at seven-twenty-five. James left for work at eight. The morning was the morning. The standard.

David came over for Sunday dinner. He brought some tomatoes from the Bellevue garden.

James and I had date night Friday. Indian restaurant on 45th. We ate too much. We sat in the car after talking about nothing for an hour. The marriage is the marriage.

We bought too much at the Sunday market — we always do — and David showed up with a bag of tomatoes from the Bellevue garden, and suddenly the counter was full and I had to do something with all of it. I wanted something soft, something I could bring to Karen if she needed it again, something that used what was actually in front of me. This Garden Vegetable Spread became the answer: roasted, blended, gentle — the kind of recipe that holds the week without asking anything dramatic of you.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 30 min | Total Time: 45 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

2 cups cherry tomatoes
1 medium zucchini, diced into 1/2-inch pieces
1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 small yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, unpeeled
2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons fresh basil leaves, torn
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
Crackers, crostini, or sliced baguette, for serving

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Preheat your oven to 400°F. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Spread the tomatoes, zucchini, bell pepper, and onion in a single layer on the sheet. Nestle the unpeeled garlic cloves among the vegetables.
Season and roast. Drizzle the vegetables with 1 1/2 tablespoons of the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Toss gently to coat. Roast for 28–32 minutes, until the tomatoes have burst and the vegetables are tender and beginning to caramelize at the edges.
Cool and peel garlic. Remove the pan from the oven and let the vegetables cool for 10 minutes. Squeeze the roasted garlic cloves from their skins and discard the skins.
Blend the spread. Transfer the roasted vegetables and garlic to a food processor. Add the softened cream cheese and lemon juice. Pulse 8–10 times until the mixture is blended but still has some texture — you want spreadable, not completely smooth. Taste and adjust salt.
Finish and serve. Transfer to a serving bowl. Drizzle with the remaining 1/2 tablespoon olive oil. Scatter the torn basil and thyme over the top. Serve warm or at room temperature with crackers, crostini, or sliced baguette.

Nutrition (per serving)

Garden Vegetable Spread — The Week the Kitchen Held