{ Warning: Longish, boringish ramble about my life ahead. Here for the recipe? Skip the monologue and go straight to the recipe!}
You know what's confusing? Feelings. I haven't enjoyed my feelings very much recently. Is that a fun opener? Well, no. But I need some fun, so I've had hors d'œuvres on my mind because what's more fun than having people in and eating snacks for dinner? And I really don't feel like wearing anything but stretchy pants, because I recently learned I have a thing. And I'm getting to the easy appetizer, but I need to share, and that's what blogs are for, right?
When I was 19 years old, a student in Montréal, I didn't feel very good, so I tried therapy. And it was amazing. (Thank you, Marsha Yelin. I don't know what happened to you and I've Googled your name, just so I could write you a nice note and let you know I learned things from you that still help me, but I only found a paper or two you wrote when you were working on your Ph.D. I hope you're doing well.)
"A good therapist is worth more than, like, anything" - Me
Therapy made me happy enough to realize that it wasn't all in my head and my actual body felt terrible. So I headed to the nearest clinic, Head and Hands, right there in my neighborhood. (You see, in Canada? It's easy. You feel bad? No matter who you are, you can go to the doctor, or the nurse practitioner, or whoever, and get the care you need. And you don't get a bill. It's nice.) They checked my blood pressure and it was high, especially for an otherwise healthy 19-year-old. The nurse or doctor or whoever talked to me about diet and exercise and also acknowledged that those probably weren't the cause of my hypertension. (I mean, we all know 19-year-olds like to party and eat junk food. And I was nowhere near the worst of them.) They offered to continue to treat me or refer me to a doctor and I told them I had an appointment coming up at home and would follow up with my doc here in South Carolina. I did, and I've been on medication for more than 20 years. The nice people from Head and Hands followed up by phone a few times to see how I was doing and that made me feel good. Bored yet? You can still go straight to the recipe.
Between then and now, my blood pressure stayed mostly the same on medication except when I was pregnant, when everything would go haywire. Round one: I gained 85 pounds and ended up with HELLP Syndrome. Round Two: Gained another 85 and had mild pre-eclampsia. Round Three: Made it to 37 weeks, only gained 45 pounds, and felt like a pregnancy super star! Even though I was still really bad at it by most standards! By the way, 85 pounds is roughly the weight of a 12-year-old, and 45 pounds is an average 6-year-old, just to put it in perspective. That made me feel bad, but the resulting children made me very happy, and still do. Totally worth it! (Recipe. Now.)
Fast-forward to now. I started seeing a new doctor recently and she had a hunch about my blood pressure, which has been inching higher and higher over the last couple of years. I mentally rolled my eyes and considered telling her how cute it was that she thought she could figure it out. Long story short (finally!), she was right. I have something called fibromuscular dysplasia (FMD) in my darned renal arteries, which means they look like caterpillars instead of worms because they have a bunch of little webs in them, like cheesecloth. But don't take my word for it because I'm definitely not a doctor. Who knew?
Hooray for me. I have an actual thing. It is called FMD for short and it is what it is.
A doctor who happens to look like Shia LaBoeuf put balloons through my arteries and my blood pressure has gone down a little. I'm cautiously optimistic. (Kidding. I'm convinced I'll be dead my Tuesday, even though FMD is not actually all that threatening. This is just who I am, which means a lot of people blame my hypertension on anxiety. But they are wrong! I just have awkward arteries!) And now I have a hematoma, but this is lucky because it isn't a pseudoaneurysm, and it's going away and look at all these new terms I learned! So I feel good. Or good-adjacent.
And I learned something else this week: Hellmann's is a fine mayonnaise. Nothing will replace Duke's in my heart (or my fridge), but my neighbor is a Hellmann's devotee and she brought me some egg salad this week. Her egg salad is simple, spectacular, and kept me from having to make lunches for work and that was everything. So I'm down with Hellmann's. Sue me.
A whole new world: I'm okay with Hellmann's now, because I was probably being melodramatic about Duke's anyway.
So...you hungry? Want to make a nice appetizer that's super easy? Let's do it. I first had a version of these at the Market Pavilion Hotel in Charleston, during a party in honor of my cousin Logan and his lovely wife Meredith when they were newlyweds. The hotel was lovely, and we all had a super time as far as I remember. (It was more than 10 years ago so I really don't remember, but I have warm feelings about it.) But I do remember the endive boats filled with smoked salmon and cream cheese and chives because I went home and figured out how to make them.
This endive appetizer is so good, my tiny grandmother once ate like 23 of them in one sitting and asked if there were more.
No matter how many of these I make there are never any left. So...that means they're good. And I need something good right now, so let's make endive boats and have a few people in for drinks, just as soon as I'm ready to put on something other than stretchy pants when I get home from work.
This is what you'll need. Also, mayonnaise (Duke's or Hellmann's, as much as it pains me to say it) and cream cheese (or neufchâtel, your call).
Belgian Endive Boats with Smoked Salmon
◔ Makes as many as you like. For a large party, start with about 10 endives.
⧖ 30 minutes or so, less if you can sucker someone else into squeezing the cheese into the boats.
Belgian endive
equal parts mayonnaise and cream cheese
handful of chives
Get a bunch of Belgian endive, cut the bases off and make a bunch of little boats out of the leaves.
In a mini food processor, mix a handful of chives and equal parts mayonnaise and cream cheese until they're totally blended.
Put the mix into a zip-loc bag and cut one corner off, so you can squeeze little dollops into the endive boats.
Now put a piece of smoked salmon on top of each one.
Notes:
Don't like chives? Use basil or dill.
Serving vegetarian friends? Replace the salmon with roasted red pepper.
You may have a lot of leftover endive leaves because some are a little bit torn, or kind of brown. Chop them up and make them into a salad. You should totally eat a salad right before having people over for cocktails anyway.
You don't need as much of the cream cheese mixture as you think you do, but don't worry about it. The leftover makes a nice sandwich spread or salad dressing.
You can use a fancy pastry bag, because something washable is better for the environment. But zip-loc makes it so easy. So...guess which one I choose.
You can make this appetizer in very large quantities. And I might have done that, just for the photos, if I didn't have this enormous bruise on my leg that's unsightly and makes standing for long periods unpleasant. I'll do it next week maybe. But for now? Having one person over at a time is nice and these little boats can be made in any quantity, but you do you.
How's your health? I really want to know, and I'll read all the way to the end.