Be a cook

Time seems to have disappeared. How did I manage to cart the daughters from here to Canadia during hockey season, bake cakes, skim coat cracking plaster walls and maintain a running schedule for all those years? And now, I can hardly make it from the subway to my door at night without pining for the big bed as soon as I arrive home.

It’s getting so I can hardly put two carrots together for dinner any more. Granted, the weekends still provide opportunity for slow roasted short ribs for Rosa’s enchiladas and I can still furnish sweet, moist, chocolaty cake for far away college girls. Yet, the weeknight dinner scramble never seems to work itself out without real planning and craftiness.

Take two packages of chicken thighs. Liberally rub the meat with good olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place thighs in a shallow baking dish and bake at 375 until almost done. At the same time the chicken goes in, place two or three sweet potatoes in the oven. When the chicken is just about cooked, broil it to crisp up the skin to provide crackle. Serve with the sweet potatoes and a fresh green salad.

Take one pound of spaghetti and drop into lots of salted boiling water. Meantime, in a large skillet sauté one onion, two or three par boiled and sliced beets, some garlic and red pepper flakes. When the vegetables begin to wilt and steam, add a cup of stock and cook uncovered until the stock reduces and the sauce turns a bright pink. Turn off the heat and add two or three teaspoons of butter to finish. Serve over the spaghetti.

Finally, cook like a bastard all weekend so your freezer is full of sauces, roasts, stews and reheatable dishes. Turn on the oven, insert pot and drink beer until ready.

When the family arrives expecting a meal, you’re a hero. Everybody wins.

New Beer Fermenting

Having tasted home brew, I started making beer recently. With every intention to just try one kit, I'm now hopelessly falling head over heels with the process. This is my third batch - a Pale Haus Ale. There's magic to it. It's alive. I wanted to just post a picture but it's way more interesting to watch the fermentation happening live. As I get deeper into the craft I'm learning way more than I ever wanted to know about hydrolics, physics and plumbing. I've even made a bottle or two of very drinkable India Pale Ale. With any luck, I'll live long enough to gain a certain proficiency at this so I can move on to making my own scotch.

Comfort Food

How could so much time have gone by? I’m two years older, I have a daughter about to graduate college and the world’s economy is on its ear. Alas….

We carry on.
Too assuage my anxiety about the world’s condition, I cook. I sauté, I bake, I broil and ferment.
In addition to savory’s, I prepare sweets, salty types and braced beer. It all contributes to a better frame of mind and a safe place.
Why do I keep mason jars on the counter filled with sourdough starter? Why do I maintain a 5 gallon bucket of India Pale Ale conditioning in the basement?
It’s to combat the uncertainty. It’s to shout out to the Jim Cramers of the world, “You aren’t the Boss of me!!!!!
But I digress.
Preparing food settles the soul and mends the heartbreak.
Here’s to food and the people who prepare it!

Defending your food

Michael Pollan is a journalist who teaches at Berkeley. His recent work, In Defense of Food, An Eater’s Manifesto, takes a fresh approach in addressing American eating and what he calls nutritionalism. Basically Mr. Pollan breaks it down to this: eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

No secret I like food. What I learned in Defense is that I like the right food, that is, food without process, food that’s out of a vegetable bin, not out of a box. By eating less of the boxed types of food product, Mr. Pollan says, we can eat better. Eating processed food leads to loss of health and weight gain.

He does not suggest a strictly vegetarian diet, and I liked that; instead he suggests, as Thomas Jefferson did, that we treat meat as a condiment rather than a main course.

All good sound advice, if you ask me.

Let’s eat just food, not a whole lot and maybe eat more leaves than flesh.

And cake, so long as it’s good cake, just a small slice and not too sweet.

Holy Bakeoff

Big, fat baking weekend. Don’t know what got to me…maybe the failed golden butter cake. I pulled up my boxers, laced on my oven mitt and stormed into the kitchen for three holy days and dusted the shit out of the house with flour.

Friday was Banana Tea Bread from the Times Cookbook to regain my form.






In the afternoon, I hooked a wad of sweet, egg dough and made hot cross buns.



Saturday, as long as I was still lousy with Fleishman’s yeast I made Cinnamon buns.



While enough to make most people tear up just smelling them – I actually got to eat them. They’re good for about three minutes, of course, then they start to go south. With a shot in the microwave though, they resurrect just fine and well, you know.

I know... way too much time on my hands? Saturday I'm scrambling together a Red Velvet Cake for another lucky birthday girl.

Lost my touch

How do you forget to add baking powder to a cake!?! Gawd, where has my Mo-Jo gone? I've plunged to the depths of bakery. Mija is 21 years old. You'd think I'd be able to manage a simple Golden Butter Cake with an eyes-closed-butter-cream....

I suspected something fishy when I opened the oven to check after 20 minutes and the cakes deflated like bad tires. While a normal cake is something like three inches high, these came out measured in centimeters.

All is lost...

better

Atul Gawande ends his most recent book, “better, A surgeon’s Notes on Performance”, with five suggestions for becoming a “Positive Deviant.”

1. Ask unscripted questions;
2. Don’t Complain;
3. Count things (i.e., keep statistics);
4. Write; and
5. Change.


Although offered as a guide for practicing physicians, I thought this list could be expanded for other professions, well, for anybody, really.

6. Read books;
7. Cook food for yourself and others;
8. Exercise;
9. Engage in some creative activity;
10. Listen to children;


Reading is a gift. And there are so many good books available. Reading exercises your imagination. With so many personal responsibilities, worries and political madness around us, reading allows a welcome retreat. Reading lets you keep learning. No one learns anything from watching American Idol. But read a book and you’ll learn what the author knows and maybe find out something new about yourself.

Cooking, and especially cooking for others, provides multi-level, deep satisfaction. I’ve covered this before but can’t stress enough the benefits.

Exercise converts into health. Exercise reduces stress, produces endorphins, burns fat and increases strength, just to name the generally accepted results.

Creating can include almost any activity. Make something, build an object, render an image, start with nothing – add yourself and your effort to end with something, enhance your home – level your house and build a new one or just paint the inside of all the closets, sew, knit, sing, play an instrument, participate in community theatre, do stand-up on open mic night, visit your local arts supply store and just wander the isles until you land on an object that catches your attention and buy it, take a class, learn to blow glass, learn how to make jewelry, collect penguins, garden, you get the idea.

Finally, hear what your children and other children are trying to tell you. They have lots of interesting ideas. Open up to the possibility that they can teach you how to live a fuller, less oppressed life. Then act more like a child.