Andrew describes the hateful hijinks of Meatriots who love their country, its flag, its boys in arms, and juicy Armor Hot Dogs.
The first thing the Dutch and English ever agreed upon in America was that the Natives were not using the land properly and should be divided from it. They did not improve the land, "improve" being defined by charter law as "to keep livestock on it." Thus, in a nutshell, or perhaps, in a collarbone would be more appropriate, the red men and their pudgy long-haired babies were gunned down first for not eating hamburgers. Don't snicker that I am exaggerating. You can be lynched for the same reason today in Texas and no jury will convict. This is a beef-loving country, strangely, since the more beef people eat, the worse its quality. And since, all non-organic hamburger meat in this nation now contains ash for thickening and fake coloring, and beef is no longer marbled or flavorful. More like tough and stringy and bland. The other day I went to a Mongolian grill with friends and the only difference in the lamb, beef, chicken, and pork, was a slight dye job. None had any flavor. I closed my eyes and did a taste test. My lady slipped in a piece of cardboard and a piece of plastic and a piece of leather, and the only one I thought was actually meat was the cardboard. They were really more like slivers of texture replacement, to appease the teeth. But who can complain when all the vegetables and fruits were refilled before our eyes from huge cans? At least the food was not expensive. I guessed after the first time through the line why the "house" recommended six ladels of sauce per bowl. When people say they like good food or strong flavors or this or that dish, what they really mean to say is: I like the texture and shape of my homogenous salt and sugar to be...
But that is just the usual. What I mean to say is I am not being vegetarian anymore, though I did go nearly two months meat-free at one stretch and I often go a week without meat without noticing. I try to eat organic fowl and meat now, as that is clean (er), more properly treated, and probably ate something it would have eaten 200 years ago and enjoys. It will also taste good and since it costs more, I will eat less of it and savor it more. Thomas Jefferson advised to use meat like a condiment, usually over a dry martini and a suckling pig, if not a dry cocktail of pureed ham and a big meal of ale-soaked tobacco leaves. It was good advice, even if he did not take it himself- well, he had to entertain, and the French would have thought America poor or weak were its president dangling his slippers AND eating mountains of collared greens. "Where's the beef" might have been the slogan the British were sneering as they burned the president's mansion down to its plain white walls. Of course, Jefferson also had the sound policy: there's plenty more where that came from. He believed in riding the land hard and moving west. Hey, if we farmed efficiently, there would be plenty of land for Brits, French, Indians, Canadians, and who knows who else. Can't have that. Torch it and shake a leg. Let's waste our way to the Pacific.
So I eat some meat again. A few problems cropped up when I stopped. One is that I got boring. I just started eating the same things all the time. As I was also avoiding out of season produce, this wound up being rice and beans, pasta with red or green sauce, bread, and oats. That is not a very healthy diet, as it is pretty much pure carbohydrate, with limited nutrient profile, and I have begun to branch out again. The other problem was harder to deal with, and it is that people might be okay with vegetarians, but not with sudden vegetarians. It is like coming out of the closet. People start looking back at old memorized scenes and painting you pink in them. They start to wonder: did he really like my turkey at Thanksgiving? No he must have lied! Now I can't trust him! Or: Ooh he's fickle. He might not love me by next Tuesday! This makes them angry. And too, its like losing a team member. They have some inkling that animals are not treated so well, and probably don't consider our "deal": we take care of you, one day, we'll split your head open with an axe: to be a very good one anymore. They would walk out the gate and not come back, but they don't have many options at this point. Well when someone quits their meat eating team, that makes them feel bad. So they get angry for that too. I got either confused looks, or suspicious ones when I said I was trying out vegetarian eating. Had I just been diagnosed with coronary heart disease, this might have been acceptable- I say might, because many men believe they get their fat trucker virility from a mixture of chaw, naked silhouette mudflaps, contact with the steering wheel of a diesel pickup truck, and steaks. The redder the better! These sort would rather die than eat a stem of brocolli. Of course they also drink bad beer, but what few thoughts they have, they do have loudly, and so pass for our culture around here. Also, even carnivores can tell they are getting lower grade flesh these days, and know it is swimming with bacteria, or maybe more accurately, that they are buying bacteria infested with small quantities of particular animals when they buy meat at the market. It is all the same mess of little amoebic monsters, just with a bit of bird or hog to differentiate it. When I quit eating meat, it makes them feel a bit like a sucker. They want everyone to get conned at the same time. Safety in numbers.
The only person who was positive about my experiment was my little work concubine, a vegetarian convert herself, who was getting hazed by her family, pretending to be supportive. The old: Justina, dinner is ready- oh no, whoops, I forgot you don't like drumsticks anymore, I guess you'll just have to eat a can of corn. No time to make something else now, sorry. And according to several co-workers who labeled themselves as "incapable of reading body language", the two of us screamed silently: you're favorite dimly lit vegan restaurant, or mine? Whatever that means. So she might have approved of any experiment I made, even if it were horrible. I say she was my work concubine because that is how people started looking at her, and she being shy, religious, and you know, caring what people think, this bothered her, despite my appeals and best efforts to have her play along with some scandal-mongering. I for my end of things, tried to look smitten around her (a minor effort) and act possessive, and to dress as "old" as I could around her (she was 18 when we started "work-dating"). One lady really took it too far. She sat down at our table o chat and gave Justina an up and down scan and we could both see the wheels in her head say, "huh I wouldn't have taken you for a whore." Really offended the kid. She quit not too long after, probably out of boredom and because she is young and not dead or dreary enough for government work. If you don't need a job, why keep going? Stay in school, and that sort of thing.
I think vegetarian cooking can be delicious, though I need to learn more meal options before I commit to it fully. And I should try it at peak of summer. I think winter is the time for meat. Eating flesh raises body temperature, puts on "insulation", and used to fill in when plants were not available. People often preferred produce and certainly craved it crossing the great plains and shivering through hard winters without furnaces. For example, Lewis and Clarke and company had to subsist on 9-12 pounds of elk and puppy flesh per day at Fort Clatsop. They dreamt of cabbages. I am going to go to Fort Clatsop in one week's time on vacation with the Missus, to bring this up on the tour. I love social terrorism, and Teresa does not believe me that The West's spiritual and symbolic founders were probably homosexual and puppy eaters to boot. "Where did they get the puppies if they didn't have any food anyway" she asks, naively. "Did they bring them along so they could eat them? Why not just bring jerkey instead then?" Well jerkey does not walk on its own legs and cows scare easy, but they actually bought them from the Indians who wouldn't sell the white men any fish or elk or corn because it was scarce and they needed it for themselves, I explain. And also because they hated the whites secretly and liked to tease them about how only cowards and fools ate dogs and failed to pack real food into the wilderness. They rolled their eyes at those poor starving explorers, and patted their bellies while holding their noses over steaming cauldrons of labrador stew while visiting. We'll see what the tour guides have to say to my quotations from the diaries such as "if there is a more delicious steak than one carved off a fresh young puppy, I haven't found it". I may be thrown out. We'll be visiting on Memorial Day.
But social terrorism and vegetarian inklings do not mean I harbor terrorists, as some of you carnivores were probably muttering under your breath while reading this. No, don't tell me. I like to pretend I have an audience, though when I find out I do, I get squeamish. They say Mark Twain was the same way. He also liked to lie through his teeth as a hobby.
Friday, May 20, 2011
You Mean You're A Vege-Traitor!
Saturday, March 28, 2009
A cook without a kitchen
I don't cook very much at college. And when I say very much... I mean at all.
Why? It's really pretty straightforward. I'm pretty darn busy, for one, but that's certainly not the primary obstacle. The nearest usable kitchen is 600 feet and several flights of stairs away. In the Davidson universe, this is a considerable distance... my cooking equipment is heavy, after all. My fridge is tiny and my storage space nearly non-existent, so I lack basic pantry supplies, and therefore any cooking venture requires preplanning and shopping: spontaneous chefery is out of the question. And preplanning is, well, not my forte.
In short, cooking is a rare and happy event for me here at D-son. So consider my complete disappointment and despair when I discover that the cooking contest I planned to enter is on a weekend that I have a regatta! Just consider! It is -- it is considerable. I was trying to decide between deep-fried thai-themed tofu and vegetarian pancit (I was limited to tofu or chicken for the main protein source, and "international" for the theme) but no can do. I love crew, I do, but it's a big time and money commitment that I've begun to think might not belong in my future... and now it's keeping me from cooking? Man, this is just not okay. Straw: breaking camel-a's back.
Anyway, maybe I will soon do a post of what passes for cooking in my life here at college. It includes:
- putting peanut butter on pretzels
- making trail mix from salad bar supplies
- and, um... that's about it...
Seriously. Tragic. I found a recipe for microwave chocolate cake-like substance, but it requires eggs, which, of course, I never have handy. And you can make potato chips in the microwave... but only if you have a mandoline, which, alas, I don't. I could do SO many things with a toaster oven, or a panini press, or a hot plate! -- but we aren't even allowed normal toasters. It's awful.
I tend to compensate for this by going on baking and cooking binges when I go home on breaks; over spring break I made pretzels, cake, pie, doughnuts and various vegetably dishes, all within the span of a few days. But breaks are few and far apart, and my last bout of cooking has definitely worn off. Rainy, cold days like this one, all I can think about is what I wish I was baking... damnedly distracting. And then I think about the one cooking-filled (and competitive!) day I was so looking forward to, which has now fallen out of my future, and I sigh a mournful sigh. A mournful, mournful sigh.
Monday, April 28, 2008
you are what you buy
Have you heard of Fresh and Easy? Not yo mama -- the new grocery store craze that's sweeping the nation.
Fresh and Easy Neighborhood Markets are small grocery stores that are run by Tesco. Philosophy-wise, they support fresh foods, organics, sustainable growth, all that cool green stuff -- however, they are distinctly different from Whole Foods/Trader Joe's. Mostly, there's no pretension or smugness; Fresh and Easy isn't marketing itself to foodies and yuppies. "We think fresh, wholesome food should be accessible and affordable to everyone," they say on their website.
The stores are brightly lit and simply laid out -- and did I mention that they're small? They still cover pretty much everything bigger stores do; I did my weekly shopping there last week and didn't notice the absence of anything at all. Options are fairly limited -- usually there will be one or two brands per product -- but it certainly didn't bother me. The prices were good, even on national brands, and their cage-free eggs were way more affordable than any ethical choices at Fry's. They also offer a large variety of prepared foods, from whole meals to precooked cubes of chicken, that promise they are made of fresh, healthy, wholesome ingredients. I didn't buy any, but some of them looked quite good; a reasonable alternative to junky frozen dinners, for sure.
I quite enjoyed shopping at Fresh and Easy -- however.
However. I don't even know how to say this in a way that communicates the full horror of the situation. I will give it a shot --
Their produce is packaged.
No, see, I'm failing. That doesn't sound so bad. Sealed up! Encased in plastic!
PACKAGED!
I wanted a green bell pepper. I had to buy three, in a plastic sleeve. I wanted a squash -- I had to buy two, in a plastic tray encased in a plastic case. I wanted 5 apples; I had to buy four, in a little plastic square tray, encased in a thick plastic envelope.
It was so very, very wrong. Produce, as Barbara Kingsolver mentioned in "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral," is the last section of the supermarket where most Americans can still see the connection between the food we eat and the earth it came from. The plants we buy have stems, leaves, stalks, skins, sometimes bruises, sometimes traces of dirt.
It's also the last section of the store where we really have any control over what we buy. Quality control -- squeezing eggplant, sniffing melons, turning apples over to check for bruises. I think that choice is important, on some level; retaining a sense of control over our food can be empowering.
To take all that away? I couldn't smell, squeeze, select -- none of that. Only the bananas were available outside of a package.
It was in stark contrast to the shopping I did yesterday, when William and I went to a farmer's market in Ahwatukee. The market wasn't spectacular -- I can honestly say that the one in Harrisonburg is much, much better, but I guess that's what I get for living in the desert. Still, there was a decent selection of produce, all laid out -- covered in dirt, stalks and roots still attached, in wooden trays or plastic crates. I could squeeze and smell to my heart's delight.
Around me, other shoppers were asking for advice on how to cook the beets, or where exactly were the potatoes grown, and which were the best tomatoes, and how long until they could find... It was downright inspiring, all those people getting to know their food.
At Fresh and Easy, the plastic packaging on my squash said, "Grown in MEXICO." At the farmer's market, I asked about the different colors of baby eggplant, and the farmer rolled them into piles, saying, "now, these came from one tree," (eggplants grow in bushes -- who knew?) gathering the white ones "and these from another," gathering a darker shade, "and believe it or not, these all came from the same tree," -- dark green, deep purple, striped. "I don't know how it happened," he said, grinning like he'd just presented a magic trick.
I bought one of each color.
Any karmic benefit I got from buying local was immediately erased when I went straight from the market to Fry's, where I bought grapes from Chile, bananas from Costa Rica... but that's not the point. The point is that the difference between the two buying processes -- one avowedly green and plastic-wrapped, the other eco-friendly and covered with dirt -- mirrors a much larger split in the enviroconscious movement in general.
Organic foods: grown without the use of synthetic agricultural inputs, like fertilizers, pesticides and hormones. No GMOs. Clearly much, much better for the environment, and for your health.
But best of all, they are painless to buy, and relatively pain-free to grow. You don't think so? Any major grocery store in the country carries organic food these days. It costs more, but you are paying for a personal benefit, as well as an environmental one; nobody really likes ingesting petrochemicals. A justifiable upfront cost, and as easy as grabbing a different gallon of milk off the shelf.
As easy as going to Fresh and Easy.
Painfree to grow? Sure thing. Fits right there into the industrial model; you're spreading manure-based fertilizer instead of a petroleum product, but the process is the same. You double-till or use cover crops or rotate, but you have the same land, the same harvesting techniques; the same trucks take the same food to the same processing plant; if you are raising cows, you can keep them in the same pens, as long as the feed you give them is certified and you go easy on the antibiotics.
Michael Pollan did a really interesting section on industrial organics in "The Omnivore's Dilemma." His conclusion? Industrial organic agriculture is indeed better for the land than traditional chemical farming, but they look an awful lot alike.
Buying local, on the other hand, hurts. It's not just a higher upfront cost; it's a sacrifice of variety, of convenience, of availability, sometimes of quality. To eat local, you can't shop at the same grocery stores; you'll almost always have to seek out markets or CSAs or buying clubs. To eat local, you can't eat the same foods; you can't cook the same recipes. You need new skills: cooking, canning, baking. Some things you will just have to give up.
The organic movement asks for change that works within the system. The local food movement asks you to abandon the system.
That right there is the central struggle, I think, of the entire green movement. Is it easy, or is it hard? Can we do what we've always done, but better, or do we have to do something different altogether?
Take CFLs. People are really starting to get the message about CFLs. Undeniably better for the environment than incandescents. Readily available. No major lifestyle changes -- screws right in to your old sockets, thanks-very-much. The upfront cost is made up for by long-term energy savings. Good for the environment. Good for you. Easy!
And not nearly enough. What we really need is for people to turn off more lights. We need to live in smaller houses. I read an article in the newspaper a month or two ago where a man was lamenting his family's high energy bills. He had a 2,000-3,000 square foot house, two stories, two air conditioning systems, several TVs with video game systems... his comment? "But we haven't got a normal light bulb in the entire place!"
That's the problem. So we raise awareness about CFLs -- and do people think they're done? Because CFLs are a tiny, tiny start, and the more we convince people that going green is as easy as switching their lightbulbs, the more we lie. Marketing corn-based plastic products as being the "green" alternative is doing society a disservice. We will need to use less plastic; we can't just make it out of corn.
Buying organic produce is great. But when it is raised in a massive, vulnerable monoculture, trucked across the continent, washed in a factory, packaged in plastic... this is not the face of sustainability. The sustainable option is available once a week, in a wooden crate, covered in specks of dirt. We need to eat locally... but it hurts!
Hybrids are great, but we really need to drive less. Walking, biking, public transportation -- but it hurts!
You can buy a hybrid at your favorite dealership, drive your same route, use your same parking place, leave at the same time, justify the cost in the gas savings. It's easy. You pay with your money, not with your time or your convenience or your comfort.
It's easy, and it's not enough.
So here's the question: do we do this gradually? Do we start with organic pretzels and organic yogurt cups and plastic-packaged organic produce, with CFLs and hybrids and bamboo flooring and hemp clothes, and slowly work our way up to the real lifestyle changes? Do we gloss over the need for smaller houses, fewer cars, closer vacations, less shopping, less exotic food, smaller families -- less, fewer and smaller of everything? Or do we need to start, right now, hammering in the fact that the way we live is not sustainable, and the changes we have to make will, indeed, hurt?
I see the value in not scaring people away from the green movement. Heck, it's working really well. But at the same time, I am terrified that we will grow complacent well before we really can.
Economic forces will help us, if we let them. Gas prices are going up! It's fantastic! (please don't shoot me!) But it would be much more comfortable if we can start adjusting before we absolutely have to.
As I say this, of course, I don't buy organic all the time. I don't buy local all the time. William and I drive to Mesa two to three times a week. I am speaking not as a perfect carbon-neutral angel passing judgment on others, but as a fellow human being who also wishes that living sustainably hurt a little less.
But all the same, it will hurt. Should we be pretending that it won't?
Monday, April 14, 2008
starter's game
I am having starter drama. My starter has finally stopped smelling like something died in it -- now it smells strong and sour, but entirely edible. I would say, in my limited experience, that it smells right.
HOWEVER. It is NOT rising up. It is not crawling up the sides of the jar. It is not gently doming on the top. It has not increased to 3 cups -- nowhere near. It looks alive -- it is full of little bubbles and all -- but there is a distinct lack of expansion.
Also, it is incredibly liquid. It was a stiff sort of batter , then a less stiff sort of batter, and then -- POOF! -- it turns into something I could drink. You know, if I wanted to. Watery. Sloshing about. I am wondering if I accidentally added water twice on one of these days. I would like to think I am not that dumb, but I am not dumb enough to think that I am not that dumb. Is that dumb?
No, really. I think I might have. It's just... very, very liquid.
I was really hoping that it would be established enough to be refrigerated by the time we went home for 4 days. Because traveling with my starter just doesn't seem like that good of an idea. But if it hasn't expanded by Friday, I think I'll have to throw it out and start over.
It's so sad! I don't want to break up with my starter! But I feel that I have no choice... alas!
My life is so tragic.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
i'll probably be the next fleming or something
blargh. i am sick of bad cheese. I swear that mozzarella wasn't that old. and yet there it sat, super duper mcmoldy. And not 'cut off the moldy bits and use the rest' moldy -- and besides, the internet tells me that it's only okay to do that on harder cheeses, like cheddar. apparently poor mozzarella is too squishy.
super. duper. mcmoldy. And my pizza dough was all ready! I could have cried. That's what I get for knowing what I have in my kitchen and not bothering to check.
So I sent William out to fetch me some. Every time I look despairingly out of the kitchen and say, "dear, would you mind..." a little piece of me DIES.
I am a little more dead today.
But yes. Yesterday for dinner we had pizza. Pizza and soda. and it was deeeelicious.
I feel like some folks have wound up with the impression that I am all health-nutty. I was talking about chocolate with one of my coworkers and she said, "wait -- as healthy as you eat, you still like chocolate?" I almost choked. What is this nonsense about me eating "healthy?" I bake cookies and pies on a regular basis, I love chocolate and ice cream and cake -- I like things that taste good. Who doesn't?
And how on earth did she get the idea that I could live without chocolate?
The thing is, I don't like eating gross food. Pizza in a box? Usually gross, although there are some exceptions. Those soft, strangely-colored "cookies" sold at supermarkets? Gross. Shrink-wrapped little debbie cakes? Disgusting. Anything with aspartame? I can freaking taste it -- like somebody sprinkled sour metal shavings into my no-fat yogurt. I don't care how "healthy" they say that is, it is gross. Limp sandwiches that are 90% sprouts? Gross.
Most sodas? Gross, gross, gross. I don't know. I have somehow moved away from liking anything that comes out of a soda fountain. Right now the root beer is about all I can handle, and even that isn't too enjoyable. I don't know what about it tastes so bad -- it's too sweet, too syrupy, or something.
We had Fufuberry instead, and that is some delicious stuff, yo. Props to Jones Soda for the only soda of theirs I really love. Props also to them for all their other, very creative sodas that I don't love at all.
I suppose my food philosophy, if it could be summed up, would center on the fact that I like eating delicious food that doesn't make me feel bad. Food that doesn't make me feel physically bad, like fat-filled meals make me feel heavy and nauseous, and like sugary candies make me feel ill fifteen minutes after I eat them. Food that doesn't gross me out, like anything with lard in it does. Food that doesn't make me feel guilty, like factory-farmed meat or -- well, the category of 'food that makes me feel guilty' seems to be expanding, thanks to my reading choices. Drat.
Things that taste good but feel bad seem like they should be easy to avoid, especially when there are all kinds of yummy foods that make a body feel good. In fact, these days, the only place I have problems is with candy. There are always jars around in the office, and even though I know I'll regret it, I frequently grab a few and gulp them down. And then I regret it.
My own desserts rarely make me feel regretful. It turns out I can eat a fair amount of pie without feeling icky afterwards. Cookies are easy to have in moderation -- they're the right size and everything. And a lot of what I make for dessert starts life as non-threatening fruit, and doesn't get much transformed along the way. Have you ever had broiled grapefruit? (Recipe: Turn on the broiler. Sprinkle as much brown sugar as your sweet tooth desires on top of your grapefruit halves. Pop them under the broiler til they smell delicious and you can't wait any longer. Enjoy.)
Most of the time, I eat food that actually makes me feel good. I'm usually proud of myself for having made it, and I am continuing to discover what sorts of dishes leave me feeling energized and refreshed, and what sorts of things leave me a little bloated or queasy or sleepy or just feeling off. My body certainly doesn't have ascetic tastes -- it's anti-grease and salt, but loves spicy foods, roasted vegetables, dark chocolate after dinner, fruit smoothies, coconut milk, lots of fruit, honey -- even deep-fried things, in moderation. Did you know that if you deep-fry things right, they shouldn't be greasy?
And just like soda doesn't have to be sickly-sweet and cloying, pizza doesn't have to be a greasy, limp mess. Mine was tomato sauce, mozzarella, sauteed onions and red bell pepper, broiled eggplant, and spinach. A bit of canola oil, a bit more olive oil -- no grossness required. I did learn a few things -- I didn't saute the spinach, and I think that if I try that again, I will put the spinach under the cheese. It seems obvious in retrospect, but there was some pretty crunchy spinach involved. But overall, it was good.
The last couple pizzas I had made were thin-crust; good, but not the same as the thick, crisp, chewy crust that my dad makes. I was really craving pizza like I grew up on (I miss all kinds of things!) and I called him to find his recipe, but I couldn't reach him. What to do? I decided to go with the Joy of Cooking recipe, figuring that odds were pretty good he had started from there. If not, hey, it'd still be pizza. And it turned out pretty darn close!
I totally understand that people are reluctant to eliminate tasty things from their diet in favor of low-fat, low-calorie, low-carb, low-pleasure diets that leave them hungry and cranky. Pretty much everybody agrees that those diets aren't good for you, anyway. But why would we seek out foods that make us feel ill, and avoid good, wholesome foods: whole-fat, whole-calorie, whole-carb, whole-pleasure diets that actually nourish?
A live without pizza would be a sad one indeed -- but trading greasy deliveries for fresh ingredients, a crust just how you want it, and a far more flavorful experience... how is that hard? Why is that unusual?
Thursday, April 3, 2008
pease porridge gross
Well, I've had a pretty delightful week away from the computer. I'll have some sort of a proper post soon, but for now I will just share two not-delightful things I have learned in the past week.
1) Canned vegetables are GROSS. I know. I should have known this, somehow -- I feel like I should have had some sort of warning sensation in my gut when I contemplated the cans. The things is, I have a natural distrust of anything canned, bagged or boxed. Everything but fresh fruits and vegetables, basically, makes me suspicious.
But canned beans work pretty excellently, and frozen veggies are working out far better than I had thought. I thought I would be open-minded. I thought I would give canned vegetables a try.
EW. Just plain ew. How did I miss the part where canned vegetables have not only already been cooked, they've already been OVERcooked? I am so foolish. I opened the can of green beans and THREW THEM OUT. I never throw out food!
Um. On that note, I accidentally served my boyfriend and his family rice and beans topped with rotten cheese. Man, did I ever want to cry. I'll be throwing out cheese more frequently, now. Or maybe I just won't buy pre-grated cheese -- my cheese blocks aren't stinky yet. We bought pre-grated stuff because I'd been recruiting William as my grater and he really hated it, but I think I'll just grate my own cheese from now on. It's not worth it.
Anyway, back to the canned grossness. I threw out the green beans. I opened the peas and decided there was no way I could add anything of that color and that squishiness to a delicious curry. The next day, I tried the only thing I could think of: pea soup. Blended with some veggie stock and heated with onions, carrots, salt, pepper and thyme, the result was edible... just.
Moral of the story: Canned vegetables will never again feature in Camila's kitchen pantry. That is all.
2) A camera enthusiastically swung on its strap becomes a camera enthusiastically dropped into the red dust of Sedona becomes a camera enthusiastically broken. It was off! The lens was closed! I was holding the strap, I thought we were all so safe!
Oh, it is so sad. It makes sad little noises like whirr-whirr-whirr-whirr tik-tik-tiktiktik when it tries to open the lens... it makes the same sad little noises trying to close it. It won't close at all, now.
This weekend I will take it to the nice camera store next door and see if they can fix it. I do hope they can. I can't afford a good replacement camera. And I'd just learned how to use this one properly!
Oh, it is so, so sad. I just look at it, permanently open, lens staring like the single eye of a dead cyclops, and I want to cover it with a coin or something. Do dead cameras go to heaven?
No! Don't say that, Camila! There's still hope!
It can be saved!
I hope.... *sniffle*
Thursday, March 20, 2008
afternoon tea
So perhaps I have mentioned how much I love afternoon tea. No? Well, let me fix that. I really, really love afternoon tea. Do you know why? Because afternoon tea is one of the best ideas ever.
Because, let's face it, 7 hours is a long time between meals. I eat breakfast at 7 and lunch at noon and life is good. But then it's 7 again and time to cook dinner and I am starving, which always serves as an incentive for shortcutting and skipping steps and settling for mediocre food. And if I had my way, I would never eat mediocre food again. Hey, I can dream.
The point is, afternoon tea is 1) well-timed, 2) delicious, 3) adorable, and 4) oh so civilized. I adore it. I wish I had cucumber sandwiches today, but lacking that, here was my afternoon tea:
I know. I peeled my grapefruit and separated the slices and arranged my plate all pretty. I know. I have way too much time. In my defense, we aren't building this Saturday, and since 80% of my job is scheduling things for Saturday... well, I wasn't very busy.
Isn't it cute? It was delicious. It made me happy. I was warm all the way down to my toes and my tongue was delighted and I sipped my stolen green tea with the deepest satisfaction. (Yes. It was somebody else's tea and I stole it. But -- I keep forgetting to bring my own into the office! But -- it's been in the cabinet for ages! But -- but -- I've brought everybody cookies so many times that I think it evens out. Yes? Yes.)
It needed some carby goodness -- little sandwiches or crackers or cookies or mini muffins or cakelets or tartlets or scones, or oh my goodness, now I am starting to think about it. But I worked with what I had.
Incidentally, last night I tried a new recipe -- grapefruit stir fry. A word of advice? Don't put grapefruit in your stir-fry.
It wasn't dreadful, quite. It just... wasn't very good. At all. Without the grapefruit, it would have been a little boring, but better. William hated it -- of course, he can't stand grapefruit, which I totally forgot about, I swear, until after I'd started cooking!
So we have a milk crate full of grapefruit that I guess I'll have to find something else to do with. Main course options are slim, so fruit salads and grapefruit juice it is, I guess. And roasted grapefruit. I'll try that, too.
Heck, I'll try anything. I read that you can grow a grapefruit in its own skin. I want to try that, too.
Also: I have ordered yeast. I bought a pound of yeast online from King Arthur's Flour because I just could not bear to pay $8.50 for a little four-ounce bottle. So I paid $12 to have a pound shipped to me.
And now I am worried about it. You see, the round table baking folks did a cruel, cruel thing. They let me track my shipment. Normally, I order things online and then forget about them (I do things like that) and then it is like a delightful surprise when it arrives.
but now? Now I am checking it online every few hours, and saying things like, "West Virginia? West Virginia? What do you MEAN it's still in West Virginia??" and, "it's been in that sortation center for 8 HOURS already, hurry up! Come on! What's the holdup?"
And that's just silly.
You know what's sillier? It's not going to be here by tomorrow, I can tell. Because it just left West Virginia at 9:36 a.m. It's not happening. But I have a whole day off tomorrow, and I have PLANS. I have plans for BAKING.
I am going to make french bread. And cookies. And maybe little cakes. And hot cross buns. And a pie.
And I won't really make all of them, but I WANT to. And I definitely am baking bread. But without yeast? No can do! So I am going to suck it up and buy a hideously overpriced little packet of yeast.
To tide me over 'til my ship(ment) comes in.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
failures
man. this is hard.
Last night I made tomato, corn and garbanzo bean soup. It was... not good. It had a peculiar and very unpleasant flavor to it. I also made irish soda bread, but messed up the recipe by leaving out the oats. Can you say oops?
William's comment: "Weeeell, the garbanzo beans are good. And the bread is delicious!" (It wasn't. It is okay, but it is not delicious.)
As for the soup, I blame the stuff from the cans. I kept it simple and quick, grabbing and adapting a random quick soup recipe from Joy of Cooking. I sauteed onions and garlic, then added condensed tomato soup, milk, cream-style corn and garbanzo beans. Why did I have tomato soup? Annie bought it. Why did I have cream-style corn? Well, it was on sale. What can I say.
So my theory is that the soup, having unpleasantries like corn syrup and too much salt, and the corn, having corn starch and other seemingly unnecessary ingredients, introduced a not-delicious-ness to the soup. Because I know there was nothing wrong with the onions, garlic, and garbanzo beans, and the only spices I added were a little bit of curry powder. I really don't know how even I could mess that up so badly. The wrongness lay somewhere in a strange sweetness... yeah. I've thought about it. I blame the tomato soup. Unfair of me? Perhaps. But there you go.
Wow. It was really not good, though. Ugh. I don't want to talk about it.
All the same, it seemed like it might have been trying for something positive. I might try the same thing again, except making my own tomato soup and using frozen, un-creamed, un-canned, un-additivized corn. Additivized. That's right. Anyway. Maybe I'll try again a long time from now, when this trauma is gone from my memory.
Tonight? Tonight I made tempura. I was going to make beer-battered vegetables, but the beer I grabbed from Andrew's house turned out to be barbecue sauce. In a seemingly-unopened beer bottle. WTF? I called him to complain, and he just shrugged it off and said he can't explain his roommates. Whatever.
So I ended up making tempura with water instead, and it was profoundly uninspiring. Squash, zucchini, onions and tofu, deep-fried and pretty much tasteless. Also: not crunchy. Is tempura supposed to be crunchy? I don't know. I can't remember ever having it. I sort of expected it to be, but it was almost limp, instead. And did I mention flavorless? I put curry powder and ginger in the batter, but believe me. You couldn't tell.
And I tried to make a dipping sauce, using soy sauce, red crushed peppers, lime juice, honey... I was doing okay until I added some vinegar. Have I mentioned that I don't know what the hell I'm doing? It was DREADFUL. I had to stop and start over again -- soy sauce, red crushed peppers, lime juice, STOP. It was uninspiring, too, but at least it wasn't dreadful. (And we are apparently out of fresh ginger, or I would have used that -- I couldn't find it in the fridge).
In short? NOT a success.
William's comment: "Well, it's better than last night's dinner."
It makes me want to cry. Well, not really. It makes me want to throw my hands up in despair and look angrily at something. Also? I have a splatter burn on my forehead. I hope it doesn't turn into an angry red mark. I have three zits that are just starting to go away. Come on. Cut me some slack, face.
Anyway. I want to throw up my hands in despair. How does one get good at cooking, anyway? I know how you become a chef -- culinary school. But I don't want to be a chef right now. I just want to be a kick-ass cook. And so I read about cooking and think about cooking and I try new things, and I try really hard, and... and it makes me want to throw my hands up in despair. Because there are people who seem like they just excel effortlessly at this. Like everything they touch magically responds to the meal in their mind, while I'm left with a big and active imagination, with a perfect plate in my head and mediocrity on the table.
Maybe this is the world balancing out my test-taking skills, gently teaching me a lesson. Right at this moment I am frustrated enough that I would rather be a killer cook with a C-average. I have priorities. And I am hungry.
I really, really want to be good at this. I want to cook foods that make eyes widen, smiles erupt, hearts feel warmer. I want to cook food that can adequately express my love for my favorite people. I want my food to fill bellies and warm hearts and comfort souls and blow minds. I want to make dishes people talk about for years, request again and again, remember fondly. Food is, in my mind, one of the best parts about living, and I want my food to be as good as the rest of my fantastic life is.
Mantra: It takes time. Keep trying. It takes practice. Keep going.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat. "It takes time, keep trying..."
But I feel like it doesn't, not for everybody. I know people who are younger than me who are fantastic cooks. I know. I have eaten their food. So I don't even have my youth on my side, really. And I'm not lazy, and I'm not too busy, and I don't not care, and dammit, I am really trying here.
Maybe I am just doomed to make edible food (because I've been managing that, so far) and I will have to pay other people to make me the lovely and delightful things I really want to eat. This whole cooking-really-fantastic-food thing might just be a bad idea. Maybe I'm aiming too high. Maybe I should just give up.
Stop. Enter William:
"Camila, you can't expect to make things perfectly the first time. But I have every faith that you can make them perfectly the second or third time. So try again later!"
Breath deeply. Rinse. Repeat.