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Category: Sustenance

Playing with My Food, 250601

When I first opened Kristina Cho’s Book, Chinese Enough, one of the first things I wanted to make was Kohlrabi and Radish Salad with Chili Crunch. It was not the first thing I made from this book, although it is the first dish I will write about in this post.

What attracted me to this dish? First of all, love kohlrabi, and very nice kohlrabi is often available at my local Asian Market, Sunrise Supermart. I don’t recall eating kohlrabi much growing up, but it is common in German and Austrian cooking, and it was the favorite vegetable of my late husband, who was born in Austria. I also love Chinkiang Vinegar, which is one variety of Chinese black vinegar. It is made from fermented glutinous rice, and although there are many bottles and brands that add wheat, it is not difficult to find Chinkiang Vinegar with no wheat added, at least if one has a good Chinese or Asian market nearby and is willing to spend time reading labels. But having celiac disease taught me that taking time to read labels is a good idea, and I have come to embrace that idea on a broader scale, meaning I like knowing exactly what is going into my food..

But let’s return to that salad. First I made the chili crunch. I’ve made nearly every chili crunch from nearly every cookbook I own which has oe, and this was good but I am not certain it is my favorite. I would have liked more heat, but that was my fault as I was out of hot red pepper flakes when I made it and was too lazy to run to the store. I used mildish Korean gochugaru instead. Were I to make this again, I would use hot Chinese chiles.

Although the recipe called for watermelon radishes, I was planning to use regular radishes, simply because I don’t often find watermelon radishes. However fate was on my side and I found some in the farmer’s market that week. They proved to be the weak part in an otherwise lovely salad. I admit to knowing little about watermelon radishes and I suspect these were too large and not particularly tender. Even thought I sliced the reddish very thinly on a mandolin, they were more woody than crisp.

I loved the flavors of the salad; it was bright, tart from the vinegar, but with a slightly funky, nutty, oily heat that did not dominate but softened and rounded out the flavors of the vegetables. However, due to the radishes, I realized I was unlikely to finish the salad, despite the fact that the author says it keeps five days.

Then I had a thought.

I had some leftover roast chicken in the fridge and a partial bottle of heavy cream. I wondered if I could turn the kohlrabi/radish salad into a kind of gratin with the leftover chicken. I knew kohlrabi bakes well; I’ve made kohlrabi gratins. Radishes of all varieties steam well, so it seemed logical that it would also work in a gratin, so I proceeded. First I drained the vegetables because the vinegar would not help. I had about 6 cups of thinly sliced vegetables, and about 3 cups of shredded chicken. I also had two medium-sized russet potatoes in the pantry, and since I was about to go out of town I thought I would use those as well.

I dabbed the bottom of the gratin dish with a small amount of butter, layered the peeled and thinly sliced potatoes as a base and then alternated layers of chicken and vegetables. I grated a small chunk of havarti I rescued from the fridge on top, then poured the heavy cream over it all and baked it until the cheese was brown, the liquid was thick and bubbling and the potatoes were cooked through.

Although it was not a beautiful dish, it was delicious. I expected it to be good, how could it not be? But it was far greater than the sum of its parts — more complex and more enticing than I had hoped. Due to the high volume of radish and kohlrabi, the dish was lighter than many gratins, but it was still substantial. The vegetables cooked down but were still tender and toothsome, with a fresh, fruity, crisp-soft, and yet still slightly starchy consistency that was very appealing. The color of the radishes faded substantially, but they also colored the dish a very faint pink. The potatoes didn’t add much, but I felt virtuous for not leaving them behind. What started out as an impromptu “mess” of a fridge clean-out, turned into a dish that I would make intentionally, not just as to use up leftovers.

I’d been in “play” mode in the kitchen for a few months, but this dish kind of tripped the pause button. I actually made two small gratins and froze one. It makes me so happy when something virtuous also ends up tasting sublime. And these happy accidents send my mind wandering along the many ways that food has shaped human development and culture. I perhaps never would have thought of making a gratin with radishes, cream, and chili crunch, but it worked beautifully.

That is the thing, for me anyway, about cooking and exploring new cookbooks. I find it fun. Both reading a cookbook, and cooking from it, expands not only my palate and my skills, but my imagination as well. I may not be in the mood to cook, but I’m still in the mood to write about cooking. What I love is not just learning new dishes, but the process of inspiration that leads me to discover and think about food in new (to me) ways.

June 19, 2025
In My Own little Corner

This is one of my happy places.

In the library, the corner where my desk sits. Of course I look out at all the books except the ones behind me, but it is easy to roll my chair around as needed. This corner houses my cookbook collection, or about half of my cookbook collection. The other half is downstairs in the breakfast nook. The wooden stool is not usually there, but I needed to access a high shelf.

I recently resorted all the cookbooks. I had thought about it for a while; I've been cooking a great deal the last few months — exploring new recipes, revisiting old favorites, thinking about the way I want to eat now — and in the process realizing that the way my cookbooks had been ordered recently wasn't really working for me. But shifting books, especially big heavy hardback books, is a job. It is a job made all the harder because the books are on two levels of the house and when I started I had only a rudimentary idea of which books would go upstairs and which would be downstairs. All I knew was that the previous method, straight alphabetical by author on each level was confusing. The books I used the most were downstairs; the remainder were upstairs. But then I would start using a book that was upstairs more, and a book that was downstairs less. When I wanted to cook Thai, or Spanish, or whatever, none of the books were together, and I like to compare recipes. Long ago, when I cooked a lot, I grouped books by category. It was time to go back.

Admittedly I never really stopped cooking, but I had grown a bit staid and stale. Then I bought a new mixer after contemplating it for about 3 years. I hadn't really done any baking in those three years, whereas I used to bake a great deal. Baking for one is problematic, and my church no longer has a coffee hour on Sunday, so I no longer have the excuse of baking things that I can take to church. Yet I miss the act of baking and making dessert. I actually miss making desserts more than I miss eating them.

So I bought the mixer above and started playing. This will be a good mixer when I get to bread, but I'm not there yet. I started with simple and familiar basics: choux pastry (which does not require a mixer at all) and meringues and pavlovas. I made choux puffs to make tiny appetizer sized lobster rolls, then I made cream-puffs, where the mixer was required for the pastry cream, and savory puffs filled with pimento cheese, and salmon mousse. I made multiple batches of pavlovas with spring berries. I made a batch of cupcakes and then I stopped baking for a while. I'm not worried, I will start up again, probably as the weather cools. But the mixer, and the baking, shifted my brain from the utilitarian "I need to eat" setting to "let's play in the kitchen" mode. I'm still playing.

It seems like I've been doing everything except writing. I play in the kitchen. I work in the garden, mostly weeding, but I went through a period where my early mornings were all spent wrestling with chicken wire as the rabbits were feasting on my vegetable beds and my flowers. I've been sewing, slowly but steadily, learning new things as I go, but also making things I am happy with and happy to wear. Knitting. Reading. Occasionally seeing friends.

All of this makes for a very full and happy life, but it is not necessarily an interesting life to write about. What would I say? "I cooked dinner, I am working on a muslin, I knit four rows of lace?" Who cares? I've been reading, but mostly reading genre fiction which I have thoroughly enjoyed but I don't really have anything to say about the books, nor do I need to say anything.

Mostly I've just been wondering what the purpose of a blog is in this world where the internet and social media in particular sometimes feels like it has become too commercialized, to politicized, too fraught. I was an innocent when I started this blog. I am terrible about throwing away pieces of paper. I've lost a lot of things. I thought of this blog as a journal I couldn't throw away only to regret it later. A part of me wants to go back to those innocent days. That may not be possible. But it seems that writing here fills a role, provides some outlet that I still need. Throwing words out into the digital void is different than writing a journal. It is not better. It is not worse. It is different and I write differently. I also see myself differently, and learn about myself in different ways.

Somehow, a post Lisa wrote in 2011 came up on my feed. That post is here. I don't know why, I think I just needed a little kick. So I think I will post a picture from my kitchen window. If I am standing at the sink, this is the view from my window. But the entire outside wall of my kitchen is windows. I neglected to put in upper cabinets because I wanted the view. In the house before this house, the condo I lived in when I first moved to Knoxville, there was no kitchen window. The kitchen was in the center of the house, there was no view to the outside. I hated it. In retrospect perhaps that contributed to why I lost interest in cooking. George died. I had only to cook for myself. I felt claustrophobic in that kitchen.

It has taken me a while to settle fully into this new house; there were reasons, but I am here now. My kitchen is another one of my happy places. I watch the robins while my coffee brews in the morning. At the moment my big fancy espresso machine needs a bit of fiddling and I don't have the patience for it, so the drip coffee maker is out. Apparently this is a happy place for my orchid as well. No complaints here.

July 20, 2024
Playing with my food

Somehow I think I didn't cook as much in January as December. Perhaps my memory is faulty; in retrospect I cooked a lot in early January and then I went through a lull.

Let's take a look back and see.

I think January started off pretty strongly. I had a large bag full of fennel fronds after making fennel gratins for Christmas. I also had a new cookbook, Tenderheart, by Hetty Liu McKinnon. I noticed that she made a pesto from fennel fronds, and she did it a little differently than my standard pesto recipe in that she used pepitas (pumpkin seeds) instead of pignoli (pine nuts). I had some pumpkin seeds languishing away and decided to use them up. At first I wasn't convinced, but the pesto improved with age. I still think I prefer pine nuts.

I also thought McKinnon's proportion of garlic to fennel frond was a little high, but that could have also been a factor of my garlic and my fennel. At first the pesto tasted strongly of garlic and made my eyes water. But I left it to rest a few hours, which allowed the allicin in the garlic to mellow, and the balance of flavors improved immensely. I've grown fond of the numerous variation on pesto that I've tried over hte year and tend to keep on hand now. Some, like this one, appeal to my frugal self — "look I'm not tossing the fennel greens" — but they offer wonderful flavor profiles and easy techniques for sprucing up a plate of vegetables or a simple piece of chicken or fish. I use them more than true basil pesto right now, but that could just be because my basil crop didn't do all that well last summer.

That first evening I used the fennel frond pesto with pasta and seared sea scallops. I may have added slightly too much parmesan, fearing the the pesto was still excessively garlicky, so the color suffered. Dinner was delicious anyway.

The next morning I dabbed fennel pesto on my scrambled eggs with some grated radishes and a scattering of pickled red onions. This was a revelation in flavors, everything harmonizing and playing off each other nicely. I've continued eating this combination since, it makes my mornings feel like spring even though we are in the depths of winter,

The big hit from Tenderheart was McKinnon's recipe for Garlicky Chili Oil. I've been slathering it on everything and am finishing up my second batch. Perhaps I've been a little excessive, but it is that good. She also has a recipe for Chili Crisp that sounds fabulous, but haven't made it yet, mostly because I am so besotted with all the components of this oil.

I also made McKinnon's version of celery soup. Here served with a drizzle of chili oil. I had recently grown bored of my previous celery soup recipe and this was a welcome change, even when using pale, anemic, winter celery from the grocery store. I think I still need to play with this recipe, or explore recipes a bit more. Celery soup is a good basic as celery itself is something I find I need only in small quantities, and then I am trying to use up the rest of a bunch before it goes bad, although celery does make a nice stir-fry, one I loved as a child. I wonder if my mother stir-fried celery as a way of just using it up before it went bad as well?

Still on a Tenderheart kick, I used McKinnon's recipe for hoisin sauce and a hoisin-glazed roasted cauliflower. Roasted cauliflower is something I do regularly in season, and I've been making my own hoisin for years, since I first learned I had celiac disease, when the only gluten-free hoisin I could find tasted nothing like the stuff I had been buying previously in my local Asian market. I still make hoisin, but felt my version was rather one-note and basic. I wanted to try a new recipe and I really liked the one I found in this book. This may well become my new base for hoisin, although I will probably tweak it a bit here and there.

During the big snow I was craving "brown food", slow-cooked, braised, warming dishes. I made myself a pot of chili and a big batch of chicken paprikas, which has been one of my favorite comfort foods since childhood. I also made Nigella Lawson's Oxtail Bourguinon, from Cook, Eat, Repeat. This made a large batch as I had 4 pounds of oxtail in the freezer. All that cooking meant that warm and comforting meals went into the freezer and I just finished off the supply this week. Perhaps that is why I have not been cooking as much recently. Anyway, that is the oxtail pictured above, with lots of carrots and mushrooms. It was very good, but not perhaps my favorite oxtail stew. I'm not 100% on that, as it has been a few years since I routinely made oxtail stew or soup. Something else that may need to change.

I also harvested an armful of bok choy before the snow, not being sure how it would weather the single digit temps. Luckily we had enough snow that it stayed under its snow blanket the entire time and survived just fine. I am still eating winter bok choy and broccoli raab. One of the new dishes I tried was a recipe for stir-fried bok chow with crispy tofu from Nik Sharma's new book, Veg-Table. This was supposed to be the January book from my cookbook club, and so far it is the only recipe have tried, although there are several that look tempting. They just haven't appealed to my winter-dining cravings for stews and long braised meats.

Anyway the bok choy was really simple, stir-fried with onion, garlic and a simple sauce made of soy sauce (wheat free tamari for me) and Chinese black vinegar. I loved the flavor the black vinegar added and it reminded me I do not use black vinegar enough, The tofu was cut in cubes, coated with bread crumbs and sesame seeds, and fried, yielding a crispy crust and a tender middle. The combined flavors were wonderful, with the textural differences of crisp and soft, and the bright savory flavor of the bok chow also enhancing the very mild tofu. The tofu would also be good with a dipping sauce, but I found it a little bland on its own. I think, once again, my seasonal tastes tend toward something more deeply savory; this might well be the kind of light meal I crave once the weather brightens.

February 13, 2024
Playing With My Food

I've belonged to a cookbook club on Facebook for a few years now and I go through fits and starts concerning participating. A friend, who also has a cookbook collection, reminded me that I could also just choose a book from my library and cook from it, and I might well do that. But I've also learned new things from new cookbooks, even the ones that did not become permanent additions to the shelves.

In December I was mostly cooking from Cook, Eat, Repeat Nigella Lawson. I'd owned the book for a while but hadn't gotten further than just reading it. Lawson write well about food, and I've always been a person who can curl up with a good cookbook just as easily as I can curl up with a good novel. Still, I found moving from imagination to reality and actually cooking.

This dish, beet and feta spaghetti, was both beautiful and delicious. Basically, the pasta is partially cooked in water and then finished in beet juice, which the pasta absorbs. After cooking the noodles are tossed with feta and herbs. The texture reminds me very much of risotto and specifically of a beet risotto I made regularly from the 90's through 00's. Same principle, in that beet juice was used as the cooking liquid. I stopped making the risotto simply because risotto for one seems a bit much. But I can easily see myself making this again, and enjoying it.

Another pasta dish was this spaghetti with chard. I used twice as much chard to noodle as the recipe specified, which is pretty much in character. Since I love chard and usually either grow it or buy it every week, this could easily become a staple dish for those days when I just need to toss something together quickly.

I also cooked beef cheeks with port and chestnuts, a deeply satisfying winter dish, just the kind of thing I adore. I was also on a bit of a freezer clean-out (still happening) and happened to have beef cheeks available. The stew is rich and satisfying and, like most braises and stews, improves with age. The chestnuts add a particularly nice textural dimension and flavor. Those beef cheeks had been in the freezer some time, and I was questioning whether or not they were something I would continue to want to cook. Should I have even asked? How silly. All I needed to do was start cooking. Of course I want to cook beef cheeks and all manner of deeply browned braised meats.

Just before Christmas I made this celeriac gratin. Celeriac is another vegetable that I adore and Lawson has a nice collection of celeriac recipes, all of which I want to try. Unfortunately it took me until just before Christmas to find the celeriac, and truthfully I was despairing of its absence in the markets. Even though I have been in Tennessee over ten years, occasionally, something like this happens, some vegetable I thought of as a common staple becomes hard to find and I despair. Once I found celeriac however, my heart was filled with gladness. I tried this dish. Much like a potato gratin, it is just as rich but somehow also lighter, perfect for a holiday meal.

Lawson opens the book with a great section on anchovies, and I could have spent the entire month just immersed in the ideas I found there, were they something simple, like marinated white anchovies on a biscuit with butter, or anchovies scattered over eggs and a bowl of greens with a harissa dressing. Spinach was suggested for the latter; I used spigiarello, which has been abundant in my winter garden. Now that the spigirarello has emerged from under the snow, I might be treating myself to this again tomorrow.

I also tried two new recipes from previous cookbooks:

This recipe for corn creamed in coconut milk is from Andy Baraghani's book, The Cook You Want to Be, and I had wanted to make it since the book came up, but I was traveling a lot. I made it with frozen corn, and I keep canned coconut milk in my pantry so this was pretty much a pantry side for me. I might have said I was on the fence regarding this book, but of the four recipes I have cooked so far, three have been repeats that I thoroughly enjoy eating, so perhaps a success after all.

I also made this orange and radish salad from Paula Wolfert's book, The Food of Morocco, a book I've had a long time, and cooked from pretty regularly, but I had never made this particular salad before. I made it with those little oranges called "cuties" in the grocery store, and, since I've pretty much had a bag of them in my refrigerator all winter, as well as a steady supply of radishes, this salad has become a constant winter treat.

January 27, 2024
What IS This Blog?

The simple answer: a journal, an online journal if you will, not entirely private, but a journal nonetheless.

I realized I had lost something, something important, and it took me a little while, and a bit of soul-searching to figure out what. It seems that the internet, online communities, and social media have all moved on, but I have not. I started this blog, or at least its previous iterations, as a way to keep a record for myself, yes one that I shared, but nonetheless a modified personal journal. At first it was about sewing and knitting and eventually my general observations on life. These were things I could have committed to paper, but I have a history of tossing bits of paper, including journals and sewing notebooks. The internet remains here, although I suppose even it is not permanent.

I don't mind people reading what I write; in fact it even makes me happy to hear from readers. But I remain opposed to the idea of marketing, of packaging my blogs to fill a niche, to catering to the reader. I suppose I reject the idea of the curated life, at least the curated life as it reflects outside expectations. I do curate my life; most of us do to some level or another, but I curate my life for my own joy, and increasingly I feel that outside expectations do nothing but hamper that joy.

I suppose posting to Facebook was my first mistake. Initially, I did so at the request of a friend, so she could access the blog easily. But then it became something else. I was never shy about telling people I knew that I blogged; most of the time my friends thought it was something weird, and if they read my blog, they did not, for the most part tell me so. But once I posted to Facebook, more and more people I knew would comment on my "secret" life, and I found myself wanting to please readers, sometimes at the expense of pleasing myself. I was trained to achieve, to please, to rise to meet expectations, and I find I had not quite fully escaped those shackles. As soon as I began to think I "should" write, the joy in writing slipped away.

For now, I am forgoing Facebook and social media links, but I am still tossing my words out into the world. Anyone who wants to find them can of course, but I am feeling no need to make the process easier. Besides, as I have learned, only 10% of my readers find me through Facebook, but that 10% plays an outside role in triggering my own demons, not through any intention of my readers but just through the medium itself.

So, what have I been doing since last I wrote?

I came home from Texas to an overabundance of sorrel. So there has been some cooking, several kinds of sorrel soup, including a Russian Sorrel broth, and the chard and sorrel soup shown above. I have also made, and frozen a large batch of spring spinach and sorrel soup, which doesn't look much different except that it is a darker green.

I have 12 jars of carrot green pesto, and an equal number of jars of canned carrots.

I missed most of the snow pea harvest while I was in Texas but it looked like the squirrels and birds had a feast. I also planted some purple podded peas and they were still producing in late May. I thought they were spent, but we had a cool snap last week and I got another small flush of peas, which I have thoroughly enjoyed both lightly steamed and in salads.

The blueberry bushes suffered from neglect and did not produce much. I just lost my late crop to something, birds or the bear that was wandering down my street a couple of mornings ago, but it does look like I will have a bumper crop of blackberries again this year. The roses that are intermingled with the blackberries are also doing well, even though I fretted that perhaps they had been killed by a harsh winter frost.

I continue to work intermittently in the garden. Nature is ahead of me but I am doing more work than I have been able to in years. Still not as much as my younger self once managed, but I am comparing myself to what I could accomplish 20 years ago, an unfair comparison. I have done more this year than any previous summer since I moved into this house. And I've finally admitted to myself that I did not lose two summers, but three. My first summer here was the summer I broke my nose on my birthday, the summer I found out I was in atrial flutter, and probably had been for some time. I can only accept that now because although my almost-65 year old energy level is not the same as my 45-year old energy level, it is higher than it has been for some time. And if I am driven less than in former years, it is more because I am less inclined to worry about what anyone else thinks.

The other thrilling thing is that I found a roller frame in my stash of needlework supplies and assembled it to work on the next baptismal towel. It is not quite the size I need, and I don't have any cotton webbing so I had to substitute quilting cotton on the sides in order to pull the fabric taut. As you can see, there are still adjustments to be made to the tensioning before I begin work, but I am excited. I have ordered a roll of cotton webbing. I have a box of various kinds of needlepoint and other frames and I think I need to sort them out to figure out what I have and work from there, but that is progress. I am slowly accumulating a set of embroidery materials and tools and am excited to work. No the above is not perfect. Yet it is an improvement over what I have done in the past. My work keeps improving. I tried something new with the last baptismal towel (seen at the top of this post), and I am increasingly excited about this work.

I might wish I had pursued this interest when I was younger, but I did not, and I have made the best decisions I could at any time of my life. I'll never be a master knitter, or embroiderer, gardener, or chef. Truthfully I never cared to. I just wish to pursue what I enjoy for the pure joy of doing so.

In short. Life is simple. Life is good. What more could I ask?

June 16, 2023
A Few Things that Made me Happy

I've been busy since last week's meditation, as has Mother Nature. Spring is continuing apace.

There are quite a few bright spots in the garden. Most plants are beginning to leaf out or set buds. It doesn't appear that I have lost much to the cold, but most of my plants are cold hardy for this planting zone, which should allow for minimum temperatures of zero or below. Of course it didn't help that nothing was dormant and that the temperature dropped from 70 to zero, but I grew up in Texas, even if my plants didn't. I tend to get far more bent out of shape over the things humans do to each other than I do over Natures upsets.

Still, how can one's heart not be lifted by new blossoms?

Last week I told you that I had bought a brisket with the intention of making corned beef. I have set two big chunks of brisket to cure, about 10 pounds total, which should last me a while. Although I did not make corned beef when I was struggling with health issues, I am happy to have another batch in process. I am running another comparison, following up on my results from the last time I made corned beef, and I will inform you of the results. I am basically using the same marinade on both, but varying the time of the cure, as a refinement of those previous results. To my taste, corned beef is all about the cure. I haven't yet found a commercially available, grocery store corned beef I find acceptable, and I have been less than impressed with cures that marinade for less than 5 days (the minimum I see recommend in recipes. Hopefully this is the beginning of a process for maintaining a household staple. I can freeze part of the beef, and use it regularly, not just in March. I've always considered corned beef a year-round thing, not a Saint Patrick's Day thing, anyway, perhaps that is the Jewish deli influence in my life, just as I find the seasonal corned beef and cabbage dinner to be the least interesting thing to do with a corned beef. (Remember it is all about the cure for me). In fact I've had more than a fair number of "corned beef and cabbage" dinners where the beef is barely cured, and could just as well be a New England Boiled Dinner, something I grew up eating. Anyway, look for results in a week or two.

The garden is behind where it was at this time in 2020 (the last time I made corned beef also) but I am not worried about that. What gets done will get done. I am happy to have increasing energy, to work on things as I can, and make the best of it. I am also happy that my energies and my mental wanderings are more forward-looking than reactive, that there is hope.

I cleaned out the freezer and the pantry this week as well, and found 4 chicken carcasses, 4 pounds of chicken backs and necks, and several gallons of leek/celery/onion/vegetable trimmings for stock. I've been out of chicken stock for a while as well, so out came the 16 quart stock pot and a batch of chicken stock was made. The stock is in the refrigerator now, where it has been chilling so I can separate off the layer of fat, which will be reserved for cooking. I will be canning the remaining stock later today. I think I have between 9 and 10 quarts to be canned. I've already used one quart to make some soup from a bit of cabbage and lettuce that had been hanging around the fridge a little too long.

In fact, leftover lettuce or vegetable soup is another one of my favorite things. My mug of soup and I are about to go sit on the deck and absorb the sunshine. Here's to glorious days filled with hope. Believe me, it is there if you look for it.

March 18, 2023
New Shoots…

Having written one blog post my brain has been filling up with ideas and things I want to write about. And yet I don't get there, don't get the words down.

I have just collapsed into bed, propped up on pillows hoping I have enough energy to write something, anything. There is a warm mug of leek and celery soup on the nightstand by my side. I feel like I have been whomped, like I could settle into a puddle in the ground, but it isn't a bad thing. I've done a lot today. I have done a lot the last four days, so perhaps my body needs a rest.

But I also want to find my words. Let's just consider this part of the process of new growth, or spring in East Tennessee. The sun shines, the air grows warm and gentle breezes caress the skin, then the temperature drops and we have icy frost, or torrential rains, or tree-felling winds. I go to sleep only to waken to another gentle clear day. All part of the process. Energy, tiredness, creativity, action, rest. Spring rebirth in the making.

The brain seems to require a lot of energy and I've had more ideas than I've managed actual posts. But I am hoping to manage a few words.

I am surrounded by daffodils and forsythia and spring trees bursting into bloom. These are mostly my neighbors blooms. My daffodils are later varieties, and I live on the shadier side of the street, so most of my plants bloom about a week after my sunnier neighbors, but my yard is not bare. The roses have leafed out, the hellebores have been lush with blossoms for weeks now, as have the camellias. The geraniums are blooming, and I even have my first daffodil. No complaints. No dearth of promises.

I've had my hands in the dirt, digging and clearing the planting beds in the vegetable garden. The sorrel is up, replacing the bed ripped out by an over-eager landscape worker last year. Chervil and arugula are up as well. I got the pea trellis up before the torrential rains and wind, which ripped the trellis up and tossed it across the yard. I'm glad the peas weren't yet on that trellis. I hope to plant them this afternoon. I said that yesterday as well.

I've cleared out the bramble patch (roses and blackberries), after which I needed a nap. I'm still not rushing myself. What gets done will get done in its own time. Nature has her own schedule, and apparently so does my body, independent of what my mind might will. And yet, my energy today is exponentially greater than it was at this same time last year.

I picked up a whole brisket today when I was out shopping. I am planning on curing some corned beef. It has been a couple of years. I might braise one chunk of it to eat while I wait out the brining process. I've not yet decided. The fact that I am feeling more adventurous in the kitchen is a good sign, that not only do I dream but I have the wherewithal to act. Hands in the dirt, playing with thread, playing with words, working until I am actually tired and then allowing myself to rest. These are all signs of growth, of life, of what is important. It is these little things, an hour cleaning out a flower bed, planting seeds, knitting yarn into fabric, making soup — .these are the things that are fulfilling to me, that make life feel worthwhile.

But my weariness has not abated. Time to surrender to slumber.

March 7, 2023
Adventures in the Kitchen

Slowly I start adding things back into my life. And yet. I think I will leave it at that, a fragment full of both frustration and hope. I grow frustrated. I grow tired. The eternal cry of "MORE" rears its ugly head. This has always been my curse, and perhaps it is the one lesson from my childhood that will be the most difficult to relinquish — the wanting to know everything, to see everything, to miss nothing. And yet, despite this struggle, I become increasingly unhurried, increasingly content to just be here, wherever, with less, worried about less. It is a good place to be, although I do not always manage to remain wrapped in its stillness and peace.

When I take the time to pause, I see that these frustrations are unfounded. Yes, I can grow tired. Who does not? Certainly I am doing so much more than I was a year ago, when, in the midst of chemotherapy, I was not doing well at all. And yet I wonder. Why this need for an accounting? I wonder if it matters, ultimately, in whether or not a life was well lived. Perhaps the pursuits of more, whatever they be — popularity, power, things, experiences – perhaps this life of pursuit is a life in pursuit of a mirage. Increasingly I think all that matters in life is that we love and find joy, our own joy, the joy that is essential to our natures, the joy that resonates and explodes our own essential selves into lights in the world. As I increasingly understand, joy is not a solitary pursuit. In order to live in joy, I must also share that joy with others. I cannot do it by myself for only myself. Self-centerdness is the opposite of joy.

Sometimes joy is quiet and calm. Sometimes it is active and riotous. Sometimes it makes a mess.

In July I started cooking again. Not "get dinner on the table" cooking, but cooking cooking. I started exploring new recipes and rediscovering old ones, playing with dishes both complicated and simple. Certainly the results were often delicious and satisfying. There was an occasional failure. But the joy came not just from the results but the very act of making, of exploration, of rekindling a kind of muscle memory. Cooking is a creative exploration, a gift to those we feed. Or it can be. We need to cook; we need to eat. There is necessity. One of our gifts as humans is the ability to elevate necessity into something beautiful, powerful, shared. The creation of food is also a gift, an act of creation and also of reverence of sorts, of honoring the things that nourish us, and in nourishing both ourselves and others in the process. Mostly I fed only myself. Occasionally I fed others. I tended to go overboard, but that was primarily because I was caught up in the act of exploration, of rekindling some previously misplaced neural networks and following them into new delights. But I have no doubt that the act of creating, of feeding myself even, not only of feeding others, percolates into every aspect of my presence in the world

A lot of this cooking came about because I would flip through my old recipe files and think about the things I have not made in a long time. I learned that my tastes have changed. Some recipes were successes. Some were failures. I am far more sensitive to tastes of preservatives in food, far less enamored of commercial processed food than I once was. Perhaps not oddly, I would have said, even then, that I did not eat that much processed food. But perception is relative. Now even less appeals. Except for Fritos perhaps. I still love Fritos. But my once-upon-a-time self could devour a bag of chips, hoarding them for myself, and now about a handful is all that I want before something shifts and the bag goes in the trash. Once I could eat a Frito plain, but no longer. It remains a great vehicle for something else, but even then the limits of my tolerance is easily reached. I would rather have a slice of turnip, or cucumber, or even a spoon with my hummus or my dip, but the spoon, of course, is not an option in a social setting. The spoon itself, the idea of eating a shared dish with a spoon, is an inward, and ultimately selfish act, a turning away from the communal. It is good we do not serve spoons with our dips. The communal table allows us to use appetite, a physical appetite, as a trigger, turning ourselves outward to others. I need to feed myself, but I cannot be whole, wholly myself, alone. "Our daily bread" is not just bread, it is the communal experience we need to survive: physically, emotionally, spiritually. We humans are selves only as part of a communal gathering. Nourishment is also communion. So also is creativity. The creative act might seem solitary, but in fact the very act of creation means that it flows beyond itself, sometimes even in ways that are not immediately evident.

Oh wait, I am writing about food, about cooking.

A significant amount of my recent cooking explorations revolved around a new to me cookbook, Mi Cocina, by Rick Martínez. I grew up eating both Mexican and Tex-Mex food. I spent a great energy in my 20s expanding my Mexican culinary horizons beyond what I learned in childhood, primarily because options for Mexican food in New York State were slim in the 1980s. We ate a lot of Mexican food, both simple and complex, exploring regional Mexican cusines, and revisiting my childhood Tex-Mex favorites. But after my husband died, I mostly stopped cooking Mexican food. Perhaps it seemed too much work for a solo diner. Perhaps it was simply too emotionally fraught of an exercise. Martínez has rekindled that love affair with both the flavors of Mexico, with the joys of flavor itself, of cooking something with attention and detail and yes, joy. He has also reminded me that although complexity in and of itself is not needed, detail is important. Nourishment, and joy also, often comes from the meetings of several simple things. I needed this.

Exploring new culinary ideas, finding new favorites, revisiting the once tried-and-true. Not all was measured and calm. I have always been a person inclined toward too-muchness, all in or all out. I repeatedly write about that here. It is another of my ongoing struggles. But our struggles and our joys shape our lives. I am not sure that this tendency, this bubbling forth and then retreating, is at all unusual. I look around me. The world is balanced, but it is rarely measured in its flow. Perhaps this too, this idea a life well-lived is a life of moderation, of calm, of evenness, is another mirage.

In some fit of energy, or was it madness, I looked at the freezer, which desperately needs cleaning out, and some detailed culinary plans started to come into focus. What after all is the point of exploring the new without also using what I already have. Accumulating more is rarely the answer in and of itself. I decided to make chili. Three big pots of chili in fact. Remember that part of my nature that tends toward excess? This is not in fact as extreme as it sounds. It does not, in fact, take three times as long to prep three pots of chili as it does one, as many of the ingredients overlap. Once the first pot of chili is bubbling away, the others fall in place. I made two long-time favorite recipes and one new one: one in the slow cooker, one braising slowly in the oven, and one on the stove top. The cooking also takes no longer for three chilis than for one.

Of course, one is left with a great deal of chili. A party perhaps? That would have been a great idea, and I will do it someday. This time I just put the chili in the fridge for 36 hours, allowed the flavors to meld and the fat to rise to the surface and solidify, then I reheated the chilis and canned the bulk of it. Does it make sense to move meat from the freezer to pantry shelves? Yes. Although it doesn't really eliminate the problem of having a backlog, pints of chili are more usable than pounds of frozen meat. There will always be days when I need to eat but really just want to reheat something simple. So yes, having chili, or beans, or spaghetti sauce makes sense. I would simply rather can, or freeze, my own than buy commercial. My pressure canner holds 14 pints. A pint is a good sized quantity for a solo household. And so I canned chili. I could have frozen sealed pouches of chili, but remember, I am cleaning out the freezer here. It needs to be defrosted, as well as reorganized. After two rough years, my priorities have evolved.

Little did I know the chili would prove useful sooner rather than later. Early last week, I went back into atrial flutter, where I have remained. Each day my energy would be lower than the day before. Rows of glistening jars of easy and nutritious chili and the pouches of colorful vegetable soups lining the shelves of my freezer, have been a godsend. Earlier this summer I mourned that I did not have the energy to grow tomatoes, to can them as I had a few years ago. I miss that, and my home-canned tomatoes were more filled with the essence of ripe tomato than anything I can buy the store. I wondered if I would ever undertake such activities again. Then chili happened, and I find myself blessed with bounty just when I need it. I am all about efforts that yield tangible rewards.

And my fluttery heart? We are addressing that also, I am in no danger, or no more than any of us are on any given day, and all is well.

August 22, 2022
Branching Out
The concert season has begun again. I missed the first symphony concert; it was too close to my last chemo and I was still feeling too vulnerable to sit in a concert hall filled with people, even masked vaccinated people. My immune system was still too fragile. It still is fragile, but growing stronger and I have been venturing out more. It is necessary. Isolation is a deadly as disease. Even for a basically introverted person like myself, there can come a point when life becomes too small, too isolated, when one becomes disconnected. I've been wanting to sell everything and flee, become nomadic, and I realize this is not about anything really but my own need to begin regaining a life outside the small confines of health issues and pandemics and various whatnots that have making me feel constrained, and that running never solves anything because the frustrations we are trying to escape are always the ones that are glued most deeply to our psyches.

There were two chamber music concerts within a few days of each other actually. The first, my first concert of this season, was the Knoxville Chamber Classics and it featured two works that had been transcribed for a chamber orchestra. The first was Jessie Montgomery's Strum, a work I heard performed by the Providence String Quartet in its original, cello quintet, version. I have also heard it in quartet form but failed to record the specifics of when, where, or by whom. But that was many years ago, and I understood from the program that not only has the quartet been revised, but that Montgomery had also arranged a string-orchestra version, which is what we heard on October 3rd. The piece was still charmingly familiar and delightfully performed, the pizzicato strumming providing texture to musical themes reminiscent of sparkling flashes of light washing through the room. Quite a joyous way to return to concert listening.

The second familiar piece made new was Tchaikovsky's String Quartet No. 1, which had been arranged by Christopher Theofanidis for chamber orchestra. The quartet itself is a beloved piece that I know quite well, and although I may have been a tad cautious, there was no need. The transcription itself was beautifully done, and Theofandis deft use of the woodwind section to add texture and melodic richness to the strings was brilliant. The second movement, which is particularly poignant when well performed was particularly well written, and brilliantly performed, leaving me on the verge of tears.

Three nights later a smaller ensemble performed in the concertmaster series at the Knoxville Museum of Art. The first half of the program was brilliant, with William Shaub on violin and Kevin Class on piano. Although I loved every piece and sat on the edge of my seat, lost in the music, I was particularly taken by the two works by Fritz Kreisler, and yes, not that long ago I would have thought I would never write such words. Kreisler is not my favorite composer. Heretofore I would said he leans too heavily toward schmaltz, but now I also wonder how much of that is expectation in interpretation. Shaub revealed crisp melodies warmth and an emotional depth I did not anticipate, without any of the dreaded schmaltz. The second half of the evening was filled with the Mendelssohn String Quintet No. 2 in B-flat. I felt the third movement, where the first violin takes a strong melodic lead and the ensemble played with a responsiveness that felt like it was leaning more toward a symphonic temperament than traditional chamber form, was particularly effective and beautifully played.

What a relief and joy these concerts were to my soul, and they have at least temporarily stalled my dreams of flight behavior, but as I said that is not a statement of anything definite or permanent, just a reactionary phase to the intense changes of the last year.

Also, slowly but surely, because I needed to get beyond just functioning, I have started playing in the kitchen again. Oh I needed to eat, and I cooked in a functional sense, in that I put food on my plate. But starting in September I also felt the urge to start trying new things again. I rejoined a cookbook club on Facebook, one I had participated in a couple of years back, and started trying a few new recipes from their September book, which I got from the local library Cook With Me by Alex Guarnaschelli, and trying a few things that had been languishing in my own files, or in other cookbooks that have been collecting dust on the shelves. Scattered throughout this post are photos from my experiments. Most were not a full dinner — I did not often have that much energy. But the energy spent in cooking filled a creative vacuum, one that was particularly sharp as there was a period where my hands were not up to knitting or needlework.

Shown are the following:
- Daikon Curry; recipe from Saveur Magazine.
- Chilled Carrot Soup from Cook with Me.
- Chili-Mint Sautéed Cucumbers from The Broad Fork by Hugh Acheson.
- Grilled Zucchini and Charred Pepper Salad from Cook with Me.
- Spice Ruby Red Cabbage Steak from Cook With Me.
- Chicken Parmesan from Cook with Me.
- Halibut Braised in Ginger Lemongrass Broth from In the Hands of a Chef by Jody Adams.
My most recent musical outing was to attend the Met Live broadcast of Boris Godunov last Saturday. On a screen, not a stage in front of me, but fabulously well done. It is one of my favorite operas, and at least a part of that is the way that the opera is both intimate and epic, the way it takes on grand themes of Russian history in a really rather complex, and complexly moving narrative with great music too boot. Seeing that performance had me dreaming of opera again, although I realize I am not an opera lover per se. I love opera, but don't love opera for its own sake, and the music has to be as good as the performance. I am fortunate to live in a town with three opera companies, although I only attend the performances of two of those organizations: the smaller one and the university based one. I do not attend the performances of the third because I find their performances bore me to tears. In short, I am still, perhaps always, coming to terms with my own bias and expectations; I am spoiled, and my inner critic tends to get the last word. I actually don't seek perfection, it is not all its cracked up to be, better a spectacular failure in a daring attempt than boring blandness any day. But this is true not just of music, or art, or anything really, including my own successes and failures, or perceived successes and failures, and finding some balance between head and heart is a complex and never ending struggle. Sometimes I think the reality is exactly the opposite of whatever we perceive it to be, blinded as we are by our own history.

I haven't yet started cooking from this month's book, Dishoom by Shamil and Kavi Thakrar and Navid Nasir, although I have been happily reading the extensive text and dreaming. Primarily I have been too tired to take on the recipes, although I hope to make something before the month ends. I am slow-roasting the spices for their version of Garam Masala, which is different than the version I have made for years, as I write this, so there is hope for Indian food exploration soon. I still need to make a trip to the Indian grocery. Why have these simple tasks taken on such weight? No, no, please don't tell me.

More cooking? Or is some other stone waiting to be unturned?
October 13, 2021
Saturday Six

It appears that this life continues to be a small quiet kind of life, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, there are times when it feels like all my previous busy-ness was a bit overdone. I am sure that perspective will evolve in time, as life tends to evolve at its own pace. In the meantime I thought I would share a few small things that made me happy this past week.

1. It has been a tough summer in many ways, too hot and too dry, and part of the yard are not doing particularly well. Some plants are thriving, others are showing obvious signs of neglect, if not outright abandonment. And yet there is not much I can do at this point but just wait and see. What will die will die. Nature may or may not fill in the void, and next spring I will see what ventures forth and then reassess. Many of the older hydrangeas are showing obvious signs of stress, especially the lace cap hydrangeas, or hydrangea serrata, as they are not well adapted to Southern heat and drought (much like their adopted mother). It appears they will pull through, and I will round them out with the more resilient mop heads over the next few years.. The newer hydrangeas, the varieties of hydrangea paniculate, are thriving, as they are prone to do given their love of clay soils, and sun. Their constant bloom brings me great joy. The glowing border of coreopsis and hydrangeas makes even the hardest of summers somehow tolerable.

2. Which reminds me of the surprising resilience of these little apricot drift roses which keep blooming and blooming despite the fact that they are still in their nursery pots and have never been planted. So much for plans and good intentions. But they also serve as a reminder of tenacity and perseverance. I have given up fretting over whether or not they survive, but at the moment, nestled between some azaleas, they continue to appear surprisingly content with what meager resources life has give them.

3. Oreos! I have known that Nabisco came out with a gluten-free version of Oreos only for a month or two, but this was the first time I actually wandered into the cookie aisle of my local grocery store and tried a package. I don't buy many packaged foods, but Oreos have always had a special place in my heart. I think I have tried every brand of imitation gluten-free Oreo-like cookie on the market and had primarily given up. Even the best of them, Kinni-Toos by Kinnikinick, proved to be too sweet, leaving a metallic coating in my throat and not satisfying that particular craving. I would eat more than I wanted, seeking out some elusive sense of comforting satisfaction, and still feel unfulfilled. Sad that. I am happy to say that these Oreos taste much like the Oreos or memory. I could only eat two of them, and felt then that I had maxed out my sugar and carb intake for the day. This is partly due to the fact that I discovered early on in my chemotherapy treatment that the best way to minimize nausea was to avoid sugars, starches, most carbs, and alcohol. After a few months my tastes have probably changed, although I suspect my life-long love of sweets will always be with me. Anyway, two cookies one day, a third a couple of days later, and my craving has been satisfied. The package is gone; it was well worth the investment.

4. I sliced vegetable to make one of my favorite salads. One of the downsides of paclitaxel treatment (or Taxol) is the neuropathy that is frequently experienced by patients. I have had a great deal of neuropathy in my hands, and this has made it difficult to do many things, including anything much beyond minimum basics in the kitchen. However, my oncologist reduced my dose this past week, and although I still have neuropathy, I am actually able to type more easily and to hold a pen and a knife. Much to my joy, my garden and CSA this week supplied me with the components of one of my favorite salads and I was able to slice away without risk.

5. Magnolias. Not in my yard. Photo taken on my walk this morning, and yes my neuropathy had calmed down enough that I was actually able to take a walk. I adore magnolias in all their iterations.

6. I also went to the farmer's market, and gathered a small harvest from my deeply overgrown vegetable garden. The tomatoes and parsley are mine, The cantaloupe and eggplant are from the market. My own fairy tale eggplants got overwhelmed by the weeds, which is sad, because as much as they bordered on overproductive last year, I ended up loving having a constant supply of these tiny eggplant, more so than I would ever have anticipated.

So when I found a small box of tiny little fairy tale eggplant I had to make one of my favorite treats. I ate this every week last summer, sometimes making multiple batches in a week. This is the marinated aubergine recipe from the original Ottolenghi cookbook (page 27 in my edition). I don't think I used fairy tale eggplant the first time I ever made it; I didn't even know about the variety at that time, and Ottolenghi simply specifies small eggplant. I also originally used the tahini-herb dipping sauce he recommends as well, but now I don't bother. These tiny eggplants, simply quartered or halved, brushed with olive oil and salt and roasted are too divine. The trick is to make up the herb vinaigrette while the eggplant cooks, then drizzle it over the hot eggplant and allow them to sit for at least 2 hours at room temperature. When I have them, I keep a platter out on the counter to nibble on whenever I pass through the kitchen. Lemon Juice is important. The recipe specifies oregano and cilantro, but I find that whatever herbs I bring in from the garden work. More than once I have even subbed Nuoc Cham and Thai basil for the more traditional vinaigrette and been equally delighted.

There you have it, a wealth of bright spots to lighten my life. And it is still Saturday, although barely. I am tired, but it is a good kind of tired, the kind of tired that comes from getting outside and talking with friends and playing in the kitchen. All in all, a good week.

August 28, 2021