The Island of Lost SOLs: Kitchen Magic

Heh.  My computer hasn’t been playing nice with me lately: freezing in the middle of things, announcing that it is infected by some evil malware.  The result, aside from my utter frustration, is that I couldn’t get my SOLs posted for the last part of the Slice of Life challenge. Fox, in her online savviness, found a DIY article about the exact malware that’s hobbled me.  Last night I bought an external hard drive, and tonight I’m taking all my writing, music and photos off the computer and attempting to erase the badness.  (If that doesn’t work, there’s still the Geek Squad at Best Buy.)  It’s weeks now that I’m sans computer.  I have my mini, but it’s just so small to be an every day machine.  My big hands want a full-sized keyboard.  My aging eyes want a bigger screen.  Churning out grant proposals on this little machine made me tired.  But I’ve decided to stop whining.  I have a working computer, so I’m using it.  I missed the last weeks of the Slice of Life challenge, and I refuse to miss my month of poetry.

But what to do with all the SOLs I wrote in the last half of March but never got to post?  I like some of them.  A lot.  So, giving in to my love of the silly blog post title, I’m going to put them up over the next few weeks under the perfect-perfect heading: Island of Lost SOLs.

Here’s Lost SOL #1 from March 21st:

And the kitchen magic?  Well, actually just cooking.  The real magic of today is that we somehow managed to get all three proposals out the door with only an hour to spare before the deadline and got them all submitted.  I still can’t quite believe it.  If not for Mopsy and my boss, it would never have happened.

So, after more than a week of not enough sleep and almost no time off (Back to back weekends in the office is a bad plan, people. Learn from the error of my ways!), I came home tonight and … worked.  I am tired enough to just have walked in the door and gone to sleep, but instead I decided I needed to make some soup and do some baking.  Cooking always makes me feel better.  And not just because I like to eat.  I really like making stuff.  And baking … baking is all that times 10.  So, even on a night like tonight, cooking was a kind of relaxation therapy.

What was on the menu tonight? Baked Winter Squash Soup and whole wheat rolls.  This time I took pictures:

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I have recently felt the urge to bake yeast bread.  I bake relatively often, but I’m queen of the quick breads, the ones that require baking powder or soda, not yeast.  I made a spicy loaf of white bread a couple of weeks ago (really: it had cayenne in it!).  As I was kneading the dough, I realized I hadn’t made yeast bread maybe since I was a teenager, still living at home.  My mom was the bread baker.  She used to make several loaves of delicious whole wheat bread a week — the family supply.  I baked a little then, but never felt any pressing urge to do it.  That was my mom’s territory.  Then Fox started baking, and she was really good at it, so bread baking became her territory, too.  Fear not, I had some territory of my own — lasagne, in particular, macaroni and cheese more recently.  And I like quick breads, but they aren’t the same as the yeast ones.

With both Fox and my mom living three states away, I figure it’s high time for me to step into the territory I ceded to them so many years ago.  And, while I’m not sure where the bread-baking yen has come from, I’m enojoying both the process and the yummy results!

Thick dough yielding under my hands
minute after minute, again.
Smell of yeast is a memory —
my mother and sister knew how,
knew this quiet ritual. Now
that knowledge comes at last to me.
My house smells like family, like love
steam from fresh loaves rising above
warming my face with history.

_____

Come

My eyes need
something easy
come rest yourself
by here

— Ruth Forman

Don’t forget to check out the rest of the day’s slices at Two Writing Teachers!

Love Affair

… with Google.  Really. It’s me and the internets, our initials carved in some innocent, unsuspecting tree.

On my way home tonight, thinking about what to have for dinner that could carry over to lunch tomorrow. I wanted to do something with lentils. Oh, what about those carrots and the rest of that flat-leaf parsley?  And wouldn’t I like some bacon (because everything is better with bacon, n’est-ce pas¹)?  What on earth can I make with all of that?  I’m sure there’s nothing.

Ha!

Typed that laundry list into Google and found half a dozen excellent-sounding recipes!  I always forget about this option until I reach a point of desperation (read: when I’m too tired to think and can’t bear the thought of lifting a cookbook and searching).

I went with the straight-to-the-point “Lentils-n-Bacon.” All those ingredients plus thyme, onion, garlic and pepper, a few alterations that I thought of in process … et voilà²: a yummy-like-nobody’s-business dinner!

There are plenty of things I don’t love about my new paramour, but I can’t think of any of them tonight!  What dining delights has Google revealed to you?

Check out the rest of today’s delicious slices at Two Writing Teachers!

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¹ Ok, what was that?  I pretty much never randomly insert other languages into my posts.
² Clearly I am over-tired.

My Sweet Lord

When I first started teaching, I was surprised by a recurring set of questions from my students.  How old was I?  Was I married?  Did I have any children?  Why did I smile so much?  Did I believe in God?

I’ve been teaching for a lot of years now, but the questions haven’t changed.  The God question has always been an interesting one for me.  I don’t really want to discuss my religious beliefs — or lack of them — with my students, but  I want them to feel free to ask their questions.  Where’s my happy medium?

Aren’t there watermelons?

Yes, that’s right: as with most difficult questions, good food is the answer.  My students ask if I believe in God.  I say, “How can you ask that question?  Aren’t there watermelons?  Aren’t there mangoes?  Aren’t there pomegranates?”

Because mangoes, watermelons and pomegranates are, of course, the three fruit proofs of the existence of God.  I’m sorry.  Didn’t you know?  How can anyone doubt the existence of a higher power when there are watermelons in the world? 

My students, understandably, never quite know what to make of my answer.  Maybe I’m mocking them with a silly response, or maybe I’m nuts.  Maybe I’ve just said that I do believe in God, maybe I haven’t really said anything.  It works for me.

And the three fruit proofs idea works for me, too.  If mangoes aren’t manna from heaven, I don’t know what is.

Then yesterday, WordPress highlighted a little foretaste of paradise in the form of mango mousse.  Yes.  Ms. Chef It Yourself  has shared this fruity pleasure and totally made my day.  Can’t wait to try it.  Existence of God, you ask?  Just put a spoonful of this treat in your mouth and try to deny it!

A Taste of Saint Vincent

Yesterday I had the pleasure of taking my first ever cooking class … or, more exactly, the first cooking class I’ve ever paid for.  I am lucky enough to have had the free, in-home course of watching my mother, my grandmothers, my aunt, of being encouraged to cook at an early age.  And of course there was high school, which gave me Miss Davis’ French class and the dramatic comedy of making éclairs, Madeleines, Beef Burgundy and a somewhat smushy and misshapen bûche de Noël … and Mrs. Mueller’s Home Ec class in which I learned to make my family-holiday-favorite Lasagne!

I love cooking, but I’ve never taken a “real” class.  When I studied in France, one of my friends took a course — and practiced his new skills by making fabulous dinners for us — but I was church-mouse poor in Paris, and extra classes weren’t an option.

And then last year, Center for Family Life, one of the agencies we work with in Sunset Park started Emigré Gourmet, a cooking collective.  The group has grown beyond what’s shown on the website, adding a South Indian and Mexican cook to the group.  In increase awareness of the collective, the women started offering cooking classes, and yesterday’s class with Sandra Shallow is the first I’ve been able to attend.  The classes are wonderfully small — only six students — so we all get very up-close and personal attention, and everyone gets their hands into the work.

Our class: a mother and daughter, an Australian chef, gorgeous Nigerian-born actress Adepero Oduye, a Japanese artist, and me.  Our menu: curry chicken, rice and beans, vegetable roti and tropical salad.  I forgot about my camera during the first part of the class, but then …

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Working with the other students, getting to share stories about our own cooking and family food histories, getting to work in the home-like environment of the Emigré Gourmet space at Center … it was a wonderful experience with lots of laughter, delicious aromas and a shared meal at the end that was so much for delicious for having prepared it ourselves.

Today I’m trying out the rice and beans, substituting pigeon peas for kidney beans.  I soaked a pound of beans last night and cooked them this morning.  Now it’s time to get in the kitchen and see about the thyme and cloves and coconut milk …