I just picked up a ten pound, 21-day aged, hormone-free, fresh from the producer standing prime rib roast. I rinsed it, patted it dry, swaddled it in three layers of cheese cloth and set it at the bottom of my fridge on a rack. It will sit there until Christmas Day, getting more tasty and beautiful by the moment - or so I’ve been told.
Fear me.
Dear Fates,
Whichever one of you sorry bastards thought it would be funny to rob me of my taste buds has reserved his or herself a special place in my Big Book O’ Hatred.
Seriously. I mean, and I get how very tempting it would be to see me, all food lovin’ and happy with my taste buds, suddenly robbed of my flavour detecting agents. I see it and I’m the actual victim. The perfect, unsuspecting victim for such unkind tomfoolery.
But don’t you see? This is exactly why this is so very wrong. I haven’t got my mobility. I’m still recovering from a cold. I have no cigarettes in my life to love. All I have left of the creature comforts is food. And what you’ve done to me, you rotting scum bucket of angst and malevolent glee, is take that away. Not only eating it, but prepping it. Because really? I discovered on Saturday precisely how difficult and joyless it is to make food that you cannot taste and can barely smell.
Even ordering in is no comfort. Remember Friday night’s meal, you asinine and gormless excuse for an omnipotent being? That gorgeous pesto pizza with sundried tomatoes and feta? The one I had to stop eating because I couldn’t taste anything, but could feel the sprinkles of dried oregano on my tongue, giving the illusion that I was attempting to chew sawdust cud? Yeah, that was a good one. Hilarious humour, you maggot-ridden piece of excremental residue.
So – props to you. Great work in putting a damper on my weekend. Har har, good laugh. Well done.
But this is day four. DAY FOUR. Did you leave the taste bud sucking machine running by accident, you witless piece of deified butt shrapnel? Are you so busy basking in the glow of your pranking prowess that you’ve forgotten about me? Are you deficient in all ways, including your grasp of time?
Listen – I know it’s your job to throw wrenches into people’s works, you misanthropic waste of immortality, but this is NO LONGER FUNNY. Or ironic. Or clever.
Cease and desist immediately and all shall be forgiven. Continue and I will make as many empty threats as I can conceive of until such time as my voice goes high and desperate and your ears bleed from the pitch and you’re forced to appease me simply to get your mythic ears working once again.
Sincerely,
Me
P.S. Okay, in all fairness, I don’t have a Big Book O’ Hatred. In fact, I have a very short Hate Slip O’ Paper, made from a torn half of a post-it note. Nonetheless, you will go at the top of this list, and I mean business.
You know, it becomes more obvious on a daily basis how much my kitchen is my happy place. I love to bustle around it in, even (and perhaps especially) on a Friday night. I go there to put everything else in the world aside.
And it’s a mark of how often I’m in there, and how enthusiastic I am about the whole process of making food that nobody even comes in to check, regardless of how much hammering and thunking goes on. They’ll snoop about the food, but they never blink at the noise.
This is good, because I lost the head of my meat mallet whilst beating naked chicken thighs to a pulp. When I say lost, I mean propelled. And when I say propelled, I mean tossed upward.
Guess the reflexes haven’t quit on me just yet.
His family is almost entirely made up of foodies. No surprise, really. I’ve known about CH’s foodie nature from extremely early on and Pal is no creampuff in the kitchen, either.
On Friday, we went over to his uncle’s home - where we were fed with local chicken, local potatoes, local corn and extremely local bread and apple pie (both bread and pie made by said Uncle) produced from local apples.
No kiddin. I’ve never had a bad food experience with his family. Dinners are generally occasions where wine, food, conversations and children roam freely. The food, even if it’s delectable, never quite drops the conversation into catatonia. The wine paints CH’s cheeks a rosy red and puts a warm fuzz in my stomach, but never seems to generate slurred vitriol about who made the better battery (Duracell, of course) or which way is the appropriate way to pour coffee (*in*, not *on*, for the record).
And this kind of dinner? This is exactly the kind of dinner I love. If my entire social life could be composed of dinners with friends and foodies, I don’t think I’d ever want to depart this mortal coil.
But since that’s unlikely, I’ll have to resign myself to the simple knowledge that I have these dinner parties in my life, and be grateful for that.
It’s Friday (in case you haven’t noticed. Because I’m sure there are legions of us nine-to-fivers who dread the coming of the weekend with unparalleled ferocity). That fact alone is enough to have be feeling sprongy and chipper, but couple that with the fact that I don’t have a sense of impending doom about tomorrow’s Rosebud festivities, and you can count me as over the moon.
I mean, it’s not like I don’t have a metric ton of lasagna to make, a cake to coax into existence (and hopefully, edibility) or sangria/hummus/odds and ends to prep. I do. That will be my entire Friday night.
There are things working in my favour. The first of which is that both girls will be at their respective other parents’ homes, which means that I can cook and bash around to my heart’s content, including loud blaring of music and late night whizzing of various concoctions.
It also helps that I know Buddy is equally prepped for a night of puttering. I do enjoy the way we work together. He’ll roam around the house, performing different tasks and chores without any kind of prompting, hinting, nudging or pointed staring. He simply knows that these tasks need to be done. (Yes, I know he’s practically a miracle, in that he does this, but is not an OCD clean freak. No, I won’t share him and I don’t think he’s interested in holding seminars.)
However, he also stops by the kitchen at frequent intervals to be my sampler, coach, cheerleader and witness. He’s yet to cease being fascinated by the alchemy of cooking, and I absolutely adore being able to natter at him about what’s working and what isn’t.
All in all, this sounds like a lovely Friday night. I could, as I have in years past, muse about how much I’ve changed, in that a night spent at home cooking and cleaning sounds like entertainment, but I won’t*. I know now that my heart resides in my home, with a particular focus on the kitchen. And that even though this is a sign of aging, it’s an age I’ve grown into, happily.
*Much.
You thank me all the time.
But now it’s my turn.
‘Cause truly a word of gratitude so due
can’t go unheard.
- Sarah Harmer, The Ring
I cooked a meal for my family for the first time in weeks. I stood in the heart of my home, mindlessly prepping a routine weekly meal. Spaghetti. A normal meal, a normal Tuesday night. The girls have cordoned themselves off in the front playroom, attending to the bedroom furnishing needs of their new Alcatraz rejects*.
Buddy is mowing the lawn, pushing the silent manual mower with ease born of regular summer practice.
I sing along to the music. I feel as though I’ve waking up from a long sleep. My home, my family, my food, my life. This is my core, where I thrive, where I know love and abundance.
Not too long ago, I was tired. I felt the weight of all the tasks and the routine. I struggled to do what was needful, and strove to keep the resentment in check.
Now I relish the simple task of mincing garlic, feeling my home humming with vibrance, life and activity. And in it, at this moment, I am content.
*Rejects owing to cute overload. It says so on their butts.
My mother’s birthday is the fifth of July. As such, Buddy and I meandered out to the general vicinity of Lake of the Woods - where my sister and her family have a nice little view of the lake and opportunities to spend a great deal of time on said lake.
Aside from the noseeums (tiny biting midges which, prior to being swarmed by them, Buddy declined to believe in) and the cramped (and snore-filled) sleeping arrangements, it was lovely. Beautiful weather, good food and good company.
The best part? Spending a few hours on the lake with Buddy, my sister and my mother. Fishing. Which is not something I usually do, or generally get all that excited about. I fish about once a year - tops. Which is odd, in a switched-at-birth kind of way. The rest of my family is comprised of avid fisherpersons. In point of fact, our birthday gift to my mother (by her request) was a tackle box and some swivels and jigs.
Not even kidding. My nephews, who were babies just yesterday, are now competent to drive boats on their own, fish on their own and even offered to throw me into their boat for a go-round.
It’s terrifying to think of these little infants suddenly being in total control of my life. On water. Cold, cold water.
But I digress.
Yesterday, I caught a lovely 16 inch walleye and my mother caught a smaller, but no less keepsy pickerel. After my brother-in-law kindly filleted the beasts on the dock, we hopped in our car and drove home, our bounty in a cooler with some ice and lake water.
And then we ate the little beasties for dinner with a nice, light, Mexican salad.
It’s here, in the preparing and eating of the fish, that you really catch my attention. The fact that I know exactly where it came from, where it was prepared and how it was prepared. The fact that it took less than six hours from catch to table. The fact that it took very little time to cook, and required very little enhancement to produce a beautiful, tasty, flaky and fresh dinner.
This is where you find my heart. And my fondness for fishing. Oddly, this is also where you find Buddy’s heart. Or stomach, at least. We’re truly fascinated by acquiring foodstuffs that are like this. We’re never going to be true locavores, as we like things like coffee and avocados and wine and beer. But wherever possible, it’s nice to be able to appreciate the difference between “shipped from X two weeks ago” and “found this morning”.
In short - a nice weekend. One that left us short on sleep and short on time for ourselves (as per usual), but still - we are learning to appreciate the little things that make a difference.
Including dinner. Maybe even especially dinner.
Or, more accurately (since good ol’ Menno-the-original is long dead and gone), if you don’t know any Mennonites, I feel sorry for you. Not only are you missing out on the comedic gold to be found in blanket stereotypes about inbreeding, dancing (or lack thereof), drinking (or lack thereof), and general cheapness, you’re also missing something else.
You’re missing out on this:
(served with sausage gravy, called SCHMAUNDTFAHT by those in the know, or those who can wrap themselves around the tricky Germanic gutturals)
And this:
(Served with a crosshatching of hot pink icing. Rosebud snarfed this at an unseemly rate. I, virtuously, did not. Do you believe me? You shouldn’t.)
Ah yes. Kielke with schmaundtfaht and rhubarb platz. With farmer’s sausage and cole slaw. It was a lovely way to end my indulgently lazy weekend - if the weekend had to end. Which it did, apparently. Even though I put my vote in as firmly against the notion.
Thanks to CH and Bobby for feeding us (though Bobby is now full on committed to helping with the kielke making next time), and for being Menno. My sense of humour is quite appreciative of the opportunities you provide. ;-}
Well, it’s done. My garden is officially planted (except for the bergamot and the purple pansies, which will be planted at Rosebud and Juniper’s earliest convenience, because heaven forefend that I should plant them myself. I’d have better survival odds if I coated myself with bacon grease and ran starkers through a meeting of recovering pork product addicts.)
In it, we have:
Basil (Marseilles and Genovese)
Rosemary (Tuscan blue and another one that escapes me)
Silver thyme
Bush cucumbers
Beefsteak bush tomatoes
Golden oregano (planted between the tomatoes, to see if that theory of flavour adding in the soil really works)
Yellow potatoes
Lavender (cannot remember what I got this year - two kinds, two plants each)
Lettuce of varying colours and tastes
I always end up with new and interesting things when I go to Sage Garden. I don’t know if all the employees are family members, or if the owner simply requires that all people working for her MUST ADORE HERBS IN ALL CAPACITIES (with an unrivaled passion), but it’s always a nice trip.
Juniper beetled off with one of the staffers almost immediately - all on the quest for the exact right red flowering plant (result: bergamot). I wandered through the small but generously burdened greenhouse, Buddy trailing behind with basket and tolerant smile. Happily, he’s not shy about enjoying plants, so we sampled many leaves on the way through (most notably, something called a toothache plant. Doesn’t exactly thrill the tastebuds, but be damned if it didn’t numb our tongues in a peculiar way. Fun!)
Truth be told, I’ve never grown food before. Herbs have been a particular passion of mine for a number of years, but food? Lawds no. I love the times I can have a wander through my garden, selecting bits and bites of things to add to dinner, but harvesting most or all of my produce for a meal from *my* garden? That sounds like my idea of joy.
I’m especially nervous about the tomatoes because I’ve heard they’re notoriously finicky, and the sproutlings were started by CH. I’d hate to think of all her work in growing these babies because I’m too bloomin’ incompetent to figure out the best way to encourage tomato survival.
Nonetheless. Plants planted, bloodmeal scattered and sun overhead.
Let’s hope I don’t kill everything.
Buddy and I have been working hard for quite a long time. We’ve dragged the girls to swimming lessons in the darkest part of winter. We’ve cleaned up vomit, we’ve doled out medicine, we’ve entertained, we’ve amused and we’ve made crafts until our scissor hands ache with it.
And you know? We don’t mind. We want the girls to have a good childhood, and we’re focused on doing what’s necessary to make it happen. And hey - we love them. They’re fun little beings to have around.
But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have those days. Those days where you might find one or both of us pressing our noses up to the glass doors, staring mournfully out at the big old world. Waiting, wondering, hoping - daydreaming about adventures of our own.
Cue Dragon Mother.
As is our usual, we were chatting yesterday about our weeks. How’s Juniper? How’s Rosebud? How are you guys?
I gave my responses: Good. Good. Grinding a bit. (Okay, this is an oversimplification. If I ever gave this level of non-response to my mother, she’d likely make a special trip over to swat me. But you get the idea - and *you* didn’t ask for the gory details of the weekly update.)
Grinding a bit? Well, yes. It’s just been a bit of a long winter, and the routine has been getting a little tired.
It was at this juncture that a ray of sunshine came down upon my head, lo, though I was in the house, and yea, there was no sunlight yesterday.
“Wylie,” she said. “Why don’t you and Buddy plan a getaway for Easter weekend?”
I admit, I was so entrenched in the routine that I honestly thought about saying no. What on earth would we do with two nights away from home?
. . .
No need to call me on my mental stability. I’ve recovered from my bout of temporary insanity.
So . . . guess what? G’on. Guess!
WE’RE GOING AWAY!
*dancity, dance, dance*
We’re going to take a short drive to a little cabin. We’re going to hike, sleep, draw (him), read (me), and generally take two days of rest.
And this fact? This fact has reenergized us both. We’re downright perky. We keep giggling like kids getting away with something.
So, in case you have a wonderful benefactor offering you time away, and in case you’re so deep into the doldrums that you’ve considered refusing - here’s my little reminder that you should hug your benefactor, do a quick jig around your kitchen and book a place to stay as quickly as you can.
Your sanity will thank you.
——————————————-
Another highlight of the weekend? I finally (FINALLY!) made a successful aioli. I’ve tried it a few times, and I always manage to break it* right at the end.
I had a moment of absolute smuggery, when I stopped my whizzing stand blender. I confess, I spent a fair bit of time admiring the soft peaks and rich appearance of a well-made aioli. I even made Buddy come over and admire it with me. More than once.
Anyway, it was wonderfully tasty on top of the pulled pork in coconut tomato sauce and the caramelized onions. I think I’m going to dollop some out tonight to go with our sweet potato fries and burgers. And I may fall asleep dreaming of ways to use up the remainder.
*Broken aioli, for the record, is watery, suspiciously grainy, and nowhere near as tasty as it ought to be. Aioli done right looks like a slightly yellow/green (depending on the quality of olive oil you use) variant of mayonnaise. Only it’s a drop of garlicky heaven instead of gloppy spread of darkness.
