Leftovers

Leftovers, perhaps they should be called love (to have you) overs. They can be so great and have such potential, but at the same time they can be horrendous. Mystery meat anyone?

Tonight we had love-to-have-you-over's [if only! :) ] of cottage pie.

Can anyone guess what they were originally? If you said meatloaf and roasted rosemary potatoes you would be the winner. (of what, I don't know. Luck?)

It was my first time making cottage pie and I would say the results were fair. I was happy to be eating it, but perhaps it wasn't exactly perfect. The top was crunchy (butter helps) but it was only the very top; the inside was savory but perhaps a little too full of carrots.

I guess you could say that life is just a good case of love-to-have-you over-again-and-again-and-again. And as long as there is good food and good people, count me in.

Birthday madness

Arriving at the anniversary of my mother's birthday, I set out to create a meal which would be appropriate, yet delicious. Well, actually my mother decided on the food she wanted to eat. And, actually, the said steak and potatoes had to be postponed for one day due to my father's cholesterol test the following morning. So, that being addressed, the only dish I was able to keep with on the actual day was my mother's cake: Jack's (as in, Jack Daniels) birthday cake. This cake consisted mostly of roux-ish ingredients like of butter and flour, with the necessary additions of brown sugar, b. powder chocolate, pecans (shelled by me and my mother and grown somewhere in NC, our state), Jack, eggs, and vanilla.

It was good, too. I made it in two 7x7 cake pans and was able to squirrel one away in the freezer for a later date. The sauce consisted of butter, confectioner's sugar, Jack, and vanilla. It wasn't really a a sauce--it was more like a glaze--and was actually referred to as the glaze. It didn't dry and it didn't seem strong enough, but it sure was sweet.

I decorated the top with pieces of broken up chocolate and pomegranate seeds (leftover from when I just had to have one!)

Enjoy.

Pasta joy

Yesterday, and the day before I must add, I made pasta. From scratch. Just eggs, flour, some water, and a little salt. I made three batches: one first with random sized strands which I hung along the bottom-side of a folding wooden tray stand; secondly as tortellini, stuffed with remnants from Thanksgiving sweet potato; and lastly, as three-hour fresh noodles, long and stiff. I cooked the second batch first, during lunch. They were eggy and chewy and very, very sweet. The first and third batches I cooked for dinner, complemented with a handmade tomato sauce my sister whipped up during her time working on an organic demonstration farm, with added seasonings from me. We rounded the meal out with some garlic bread and a salad which claims about 50% of it's origins to the sandy, clayish soil outside our house.

It was a good dinner.

Pasta homemade seems like such chore; my mom was commenting on how much work I was putting into rolling the dough translucently thin, when I could easily purchase a decent box of spaghetti at the store for less than a dollar. (in some markets).

But to actually know where something comes from, and how to make it, that's what I really want to know. I think that if more people realized exactly where all of their food comes from, and especially, what they are made from, more people would take the time to make things themselves, or at least contract a chef, etc to do it if they don't have the time, etc.

However, I also know that the idea of hiring a chef to cook healthy meals is something that only certain individuals can even take a gander at. It's a hard line to follow: wanting the best, yet, making sure others have the best, too.

rejuvenated resumation

Food, not unlike writing, will always be necessary. Every meal, every day. It was always be a new adventure in the kitchen, and especially on the floor and in the sink. Is it possible thate the more mess we make, the better-tasting something will be? Because it's no simple task to only dirty one or two dishes or bowls or spoons; I can easily dirty dozens if I tried. How about you?

New things

So, here I am, coming back into my own as I resume my perpetual habit of blogging. We'll see how long I can perpetually keep it going!

So I must spend the next 1,000 or so characters devoted to my newest discovery: greek strained yogurt. On Friday, during my copious free time, I opted to purchase some somewhat healthy and/or coupon-friendly snacks from the Natural/Organic section of the Giant Foods. How convenient: I found a coupon book in the car which I cannot claim as my own but which I depend on for at least one day on a weekly basis. Hoorah! Greek yogurt was not one of the coupons available, but the idea of a cold, healthy dairy product was very appealing (it was too early for ice cream--at least that's what I told myself). Along with the Face Greek yogurt I purchased three health-foods bars, and one generous-sized bottle of organic pomegranate-blueberry juice.

The yogurt was including a convenient side pocket filled with a strawberry jam, and I accosted the salad bar for some free plastic spoons to round out my on-the-go snacking adventure. After browsing in a few stores for the specific items to tie together the Germany-bound gift package I finally sent, and of course having pitiful luck, I took a few minutes in the parked car to enjoy some WHYY and my now very anticipated carton of yogurt.

When I pulled off the paper top, I was astonished! Dipping the spoon into the yogurt resulted in a very creamy, mousse-like, delectably light non-dessert delicacy upon my tongue! I was quite overwhelmed with joy. I slowly savored each morsel, occasionally mixing it with the fruit jam which, like the culinary-minded mouse from Ratatoullie speaks of, is a flavor explosion in my mouth (the blending of two stand-alone flavors) Imagine, mousse for breakfast, everyday! How wonderful it must be to be a Greek native. Or perhaps any non-USA native: the more I research the culinary habits of other cultures the more and more I want to eat! I feel a little unfortunate to be 'only' an American native with no long-time food culture. When I think about my time abroad: Poland, Germany, Italy, and how in each country (perhaps excluding Italy because I was traveling with and frequenting many tourist-oriented affilitations) each meal has it's custom. In America we're all overwhelmed with the products evolving from a simple man's wish to do some more original (and therefore, profitable) than the selling of varietal flours. Oh, how I desire difference and tradition not based upon some form of science experiment! (even if for nutrition's benefit)

So really I just want to go back to culinary roots! At least when it comes to being simple and as wholesome as possible in relation to ingredients and their known end result of actual homemade dishes.

Fasting

So, on Ash Wednesday I made the decision to fast--I was hoping it would lead to some sort of spiritual clarity. It all started off ok--Water and Weleda Liver Tea for breakfast. By midday I was getting a little sluggish and by the evening all I seemed to be able to gather was that I was depriving myself of food and therefore muddling my mood. In the later night I even gave in and with a friend I ate the dinner I had skipped earlier--I felt that I was holding to my fast for all the wrong reasons and was unable to carry through with the whole thing. Instead of finding the internal strength I thought I was missing, I just provided fuel for my poor mood. I didn't want to think of my fasting experience as something I had to feel bitter about or to regret with some sort of vengeance.

However, I did come to grips with this very scary and rapidly growing disaster known as hunger. Even for as little as ten hours, I felt the beginnings of hunger pains. I feel a little unable to quantitatively equate my experience with people who are actually experiencing far worse fates than mine on a day-to-day basis, but I feel that my experience helped to open my eyes to the absolute terror of this epidemic. If we compared those who are not able to fill their bellies each day to those who just completely take for granted the availability of not just any food, but organic, local, wholesome food, I feel very selfish. I prefer organic food and good-quality food which I know is quote-unquote better than "other" food. But how often could I have helped others! Food in itself is amazing. The sheer quantity of edible things in the world is more than anything I could ever count. How many different seeds, roots, flowers, branches are taken from the ground specifically so mammals, etc could consume them?

What would it be like if no one had ever to suffer with an empty stomach?

myself, as an individual

to say that food is the only thing which I think about or which really fuels me would, in itself, be stating an obvious falsity. food brings people together: food can be the reason for almost anything. Food fills me up; food brings me down. But food cannot sustain itself as an independent thought process--it is created with thought and often renders thought but cannot replace thought.

I am as an individual not what you would always call a free thinker. I spend a lot of time thinking and I think about what I will do, but I don't intend for thinking to be the sustenance of my existence. I have recently found it quite difficult to mold myself into someone who, as a matter of being, is inexplicably intertwined in constant thought. I find myself so overwhelmed with all the thoughts and the ideas which come to mind as a result of my "thinking binges." I am I guess in this stream of consciousness trying to express my fear at the idea of becoming more "thoughtful" than I already am. I am fearful that I will create for myself a path into territories unnamed, regions undiscovered, which ultimately show me something I am not sure I want to discover. Not that I fear myself as an individual, but more that I'm just not really ready to grow up even though I try so hard sometimes. I feel as though if I was ready to grow up I would not be living in a life-sharing community. I spend so much of my time enjoying: laughing, cooking, being tickled, hugging, sing-song'ing--and although the idea of sitting down and thinking all the time theoretically could embody the yin to my already personified yang--it seems it would be without the sense of balance which would actually create two mirroring and to borrow the expression of a friend, "wave-like" approaches to 'being.' Alternatively, I feel like, as of recently, I am somehow consciously or perhaps intentionally trying to balance all of my free thinking into one designated bloc of time which in the end does nothing less than overwhelm and confuse me when I step away from it.

Perhaps Macrobiotics hold the future for me: the intentional balance of life-giving nutrients which then seep into all the other nooks and crannies of my life. Peace is good!

On a side-note, in this very moment I feel I AM at peace. I am writing on my newly acquired re gifted laptop Bessie :), listening to Sufjan Stevens' 'Illionoise', sipping cranberry juice and seltzer, nibbling German Ritter Sport, and enjoying proper "mood lighting: colored christmas lights and an unfortunately energy-sucking incandescent light-bulb. If fluorescents were more appealing mood-wise I would totally go all out. Perhaps candles are really the only way to go (but still carbon emitting...).

I am starting to get really excited about the prospect of traveling to Europe: Italy specifically, during my Spring Break and I am pondering the balance between this indulgence and all of the financial-related sadness of our everyday reality. It almost seems like I would be postponing my "reality." But that it is!

I feel that I am experiencing a lot in situations which are both self-created and spontaneous, and I feel I will be something I am happy with when I finally find someone or something sweet enough to bring me clarity with a little mud and perhaps some saliva (but water works, too).

If God would personify himself in you this my life would be.

Real Life

So recently I went to see Revolutionary Road and it was quite a little bit mind-blowing. For me, all that I can think of relationships is that I haven't always had the best luck but I am so hopeful for something genuine in the future. I don't want to see a movie which is perfect; who is perfect anyway? It is unsettling to compare oneself to the characters on the screen who just seem to have it all together. But this movie--this is real. So real that I left the movie stunned. The "heroine" goes through so much just so she can fulfill some dream which she uses as a substitute for reality. She seems to have so much around her and in lieu of appreciating it she throws it all away. I felt connected to the way she tried so hard to find something--anything--to fill the void and make everything good again, when once their was strife and obvious, if not overt, unhappiness. We're often quick to try to put a band-aid on something and hope that a brand new limb will grow in the place of the boiler or severed arm or what have you.

The sadness made me think of how much we undervalue the currents running through our lives. Perhaps we cannot always be amazingly happy, but we can be honest. We can see that their is possibility for something amazing in almost any step you take. It just matters how you care for it and how you are therefore cared for.

Love will save us. Life cannot provide enough obstacles or distractions to keep us unreal forever.

Nantmel Farm Cafe ReOpening

So today was the Big Day--the day we were slotted to wow the community and come back, regal style, into the world of Soltaneous existence. (yes Rachel, I did borrow your phrase I so often read). And of course, yours truly volunteered to be the "Head Chef"--that seemingly responsible individual who charts all the courses and fills all the bottles. Well, it was a little crazy I must say. I forgot some ingredients and I didn't get up at 7 am to prepare like I had done during my dreams the night before. To me, ever the "anal perfectionist" (sometimes) it seemed so different from what I remember before. I realized it's a lot of work to be outwardly 'responsible' for all the activities happening around me. Before I had always assumed responsibility for the elements I thought I could control but never had I vocally expressed such responsibility. I was really frustrated today because the food was a little toasted and the sandwiches I had dreamed about I had not enough time to prepare. But the food was good, nevertheless. At least, I was quite satified in their masticulation.

I wonder if, should I persue culinary school, how my palate will change and adapt. Who decides whether something is "good"? Who decided that certain tastes are superior to others and that certain flavor combinations actually even belong together? I fear that I am not original or creative enough to create such connections on my own without dissapointing others or especially, myself. I am not even sure if cooking is really the path for me. Sometimes I get a big head about it and just assume that I will be good--just like I sometimes do for writing, bowling (but not frequently!), or other areas in which I occasionally have some luck accomplishing my goals. I have a hard time assessing that I have successfully developed skills or comprehensive knowledge of my pursuits. I guess that is why I need more school!

On another note, I was realizing today during some personal reflection how important it is to be appreciate of simply simple things, like hugs or smiles or true personifications of individual character. Today for instance, the simple act of receiving a smile was enough to totally invert my mood and bring me momentary peace. But the simple act of actually acknowledging that something is simply great is quite difficult to attain somedays. I am always amazed how completely compounded I become in the daily grind of this stressful life and significantly my unwillingness tolet go once I have created a pseudo pattern or dare say, habit, of the stressful downplay. Time alone in a moving car often allots me space to reflect on just where I'm headed and where I want to turn up, both figuratively and realistically. To easier find this joy is what I wish I was better at!

That first night

That first night, when all I wanted to get started! Except it's been a long time and I'm going to have to say that I am tired. But it's a good tired--after a good day. Our menu for the dinner meal was Smashed spicy sweet potatoes and Garlic-pepper quinoa with honey baked shrimp. Talk about yummy eats!

So, to get to the point, I want to use this blog to write about food, writing, and life. Food: the meals I make; the meals I partake; the recipes I covet and anticipate. Writing: the poems I jot; the stories I recreate (or make up); my future and my past. Life: funny experiences; fears and dreams about the future; my newest career paths.

Enjoy it like a fine wine and some organic, fair-trade, dark chocolate--studded with ginger and chili powder!