Good Food

I was going to write about my brussle sprouts and pasta but there isn't much to say about it. I made it. It was good.

I read on a list serve for HAES (health at every size). It's a mix of eating disorder therpists, fat activists and friends of. There is often disscussion about pathologizing food and/or eating. I can never figure out how to express where I stand on it all since I come from a foodie perspective. Actually I come from a former dieter perspective and the perspective of my family and an ageing hippie perspective. There are so many things that shape our perspective on food and eating.
I have strong feelings about good food. Good is about craft in the preperation and quality in the ingrediant and something ephemeral and hard to describe. Things can be good in context. I don't usually like doughy white bread but the doughy white bread used for lobster rolls is perfect. The doughy white bread on pork buns is perfect. Doughy white bread is good food in the right time and place.
Lanquage, food and meaning making are three of my favorite things. Good food. What does that mean?
I was not born a foodie. In fact I have a fairly limited palette by foodie standards. I became a foodie because I needed a job. My earliest jobs in food were washing dishes. The silver spoons in my life were covered with other people's saliva. The people I've met in the food industry were my mentors in food. Some of them were chefs and some of them were dishwashers. I remember a prep cook giving me a cob of corn with a wedge of lime covered in chili powder. You rub the corn with the lime and chili powder. It's ridiculously good. Being a foodie is about learning from other cultures.
There's no doubt that the idea of being a foodie is pomo and manufactured. From a media perspective it is the indulgence of  the mostly young and mostly white. But for me it's a process of discovery informed by livelihood.   The intersection of my foodie life and my fat life is always wobbly. I know many people don't really care about food, or enjoy food that repels me. I don't feel superior. But good is a word that describes a notion of superior.  For me a hamburger made fresh with good quality meat is superior to one made with pink slime. It's superior in terms of health and taste and pretty much every thing. But there's nothing superior about being a person who thinks that way.
Once I took some women to a place near me where they make amazing hamburgers. They grind the beef daily and use a good cut of local beef. They grill the burgers and serve them on wonderful crunchy buns with romaine, tomatoes and red onion. They make a sauce with mayo and mustard. The fries are cut from potatoes, also fresh daily. The shakes are ice cream and milk. They enjoyed the meal but when I said something about not being able to eat fast food burgers after tasting the ones we were eating they gave me a look and I knew I was wrong. For them.
Fat people are always being told that their food choices are wrong and bad. It's not a useful way to think. I know there is more than one reason to enjoy a particular food. When I was a kid we had chipped ham on doughy white bread buns. I crave them.
I get angry when I read ideas about foodies as class specific and uppity. It's not my experience. It is true that I always want to cook good food for people. Cooking and sharing a meal is one of my great pleasures. I do have strong opinions about what good food means. But, like it so often is, meaning is a shape shifter. Good is what you want it to be.

Visualize This

I had a picture. I think I must have deleted it but I don't know why I would have done that. Sigh.
The market is slowing down.  At least in terms of what Debbie goes to buy. Every week she brings less and what she brings doesn't last as long. This is the first year that I haven't mourned the loss of peaches. I was happy to switch to apples and citrus. In the winter I do let go of my local values, accept the use of fossil fuels and eat mango or pineapple once in awhile but right now it's apples and citrus.
Debbie did bring me late season plums for a few weeks. They never got soft and they were sour. I was cooking a pork chop one night and got the idea to slice them and toss them in the pan. They weren't even in the pan that long and they softened and caramelized. Pork and plums. Couldn't have been better and I thought hmmm. I should blog about this. But I was hungry. I had already taken two bites and still wanted to take a picture and blog it. So I did. And now it's gone. Dang.
I did the same thing with plums and French toast. I tossed the sliced plums in the pan with the bread. Oh man. So good. I didn't take a picture.
I can never really do a lot of recipes and detailed technique posts because I cook so seat of the pants. But I usually have a picture. You're just going to have to use your imagination.  

Pops

This was supposed to be the summer when I made ice cream. I made two or three batches but didn't love them. My ice cream maker is old and never worked that well. Then Debbie and I were shopping one day and she showed me a book by her friend Charity. She doesn't seem to be blogging much but she did write this really sweet book about pops. She has a few others and I own most of them but I like this one the best.

I ordered some molds and made raspberry, chocolate pops. They were pretty good. And then I made cherry pops. Oh lordy. Soooo good! The taste of fresh cherries beats "cherry flavor" every time. Next comes coconut and the Mexican chocolate. It's all big summer fun.

Sunday Food

Debbie takes me shopping on Saturdays kind of late in the afternoon. By the time we get home I'm too burnt to do much more than cram everything into the fridge. When you work in a restaurant it's really important that you keep your fridge organized and, after years of that, I'm pretty hyper about it at home. These days Debbie arrives with bounty from the farmer's market. Sunday

is the day to process all the food and get it put away.

But first.

Sunday morning is time for French toast and news talk shows and The Sims. I like French toast crunchy on the outside and custardy on the inside. I've started using Acme ciabatta because I can cut a piece and then cut it the way I would for a sandwich. It makes a thin piece of toast with lots of chew and crunch. Sometimes I have bacon or sausage and coffee. If you're thinking that's a lot of raspberries you're right. Debbie brings me a lot. They aren't expensive at the market and I needed to use them up because these were what was left from last week. I don't love syrup but sometimes I put a bit on the side of the plate and drag the toast through it. I put cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla in eggs and milk for the batter. Oh, and juice. It's a big breakfast. I take my time eating it.

I've also been making an effort to have a good dinner on Sunday evenings. With wine. I never used to have to effort to have wine but these days, I do. Crazy. And I don't always get it together.Very often I have a steak although I don't usually eat it all. I'll toss the leftover into something tomorrow. Eggs, or salad, or pasta. I also made a few extra roasted potatoes for the same purpose.

I didn't even dress the salad. Mostly out of laziness but also because I love the fresh, clean flavor of the lemon cucumbers and the bitterness of the watercress. There's a spring onion as well. I eat it the way you'd eat a relish in a way. Stacking a mouthful with a bite of steak. It's suppose to be a special meal but it's also about using thing up. Dressing the salad is one of those things I would always do if I was cooking for someone else. I really, really want to try to cook for myself the same way I cook for anyone else. It's just wrong that I don't.

I'm thinking about some vanilla ice cream with strawberries but I'm kind of full. The fridge has been somewhat tamed. There is more work to be done. But Caetano is singing and the wine has mellowed me. And it's Sunday evening. Time to light a candle and relax.

Thoughts on Why and What

This morning I was reminded how important all the senses are when I cook. The burners on my stove stop cook unevenly. I'm always moving things around in the pan to and from hot spots. I put some butter in a pan to scramble eggs and walked away to do other things. I was listening for the sound the butter makes when it starts to bubble but I had set the pan too far forward, away from the hot spot, and the butter melted too slow and never bubbled. It was just beginning to brown. Brown butter has a wonderful nutty flavor so it wasn't a problem but the process had slipped past my ears.

These days my cooking is organized around what Debbie brings me from the farmers market. In the spring and summer she goes every day to buy stuff for work so when she takes me shopping she brings me things. She says there is a woman who shouts "watercress" at her when it's available. She always buys me watercress. It is my green of choice.

She knows I'm always going to want peas and peaches. She has been bringing me bunches of spring onions and asparagus but says these things are winding down. This week she brough a bunch of breakfast radishes. One week she brought me a huge bunch of kale because " it was only a dollar". I ate huge piles of kale for days. All my dinners are very green. It may be pasta, or soup, or just a plate full but it always has peas, asparagus, spring onions and watercress.

For the last two weeks she brought big juicy heirloom tomatoes. In the summer I tend to eat more cold food and I foresee salads filled with the pepper and bite of watercress and radishes. I bought some corn last week. So the colors on the plate are spanning out.

And we have entered the big bowl of fruit and yogurt for breakfast time of year. She brings peaches, raspberries, blueberries and strawberries. I eat cherries for snacks. The abundance is joyful.

I started this blog because I thought it might be a way to kick up my writing and I thought it might be useful to document how I (a fat person) eats. Not all fat people eat the same way and I don't feel more virtuous because of how I eat. I eat for pleasure and nutrition. I just happen to like watercress and peaches.

When I first started writing I tried to look around and see what people were doing. There are SO many bogs now. And many of them look and sound the same. I'm not saying they're bad I just feel like they're missing something. Something authentic and raw. I'm not drawn to go back.

Cheryl sent my an interesting aggregate on which I found some muffins this morning, which I will making ASAP.

So the reasons for why are the same and the what is as rambling as ever.

Heh.

And then I remembered.

I thought I might write a cook book titled: Think Like a Chef but it's already been done. And I don't really think like a chef. I think like a cook and a kitchen manager. I'm not trying to show off. I'm trying to get it done with a minimum of waste.

Recently I decided I wanted to make ice cream. I have a not particularly good ice cream machine. I got it years ago, made a few batches and then it got put on a shelf. I had to wash off years of dust. I was a little dismayed by the number of egg yolks in most recipes. What was I gonna do with the whites? I don't like egg white omelets. They seem denatured. Or something. I could make macaroons.

Anyway.

There's not much more to say about the ice cream. I forgot how quickly milk boils over. I made a huge mess. The final product is good enough but slightly grainy on the tongue. Debbie says this is because my machine is as bad as I think it is and I'm not getting enough air whipped in. She suggests making the base a day ahead and making sure it's really cold.

Next time.

And. I bought too much whipping cream. I'd seen a few recipes, thought I knew what I needed and went shopping without a list. And. I don't really like whipped cream. There times when I like it. I like it on ginger bread. Especially warm ginger bread. I like it on strawberry shortcake, which I make with biscuits. So now it's Easter and I decide to make myself some strawberry short cake for desert. It wasn't a perfect solution because I'd have left overs and be eating it for a few days and I have the afore mentioned ice cream. And I'd lolled away the morning playing games and listening to the Sunday news talk. Then I did laundry.

I've tossed together a batch of biscuits so many times and so quickly. But I was tired and still had laundry to fold and a bed to make and I wanted to get it done. Dinner. I wanted to get it done.

I sort of badgered myself about how I'd make the biscuits if there was someone else here and I should take care of myself. But I was hungry and getting tired.

And then I remembered. When you make biscuits with cream they become scones. Hmmm.

Easter dinner.

Thin cut pork chop, smashed Yukon Golds and watercress, asparagus, spring onion salad with artichoke dressing. Glass of Cab. Ice cream.

Macaroons and scones coming soon. No waste. Lots of taste.

Green

Last week I saw the first peas. There weren't many and they were kind of flat but I picked through and found what ended up to be about a third of a cup. Peas still make me so happy.

Since Mom was here I've taken to buying a one pound box of baby spinach almost every week. She loves it.

So dinner time arrived and I was cooking up a spring onion and some crimini, which I planned to put on pasta. I had some chicken stock out and I was cooking I realized I didn't want pasta. It's hot here and my appetite isn't big. I poured enough stock in the pan to call it soup. I did toss in a small amount of Fregula, the peas and some spinach.

It's so green. It screams spring.