Egg Cup

My Poppop often had soft boiled eggs for breakfast. I remember going to kiss him goodbye, possibly before leaving for school. He had yolk all over his mouth and the scruff on his chin. Instead of a quick smack on the mouth (which I was desperate to avoid) I tried to kiss his cheek. He, being use to the mouth smack was turning toward me, which made for an awkward moment. As soon as I got out of his sight I frantically wiped my face.
Yolks.
Runny yolks.
Ick.
I only wanted hard scrambled eggs. The exception was egg sandwiches with over hard eggs and half a bottle of ketchup. I didn't even like hard boiled eggs, although I sort of liked deviled eggs. I would eat poached eggs but only if the yolk was golf ball hard.
I've cooked so many eggs in my time as a breakfast cook. People are fussy about their eggs. Since it's often the first thing they eat in the morning you can ruin someone's day if you get it wrong. It is extremely easy to get it wrong. I don't remember anyone ever ordering soft boiled eggs but one woman regularly ordered one hard boiled. She picked out the yolk and ate it with mustard. Or maybe she ate the white. I forget.
In the kitchen where I first learned to cook the chef taught me how to do omelets in the French tradition, which included being a little on the runny side. We usually stuck the pan under the salamander or in the oven to heat what ever the filling was, or just melt cheese. The eggs would set up a bit but were still too runny for me.
Years later I was in a restaurant about to have brunch. There was a soft boiled egg with bacon and toast points on the menu. It captured my imagination. Felt sentimental. Like an homage to Poppop. I was already scrambling my eggs softer and even hard boiling in less time to allow a softer inside. I wasn't as squeamish about runny yolks. A poached egg on a salad with a soft yolk was a creamy revelation. 
That was one of the best breakfasts I've ever had. Delicate. Almost ceremonial with the dunking of the toast points. I vowed to get myself an egg cup and try it home.
Years went by.
In the first few years at the nest I saw an ad for an egg cup from Fiestaware. Purple, no less.

I bought it and it sat around for another few years. Eventually I pushed myself to use it. I needed to look up how to soft boil an egg. The irony of this is HUGE. I have flipped and scrambled and hard boiled sososososo many eggs. There was a logic to it but I felt the need to for instruction. I watched videos and read descriptions. I have the perfect size pan. And so I tentatively dropped my first egg into the boiling water. 
After a certain amount of trial and error I have arrived  at my system. I cook the egg for five minutes. There are so many things that can impact the perfection of the egg. How rolling is the boil. How cold is the egg when you drop it. How long does the egg sit before you break into it. It even took me awhile to realize that it was easier to eat with a spoon. These soft boiled eggs are no joke.
And yet my Grandma made countless numbers of them for her husband. I don't remember anyone else in the family eating them. I think I remember a wind up kitchen timer. I remember his eggcup sitting on the window sill.

Cooking/Writing

When I was in NC with the mommie one year I posted pictures of the soup of the day. Mostly as a way to keep myself entertained. I could put a protein, a veg and a starch on a plate and she'd scream that it was too much food. If I put all the same stuff in a soup she was happy. Soup was my constraint for years.

The food posting continued albeit as erratically as my blogging. And my writing. 

Now I mostly cook on Saturday night for a friend. Somewhat regularly. And I often post pictures of that stuff on Instagram. I get ideas from magazines and the Internet and cook books. I think about things and then I do whatever I want.
I made what I intended to be a stew but it took a long time to thicken up so it was more like a soup when we ate it. It was based on something I saw somewhere. I sliced a pork loin, dredged it in flour, cumin and smoked paprika and cooked it in hot oil with chili flakes. Then I added leeks. The pot was really too small. I was trying to be careful but at a certain point it felt silly. I pulled the pork out and things got easier.
I love that moment when leeks get translucent and shiny. I love the pale green they become.
Then I put the pork back in and added chicken stock. Last was sliced sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are not a go to for me. I like them but I don't love them.  Typically I would choose Yukon Golds. Sweet potatoes have been in a lot of my reading lately. Maybe they're trending. I think it's a glycemic thing.
So it was good. Not as pretty as I might have wished but tasty. And it did thicken up.

My favorite way to write is to write really fast. First thought best thought. And then go back multiple times and edit. I catch endless spelling errors. Remember things that I was going to add. Reorganize. It can take me hours and I'm rarely satisfied. It's harder to that with cooking.

If I ever make the stew/soup again I'll cook the pork a bit longer, to get a little color.  Take it out (on purpose)  before I cook the leeks. And maybe slice the sweet potatoes a bit thicker or in chunks. But I rarely cook the exactly same thing twice.
Writing and cooking feel the same to me. Lots of pre-thinking. Working fast. And then editing. I'm pleased with a lot of what I do but hardly ever satisfied. I'm always thinking about what I wish I'd done differently. 
At a certain point you have to let go. You have to put the food on the table.

Salads and some writing news.

I opened the book. Reread what I'd done. Got all mooky and distracted. Printed out 20 pages. (That was fun.) Decided to write a food blog. HA! I've been trying to think about some kind of food blog thing I could write in the daily project form but ... nuthin so far.
We have Zion Farms in Hood River. Every summer we wait for the first delivery to the local grocery store. I have shared loud joy with total strangers when we find the first Zion Farms delivery. It's really simple red leaf and green leaf lettuce. They also grow arugula. There were years when I'd grab leaves of Zion Farms out of the bag and munch on them for a snack. They are so fresh, so tasty and they last a long time.
Last year I wrote about not being able to eat Zion Farms at all. I made salads that I couldn't finish. I put it on sandwiches that I couldn't eat. It felt bad in my mouth. It was not the lettuce because it was happening with other foods. I blamed it on grief and hoped it would go away.
And (happily) it did.
My goal with salads (generally) is to have as many vegetables as possible and a protein. One of the first salads I made this summer was unintentionally yellow.  I ate a version of it over and over.

And then I saw a salad on the FB page for our farmer's market for a roasted carrot salad. I saw something similar in a cook book Kristina gave me for my birthday: How to Eat a Peach. I decided to try something. I used purple, yellow, orange (and one white) carrots. I was going to use powdered cumin but (much to my dismay) I didn't have any. I did have  whole cumin and a mortar and pestle, which may have been better. The smell of grinding cumin is really nice. I put olive oil, the cumin, smoked paprika, shallots, garlic, chili flakes and a little salt on the carrots and roasted them for about 45 minutes, just until they were soft to the fork. Then I piled all that on the arugula in a bowl. The heat from the carrots wilted the greens slightly. I added goat cheese and topped it all with pistachios.  

It was goooood!

I also worked on the book some more. Printed out another 26 pages. The biggest surprise ever is that I like my book. I am still in the beginning. It may get harder a I go along. But I like it. And I like working on it. I am also still trying to figure out how to use this new writing energy to blog. Today I'll swim and shop and not have time to write. I am sad about that. I think that's a good sign. Heh. 

Cauliflower Soup And Other Plans

So. I have been cooking more. But lately I haven't been feeling well. I have some kind of crud. Sore sinus, sore throat, cough. The symptoms come and go and change in prominence. Often it impacts my energy and appetite.  I had big plans for the holidays but most of them didn't happen.
Even before the holiday food I had a plan for cauliflower soup. Simple plan. Roast the cauliflower. Start with my olive oil, chili flake, shallot, garlic routine. Add chicken stock. Blend. Add half and half and butter. Eat. But nothing is simple when your body doesn't cooperate.
My Christmas Eve dinner plan was orange, fennel and pomegranate salad and triple cream. I managed to get the salad made. It was really good. But I only managed a few bites of each. No wine. Christmas was supposed to be a steak, polenta and green beans. I got the beans cooked. That was it. I baked a potato and ate a few of the beans. No wine. HoHoHo. I wasn't even that bummed. I just didn't feel well.
I don't even remember when I put finally put the cauliflower in the oven with a few cloves of garlic. I love the smell of things roasting. But then my energy flagged so I put it all in the fridge. Days later I pulled it out. Skipped the starting ritual. Blended it all with stock and cream. It is really good. I thought about adding cheese but decided I like it the way it was. It probably needed more blending or even a pass through a strainer or a food mill but I didn't mind the wee bits of cauliflower. 
Years ago I had an amuse bouche at a French restaurant. A demitasse cup of cauliflower soup with truffle oil. I've been trying to recreate it ever since. This new soup was close. I have some truffle oil but I didn't add it.
The roasted garlic was so good that I plan to roast a bunch and keep it in a jar in the fridge. 
I don't even remember the New Years Eve plan. I think scallops were part of something but I never ordered them.
I don't follow any rules No collards and black eyed peas. When I was young the mommie used to eat an onion sandwich and drink buttermilk every New Years eve. I have no idea why.
I slept a for many hours the last two nights. And I woke up with a fair amount of energy. I've been cleaning and cleaning. I made a sort of stew with things I needed to use up from the refrigerator and (finally) some polenta.

I feel like things are better. I think about food. I make plans. I do cook.
No big plan for tonight. I think I'll have the rest of the soup and maybe a grilled ham and cheese sandwich if my energy and appetite hold up. Mandy gave me some small bottles of champagne. There will be wine.

Saved by Soup

For most of the year I did not want to cook. I did not even want to make a sandwich or a salad. I wasn't enthusiastic about eating and didn't enjoy things that I had previously enjoyed. I just assume this kind of thing is about grief and try not to worry about it. But the cooking thing was bugging me.
Ironically I started pushing myself to make soup. Ironic because for the past few years cooking for the mommie meant making soup. If I put a protein, a veg and a starch on a plate she's freak out. It was just too much food!!! If I put the same things in the same amounts in broth she'd eat it with no fuss. It was just a bowl of soup. I feel like this was residual diet mentality. And yet she always had room for desert and a handful of after dinner M&M's. Soup became annoying and limiting. And now it's a path back.

People say that cooking for one is too hard. I don't feel that way. I probably put more effort into cooking for others but I'm pretty good at making myself a meal. I think a lot about the time of year and what's available. I don't eat many salads in the winter. I don't eat as much warm food in the summer. I read recipes and think about them. I like cooking.
My method with soup is almost always the same. First olive oil with chili flakes. When the chili flakes start to crackle I add shallots and cook them until I see some color, then I add garlic. Ingredients might shift a little. I often add bacon after the oil and chili flakes. I forgo the shallots and garlic if I make something like potato leek soup. I roast things like squash to bring out the sugar rather than boiling them in the both. The mommie didn't like spice, garlic, kale, chard. When I started making soup again it took awhile for my habits and instincts to kick in.

Now I'm making one or two soups a week. My Instagram feed is full of soup. There are times when I don't want to cook. I still feel a bone deep level of tiredness and apathy. I don't always push myself. But once I'm in the rhythm of cooking I'm fine.  This is a craft that I put a lot of energy into learning. It's a way I express myself. Every pot of soup is me being engaged in life.
And then we eat.

Two Books and a Problem with My Mouth.

I'm reading two books with food themes at the moment. It wasn't intentional. I keep a small book in my Baggallini because I spend time waiting for people to pick me up and my Baggallini isn't big enough for most books. I have another book by the chair in library or the chair in the living room or the bed depending on where I was reading last.
The current book on the go is one of the Persephone books. I really like the idea of reprinted books that would other wise disappear and they always do such a beautiful cover liner with a matching book mark. I'm reading Kitchen Essays by Agnes Jekell. She wrote these little essays for the Times. It's apparent that she isn't really doing the cooking. In the first essay she begins the recipe with instruction to 'your cook'. The recipes are written as paragraphs and the time the lamb should be cooked begins at 4 and goes until dinner time.
Dinner time?
The current book by the chair is Maman's Homesick Pie, which is a memoir by the Donia Bijan who also wrote The Last Days of Cafe Leila. I just finished the latter. I grabbed it on a whim when I was in Bellingham and wasn't expecting much. I was so wrong. The writing is strong, direct and evocative. Food drives the narrative in both books and in the memoir there are recipes. The first recipe is for tea and includes warming the pot and warming the cup. It's a very tender account of her parents exile from Iran and her own love of the smells and flavors of Persian food.
I am more engaged by the second book. The writing in the first one is almost impossible to follow. It's old old old style. I find it amusing but I'm never anxious to pick it up.
I often find food writing tedious. Too many adjectives. Nothing is revealed.

I haven't written on this blog for three years. The original idea for the blog was to reveal the way I think about food and cooking, maybe blow away some assumptions about how fat people think about food. Or not. Maybe just develop my thinking about something that preoccupies me.
Food in the books by Bijan often begin with smell. My nest smells like peaches and bacon at the moment. Peaches because the last ones from the market took four days to ripen enough to try and a week to have any flavor. Now they are redolent and compete admirably with the smokey salty smell of the bacon I cooked for breakfast. I know there will not be any more peaches all too soon. Although they started late so they may keep coming for awhile. Peaches define my summer.

This summer has been odd. There's a problem with my mouth.
We have great lettuce in the Hood. It's only available for a few months. It comes from Zion Farms. I've been known to eat it with no dressing.  Not this year. I do OK in the morning with my yogurt, honey, peaches and berries. But in the afternoon I'm hungry and nauseated at the same time. I've had to send bags of rotten salad fixings to Mandy's pig. I just don't get it together. If I do get it together I can barely finish. The food feels bad in my mouth. This bad feeling doesn't seem to happen if someone else cooks. At least not as much.
I had hoped that the trip to SF might call me back to food and it sort of did. Yesterday I made this big plate of beauty and enjoyed it.   

                    

I don't know what's wrong with my mouth. Maybe just more grief stuff. 

Maybe the books and the trip are calling me back to cooking and eating. It feels like it's taking an act of will. I want to write more. Not necessarily about food. Just write. And I want to cook more. 

These are the things I love so it shouldn't be this hard. 

The BLAT

Awhile ago (actually months ago) I realized I had everything I needed to make a BLAT. I had precooked some bacon. I had really good Pine Street multi-grain bread, Zion Farms lettuce, garden grown tomato, mayo and an avocado. I took the picture and saved it all this time. I had thought I might write about how classic things are classic for a reason. And/or you see BLTs everywhere but you're more likely to see a BLAT in the west where the avocado rules.

A BLAT is fat on fat on fat and it's so good. But I've been worried about eating fats because ... of the bleeping gall stone. So lately when I've seen the picture buried in my photos I've felt like I should just delete it. 

For so long now I've fooled around with what I eat when trying to manage what I've called my stomach aches. I have believed it was about sugar. If I ate enough protein I could eat an amount of sugar. Never too much but some. I knew fats were in the mix but I just wasn't sure how. Since the bleepin gall stone showed up I've been eating like someone with an eating disorder. I've been so hyper vigilant and careful. I'd eat the same thing two days in a row and one day I'd feel fine and the next I'd get sick. I'd get frustrated and eat something I felt sure would make me sick and be fine. I'd eat really carefully and feel like crap. I'm not sure I have a clue what works anymore. 

And, after tomorrow,  I imagine it will change again.

But that BLAT was good. 

It is a classic. 

And I hope to eat another some day.   

Lemon Cucs

Jane found lemon cucumbers, which makes me so happy. They don't taste like lemons. They taste like cucumbers. They're just so dang cute. This is one of my favorite salads in which everything is local except the cheese and the olives. It would have been served by olive oil and balsamic but when produce is this fresh I love the flavors. And half way trough I thought I could have sliced in some shallot, or red onion. Next time. 

Although I love my aqua farm the herbs aren't growing big enough to add. I have wee tiny basil but I thought I'd give it a bit longer to grow. 

Beans

I've never been sure what to do with this blog. I post pictures on Facebook of stuff that I'm eating. Maybe I should post them here first.
Just before I left SF I found The Better Bean Company. I am particularly fond of their black beans. I noticed they were made in Oregon but when I got here I couldn't find them. Last week (or the week before) I went to The Farm Stand  for the first time and there were my black beans. I made this salad with chopped garlic, yellow bell pepper, celery, shallot (might have used red onion if I'd had one), corn and tomato. Squeezed the juice of a lime into it. The beans come well seasoned  but I love cumin so I added a bit more.The greens are from Zion Farms, which does not seem to have a web page but I love them.

Pleased

I read a short essay about Andre Soltner in The New Yorker (Sadly, you have to subscribe to read it on line.)  in which he is quoted: The molecular cuisine has some good things about it but I--I count my my cooking by the looks of satisfaction on the faces of the people who have eaten my food. 
Yes. Indeed.
I think a lot of the Adria stuff is interesting although foam always looks unpleasant to me. Interesting but not what I want for a meal. It might be a fun meal. And I think fun is a good thing. But I've seen too many chefs messing with food in an attempt to seem hip. Somewhere there's a chef "building" a salad of micro greens with tweezers. I've watched chefs pick at food trying to make it look better. It's good to make food look beautiful but it's best to make it pleasing. I don't think you should remember the chef. I think you should remember the food. Restaurant work is all about pleasing people. It's not always possible but you should be trying. I too often feel like chefs are so busy making a name for themselves that they forget they're feeding people.
Still not cooking much. But Mimi brought me some ham and cheese croissants from my favorite croissant place. The next morning I made one of my favorite breakfasts. Poached eggs on top of the heated ham and cheese croissant. Honey tangerine. Coffee. Pleased.

About That Asparagus

Debbie did bring me asparagus from the market. And I did eat it in curry. And it was crazy good.

My presentation could have been a little better but the smell of curry was overwhelming and I needed to eat. 

For no obvious reason I've been remembering a dish I cooked for brunch at a restaurant in NYC. It was latkes with eggs any style and pork loin. I don't remember if there was an apple-something or sour cream on the plate although that would have made sense. I do remember wondering if the person who created the plate was being funny or ignorant. Either way I got a craving for latkes.    

Conveniently Debbie got me spring onions. I intended to get pork loin but they didn't have any and I saw a small steak prepackaged. I cooked the latkes in the afternoon. I cooked a bunch. Not the best plan because they are one of those things that are best right out of the pan. But I thought I might like some for breakfast and I never feel like cooking that early in the morning unless there is someone else around.   

I like the outside to be crunchy and the inside to be like mashed potatoes. 

Debbie also got some chard. So that was dinner. I cut the steak in half. And I had Cowgirl Creamery Creme Fraiche. The next morning I had half of the half a steak, scrambled eggs, latkes and grapfruit. And I had a version of the dinner the next day with the remaining quarter steak.  

Here's a flavor tip to never try. As I was making breakfast I passed my pomegranate juice over the eggs, which were still sitting in a bowl waiting to be cooked. It wasn't a lot but it was enough to make me wonder if I should toss them and start over. I hate wasting food so I cooked them and they were OK. But it was not  a thing I would repeat. 

The market is just starting up and I'm already having too much fun. 

Processed

Someone at EA asked me if I ate a lot of processed food and I said yes. Later I realized we meant two different things. At the time I was always exhausted from the commute and the job. I got a lot of food from Whole Foods deli and carried it to work. It was food made by someone other than myself. Processed is more often used to describe food made in factories and frozen or canned or shipped to a chain location where it is served. I don't really eat that kind of food. I remember at the time saying something about the deli but she had already confirmed her opinion that I was fat because of the bad food I ate. I remember her seeing a container of mixed fresh fruit on my desk and looking confused. Ah well. 

I thought about it the other day since I'm only beginning to come out of my post Mom soup-a-pal-ooza. I've been eating lots of delivery and sandwiches and yogurt and popcorn. 

The Bay Area has so many local purveyors of great prepared food. The other day I noticed that Aidells has started making meatballs. I grabbed a package without looking too closely and got the Teriyaki, which I ate with rice. I had also purchased some Pasta Shop tomato sauce thinking they were a more traditional Italian and I had some dried pasta from a Christmas food basket Kristina had sent. So I got the Italian version and tossed all of that together and added a bunch of arugula and had enough for a few days. Technically all processed food but also local and of a pretty great quality. 

In my perfect world I'd make jars of tomato sauce every year with tomatoes, onions and herbs that I'd grown in my garden. I'd make my own hand rolled pasta. I have done and it's not that hard. And of course my own meatballs. But I don't live in that world. 

There's a local company that makes fantastic tamales. Also good when I don't want to cook. And I use their chips to eat hummus. Processed food. 

When I was younger and had the strength and stamina to cook all day at a restaurant I often resorted to eating other people's pre-cooked food. I've never really lived the completely home made life of my dreams. It's not always a bad thing. 

I am snapping out of my can-not-cook doldrums. Debbie says there's great asparagus at the market and she may bring me some. I'm already thinking curry.

I was going to write ...

... about my funny looking pancakes. There's a picture of them taken at Mom's house on Flickr and I feel like I used to be able to put a picture from there into a post but I was unsuccessful. I was able to add it as a post. It's below this one. I didn't realize how blurry the TV screen was looking at it on my phone. So I fooled around with the blog template and it's better but not exactly what I want yet. I keep having the same experience over and over as I play with my web stuff. A program tells me it can't do what I'm asking it to do but it doesn't say why. I got the Kristina picture more or less where I want it. I got the share buttons back. But now all the side bar stuff is at the bottom.
The thing about my funny looking pancakes is that they come out that way because I cook them in a pan and the batter spreads out and meets creating a flat line at the intersection. So they're round on one side and then triangular-ish on the other. If I'm very careful and make small enough pancakes I can avoid this but I am not always careful. I want a griddle. On my stove. Or at least this one. But I don't make pancakes often enough to justify buying one. Mom has one but it's on top of the cabinets and I couldn't get up there.
I never feel like making them in the morning. It's another thing I will do if there is someone else around. At Mom's I made the batter the day before. A double batch. I put a bunch in the freezer for her. I do that for myself sometimes. I made them last night. I ate a couple as I went and made one slightly larger with the end of the batter. It was nice and round. I ate it. I now have three containers of pancakes in the freezer.
I can't stop tweaking the template. But I have in fact written about my funny looking pancakes.
Heh.  

Happy Martin Luther King/inauguration pancakes.

Happy Martin Luther King/inauguration pancakes., a photo by fatshadow1008 on Flickr.

Mommy Food

The beet and artichoke salad with black been soup.

I think I do a fair job of cooking for one but I am always more inspired when cooking for someone else. Maybe inspired isn't the right word. It's just that there are days when I don't want to cook but if someone calls and is coming over a switch gets flipped. I want to cook for them. These yearly extended visits with Mom always mean lots of cooking. But cooking for Mom is limiting. All she wants is soup. I can put a protein, a carb and a veg on a plate and she'll go on and on about it being so much food! I can put those same three ingredients in broth and she might have seconds. No matter how she protests about the amount of food she always has room for desert. And several sweet snacks during the evening. She isn't interested in trying anything new and once thought a roasted beet and artichoke salad was "too weird".

She loves the soup I make. She praises me and tells everyone how great my soups are. Meanwhile I'm thinking of all the things I might do if I were not so constrained.

Her thinking is bent from years of dieting. She binges and purges. She's been on so many liquid only dietsin her life. I remember her sitting at the dining room table sipping from a can of some liquid diet thing. She doesn't purge much anymore but she talks endlessly about how fat she is. She really isn't. After I'd been there a month people were telling her that she looked like she was losing weight. She checked and had lost a few pounds. She wasn't happy because it was only a few pounds.

I do like knowing that I'm feeding her good food. Then the holly-daze began and there were cookies, candy and such.

When she's here we go to Debbie's Mom's house for dinner and lament our lack of leftovers the next day. This year Mom invited friends and I cooked. She wanted sweet potatoes with marshmallows. Not my thing but I made them. I insisted on mashed potatoes and gravy, which was a fight because it was "too much". I made green beans and brussel spouts. Mom made cranberry sauce and a mince meat pie. Her friend brought a cranberry salad. I bought a legless turkey because I wasn't paying attention in the store but it worked out. We had versions of the dinner for days afterward, which more than made up for our leftover deprivation. I had enough turkey to freeze.

A few weeks later my cousin decided to come visit on his birthday. He intended to take us out for dinner but I didn't want to miss my opportunity to cook for him and his partner and brother (also my cousin). I roasted a beef tenderloin. Made mashed potatoes, asparagus and biscuits. I made an apricot and cherry upside down cake, which I try to do every year because it's Mom's favorite. It was fun and appreciated. 

I baked fewer cookies than I usually do but I made several different kinds and we had fun distributing them to Mom's neighbors. I insist on good food for the actual holidays. We had clam chowder on Christmas eve but I got sick on Christmas. We had Campbell's chicken noodle that night. I crave that soup when I'm sick. Made me sad though. I had purchased  scallops, which I tossed in the freezer.

Debbie sent us her caramels and brittle and a variety of caramelized nuts rolled in cocoa powder. Mom bought me a box of Sees. Mom used me as an excuse to buy a lot of stuff. I don't actually like boxes of mixed truffle candy that much and I can't eat much sugar in the coarse of a day. I'm really only interested in chocolate. But she buys it all "for me" and eats most of it. I think she did gain weight but really, it's the holidays. I am always annoyed by diet talk but during the holidays I am completely intolerant.

I made the scallops for New Years eve with pancetta, mashed cauliflower and asparagus. I made cinnamon rolls at some point and waffles and pancakes. When January arrived we were back to soup. I left her with a freezer full of soup, chicken stew, macaroni and cheese, spinach lasagna, pancakes, waffles, corn muffins and biscotti.

She really never liked to cook and now she hates it. She makes very good whole wheat bread in a bread machine and she makes good blueberry muffins. Every Sunday she made us poached eggs on English muffins and Morning Star sausage. She took me out a few times. I had more iceberg lettuce in three months than I've had in decades. I had a pretty great hamburger at Five Guys. Great is a relative term because if I had to choose between five guys and not fast food type burger I'd choose the latter but it was OK. They pile so many French Fries in the bag it's impossible to finish them. Interesting experience.

I've been home for two weeks. Haven't cooked more than a scrambled egg. I've been eating delivery and sandwiches. It's been good. But it's been cold and I find myself craving red bean and kale soup. Ah well. Soup is good.  

Guilty

Gabrielle Hamilton says she doesn't understand the notion of guilty pleasure. She eats what ever she wants. I feel the same way. Pleasure and guilt are oxi-moronic.  But there are foods that embarrass me. Like baloney. At least once a year I crave a baloney sandwich. It's a childhood memory thing. My grandmother used whole wheat bread long before it was cool but sometimes she'd make a sandwich on doughy hamburger buns. I think there was lettuce and tomato but I'm not sure. These days I eat baloney on crunchy baguette or ciabatta, mayo and tomato, watercress if I have it. They make really good baloney, which I buy when I see it but I'm OK with any kind.
The three things that influenced my thinking about food were diet history, hippie health food as a way of rejecting the main stream and my years in restaurants. I'm not always sure which of those things is influencing me at any given time. My ideas about snacks are full of craziness.
Grandmom rarely served any snacks. Maybe a sour ball. Sometimes on summer evenings she'd make root-beer floats and serve them with pretzels. I'd scoop the ice cream with a pretzel. Salty, sweet and bubbly. If she had her Bridge club over she's serve mixed nuts and I could have a few. Potato chips were a side dish, like with a baloney sandwich.
As an adult I thought of most chip things as empty calories but I'm not sure why. It might have come from dieting but I think it was also part of the hippie health food thing. There were no hippie health food chips then. But for some reason corn chips were OK. Why was corn a better starch than potato? There might have been a reason but I can't remember it. Popcorn was OK too. Usually at a movie. Usually with brewers yeast.
Maybe part of why I didn't eat chip type thing was because I didn't usually have a lot of money. If I wanted something salty I ate nuts. I ate M&Ms with peanuts because the protein in the nut made the chocolate OK. I don't even know what I mean by that.
I do remember being offered some kind of salty snacky thing when I was a preteen hanging out with some friends. I'd been dieting and knew I'd be cheating but I also wanted to be normal and fit in. I might as well have been smoking crack. 
For some reason lately I've been wanting cheese puffs. I think I saw them on a movie or something and it stuck with me. So yesterday I bought some hippie health food type cheese puffs. I watched TV and ate empty calories. It was fun. I'm not sure it was something I'll do anytime soon again. They didn't sit that all that well. 
I don't feel guilty about these things but I do feel like I'm doing something wrong and I really don't know exactly why. I don't feel that bad. I mostly feel confused.  

Herstory

I pretty much stopped dieting, or eating to lose weight when I was seventeen. It was the sixties and I was influenced by Frank Zappa singing: there will come a time when you won't even be ashamed if you are fat and feminism and the general culture of peace and love and rejection of main stream culture. I didn't really internalize the idea of fat as part of my identity until much later. I continued to think that being fat was a pathology and that if I worked on my psychological issues I would naturally lose weight. In my early twenties I titled a journal: Adipose Agony because I was still fat after so much self help work.
My thoughts about food moved toward hippie health food. I ate bowls full of yogurt and wheat germ. I ate brown rice and veggies. I drank Lapsang Souchong. But I also experimented with indulging cravings for things like M&Ms as a way to shift any psychological addiction.
I  began to work in restaurants at sixteen but it wasn't until I was in my early twenties and got a job in a French restaurant that I began to think like a foodie. I started as a dishwasher. The chef was Italian, oddly enough, and decided to teach me about food. I remember him literally sticking things in my mouth and asking if it was good. I had no idea. I knew what I liked and I learned to like new things but I had no sense of what made things good, better or best.
I am diabetic by one point. I never remember the numbers that define things but I am literally diabetic by one point. I know that those numbers were redefined at some point but I've always been told I was borderline diabetic. My doctor isn't worried because my numbers don't jump around. Every year I get blood work and every year it's the same. My cholesterol numbers are great.
In my forties I noticed changes in my ability to digest fats, sugars and carbs and in my fifties things changed again. I noticed because I got stomach aches. I've adapted my consumption and manage to keep the stomach aches at bay most of the time. As a result I eat in what would probably be considered a very healthy manner by most standards.
My first concern is getting enough protein. I rely on eggs for breakfast to some extent. And then some other kind of protein like fish, meat, beans, cheese later in the day. I always have fruits and veggies. I eat most of my carbs and fats early in the day so I can digest them before time to sleep. I have something like candy, cookies, cake, ice cream every day but I can usually only have one thing (or suffer a stomach ache) and I usually eat what ever I'm going to have very early in the day. I drink lots of water. Little caffeine. Not much salt.  
How I eat is also determined by the seasons. If you read me at all you probably know that I if it's summer I want to be eating a peach every day. Peas start in spring but sometimes I can get them all summer. Berries are in abundance and so good. Tomatoes get better and better as the summer goes on. At some point in the fall I'm eating apples. I eat more warm food in the winter. Cold food in the summer. Because I live in San Francisco it can feel like winter in July and summer in December, which keeps things interesting.
I need variety to feel happy but that's not hard for me. I enjoy the process of figuring out what to eat. I never think about eating to lose weight but I do have a diet of sorts. We all do. A diet is how you eat.
Dieting, or eating to lose weight, is unsustainable for most people. I've met very few people who don't care what they eat on a day to day basis. People like to eat the food that makes them happy. Fast food doesn't make me happy. But I have learned that some people love it. Hard for me to accept but it's true. I don't have much trouble not eating a lot of the candy, cookie, ice cream, cake part of my diet because it doesn't feel good. The only time I every crave anything is when I try to not eat it at all.
I didn't always have to put much thought into what I needed to eat. I didn't get the stomach aches when I was younger, or certainly not as easily. After cooking all day I often didn't feel like cooking for myself and have eaten lots of popcorn and yogurt dinners. I've also had a bag of something ( cookies, pretzels) open next to me on the desk and eaten most of it without paying attention. But those days are gone now. My body complains too loudly and too quickly.
Sometimes I'm not in the mood to think about food and not in the mood to cook. I order a pizza or some Chinese food and sometimes it works out. But most of the time I spend any where from twelve to twenty four hours in misery while my digestive system grumbles and complains.
Also when I was young I smoked and if you gave me a choice between a cigarette and food I'd pick the cig. I was still fat.
I've been on the drugs and alcohol diet. I was still fat.
I've been on the poverty diet. I was still fat. 
I am fat by nature. How fat may be about how much I eat and how much I exercise but in my experience the thinnest I've ever been was still fat.  
I love and respect food. Food is about comfort. And community. And pleasure. And so many things that I am not willing to give up.      

Birthday Food

Last year I took pictures of what I ate on my birthday and posted them on Facebook. It was fun. I mean I am plenty critical of Facebook but my birthday was an example of a good thing. All day long I got messages from friends. Friends from every phase of my life. And then I'd post a picture of a meal and get likes and it was just fun. I did it again today.

I always want eggs for breakfast. Always. Sometimes I eat yogurt in the summer and oatmeal in the winter but I mostly eat eggs. I also always want triple cream and I only eat it on special days.  It's asking a lot of my ageing digestive system to eat eggs and toast and then triple cream and toast so I had the latter for breakfast last year and it worked out very well. This year I had it again. I like St Andre but I've been getting Cowgirl Creamery Mt Tam. It's so good. Crunchy  Acme bread, peaches, strawberries and coffee. Great start to the day.

I had to wash an inch of dust of off my martini glass. I think the last time I used it was on my birthday last year. I really like the taste of alcohol. Always have. And I drink top shelf. Bombay Sapphire when it comes to gin. But today I added the smallest amount of pomegranate juice in the gin. I always get a twist in my martinis but I do like olives on the side. Creminelli Barolo. Lovely snack. 

This picture kind of cracks me up. It does reflect the blur in my vision after the snack. I used to always want lobster on my birthday. In fact I didn't really eat red meat until I was in my forties. I'm not sure if it was a hormone shift but I became meat obsessed in my forties. I still eat it as a special thing. Watercress is my green of choice and I've developed a taste for breakfast radishes recently. A glass of Pinot. Funny. There was a time when it would have been a bottle. 

And. Of course. Cake and ice cream. Chocolate cake. Vanilla ice cream. Still in the plastic clam shell. Happy birthday to me. 

  

Just Another Bowl

Dinner. Starts with a spring onion and pork loin in olive oil in a pan. Then the kale. After a minute I put in some chicken stock (water if I don't have stock around ) and a hand full of peas. I added a slab-o-feta tonight for creaminess. I've been eating a version of this two or three times a week for a month or so. The protein changes. I use Bruce's stuff a lot. Sometimes Grana. Sometimes chard instead of kale. Peas are a recent addition since the season has just arrived.

Still thinking about food in Gabrielle terms although I will probably never eat the way she does. She says she eats when she's hungry, is never ashamed of anything she eats and doesn't understand things ideas like comfort food. However she clearly understands how comforting food can be. 

The last section is about her trips to Italy to visit her in-laws. She mentions parmesan omelets several times. I'd never thought about parm for an omelet. I don't really eat that many omelets. I tried it and it was good. She also used mayo instead of butter to make a grilled cheese sandwich. I am very curious about that.

She doesn't like food blogs because she's always seeing bad grammar, syntax and spelling. 

Yes. 

Well.

I don't like that many food blogs myself but mostly because they're boring. 

And this one is  no doubt boring. 

Heh.      

Gabrielle

I do not want to finish this book. I'm enjoying it too much. I think it's a good enough read for anyone but if you've worked in a restaurant it's like meeting your new best friend. I was trying to finish it today but after reading for awhile I Googled her and watched videos of her in her kitchen. I recommend it.
Eventually I got hungry. I chopped a Spring onion in a bowl. Dumped in a can of tuna. Swack of mayo. Squirt of mustard. I was sad because I had no celery. Happy because I had lemon. Tossed in a large handful of watercress and chopped in some breakfast radishes, which added the missing celery crunch. I've been experimenting with not eating carbs in the evening in deference to my cranky digestion and it does seem to help.  But I was really hungry so I made a piece of toast. Grabbed a handful of cherries and went back for more Gabrielle.
On Saturdays Debbie takes me to shop. Every week I buy what Acme ciabatta so I can make French toast on Sundays. I like it because of the crust to bread ration. I slice off a chuck and slice that the way you would if you were making a sandwich. So there's a lot of chewiness. But before that, on Saturday night I slice off a small piece of the end and eat it with butter. It's a risk because it's carbs and fats in the evening and sometimes my digestion gives me trouble but I can't resist when the bread is fresh. I was thinking about it when I ate my toast. I was thinking about the difference between cold butter and fresh bread and butter melted on warm toast. Both good. I'm thinking about these things because of how she writes.
Gabrielle writes a lot about eggs. People making eggs. Eating eggs. Cooking eggs. I love her desire to feed people with good solid well made food. The food you remember. Food that comes from your life and experience.
I just do not want to finish the book.