My Eskimo

"The loss, you know what I mean? The... the disappointment in yourself. The anger that turns into disappointment. The despair.

Like the guy who's sittin' at the bar and a priest walks in, pulls up a chair. The guy says, "Wait a minute." He says, "I hate to tell you this, don't waste you're time, but I happen to know there's no God." The priest says, "Yeah, how's that?" The guy says...

"I am an explorer in the north pole. I've been caught in a blindin' storm once. Freezing. I was blinded, freezing to death and I prayed, if there is a God, save me now. Now God didn't come."

The priest says... you know, "How's that?" He says, "You're alive. He must have saved you."

He said, "No. God never showed up. An Eskimo came along. Took me back to his camp and saved me." That's Janice. She's my wife and she's sittin' right there. She's my Eskimo." (The Town, 2009)

...

Imagine you are a swimmer. You've been a swimmer all your life. And one morning you wake up, or maybe it's been happening gradually, you can't remember, but you wake up and your pool has become a big, tumultuous, roaring ocean. The waves are crashing around you, there is salt in your eyes and its hard to keep your head above the water. You are drowning.

You've been treading water, floating on your back, grasping for safe harbor for hours, maybe months, who is keeping track. Where is the lifeguard?! You might say, to yourself, angrily. You have forgotten. You are the lifeguard. No one is coming for you.

Vulnerable, you float alone in your ocean. You pass in and out of consciousness - in and out of reality. Each time you think you see the glimmer of shore in the distance, you cannot reach it. It moves farther and farther from you the faster you swim. You are thrashing and kicking but you never reach refuge. So you float, helpless. Defeated.

When you have finally given up hope of rescue, admitted you can no longer fight - it is over -

there they are.

But they do not reach into the swirling, whirlpool you are spinning in to pull you to shore.

They do not lift your lifeless body from the waves. They say

swim.

They say, swim. You can. You will. You are strong.

They say, I will wait for you on the shore. swim.

Now in that moment, you can choose to not trust this. No one has come for you before. You have been alone. You are mad. You scream, "leave me! let me die here!".  Maybe not your body, but your soul. Your ability to love. To love yourself. You let your pool become an ocean, after all.

Or you can swim. For your life. For your love. For your self.

And when you reach the shore, because you will reach it, even if it takes hours or weeks or years, you will be ready. You will be changed.  And when they come to take your hand, your ocean will slip away, shrinking to nothing, a puddle.  You are too strong now to let that sea take this from you. This opportunity to live. To love.


I have fought for this life but

you are my beacon of hope.

...

I have been working on this from some time now, and if you know me well enough, you'll have to excuse my swimmer's metaphor. It is ultimately, the most fitting.

Cocoa Devil's Food Cake

It is maybe unethical of me to make this cake only because of the yogurt in my fridge that is about to go bad. And because I went running. So I can eat all the cake I want! Right?

It might seem like I haven't been cooking lately... but you would be wrong! I've made lots of good stuff from Joy (and some not so good...my fault), including risotto (my first!), pork chops, and cinnamon raisin milk bread. But these past few weeks... have been quite testing. My head has been too full to write anything worth reading.

What will you need ?

2 c. cake flour (or 2 cups reg. flour - 4 TBS flour + 4 TBS corn starch)

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 c. sugar

1 c. buttermilk or yogurt

1/2 c. cocoa powder

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 c. butter

1 c. sugar

2 large eggs

Icing (of some kind - you'll have to get creative - mine was awful.)

Sift together cake flour, baking soda and salt. If you "made your own" cake flour. Sift it to death. 

In a separate bowl, whisk together 1 c. sugar,1 c. buttermilk or yogurt, 1/2 c. cocoa powder, 1 tsp vanilla. It should look similar to what cake batter from a box looks like. 

In a bowl, or your sweet Kitchenaid mixer, combine softened butter and 1 c. sugar. Beat on high until fluffy. Add your flour mixture, alternating with the chocolate mixture, until combined. 

Put in 2 9x9 cake pans and bake 25-30 minutes at 350˚F (checking frequently toward the end).

Frost and eat!

The Real Roux

~ 1 year ago, I made my first roux. If you don't have a clue what I am talking about, a roux is a "thickener for savory sauces" and is your most common base for your white sauces and cheese sauces and that liquidy stuff inside your chicken pot pie. I promise, even if you still don't know what I am talking about, you love a good roux. And you want to be able to make one quickly and without too much thought. It's just butter and flour after all.

Nevertheless, when I first attempted cheese sauce (gorgonzola of course, if you know Ethan, you'll know he has a weak spot for anything gorgonzola), I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off because I was sure I would ruin it. Of course I would ruin it. That's my MO.

But one full year of practice later, I have created the perfect gorgonzola sauce. 

There are, technically speaking, 3 types of roux: white, blonde and brown. They vary depending mostly on how long they are cooked (and how they taste and what you would use them for).   Today I am making a white roux for gorgonzola sauce with pasta. But I won't tell you how to make the gorgonzola sauce. It's a secret. But I'll give you one hint:

Drink at least 4 glasses of Moscato while preparing it.

Not kidding.

Béchamel sauce

(i.e. white sauce, i am trying to expand my vocabulary)

 

What will you need to make a roux?
2 TBS BUTTER (DO NOT use a butter "alternative". You will bring shame to your family.)
2 TBS Flour 

What will you need to make white sauce?
1 c. milk (and/or cream)



What will you need to make gorgonzola sauce?
Gorgonzola

secret ingredients. Get your own. 

Melt 2 TBS butter over low/medium heat

Add 2 TBS flour and whisk over heat until fully combined (~1-1 1/2 minutes).

Meanwhile, scald 1 cup milk in a separate pan. If you need practice multitasking, this is a good exercise. I have made this both with and without scalding the milk and I would testify that scalding is the way to go, even if it is a pain in the ass. It really deepens the flavor of the sauce and aids in consistency.

Heat the milk until small bubbles start to form around the edge of the pan, no more, no less. Add milk to your roux a bit at a time, whisking constantly until combined.

Continue whisking over heat until the sauce begins to thicken. Thicker is better, because you can always thin with more milk if necessary. At this point add all your secret ingredients and continue stirring until desired consistency is reached.

At this point, I don't suggest using cheddar unless you have a game-plan already (please please share it with me!). I've attempted several times and it always becomes a regular disaster - bad consistency, bad flavor - its a dinner nightmare.

Combine sauce with 2 cups cooked pasta to feed your hungry boyfriend.

 

The Joy of Cooking: 4 weeks of recipes from one of the most beloved cookbooks of all time

There is at least one good reason print books should never be retired: cookbooks. When you walk into someone's kitchen, you can tell the great cookbooks. They are the ones with the food stuck to them, the stains, the pages stuck together or falling out. Dropping my Kindle into a bowl of cake batter won't work out well for anyone.

So this month I'll be bringing you recipes from "The Joy" 75th anniversary edition which I happened upon last year for $9 on Groupon (plus free shipping!).  It is a journey through time - a story that builds from a desperate and enduring woman's heartbreak during the great depression to a nine-times revised bestseller referenced by chef's everywhere. Another story about a woman who took her reckoning, and transformed it into something incredible.

Here you can learn skills like how to skin and carve a rabbit (who knows when that might actually come in handy).  Or learn how to make Kentucky Burgoo, apparently a long-time, catch-all of southern cooking (...something about feeding a single town from one very large pot).  You can also learn the finer points of place setting, brining, making coffee, table decor, and menus for occasions from afternoon tea to formal dining to backpacking. Since my only claim to fame in those categories is making a mean cup of coffee, you can see how this might be useful for me. Or anyone not growing up with home-ec.

Today I will be bringing you (my take) on whole wheat muffins. Today I was out and about at the Main St. Cafe in Stockbridge (my choice cafe in Southern Berkshire County, so far) and they had some real-delicious looking muffins. But I try not to get too decadent over lunch. So here I am, eating muffins for dinner. But they're whole wheat, so that's legit...right?

Strawberry-Pecan Whole Wheat Muffins

Reading about muffins, you'll learn that you're never intended to mix the batter smooth - which you would never quite guess from $.50 box of Jiffy (which I also love). You can add about anything to muffins...including Pineapple, which had never occurred to me before. Guess I'll have to try this. There is also a section that states, you can add more nutritional value to about any flour based recipe by adding 1 TBS wheat germ, 1 TBS soy flour, and 1 TBS dry milk powder to the bottom of your measuring cup before measuring. Don't tell Ethan. He hates when I add wheat germ to things.

 What will you need?
1 2/3 c. whole wheat flour
1 c. whole wheat flour
1 TBS wheat germ (optional)
2 tsp. baking powder
1 1/4 tsp. salt
1 large egg
1 1/4 c. milk
1/4 c. honey (or molasses)
2 TBS softened butter
1 c. chopped strawberries (optional)
1/2 c. chopped pecans (optional)
2 TBS flax seeds

 Mix dry ingredients (flours, baking powder, salt) together in a boil, set aside. In a large bowl, combine egg, milk, honey and butter. Mix dry ingredients in to wet ingredients "in a few swift strokes". Before the dry ingredients are all combined, add strawberries and pecans.

 Fill well-greased muffin tins 2/3 to all-the-way full. Bake at 400˚F for ~20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. I made mine quite large and my recipe made 15 muffins.