In this last half-year plus a little, I've been pulling a bit of a Julie and Julia. I haven't been quite cooking my way through a cookbook and finding it to be a form of self-discovery, but I have been turning my kitchen into a psychiatrist's couch. It started quite innocently, and out of a practical necessity, but starting in early May and pretty much continuously up to and through today and into the foreseeable future, I am in the kitchen nearly every single day. I am in there cooking, baking, candy making, canning, preserving and preparing food in nearly every conceivable manner. If I have enough energy to get out of bed (and honestly, some days it doesn't happen and some days it barely happens), but if I can do it, even if it's for an hour, I go in the kitchen and I cook. And when I do, I feel better. Not physically, but emotionally and spiritually, I feel better. Cooking has been therapy for me, because it's something that I know but it's also something that I really can't ever peak at no matter how long I keep at it. Like art, if one has talent, they only get better with practice.
These last couple of months have involved planning and now executing my gift project for this year. I decided months ago, really at the very first thought of Christmas, that if I gifted this year (and there are years that I haven't), that the gifts would not come out of a store, at least directly. To anybody I'm gifting this year, they are getting a basket of homemade foods: pickles, homemade canned pie fillings, jams, jellies, chutneys and other sauces, and finally, baked goods and homemade candy. It's personal, full of love, and something that I would love to receive. I started first with candies, and this was a leap of faith thing for me. I've never been very successful at candy-making, so I wasn't sure if I could pull it off or not. Candy, more than almost any other food making, is exact, precise and governed by a set of rules that are, for the most part inflexible. As Elle Woods says in legally blonde in a court room scene: "the rules of hair care are simple and finite. Any Cosmo girl would have known". The rules of candy making are finite, and sometimes simple, sometimes not. It is also dangerous - ask anybody who has ever sustained a burn from 375° sugar syrup. And it will happen to you if you make enough candy. I've yet to meet anybody who has made a substantial amount who doesn't have at least 1 scar from sugar napalm. Hint for candy making virgins - when you are candy making, keep a big bowl of ice water close to the stove, but also at a safe distance. Close means that you can get your appendage with searing skin in it in one second or less, but also not so close that you can splash ice water into a pot of boiling sugar syrup. It won't be pretty, unless you consider a sugar lava facial pretty. This trick is also a good one to do when you are working with a hot glue gun. As with candy making, I don't know anybody who has ever worked with a hot glue gun who has not burned themselves, and usually this happens first with your first attempt at using it. Anyone who has used a glue gun for any appreciable amount of time and claims to have never burned themselves is lying.
I entered the candy making venture with a lot of trepidation. I knew my past history with the craft and my monumental flops were not forgotten. I really didn't want a repeat performance, so I decided to take a novel approach: I would follow the directions to the last word (none of my typical winging it), and I would not try to do it without a candy thermometer. And so far this year, everything that I have made has turned out beautifully, and I'm not just doing Candy 101 recipes, I'm picking a couple of the most temperamental candies to make. Of all the recipes I've done, the one that appears on the surface to be the easiest but is in reality the most temperamental is called divinity. If you've never had it, the best description that i can give is that it is a real old-time American heartland candy that is something of a hybrid of meringue and nougat.
If the temperature of the room isn't right, divinity will fail. If it's too humid or not humid enough (25-30% seems to be about ideal), the divinity will fail. If the egg whites aren't just so, it will flop (I've found that if the whites are too fresh, it's not the best - for some strange reason, 3-4 week old whites seem to be ideal). If you look at it the wrong way, it can and will fail. Before this winter, I've never had a batch turn out right. My Mom, who is a very good candy maker, has probably about a 70% success rate. I've done 3 batches so far this year, every batch has turned out great. Unfortunately, I've already eaten about half of it (oops) so I have to make more, maybe tomorrow.
Other than divinity I've also made fudge and and peanut brittle. In my entire life, I've probably had fudge turn out perfectly once or twice, and I've made a lot of fudge (or attempted to) over the years, undoubtedly it is the candy I've tried to make more times than any other candy. It usually ends up grainy from undercooked sugar, or runny and won't set for the same reason. This year, two batches so far this year, both spectacular. I have 2 batches left to go. I've never made peanut brittle prior to this year. I love it, but I've never made it. Brittle, like divinity, is a deceptively simple recipe, yet one that I've been warned can be prone to disaster. I've found that again, if you follow the directions to a T and use a candy thermometer, you greatly improve your chances for success. Another important hint is use raw peanuts (or whatever nut you're using), unless you like the acrid taste of burnt nuts (and please don't tell me a peanut isn't a nut, I know it's a legume - go stuff it).
Raw peanuts can be somewhat difficult to find, at least this year for me, but I've found the best bet to be a health food store. And please, don't go to Whole Foods, aka Whole Paycheck, or any of the other mega Wal-Mart-esque operations. You are getting ripped off, and you're not keeping your money in your community. It might be pretty and shiny in there, and I hate to burst your bubble but the truth is, the food isn't any better than what you're going to find at your local, old hippy-run, mom and pop health food store. Every town has one, and it's good karma to support small local merchants. You might end up getting your chakras aligned or your aura adjusted without your permission, but I promise, it won't hurt. For that matter, it probably won't do anything.
Most recently I've been working in earnest on the cookies. A few weeks ago I started out by making test batches of the recipes to make sure that I could reproduce them consistently. I know what all the recipes I'm doing are supposed to look and taste like, so if it's not going to work, best to know early so that I could make adjustments or choose and make an entirely different contingency cookie. So far all's well, so it looks like this is my assortment. I've done 3 different kinds of spritz (cookie press cookies). First was standard vanilla (wreath-shaped) with sprinkes and gaudets for decoration, then peanut butter (flower-shaped) with a chocolate chip in the center of the flower, and finally chocolate-espresso (trees and wreaths) drizzled with a white chocolate ganache (slurp - these are my personal favorites). After the spritz I've done sugar cookies (baked and awaiting decoration). I did the following shapes: snowmen, stockings, stars and trees. Then this week, I started on linzer sandwiches (hazlenut cookie sandwiches with jam in the center) and pfeffernüsse (a very spiced traditional German cookie with cardamom, nutmeg, anise, black pepper and cinnamon, and dusted with powdered sugar after baking. They have a very spicy, molasses-infused flavor; not really a kid's cookie, but I love them. They shout Christmas for me. I'm also going to do peanut butter blossoms - a small thick and chewy peanut butter cookie with a chocolate kiss on top. Then maybe one more, but I haven't picked one out yet.
Once all the cookies are done, all I have left to do is prepare the baskets, and I'm done. I don't know if I've really saved any money, but these gifts feel to me as if they are filled with my love and have a bit of my heart in each one. This really has been a very therapeutic experience for me. I've really been able to open up my heart a little bit more each time I go into the kitchen, and I'm given back much reward - good food, good feelings, creation, artistic expression and pushing myself to be better. I've always known that the kitchen is a place of comfort and safety for me. I can nurture both my body and my spirit. It keeps my mind active and forces me to find focus. When I'm running on an empty tank (energetically), I can do as little or as much as I want to and am capable of. My home smells better, my belly is full (if I can eat, and that has been a challenge lately), as is my heart. I really don't have any friends or family that have quite the relationship I do with the kitchen - perhaps the closest is Deanna, but I think I even get more than her in the kitchen, at least emotionally and spiritually.
This is really the first year that I've had even a semblance of the lust for the holiday spirit that I used to have. It's not the same, but it's far better than the last two. I keep being surprised by how much sadness and loss I still feel this time of year, and I don't think they will ever likely be anywhere near what they used to be like for me before Ken died. That it happened 4 days before Thanksgiving will always place a pall over this time of year. I'm sure that over the years it will be likely to diminish somewhat, but it will never go away. Ken loved Christmas as well. Every time I hear Hark the Herald Angels Sing on the radio, my eyes pool with tears. It was Ken's favorite carol, which slays me to this day (avowed atheist that he was), but I know it wasn't the words, even though he knew each and every one in the song, it is, quite simply, just a very beautiful song. It is now probably my favorite carol as well, but every time I hear it, the waterworks open up. I just have to give in and let the tears be. They aren't mournful and dismal and depressed, they are tears that feel good. They are not just cathartic; they are, far more importantly, tears of loving homage to the man I love as I have never loved anyone before or since.
My holiday music this year is primarily coming from Sirius (DISH TV gives you the Sirius music channels), and I'm listening almost exclusively to the classical music. I don't want to hear any Christmas rock this year. It turns my stomach, to be perfectly honest. My trees are up, my lights and most of the decorations are up, and now the house really looks and smells like Christmas.
This coming Sunday, December 13, is my favorite holiday of the Advent, even more so than Christmas; it's St. Lucy's day. Most famously celebrated in Sweden, it is also celebrated in a handful of other countries as well. It honors St. Lucy, who is the patron saint of fire (she was burned alive by the Romans, and survived). No matter what they did to her, they could not get her to stop preaching the gospel of Christ. Not only did they burn her, but they gouged out her eyes (she is also the patron saint of the blind). She still continuted to preach, and the Romans only finally succeeded in getting her to stop by killing her, thrusting a sword through her throat.
It's quite interesting that Sweden is where it is celebrated most fervently, because Sweden is considered to be one of the most secular countries on Earth, but in Sweden St. Lucy's day is a national holiday, and a very big deal. Each town elects a young girl to portray St Lucy. She wears a long white robe with a red or blue sash at the waist and a crown of candles (6 or 7, I believe). She leads a procession of other children (traditionally all girls, but now co-ed), the girls wearing the same robe and sash as she, but instead of the crown of candles, they wear a crown of twigs from the lingonberry bush. If the choirs have boys in them as well, they wear long robes with tall pointed hats (like a wizard hat), both adorned with stars. They are actually called Star Boys. They typically start in a church in the evening, and then the Lucy leads her girls and boys in a procession through the town singing traditional carols, starting with, of course, Santa Lucia. I love that song, it is probably my 2nd favorite song of The Advent, close behind Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Here is a native Swede, now living in New York, who has a video blog on YouTube, and he gives a great description of St. Lucy's Day and its meaning to him:
Also, here is a really good performance by a St. Lucy's Day choir in Sweden. In addition to each town (and sometime each school) there is also a national St. Lucy comptition, and the winner's performance is broadcast nationwide. Here is part of the nationally televised celebration:
Here is another performance, probably my favorite one on YouTube:
I've never been able to be part of a St. Lucy Day celebration, and I want to some day. Actually, in the next few years I would love to go to Sweden and celebrate the day there. The other significance to this day for the Swedes is that this is one of the shortest days for hours of daylight in the year (originally it was believed that this was the shortest day of the year in Sweden), so St. Lucy Day is also a festival of lights, with entire communities aglow from candlelight. Some Swedes will actually stay up all night with candles burning, traditionally believing that lighting the darkness would give them safety and respite in the middle of a long dark winter. There are also foods specific to the day, most famously a saffron sweet bun served in the morning called Lussekatter. Translated literally it means "Lucy cats", for the shape (a twisted S) which supposedly looks something like a cat's eyes and whiskers. There is a raisin put into the center of each loop of the S, so if you lay it on its side, well...I don't know, it's a stretch to me, but come to think of it, I just might make this tomorrow for Sunday morning. I don't know why I like this holiday so much: I've never been part of a traditional celebration of St. Lucy day, but for some reason, it speaks to me, and deeply so. I think partly it might be that Montana, as many of its neighbor northern border states (North Dakota and Minnesota) and their Canadian provinces to the north (eastern British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan) have large Scandinavian populations. I had access to and ate a lot of Scandinavian food as a child, and it is definitely one of my favorite regional comfort food cuisines: meats, fish, potatoes, breads and cheeses - seriously, how can you go wrong there?
A couple of months ago, I finally went out to Target and bought a small assembly-required (a la Ikea) bookshelf for my cookbooks in the kitchen. I had just opened my last boxes from the move (a mere two years ago), and found my cookbooks. Let me qualify that; I found a few of my cookbooks. Somehow and somewhere, a vast majority of my cookbooks, many irreplaceable, were lost in the move. There was an entire 15 volume series of Family Circle recipies - all but 2 lost. There were a number of old family cookbooks, cookbooks made as fundraisers for churches, club or schools, Julia Child's The Way to Cook (replaceable, but I liked the one I had), a number of cookbooks from restaurants and wineries all over Northern California. I know that these are just things, and I've become accustomed lately to letting go of what I can't get back, but it still does hurt, and mostly because I really can't remember everything that I lost. Some of them aren't irreplaceable just because they're out of print; they're also irreplaceable because I can't remember which ones are gone. Thank God for the internet at least. It is a veritable embarrassment of riches as far as being able to find a recipe for pretty much any dish that has ever had a printed recipe, no matter how esoteric many of these recipes are. This loss has had another positive effect in this regard, that being that it has also nudged me, at times not much subtlety, to move out of my comfort zone and try new things: new recipes, techniques and cuisines. That has been my Julie and Julia experience. That, and the emotional healing that I get when I cook. It's the kind of healing that I don't think I have ever gotten from any other specific activity, except for maybe meditation, but I think the outcomes for me have been more personally meaningful and profound in the kitchen, for better or worse.
Joy of Cooking has been my go-to for the holiday season this year. There are some traditional recipes in there that you really can't find a more accurate recipe for than what is in Joy. A few weeks ago, as I opened and started to leaf through Joy semi-haphazardly, I remembered how many recipes in it have Cockaigne in the name of the recipe. In every chapter, I can guarantee you that there will be multiple Cockaignes. I was reminded how I alway wondered what the f- that word meant, and to that point I had been far too lazy to look it up. But thanks, of course, to Wikipedia, I now know what Cockaigne means. Cockaigne: "Cockaigne or Cockayne is a medieval mythical land of plenty, an imaginary place of extreme luxury and ease where physical comforts and pleasures are always immediately at hand and where the harshness of medieval peasant life does not exist." Screw the medieval, I want a Cockaigne now. I think the 21st century could benefit greatly from having a Cockaigne, or for that matter, at a minimum, at least one on every continent. Forget Bermuda, Dubai, The Dutch Antilles, the Greek Isles and Monte Carlo - I want a real honest to goodness, kicking it medieval style Cockaigne. MTV Presents Spring Break in Cockaigne. Girls Gone Wild in Cockaigne. Cockaigne and Godzilla Destroy Las Vegas. I lost my virginity in Cockaigne. Now, instead at looking at every damned Cockaigne recipe in Joy and asking myself "what in the hell does Cockaigne mean?", I now look at each Cockaigne recipe and chuckle to myself. For a mythical land, there sure are a lot of recipes that got out. From here on out, anytime somebody asks me "what do you want to do with the rest of your life?", my pat answer will be "get to Cockaigne".
Right now, it is a beautiful and cold California winter. My house looks and smells like Cockaigne, I mean Christmas. Things are going pretty damned well, considering. Still, there is a deep and unsettling uneasiness down in the pit of my stomach. Either something is missing or something needs to go missing, but that is about as far as I've gotten in dissecting this feeling. I don't know if it's the holiday blues amplified by deeply missing Ken, infirmity or just generalized unease. Whatever it is, I am coping. I don't feel like I can't handle it, but something is definitely not right. I'm just not sure I'm up to figuring out what it is, because if I do, then I have to do something about it. For now, I'm just getting through each day, keeping my head above water, my future outlook positive, and doing the best I can to live in and be fully present in each moment. For now, that, and keeping my eyes on the road and my hands busy is about all I can muster. That means it has to be enough, at least for now.
I'm also missing Montana. If I could, I would drop everything and go home for the holidays and a good month of winter. Until I build a home up there, that is not so easy. I've been trying to focus my future thinking on finding a way to make manifest building my retirement home in Montana. For a very long time now, I've wanted to have the option to be able to live around half of the year in Montana and the other half in California. I want a month of cold, snowy, crisp winter wonderland weather, but only a month. I want to be able to get away from that for the rest of the winter. I want to watch spring bring the forest to life, but also have some California spring, the prettiest time of year out here. I want the summer thunderstorms, comfortable climate and big beautiful outdoors of Montana. I really don't need much Walnut Creek summer; honestly, it's too darned hot. I really don't like having so many days of temperatures over 110° that I can't keep count. I want to watch the leaves turn color in Montana, then come to California a month later and watch it all happen again. Don't get me wrong, I love California, it is my home now, and it's a good place for me, but it isn't, never has been and likely never will be my real home. That is Montana; it always was, and it probably always will be. I've now lived half of my life in each place, so I think I know what I want. What I want is both, but if I'm pressed to say where I feel at home, that will always be Montana; it's my land of Cockaigne. I'm probably going to become the crotchety old snowbird that I used to ridicule, but that is for time to tell and is going to be my own thing to figure out as I have my Julie and Julia moment.
(Sunday morning, 3am)
This chapter is turning into a 3 day project. It's 2am, Sunday, December 13, 2009 - St. Lucy Day. After I dragged my ass out of bed around noon I did get some baking done today. Nothing else, unless you count calling Deanna and reading emails. Oh and a trip to Bed Bath & Beyond for more cooling racks (for baking, of course). I did indeed end up making the Lussekatter today. Well, that was after I got some saffron at Safeway (1.7 gm. for a mere 15.00). This was my first foray into yeast bread making in longer than I can remember. I've never had much luck with yeast doughs, ever. I really can't ever remember making a single loaf of bread that I ever thought "dang, this is good!" as I ate it. For some reason, this last half year in my Cockaigne, I mean kitchen, has been littered with a series of successes with things that I had never had success with before. I don't know what it is all about, but I'm not going to ask. I think the strategy that I've used and need to continue using is that I have induced selective amnesia about my prior culinary belly flops, and that has allowed me to work without the voice on my shoulder saying "you can't do this, you always mess it up". More than anything, I think muffling the drone of that voice that spells doom has more to do with my success and resultant confidence-building than anything else I can put my finger on.
As for my Lussekatter today, well, it is somewhat dense of a dough, very yeasty. The recipe calls for 50 gm. of yeast, which is the equivalent of 4 single-use packages of the typical yeast that you find on store shelves. It is a European recipe, so maybe the yeast is different over there. The bread does have a definite yeasty taste to it, but I've had a lot of Eastern European rolls and buns before that are equally as yeasty tasting if not even more so. They look exactly like the pictures of them from recipes and from Lucy Day celebrations in Sweden. They have a definite Scandanvian look to them; the shape is one that is very typical to Scandinavian sweet rolls that I've eaten before. They are pretty darned tasty, and the saffron gives them a very interesting flavor - complex is the best descriptor I can come up with. They aren't spicy, savory, rich or overpowering, but the flavor is most definitely complex, not your typical breakfast bun. I took a picture with my phone today, and here are the fruits of my labor (by the way, pardon the shadow in the picture. No matter what angle I tried to shoot from, I couldn't avoid the shadow from my giant cranium):
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My friends Tom and Dan in San Francisco (they used to own a deli about a block and a half from our home on Diamond St, and have been friends since 1992) are having a holiday open house tomorrow. It is also our friend Ida's 85th birthday. I'm taking over the Lussekatter, and I also put together a goodie package for Ida: some of each of the cookies that I've made, as well as some fudge, divinity and peanut brittle. Ida isn't much of a cook, but she loves good food, so I know she will appreciate it. It's my first large gathering of people since my immunity went down the toilet, but I won't stay long, and I'll keep a safe social distance. I can't stay in a bubble. I've never been that way, and it is getting to me. Not the solitude, I love that; it's the living in fear.
I just looked at the clock, it's 2am. I'm far from finished with this, but it's been sitting on the burner for 3 days, so I'm going to publish it, barely edited and definitely incomplete. More to follow from Outpost Viral.
Doggydad's Life Now: The Viral Monologues by Parry Tallmadge is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at doggydad.blogspot.com.
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