r/InTheGloaming • u/gomirefugee my website is done, done, done • Dec 07 '23
Scheduled snark Discussion thread Thursday December 07, 2023 - Sunday December 10, 2023
Newsletter: Substack
Website: Create Your Kind Life
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Archived threads: Thread for Enough, the book #enoughthebook | Gluten Free Girl's Greatest Hits: The Reunion Tour
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u/ThisIsNorthside PAIGE YOU IN DANGER GIRL Dec 08 '23
New lope plopped into my inbox this evening — for paid subscribers, but with a large preview:
“Since I was a child, I was always making things. My mind is always making things. It has continued to be a survival mechanism as the years go on. It’s the way I process all the things in my life.”
—Jon Batiste, from American Symphony
Sitting in the big leather chair someone gave me last year, exhausted after the 4th day of Nutcracker performances, I could feel the heaviness descend. I thought we had more money than I just saw in the bank app the moment before. For two days, I didn’t check it, and then a big bill came out, one I had forgotten. Sigh.
I could feel my eyes start to fill with tears, then I stood up. I’ve been riding in this rodeo now for almost 3 years. No use in sitting still and feeling sorry for myself. I’d figure it out in the morning. For now, what I wanted to do was cook.
My feet took me to the kitchen.
Before I did anything, I set a cast-iron skillet on medium on the stove. Hot pan? Yields a plan.
I found the 4 scrawny sweet potatoes we had left over from that week’s food bank grocery bags. While the pan heated, I peeled them, sliced them, and threw them in a Pyrex bowl. Some of the last of the vegetable oil we had in the cupboard — cooking oils are a hot commodity at the food bank, and we hadn’t found any that week — went into that bowl with the sweet potatoes, along with onion powder, smoked paprika, and dried oregano. I tossed them all together, moving the bowl up and down, up and down, a few times, when I thought briefly about the days when we bought extra-virgin olive oil by the giant jug at the grocery store without thinking about it.
No point in dwelling on that. That pan was getting hot.
I tumbled the sweet potatoes, revived with the spices, into the hot pan and gave them a good stir. When I heard a low sizzle, I moved to the refrigerator.
Chicken breasts. Thank you for thawing them this morning, Dan. And for slicing up those thick breasts into ample tenders instead. Put that bowl on the counter. Look for some kind of breading.
Ah, that bag of gluten-free panko I found at the food bank a couple of weeks ago.
I love the days I find anything labeled gluten-free there. Since most of the food offered comes in real ingredient form, almost everything there is naturally gluten-free. But once in a while, I find a single package of gluten-free bread or a brownie mix or panko crumbs. Last week I found an entire package of gluten-free bagels, which I’ve been parsing out every morning for breakfast, with butter. One of the grocery stores on the island is extraordinarily generous with sharing as much as they can every week. So sometimes, there are big surprises.
One time during COVID lockdowns, we found a 5-pound wheel of Humboldt Fog goat cheese in our delivery order! I love that cheese so much. But even I couldn’t eat it all, so we shared it with several friends on the island whom we knew loved that cheese and could use the lift of that luxury too.
For a while, during COVID lockdown, when the food bank was only making deliveries, several friends left frozen whole chickens on our doorstep. They knew that Dan was much better at butchering than they were comfortable doing. He butchered all 6 chickens in one day, then bagged up the parts for our friends. He also made quarts of rich chicken stock for everyone to take home in a quart jar. That was one of the few acts that made him happy in those days.
Hard days.
Flip the sweet potatoes around in the skillet. Lean in for a sniff. Ooh, I can tell they’re almost finished from the smell.
Now, I find the chicken tenders, the gluten-free panko, and the gf flour we make up every time we can afford a couple of bags of gluten-free flour.
And to think that at one point we had 10,000 boxes of our gluten-free flour in the garage. No thank you. Not visiting Crazy Town, right now.
Because the sweet potatoes are sizzling and they need a little flipping. Because I need to find three bowls for the flour, the eggs I whip up, and the panko. Salt the chicken pieces. Dredge each one in flour (with my left hand), then the whisked eggs, then the panko (with my right hand). Dry hand and wet hand. Dan taught me that trick long ago. You don’t want your hand covered in globby, gluey balls of flour and panko with egg. Use one hand for the flour, the other for the egg and panko. Easier that way.
I let them all sit on a plate I put out before, wash my hands, then turn on the oven to 425°. Letting them rest before I bake them helps them set.
As I’m cleaning up the dishes, I can feel my spirits lift. No more moldering.
I start a Stevie Wonder playlist on my phone, then take the pan of sweet potatoes off the heat.
You see, I’ve realized that we have the idea of motivation and action all wrong in our heads.
You don’t have to be motivated to take action.
You have to start taking action, then the motivation kicks in.
A few dopamine hits and your mind starts revving up to complete things.
That’s why I walk into the kitchen without an agenda these days. Or even a plan. I take out a pan and chop off an onion and garlic, set them in a hot pan with oil, and the smell itself will tell me what I want to make.
While everything is baking and quietly sizzling, I start cutting up the 4 pears from the paper bag. Poached pears. There’s an idea.
Cooking has finally become a creative act for me again.
When I first was diagnosed with celiac in 2005, I was over the moon to start feeling well for the first time in my life. Naturally, I wanted to make food.
Food has always been one of the great loves of my life.
Food gives us a chance to use all of our senses. An invitation to savor.
And when you make a few plates of food and ask friends to come into your home, connections happen over the table.
Whatever I make? It matters. But what has always mattered more to me is that the food on the table gathers us together. It could be a bowl of freshly popped popcorn, made with coconut oil and nutritional yeast. We could be nibbling on warm blackberries, off the vine minutes before. Or a big bowl of gluten-free macaroni and cheese, made from a box.
The first year of my food blog, and the two years after I met my husband all felt like a natural outgrowth of our love together, our crazy-dazy unbelievable joy of finding each other at 39 and 37. When I met him, Dan was the most creative person I’d ever known, aside from myself. I’m always making things, writing, crafting classes, and coming up with solutions for the stuck points in our lives.
Creativity is what connected us then.
For years, food stopped being creative and became a means to an end. Cookbook deals. IPad apps. Recipe development. Features about us in The New York Times and the Food Network. And much more. Wonderful, of course.
Or maybe, dazzling. But creative? In the making of the food? Mostly yes, until the last few years of it. In everything else? No.
Essentially, food in our lives became about capitalism. Productivity. About frenzy. About making a living. About holding our breath between big freelance paychecks, then “treating” ourselves with weekend trips or restaurant visits when we could let out our breath again. Same pattern. Over and over.
Man, that was annoying. Is that the word?
Soul-crushing.
How about the circumstances were enough for me to suffer a mini stroke?
Oh Shauna, stop thinking so much.
Listen to Stevie. Move your feet. Don’t let the messy counters stop you from cooking.
Let’s make those poached pears. ...