Week 2 :: Dessert (Swallowing Grief)

The past two and a half weeks, I have been swallowed by grief, and, in turn, swallowing my grief. When I am consumed with anger or anxiety, I lose my appetite, as if my body wants to starve away the very marrow of these emotions so that they lose their vice-like grip.

But for me, grief has been the opening up of a giant gaping void right in the centre of my body. My appetite has increased, and I have been reaching for slices of toast, bowls of ice cream, chocolate, candy. Last weekend's main source of energy consisted of two frozen pizzas, which heated up somewhat sadly in the oven, and which I ate sitting on the kitchen floor, moving my hand to my mouth with a complete lack of enthusiasm for what I was eating.

Today, as I prepared my lunch, I felt sadness that I could not really taste what it was that I was eating, as if all the tears and sleepless nights have rendered my tongue blind.

Tonight I sit here, as the dryer rumbles and the rain pours, sipping a cup of raspberry tea with sugar, just like my aunt used to make me every morning during the summer I was sixteen, as I lay on her couch in Austria, bed-ridden and on intense antibiotic therapy. Each sweet mouthful of tea seems to make me feel safe and hugged from the inside out, as if I were lying on her veranda snuggling with Stewart (her dog, who looks like Rod Stewart) and listening to the church bells ringing in the distance.

These are not halcyon days, but like anything, this grief too shall pass.

Week 2 :: Main (Rustically Content)

Week 2 :: Appetizer (Considering the Tomato)

I woke up this morning to water my plants.

This is the first year that I have really bothered to tend to the planters outside, for the sole reason that this year, unlike any other, I have a gustatory inclination towards them. Growing steadily and slowly outside are: swiss chard, tomatoes, strawberries, borage, mesclun mix, chives, lettuce, carrots, parsley, and basil. I can't say that I've been the most reliable of water-bearers to my wee green things, though I am making a concerted effort to care for them, to cut away the dead leaves, to test the soil to make sure that the water is reaching their roots instead of hovering somewhat uselessly on the top layer of dirt.

There's something clearly very satisfying about tending to plants, and I have never understood why gardening is such a fulfilling pastime. I suppose, in my case, that it's the stubbornness of my constitution that urges me to bloody well get on with things and do them myself. There is, of course, a willfully blind ease that comes along with popping over to the grocery and plucking a plastic clam-shell filled with brilliantly red cherry tomatoes, and feeling so very pleased that they look considerably nicer and healthier than the rather lacklustre Roma tomatoes piled in a sorry heap. But there's also a frustration there, that "if only I'd planted my tomato plants in time," I, too, would feel soulfully organic and revel in the satisfaction that I had been oh so patiently seasonal and consumed that which nature had made me wait for.

But that's not really what I think about when I stop to consider the tomato (which is not to say that I'm not an ethically inclined girl, as I too, have read more Michael Pollan than I can stomach). What strikes me is the joy of seeing this fragrantly sweet plant grow ever so slowly over the course of the summer while I go out into the world and live my life. There's a constancy in doing-it-yourself in the garden, a reassurance that no matter how many hearts get broken or how many sleepless nights I have, one day, the tomatoes will bloom, and then they will be green, and one day--hopefully in the early evening on a day in mid-August--they will be red, and you can pluck them and still taste the warmth of the sunshine in them.

I have become disenchanted, I suppose, with the notion that it would be easier to allow others to do things for me, or hold myself in a sterile environment where I am somehow safe from the world but never really safe from the whims and machinations of my own curious mind. I'm not abstaining from store-bought tomatoes (and lettuce, and basil, and so on) in attempt to deprive myself and make some statement about the strength of my conviction, or call out others as weak for not being able to bloody well stick it out and wait for the goddamn tomato (or the reprieve from depression, or the cessation of anxiety). But for the sake of my own wee green heart, which is yet to become fully ripened with the willingness to take risks and be open to the world, I shall spend my summer sitting patiently with my plants, enjoying the slow and steady pace at which they simply are becoming themselves.

Week 1 :: Dessert (Unexpected Sweetness)

I have been using soft unripened goat cheese and cherry tomatoes relatively frequently these days (as one must always use up what is still in the refrigerator) and decided to put them into what were supposed to be yesterday's rather savoury dishes. The butternut squash and chickpea paste, lacking the cumin with it was supposed to be made, was rendered even more sweet by the addition of a small pat of goat cheese. Luckily, the sharpness of the white cheddar and, somewhat surprisingly, the fresh bitterness of the alfalfa sprouts, mitigated the surprisingly overwhelming brightness of the amuse-bouches. The simple red sauce, much to my chagrin, was almost dessert-like. Usually I add in whatever half-opened bottle of red wine that is lying around, to cut the sweetness with some acidity, and I certainly failed to purchase the requisite garlic that adds bite to any pasta dish.

Then I moved on to the apple crumble.

The tartness of a Granny Smith apples is amplified a hundred-fold when baked, and in my reticence to use too much brown sugar in the streusel topping, I found myself rather shocked at the bitterness of what ought to be generally a rather succulently sweet dish.

The irony of this meal--a sort of saccharine deception--is not an unfamiliar theme in my life as of late. In the past few years, many of my confidantes and allies have betrayed my confidence despite their apparent sweetness and concern. But rather than wallowing in the misery of these moments (which, in spite of their briefness, seem to linger and simmer long after), I'm choosing instead to focus on the incredible kindnesses that have come my way.

In the past five months, I have had unexpected hearts open themselves up to me. I have encountered tenderness and graciousness as I made the difficult transition to a new university, found new friends to call my companions on my path towards health and happiness, and have constantly marveled at how my expectations have been transcended. Have I become an optimist? Not yet, certainly, but I am now more willing to accept and embrace the unexpected sweetness that emulsifies even the most dreary days with joy.

Week 1 :: The Main (Act Two)

Week 1 :: The Main (Act One)

Week 1 :: Appetizer (Assortiments D'Exploits)

Here's a small collection of past adventures in the kitchen. Baking a cherry & whiteflesh nectarine pie, a trio of christmas cookies (oatmeal with coconut, chai shortbread, and jam thumprint trinities); a gingerbread house; birthday cupcakes for a lovely lady; a lunch of goat cheese and tomato sandwiches; and simple little tomato basil towers with balsamic vinegar.

I certainly don't pretend to be a food photographer (look at those horrible shadows in the bottom two photos) but nevertheless, it's one thing to write about cooking, and quite another to actually feast one's eyes upon the meals in question.

And who can resist a cupcake?

The Menu.

During the creation of a meal, it is wise to be adaptable. Nevertheless, as with any recipe or menu, it helps to have a roadmap of sorts, a frame within which culinary artistic license can be allowed to develop organically, as it were.

So too, in the documentation of these food follies, I think it wisest to have a template.

While I am in a frenzy of cooking this week (given that the summer semester has only just begun), I must also be wary of getting absorbed in this new creative project too thoroughly, lest any reduction in the frequency of my cooking be, well, frankly anti-climactic.

To that end, the literary menu for each week:

Appetizer: A brief post of a food-related query related to ingredients, technique, etc.
Main: The creation/documentation/commentary on a 3-course meal.
Dessert: Some sort of pseudo-philosophical musing, or a new delicious and exciting culinary find.

Interesting and possibly tangential "amuse-bouches" may be sprinkled haphazardly throughout, and I make no apologies for overt indulgences in food-related punnery.

The (He)art of Eating.

M.F.K. Fisher (the delightful, quirky, and exquisite gastronomic writer) was once asked the following question: "Why do you write about food, and eating and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way others do?" In response, Fisher writes that "the easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry."

I, too, am hungry.

"I'm hungry" is not a phrase I have used often in the past few years, certainly not with the full measure of gusto and delight with which I think it ought to be used. Like any other relationship that binds up my heart, my relationship with food has been as fraught with sorrow as it has been blessed with pleasure. You see, the anhedonia of depression is particularly cruel in shattering one's gastronomic love: thick stews lodge themselves in your throat; a delicate meringue is tasteless and empty; even water fails to quench your thirst. Add to this depression an onslaught of griefs and traumas, and the need for nourishment (that most basic mode of self-preservation) becomes the most terrifying and impossible task to fulill. But the effects of malnourishment, as I have learned, are never merely cured by the reinstatement of regular and nutritious meals. One can learn to tolerate eating again, and even regain nearly a stone in weight, but still feel as empty and lethargic as on days spent fasting. So to really love that which I once believed was my enemy--food--I must embrace it with the full arsenal of love that I can muster up from within myself.

It should be noted, lest it seem that I am new to the world of gastronomy, that I have always loved cooking. Nothing compares to culinary sensations, the sheer explosion of sensory stimulation that envelops me when I cook: the sharp twinge of burning eyes when confronted with a particularly potent shallot; the satsifying juice-rivulets that escape from a sliced tomato; the joyful hiss of butter hitting a hot cast-iron skillet. Those who know me best know the glint in my eye when I am working pie dough or arranging a salad. That "je ne sais quoi" of cuisine is, really, the Buddhist practice of mindfulness at its very best, and the stomach is satisfied even as it consumes by proxy with eyes, ears, and nose.

And so, I throw myself fully into the world of cuisine, knowing well that the grief of a collapsed soufflé or a small cut of the finger painfully betrayed by the acidity of a lemon is as apt to make me cry as anything else in my life; but for the love of food, and mainly out of a profound desire to learn to love myself, I shall valiantly meet those challenges with an open heart and an empty stomach.