A LIttle Crust of Wisdom...

"A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images pre-cooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish." - W. H. Auden


The above quote could probably be considered the guiding spirit of this blog, although obviously he is using food as a metaphor for life in general, and not writing about food or dining per se. But somehow that seems appropriate here as well.

Granted, it also represents a state I strive for, rather than one that I've achieved. Somehow it seems easiest lately to achieve it in that part of my life that takes place in the kitchen.

Wild Chives

There was a moment about a month or so ago - perhaps a little more than that - when my world was suddenly coming apart at the seams, or so it felt to me. Which sounds overly-dramatic in a "hand on the forehead diva in an MGM movie" sort of way, but it felt very true at the time. I had managed for several months to put off my life, in effect, to focus on a job, and then it ended and other "BIG DRAMATIC EVENTS!" occured all at once. Or maybe it was only my worry that made it so, but it was enough to send me out of the house, into the front yard in tears. I was going mad, completely insane, and this time, this time, I was absolutely certain of it.

Then I saw, for the first time this spring, the various clumps of wild chives that had sprouted up on lawn. When had this happened, and how had I not noticed this yet? While I was busy working and doing terribly "important" things, the chives had been going about their own business of simply being, without any help from me whatsoever.

I pulled up a piece and chewed it, appreciating the bitter grassy/oniony flavor on my tongue, and remembering that I did have a bit of cilantro in the kitchen, sitting in a drinking glass on the windowsill. What would the two taste like together gently simmered in that chicken broth I also had waiting, perhaps with some matchstick carrots and other thinly sliced vegetables?

I have plans for you, I thought, and suddenly tears and fears were banished alike. Not forever, mind, perhaps not even for 24 hours, but for one moment at least I was happy and full of questions and anticipation, and that was enough. Enough to get me to start thinking about making dinner that night, which turned out to be filling and satisfying on my than one level. Enough to get me excited about making granola in time to have for breakfast, scented of coriander as I pulled two trays of it from the oven. Enough.

In the past year, food and cooking have become for me something other than a chore; in the kitchen I've discovered a place where I can be calm and centered and useful. What was once a chore for me has become more than that - it's not the activity but the attention to it that's the thing for me. It becomes a prayer, a meditation, an act of lovemaking. It also becomes an artist's canvas, a scientist's laboratory and something of a child's sandlot, where experiments and messes are allowed and even encouraged, while occasional failures are tolerated without shame.

Even though I may feel still, at times, as though I am going insane, there's still dinner to cook and a wild herbs to gather or to simply notice, and it's ok to put the insanity - mine or the world's - aside for a few minutes, not worry about where the next dollar is coming from, and find real happiness in moments like that.

Anise on my fingertips

I've hated anise my entire life. Or rather, I've hated "licorice" (black licorice, of course) and was certainly that my dislike applied to both the synthetic and the natural versions of the flavor.

There are certain flavors I have had an actual physical revulsion towards. (Just the smell of "artifical banana flavor" gum made me literally nauseous back when I was in high school. Anyone else remember BubbleYum Banana?) Rye is one of them, although for decades I assumed it was the caraway I actually disliked, and cilantro used to be another. I first tasted cilantro in a fine Vietnamese restaurant in Greensboro, NC as a college student, hated it immediately, and picked every bit of it that I could find out of my order of Buddha's Delight. Until one day, a few years ago, I suddenly decided I liked it. Not only liked it, but positively adored it, and found myself actually requesting it be sprinkled atop the braised mussels served at one of my favorite local Asian restaurants. There's a pot of it in my kitchen as I type this, in fact.

I don't know why, after years of successful avoidance, I thought to throw a couple of anise stars into my apple butter last October. Boredom, perhaps? We have a bit of anise in the kitchen, along with other strong, savory/sweet spices awaiting the first ever batch of root beer (that I doubt I'll ever get around to making.) Might as well use it for something.

This was my first ever batch of apple butter; although I've made apple sauce for years on and off, I'd never attempted apple butter, imagining it would be too hard, too time consuming, etc. However, after having made jam, jelly, chutney, pickled this and pickled that the last two harvest seasons, anything else suddenly seems a breeze. It's only time, and that I had plenty of.

I thew in the anise stars along with the cinnamon stick and so forth, and fished them out some time later. The flavor imparted in the apple butter was spicy and sweet and savory all at once, and far more subtle than I could have expected. The real pleasure came, however, when I sucked on the stars themselves - all the flavors of the apples themselves plus the anise itself were intensified on my tongue beautifully. Not only my tongue, but the anise left it's perfume on my lips and fingertips and lingered on my skin as pleasurably as it lingered in my memory hours afterward.

I was surprised to discover, sucking directly on the star-shaped pods and the seeds, that the most intense flavor came directly from the pods, not the seeds. Every recipe I've ever read directs you to put the seeds in - is it understood that the pods are included as well? It reminds me, again, of cilantro, in that every recipe I read calls for the leaves when I have found that the most intense flavoring is actually in the stems, not the leaves.

I made another batch of apple butter later tried the same experiment and discovered that two anise stars is perfect, three is one too many.

I've been wondering lately why tastes change. Why do I now appreciate anise, love cilantro, and even - goodness me - enjoy my old nemesis, carrots? (Albeit cooked to a just-so state of tenderness and sweetness, with the appropriate amount of olive oil, or back in the pot you go.) I'd love to think it has something to do with "increasing sophistication" leading to increasing adventuresomeness, but I fear that there are more mundane explanations: chemical/hormonal changes, perhaps? Or, worse yet, decreasing taste buds? Are these new favorites, these changes in taste, really the first sign of deterioration of the taste buds that happens to all of us? If that is the case. I had better enjoy anise and cilantro now, and all the other flavors that come my way, before even the hottest chunky salsa is as bland and flavorless to me as oatmeal.

I very much doubt, however, that I shall ever learn to love the taste of rye, although I may be in for a surprise there, too, someday. I've learned to welcome and enjoy such surprises lately. (The day I find myself complacently chewing on a piece of BubbleYum Banana, however, is the day I can call it quits.)