Beans! Corn! Strawberries!

A sense of impending summer bounty!

Mmmm.... Pie.

May 31, 2009
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My friend Michaela can whip up a pie like no one else I know. She is the Pie Maker. Her pie crusts are light and flaky and perfect every time. The filling is always just the right amount of sweet, complimenting the cookies n’ cream ice cream that we both agree must accompany pie. Today, we decide to make a birthday pie, because today I turn 23 years old. Happy Birthday to me! I’ve dubbed it a day of decadence, and my friends and I will celebrate the occasion by doing what we do best and enjoy most: eating delicious food. We have an amazing menu planned, a dinner of seared tuna steaks and fresh garden salad. And pie. Raspberry rhubarb pie, to take full advantage of the massive rhubarb plants growing outside my apartment. The raspberries were also grown in the garden just outside my door, frozen after last year’s harvest.

Like all good chefs, we drink while we cook. We’re approaching the end of another hot and summer-like day in May, which makes the cold beers we drink supremely satisfying (I think about my friend Elena J. Scribbles–who lives out of state and cannot join the party this year–and wonder if she too is enjoying a beer in the late afternoon sun. She promised to drink a beer in my honor today, and I have no doubt she’ll follow through).

Marah arrives, and joins us in our beer drinking and pie making. She enters in a gauzy purple slip, her summer wear of choice, and the room is instantly filled by her presence. I have known these girls forever, they are the only two friends who are still in my life from my childhood. After thinking a lot about the fluidity of relationships lately, how people come and go from your life at random, and how true friends are hard to come by, I am comforted by these constant and steady friendships. In their company, there is clarity: I am reminded of where I came from, and they help me to remember not only who I really am but who I wanted to be. Upon being bombarded by other people’s bullshit and their perceptions of me, sometimes those truths begin to slip away. I question who I really am, and I start to think that maybe the way I’m living my life is all wrong. Maybe they’re right and I don’t really know myself at all. But in this laughter filled kitchen, amid the aroma of pie baking in the oven, I am reminded that these people know who I really am because they knew me when. When the drama and game-playing of high school got heated, when the bottom dropped out at home, when the demands of college overwhelmed us and distance separated us. After seeing friends I make as an adult claim to know and love me, and then bail in tough times, I am amazed and stupefied to realize that there are people in this world who loved me as an awkward, knobby-kneed 10 year old who still love me today. In fact, the unconditional love I feel from them is palpable, and I figure if they loved me then and they still love me know, they must be the toughest, truest, and most loyal of the bunch.

The pie comes out of the oven and is so imperfect that it’s absolutely perfect. The crust is slightly burnt on top from an oven that runs too hot, and the filling is more soupy than it should be, seeping from any available opening. I can’t help but hope that my 24th year of life will be like this pie: pieced together from quality elements, shared with those I love most, and not entirely flawless but nonetheless filled with delicious surprises.

The rest of our meal turns out to be delicious as well. The sesame coated tuna steaks are perfectly cooked, and Michaela has brought a salad assembled from her own garden. The tuna is wonderfully complimented by an avocado and mango relish, and the entire dish screams "summertime!" We eat and drink until we become fat and happy. Satiated, we lounge on my deck in the twilight and look out over the garden: rows of corn protected by bird netting until it sprouts, a bamboo tripod with bean seedlings at its base, cloches filled with baby peppers and basil. It’s the calm before the storm, before the overwhelming bounty of summer, and in my minds eye I can picture the garden in full flourish. I compare it to the bounties I hope to encounter during the next year, and I think to myself: if the overwhelming love and sense of possibility I feel today is any indication of how this next year will turn out, it will be a fucking amazing year.

After the dishes are washed and put away and everyone has gone home, I am alone again. I decide to end this birthday and begin this next year by making a list of everything I am grateful for. Lungs that breathe air, a heart that pumps blood, arms and legs that work, a healthy body. The things I write down range from serious to silly. Two parents who love me. Feeling really happy today. A garden that is beautiful and that will provide me with food. The cool night breeze. Birthday beer and raspberry rhubarb pie. Having plenty of time. While mulling over all of my blessings, yet another blessing occurs to me: leftover pie. First I think, no, no Maria, show some restraint, you’ve had enough pie for one day. Then a louder and obviously more rational thought takes over and I think, what the heck? It’s my birthday!

Comfort

"The first thing we taste is milk from our mother's breast, accompanied by love and affection, stroking, a sense of security, warmth, and well-being, our first intense feelings of pleasure. Later on she will feed us solid food from her hands, or even chew food first and press it into our mouths, partially digested. Such powerful associations do not fade easily, if at all. We say "food" as if it were a simple thing, an absolute like rock or rain to take for granted. But it is a big source of pleasure in most lives, a complex realm of satisfaction both physiological and emotional, much of which involves memories of childhood." from A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman, page 129.

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I close my eyes and try to imagine the most comforting thing possible. I’m standing in my kitchen, adjusting to the cool tile under my bare feet as the thick heat of an early summer afternoon sizzles outside. It’s that perfect time of day when the sun hits my kitchen window and shines through the red and orange curtain I have hanging there, creating a rosy glow around me. Comfort, comfort, comfort, I think, rubbing the tension from my neck and shoulders and willing all of the world’s craziness to melt away.

A warm bubble bath, I think, irritated immediately since my apartment only has a stall shower to offer.

The caress of a lover. No lover tonight.

A hot cup of tea, a long massage, a satisfying meal. Then the answer comes to me so clearly that I’m surprised I didn’t think of it right away. I double check to make sure that I have all the necessary ingredients to make this delicacy I have thought of, very high on my list of "Most Comforting Things Ever"and one that will definitely do the trick of comforting me tonight: Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Of the many cookbooks I own, I choose for this endeavor a cookbook gifted to me by a friend many years ago, entitled Bitchin’ in the Kitchen: The PMS Survival Cookbook by Jennifer Evans and Fritzi Horstman. I find the title fitting for my current mood. I am not–at this time of the month–"surviving PMS," but I am bitchin’ in my kitchen, completely thrown and jarred after a day of realizing life’s small cruelties. Comfort, comfort, comfort, I think again, flipping to the recipe for "Double Trouble Chocolate Chip Cookies: When no amount of chocolate is too much." I appreciate the humor at the end of the recipe, the instructions telling me to combine all ingredients, scoop the dough into golf ball-sized balls and eat as is. "Alternative: You can also bake the cookies." Although I do anticipate many tastes of the raw cookie dough, I crave the smell of cookies baking in the oven: as much of a pleasure as actually eating them.

I start by combining 1 and 3/4 cups flour with 1/4 teaspoon baking soda. In a separate bowl, I combine 1 cup butter, 1 cup sugar, ½ cup brown sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla. As I cream these ingredients together, I let my mind wander and think about what has led to this quest for comfort. I think about you telling me that your new girlfriend is not only gorgeous, but a belly dancer to boot. On the list of things I TOTALLY could have gone without knowing... I think, shaking my head and cracking a large egg into the batter, with perhaps a little too much force. I combine 1/3 cup unsweetened powdered cocoa with 2 tablespoons milk, and add this to my butter and sugar mixture. As I slowly begin to add my flour to the bowl, I push this last thought out of my mind and turn my thoughts toward other things that life has thrown at me recently.

Like the realization of the volatility of relationships, for example, and how people come and go, in and out of your life as time passes. I consider how many times I’ve let myself think that I have found a forever friend, until something happens to remind me that this is a delusion and that nothing is permanent. As I finish my cookie recipe by adding what can only be described as a SHIT TON of chocolate chips, I consider the conditional nature of compassion and forgiveness. And with every dollop of cookie dough that I place on my baking sheet, I wonder if it’s really true that everyone will disappoint you eventually, if you know them long enough.

(I suddenly start to wonder if these Double Trouble Chocolate Chip Cookies will be affected by my mood. Will their structure change as a result of absorbing my sadness and anger, like the water crystals studied by Masaru Emoto? If I continue to brood over them, will they burn? Or, like the food cooked by Tita in Like Water for Chocolate, will the people I share my cookies with experience what I felt while baking them?)

The aroma of the chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven begins to permeate the air around me, and the smell is enough to lull me into thinking---at least for a moment---that the troubles outside my door no longer exist. Suddenly, I’m no longer rehashing arguments in my head or worrying about the future. Instead, I am transported to the past, to a time when things were simpler, when the most difficult task at hand was to stand eye-level with the kitchen counter and heed an adult’s warning to wait for those cookies to cool on their wire racks. This time, I’m the adult and I don’t wait. And in fact my cookies are not burnt, they are chewy and gooey and chocolaty and delicious. I crawl into bed with a book, my still hot chocolate chip cookies and a glass of cold milk, and I feel instantly at ease and also amazed by the power of comfort foods. If only for a short while, I’m a kid again: I feel safe and happy and warm and comforted.

Mission accomplished.

Sausage Wench

Standing in front of my stove, wooden spoon in hand, skillet of browning sausage spitting before me, I feel like a real pro. I look down at my mismatched, dull kitchen knives and my stained apron. Although it’s made to be worn around ones waist, I‘ve hitched my apron up into my armpits in an effort to shield my shirt from spatter. I don’t usually wear an apron while cooking, but the farm I work for has asked me to prepare samples of their meat products for Saturday Farmer’s Market. As I consider my position preparing a product given to me by a higher authority to serve to the masses, a thought occurs to me: "I am Maria: Grass-fed Meat Wench." No, no, that doesn’t sound right...I’m not grass-fed, after all, the meat is. "Maria: "Wench of Grass-fed Meats."

I’m determined to include the word "wench" in describing exactly what it is I’m doing right now. The word "wench," as noted by my friend Elena J. Scribbles, is the all-time most perfect word for describing someone who, like a barmaid or a drug-pusher, facilitates other peoples vices. Elena J. Scribbles would use this word to describe our position in the clinic where we both used to work, as we peddled prescriptions and handed out pills like they were Pez candy. I feel somewhat like I’m in the same position now, catering to a certain fetish (except aren’t we all, really?). This particular addiction, however, is to clean food; I’m fortunate enough to live in a community where a good portion of people are conscious about where their food comes from and what they put into their bodies. Hence, there’s a demand for the grass-fed, hormone and antibiotic-free meat that currently sizzles on my stove-top.

Tonight I’m cooking sausages. Grass-fed lamb and goat sausages, to be exact. I’ll admit, I’ve never cooked link sausages before, and so I did a Google search before starting. "Poaching your sausages first will make them easier to grill, and ensure that they are fully cooked." Score.

The whole event takes me about 2 and a half hours to finish–9 pounds of lamb and goat sausage in all, first poached, then browned, then carefully diced into bite size samples and tucked away in the fridge. Despite the fact that every part of me–and every surface surrounding my stove-top–feels greasy, and despite the fact that even the most tucked-away corner of my small apartment smells like meat, I still feel strangely satisfied and pretty lucky. I’ve been at this job for a good while now and I still can’t quite believe that I get paid to hang out in my own kitchen and cook. Someone actually gives me money to engage in what I like to refer to as "Kitchen Zen Time."

Granted, cooking 9 pounds of sausage may not seem particularly zen to some people. But the ritual of moving link after link from a boiling pot of water, to a hot skillet, to a cool cutting board, allows me to zone out a bit and rehash my day in my mind. As Zen as it may be, I find that tonight’s ritual of seemingly endless sausage cooking--the smell of the browning meat, the crackling sound it makes as it grills, and the many tastes I take while cooking--lulls me into a sort of meat coma.

After I wipe away the remaining grease spatter from my stove-top and remove my apron, I think to myself, "Maybe I’ll make a salad for dinner."

Summer Salad

garden lettuce

radishes

cantalope

red peppers

avacado

hard boiled eggs

dried cranberries

salt and pepper