The problem of the recipe

One of the things  that I've always found difficult about blogging about food - and even cooking for my friends and family is the constant urging to write down the recipe, so that I (or they) can make it exactly the same next time.

On one hand, I don't want them to be exactly the same - the ingredients will never be exactly the same - this years tomatoes, delicious as they are, are not the same as last years... garlic I got this week is stronger than what I had last week... the humidity in the summer means my bread rises faster than when it is dry, or cold... the conditions for my pasta water are not going to be the same tonight as they were last night - all of these factors mean that the dish should be different... and the seasonality and cyclical nature implied by this difference makes me really happy. It fits with my personal beliefs so neatly.

There is something magical in the ephemeral nature of a delicious meal... that fleeting nature makes that moment even more valuable. It may be a bit cliche, but the fact that it's not replicable should make you appreciate it more. If you could have it anytime - exactly the same - I feel like it would lose that magical nature.

But on the other hand - and I know that I am what can only be classified as the rankest of amateurs when it comes to food blogging, but even with the caveat that my recipes are more guidelines, and untested ones at that, there is something about posting a recipe that implies a sameness... And I think this sameness is important for learning and trying new things.

I was recently reading and essay (I think it's actually the introduction to his cookbook, but it was in a collection of essays) by Paul Bertolli which neatly articulates this problem of recipes that had been floating around at the back of my head... "Later, when I began recording what I had done in the kitchen, I found that I was no more comfortable writing a recipe than following one. Studying my food-stained notes, I was annoyed at having to go back and measure in cups and teaspoons the ingredients that I had originally added according to taste and feel." Expanding on this problem of recipes and their disconnect from cooking, he writes, "Subtleties in the way food looks, smells, and behaves are lost when the process of cooking is reduced to a series of simple and efficient steps. Such it the unfortunate legacy of almost all recipe writing."

This is a conundrum - because on one hand the recipe is useful, for some necessary, but on the other it is a block that gets in the way of the creative act of cooking... There are no solutions here, only problems...

A return to blogging...

I have been feeling an itch lately - undefined, back-of-my-brain, peripheral dissatisfaction with the way things are. It has been hard to pin down, and not just because its appearance like ghostly images in the corner of my eye... but also because there are so many things in my life that are going well - my friends, my job, my hobbies... though I definitely could be practicing my new mandolin more, I'm pretty sure that is not what is causing this nebulous worry. I'd let my online reading languish, my To Be Read pile has grown, while I've buried myself in comfort reads, revisiting old favorites; and indulging in new brain candy in the form of "The Big Bang Theory" - an all-six-seasons binge. And while these pass-times are enjoyable - who doesn't love a good "bazinga", they have, ultimately, not been satisfying.

So today I did the dishes I'd been ignoring in the sink, cleaned out my reader, and caught up on blogs - the physical housecleaning morphing into a mental one. And I was led to this quote:

“I am one of the searchers. There are, I believe, millions of us. We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content. We continue to explore life, hoping to uncover its ultimate secret. We continue to explore ourselves, hoping to understand. We like to walk along the beach, we are drawn by the ocean, taken by its power, its unceasing motion, its mystery and unspeakable beauty. We like forests and mountains, deserts and hidden rivers, and the lonely cities as well. Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter. To share our sadness with one we love is perhaps as great a joy as we can know - unless it be to share our laughter. 

We searchers are ambitious only for life itself, for everything beautiful it can provide. Most of all we love and want to be loved. We want to live in a relationship that will not impede our wandering, nor prevent our search, nor lock us in prison walls; that will take us for what little we have to give. We do not want to prove ourselves to another or compete for love.  

For wanderers, dreamers, and lovers, for lonely men and women who dare to ask of life everything good and beautiful. It is for those who are too gentle to live among wolves.”  

~James Kavanaugh- "There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves"

It so neatly sums up my own discontent, not new to me, but recently quite strongly felt... I have been ignoring my inner searcher, burying it under the minutiae of daily life. And this is not an acceptable state of being. Not for me.

And this lead to the further realization that I missed writing. Not the writing I've been playing at with a novel idea, nor the more serious writing of a kitchen memoir, but this kind of writing - brief, topical, get-it-out-of-my-head-and-into-the-world kind of writing. And while I've never been the most loyal of bloggers, I do think I'm happier for the effort. So, we'll see how a return to blogging goes...

Brain = Broken (in a good way) Completely

Completely unrelated photo I love from my recent trip to Gunsan

Just had a mind-breaking moment while visiting an acquaintance's blog...

Like many bloggers, she has a quote at the top of her page- though, perhaps somewhat uncommonly, her's is by Michel Foucault:

"IF I HAD TO WRITE A BOOK TO COMMUNICATE WHAT I WAS ALREADY THINKING, I WOULD NEVER HAVE THE COURAGE TO BEGIN. I ONLY WRITE A BOOK BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW EXACTLY WHAT TO THINK ABOUT THIS THING THAT I SO MUCH WANT TO THINK ABOUT, SO THAT THE BOOK TRANSFORMS ME AND TRANSFORMS WHAT I THINK."

This blew my brain right open. Perhaps I'd read it before - I've read quite a bit of Foucault - perhaps less than some of my past Theory teachers were under the impression I'd read, but a lot none the less - but if so, the surrounding text swallowed my reaction to this little bit of brain-breakage.

"IF I HAD TO WRITE A BOOK TO COMMUNICATE WHAT I WAS ALREADY THINKING, I WOULD NEVER HAVE THE COURAGE TO BEGIN. I ONLY WRITE A BOOK BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW EXACTLY WHAT TO THINK ABOUT THIS THING THAT I SO MUCH WANT TO THINK ABOUT, SO THAT THE BOOK TRANSFORMS ME AND TRANSFORMS WHAT I THINK."

This is why I've never written a book. This is why I struggle so much just to write a blog post. This is why the best writing I've done has always been the hardest, the writing where I really don't know even know what I want to try and find, just that there are all these interesting or hard things that I've noticed in the text, or in my life. And this is why, as I write - usually slowly and painfully - I come to know what I think, or at least get to what questions I want to think about...

Perhaps this is also why I've frequently felt my best writing was academic rather than creative (though I am not convinced that is a fair distinction, because I think that you need a fair to huge amount of creativity to write well academically). Academic writing, while frequently arguing for something, always seemed to me more about the exploration of these arguments - the figuring out of why they are, how they work, what the intersections and connections are - than a presentation of what the author knows... good academic writing anyway... though I am not saying that I think deliberate obsfucation is good here (or anywhere other than vampire role-playing games)... that is rather the opposite of what good writing does - so-called creative or academic writing...

And it also may be why I've always had such a hard time with the advice to "write what you know" ... I often wonder why this is interesting to anyone, and now realize that question arises because it is not what is interesting to me... I am interested in what I don't know, not what I do... because there is so much out there that I still need to figure out. Learning has always been the point of school for me, not grades or degrees (as my rather checkered and extended academic career might indicate)... so I don't really know what this means for me now, but perhaps I will just let it sit for a while with my broken brain... and then perhaps I will write to figure it out...

"IF I HAD TO WRITE A BOOK TO COMMUNICATE WHAT I WAS ALREADY THINKING, I WOULD NEVER HAVE THE COURAGE TO BEGIN. I ONLY WRITE A BOOK BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW EXACTLY WHAT TO THINK ABOUT THIS THING THAT I SO MUCH WANT TO THINK ABOUT, SO THAT THE BOOK TRANSFORMS ME AND TRANSFORMS WHAT I THINK."

A life of the mind...

So, as you may or may not know, February, at least for me, is something of a mortal enemy... For years, it has constantly and consistently sucked the joy from my outlook, stamped down my energy, and in various ways preyed upon my mind... It's cold grayness goes far beyond any sort of SAD sort of disarrangement (or perhaps, derangement)... February has been soul crushing in a way that makes other things I've been through - death of loved ones, divorce, distance from dear friends, postponement of dreams - pale by comparison... And perhaps the most baffling aspect of this soul-crushing is that I don't even know why; why I feel as though February is a living, devious, being, one that hates me... And this year was no different, February came and I wanted to curl up and hide until it had passed...


I give this explanation, so that it might be understood just how crucial the timing of this post and the events (some, largely mental) that led up to it are.


Leading up... In November, I had settled into Korea well enough to turn my mind to writing - thinking about projects I wanted to start, work on, or possibly complete. Then my computer died, necessitating a great reduction in the time spent on my computer, as I was running from my backup drive until I could comfortably afford the purchase of a new one... and as a devotee of Apple, that took a few months... This break threw me off track of any sort of creative process - my computer is largely the way I communicate with my family and friends, the scholarly and literary communities I follow - the connections that sustain me in a very real way, despite their virtual nature... Towards the end of January, I knew I would be getting a new computer soon, and those thoughts of writing began to return...


But then February happened... cold, gray, soul-crunching February... it made me want to sleep constantly, while preventing me from sleeping most nights... that is the daemon that is February...


So, Friday night I was up anyway, unable to keep my attention on my novel, having blown through my rss reader, and too enmeshed in the blahs to find other distraction on the internet, when my calendar reminded me that it was time for the live stream of the Exemplaria Symposium of Surface, Symptom, and the State of Critique... Not something I had read or prepared for in anyway other than reading Jeffrey Cohen's handout on In The Middle... In fact, until that late moment, I hadn't even looked at the schedule beyond glancing and noting it on my calendar. After all, Korea is a long way from Texas, and distance and time meant I would probably not see it anyway. So thanks, February... this is all your fault...


On opening the live stream, I was immediately swept under (pardon the pun). I had little context, beyond foundational literary theories, for the thoughts the presenters were raising and responding to, yet I was immediately fascinated - so much so that I, couldn't sleep through the next panel, or the next - when I tried to sleep between them my brain kept waking me up, wondering what I was missing. The symposium brought my brain to life - in a somewhat uncomfortable fashion, even. So, now I have pages of notes, and an extended reading list on a topic I had not really considered at all - at least not in a conscious matter (though anyone associated with the Popular Romance Studies field will confirm that how and why we read is never far beneath the scholarship, due to a frequent necessity to defend what we read and study).


Now my brain is so filled with new (to me) thinking about reading, scholarship, and creative generalization that it has pushed out of February's hold... The symposium has cost me quite a bit of sleep, but has re-affirmed my deep, integral need for a life of the mind... 


Now, I only hope that this thinking will lead to writing, and maintain the pressure keeping February at bay...

A new adventure...

Much has happened since last we spoke (or really, I wrote at you), my loyal readers. In that time I have applied for and achieved a job teaching overseas, visited my sisters, seen a city that was new to me, moved my things, and I am now staying with my sisters (first G, then M) until it's time to fly. Whew! That's a lot.

So, for the news that is probably of most interest to those of you who read here... Teaching overseas. I will be English teaching in Korea, in a city just outside of Seoul. There are things about the job that make me nervous - no Korean language experience, young children - but for the most part I am overwhelmingly excited to begin. I am excited for the new place and the experiences, hopefully good experiences. This will be an opportunity for me to expand my teaching experience, and at the same time I might be able to save a little money and pay down some of my student loan debt.

This doesn't mean that I am done with academia - I am still following along on the internet, keeping track of what is going on in my various realms of interest. But I am taking this time to figure out what it is I want to pursue - food, medieval lit, popular romance studies - and how it is best to pursue that primary interest once I figure it out. I am pretty sure food will be involved, but how and in what combination of ideas I don't yet know. My teaching schedule should give me a fair amount of writing time, as well. Which I hope to use not only for the aforementioned figuring, but also to work on projects and papers I've started but have not ever thought through and written out. Perhaps in the process of finishing, I will also be figuring. I am also going to spend a lot of time reading - my reading list I never finished, new philosophers I've stumbled across, food memoirs I've added to my list, my auto-buy authors that I can get my hands on in Korea. I've been stocking up on eBooks, as I only get two suitcases. And also because I love the format.

I am not sure what this move will mean for me on the cooking front. It's my understanding that most of the eating in Korea is done out, in a very tasty and inexpensive way. This is exciting for the cuisine I will get to taste, but disturbing that I won't have the comforts of my accustomed kitchen or the excitement of learning new techniques and dishes. However it happens, though, I am looking forward to exploring the cuisine.

I will report more as the adventure unfolds...

100 Word Challenge: Before You

I am attempting to regularly participate in The 100 Word Challenge. Each week, Velvet Verbosity posts a prompt, and participants write 100 words, in any form, in response to the word. This week's word: Chasm

Before You

There is a line between the before time and the after time - deep, indelible, uncrossable.
Before you I ate everything without even thinking about it;
After you I eat everything because I might not have the chance.
Before you I wanted to go everywhere so I wouldn’t be here;
After you I want to go everywhere to experience there.
Before you I took pictures through lenses without meaning;
After you I take pictures in a heart without filters.
Before you I feared nothing and faced nothing;
After you I fear everything and face anything.
Death changes everything;
And nothing.

100 Word Challenge: My Mother

I am attempting to regularly participate in The 100 Word Challenge. Each week, Velvet Verbosity posts a prompt, and participants write 100 words, in any form, in response to the word. This week's word: Forgetting

My Mother

Sometimes I have to concentrate to recall how a smile shaped her mouth, pushed up her cheeks, though I can see her eyes glimmer with life’s joys. After a while - minutes, hours, years - her features lose their sharp focus, becoming dreamy soft, as her hugs before disease stripped her bones. Occasionally, I’ll glimpse her hands at the end of my wrists, trace her outline in my sister’s silhouette, hear her pleasure in a Beethoven sonata, feel the pressure of her in my grandmother’s embrace. The tides of memory shift and settle, sharpen and fade, fill and empty me.

100 Word Challenge: Kitchen Dance

In an attempt to write more, I am going to attempt to regularly participate in The 100 Word Challenge. Each week, Velvet Verbosity posts a prompt, and participants write 100 words, in any form, in response to the word. This week's word: Family

Kitchen Dance

The syncopated bursts of laughter compete with the rhythm of her knife. Chop, sauté, simmer, spice. She loves listening to the retold stories the best, the comfort of favorites filling her up as she fills up the pot with stock and stewed tomatoes. Weaving between listeners, her dance builds layers of flavors, future memories.

The spoon scrapes the bottom of the pot in the silence, the last of the gumbo greedily filling one last bowl. All around the room glazed looks and satisfied smiles meet her searching eyes. No hunger here. No hurt now.

The scent of spices lingers. Loved.

ETA: Here are some of the other Challenge posts...

Writing today ...

The view from my seat...

A List of Project Proportions...

So, I really have been doing stuff, and here is a list to prove it... ok, actually it's a list of projects that are in progress, not actual completed work...

• Classes: Past Intimacies - the senses in Early Modern literature and world. I have to come up with a paper proposal and I still don't know what I want to write about - there are too many interesting options. Independent Study - Food in Medieval literature. Also need a paper topic for this one, but the reading has been super interesting and narrowing it has been a problem here, too. My mind is going in too many directions.
  
• My paper for the PCA conference on how food and religion shape the romantic relationships in Nora Roberts Three Sisters' Island Trilogy.
• Researching Medieval stones and lapidaries.
• TA-ing for "Shakespeare in the City" - I taught "Taming of the Shrew." I still have a bunch of papers to finish commenting on.
• Putting together a reading list for my qualifying exam that is comprehensive of period (Medieval/Early Modern), genre (poetry, prose & drama), and methodology (theory & criticism) in 50 texts and accompanying rational for said list.
• Keeping up with an endlessly growing To Be Read pile/list of both scholarly works and genre fiction. The commute has helped me keep up with the genre fiction end of things, because I don't generally take notes on them, so I can read them on the train without getting motion sick. Trying to write is guaranteed to nauseate.
  

All of this has been impeded by a semester fraught with illness and snow. I feel like I am in constant catch-up mode. So for those who wondered, that is why I haven't been posting... this time...

On Researching...

I love research. I spend hours online chasing information and moving through the web of connected facts (no pun intended). When I get a book from the library or a bookstore, I always check out the shelf around it to see what interesting information might be waiting for me nearby. Reading news articles sparks journeys into weather patterns, cultural histories, imports and exports of foreign nations, languages spoken, religions practiced, and - of course - what is eaten.

No, my writing problem is not in the research. It is in the argument. I struggle to get from "hey, look at this cool stuff I found" to some sort of meaning. It is not that I don't make connections and synthesize the information that I love to gather, I do. But articulating the connections I see, and the kicker - proving them textually, that is hard for me. Maybe it is because I am such a non-linear thinker, so research webs work for me, but an organized argument cuts off all these really cool possibilities. Or maybe it is my lamentable tendency to feel that if I can see it, every one can see, and why should I have to prove the obvious?

Sometime I think it might be easier if I wrote fiction instead, but I don't really think it would be. In fiction, there still needs to be a narrative arch. So much of the cool information that leads to building real and believable characters never makes it in to the story. At least with academic writing you get the footnotes for tangents. Either way I am still left with the problem of turning a fascinating matrix of thoughts and information into a clear, progressive argument or narrative.

PCA Conference Paper Proposal

So, weeks after I had planned to I have finally put together my PCA national conference paper proposal. I am really excited to write this paper, as I have been increasingly interested in the connections between food and religion. I think as I talk about some of my other paper plans you all might see a trend...

Recipes and Rituals:
Food and Religion in Nora Roberts’s Three Sisters Island Trilogy

Many religions involve the use of food both on a symbolic level and on a practical level. After celebrating the Eucharistic meal, Catholics meet in the fellowship hall for coffee and doughnuts. The Passover Seder combines ritual and nourishment to create community with Jews from centuries ago. Baptists’ Wednesday night bible study follows a potluck supper. Wiccans record their Sabbat ritual spells along side family recipes in their Book of Shadows. Food is used in all these cases to both cement common beliefs and to establish and maintain community. These elements of a shared belief system and community are necessary elements for an emotionally satisfying and believable love story. The religious aspects in Nora Roberts’s Three Sisters Island Trilogy demonstrate food as an integral part of the foundations of community and belief. She also shows food to be just as essential to the relationships that develop over the course of the books.

Roberts sets the three love stories against a background of a struggle for good and evil. This timeless conflict is acted out in terms of three good hereditary witches facing progressively stronger evils, and the community of couples fighting evil forces comes together over food. In this paper I will look at how and why this group comes together over food. What is it about Modern Pagan Witchcraft that lends itself to the incorporation of food? What do these stories tell us about why people share food? I plan to explore the questions of how food factors into their struggle to win over evil and how it shapes the relationships that develop along the way.

What do you think, sound interesting?

Resolutions and a change

Daylight savings time, in addition to making it feel like winter is really here, has for the first time ever succeeded in completely ruining my lazy sleep schedule. So much so that I wake up, without the benefit of an alarm before 8 am. I wasn't even sure a before-8-am existed prior to this - I thought it was a myth. This change has been wonderfully constructive, and I am going to attempt to keep it up. A fitting resolution for the Celtic new year. I have actually been getting things accomplished, and I want to spread that productive spirit to this thought repository.

So, in a fit of creative determination, I have decided to combine the two blogs that I have created. I update with lamentable infrequency, and spreading those posts over two blogs reduces their numbers even more. So from now on there will just be this blog. All my food post will be here, all my scholarly posts, all my pop culture posts, all my random posts... well, you get the idea. This does shift the theme of my postings somewhat, but really it fits with this blog completely - food and books and pop culture and complete randomness are what les pensée de la fleur contain, and as such are what should be reflected here - not divided and relegated to a separate space. And sadly I am no longer feeding the flock, the flock has scattered, everyone going their own ways and starting their own enclaves of irreverence.

This change will hopefully let me be less splintered in both my writing style and my online presence in general, though I don't delude myself into thinking that it will make me an internet celebrity or anything like that. Which is fine. I have always said that I would rather be rich than famous anyway, and I don't think that bothersome fame will arise out of these nebulous future posts. And the reality is blogging is not what makes you rich, sad but true.

Instead I will - hopefully - get a creative outlet, and - again hopefully - this outlet will help me to focus and create a more disciplined writing habit. Now those of you who know me probably just laughed out loud to see discipline in reference to me (if you've stumbled here by mistake, it's true - I am a slacker of the first order). However, I do want to write - papers for my classes, articles, eventually my dissertation, and maybe a book some day. These all require that I write with some consistency, possibly even regularity. So I think that creating a writing habit will be easier, and let's face it- I am reliably all about easier, if that habit had a locus, a central depository. I am not going to make any wild promises about increased updates or daily posts, but I am putting my aspirations out here, publicly, in an attempt to motivate myself to achieve those aspirations. Goals, not guilt...

Well, we'll see...

ETA: I imported the posts from my food blog, so all the food and recipes are on here now. I am in the process of going back through the archives and working out the duplicates. I also plan on working out a recipe list page.