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...

Love and stuff...

So, I've been thinking about this for weeks and weeks... love... how does that work... I get that it's a chemical reaction in our brains... but if that's all it is, it seems like it should make more sense than it does...

Flowers and Concrete I

... in that serendipitous, things-come-together sort of way, I started thinking about it a few days before I read this blog post (go read it - it's short, beautiful, and to my eventual point)... it was linked off another blog, one that I don't always read, and rarely follow links off of, even when I do read it... I felt like it was one of those universe-conspiring-to-hit-me-over-the-head moments, but one that I didn't know what to do with once I was hit... and yet I've returned to it again... and again...

It had come on the heels of several deep conversations with good friends about my relationship status (in general, not with them)... I know and appreciate that I have these amazing relationships where I can talk about the crazy and the serious, the world-changing and the fluffy marshmallow filling, too...

And I know that I do love... I love my friends, my sisters, the family I've made out of mismatched, crazy, never-should-have-worked friendships... it may not be "traditional" love, and certainly, it's not always expressed in traditional ways - I just can't seem to do that, the traditional love. The normal love. The expected love... but it's real... and big... and deep... and sometimes so incredibly painful... and just love... but different...

So that makes me wonder is there is something missing in me, something that makes love work like it's supposed to... maybe my chemicals are messed up, or combine differently... so the random blog post by a random stranger - one I've never encountered before, and might not again, even on the internet because I don't follow her blog - speaks so exactly to how I've been thinking about love...

Flowers and Concrete II

I still don't know what to do with it...

Linkage...

So, there has been all sorts of awesomeness on the Intertubes this week...

A school under a bridge, which on one hand is super awesome, because hey, look what they're doing!, but in the other hand, it makes you super aware of how first world your problems are, because hey, look what they have to do...

There is all sorts of internet legislation in the air in the US, including CISPA - a REALLY bad idea - neatly summed up in this graphic... there is also this one, which would help to bridge the access gap by helping to make broadband more available to low-income brackets.

On the food front, there are several recipes I'm looking forward to trying out - hopefully soon... especially this Yogurt Panna Cotta with Walnuts and Honey...

Mirrormirror's Roasted Pumpkin and Coconut Soup with Thai Flavours inspired my own soup supper, which received a resounding approval from the test audience, and after some tweaking (read: figuring out how much of the ingredients my toss-it-in-a-pot method actually used to achieve the awesome), I will be posting a recipe here.

Tea posted on How to Poach an Egg - with some helpful tips if you're unsure, and some cool info even if you've done it a thousand times...



And continuing in the food related vein - The oldest Medieval cookbook was found in the UK - I can't wait until they get a facsimile out...

I know there's more, and probably more relevant stuff happening out there all the time, but these are the one that I spent a goodly portion of my time thinking about this week...

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."

Food Blog linkage...

Where I read, mostly...

So, I've noticed that I am reading a lot more food blogs recently... I don't know if this is because of my relatively rural location and its accompanying lack of accessible activities (at least for someone who speaks next to no Korean)... or perhaps it is me missing American food, because no matter how much I love Korean food (a lot!), I do miss many of the things I ate in America... maybe it is not so much missing the food, as missing a sense of community I had in the States - I lived with my sisters, I saw my friends in person, I was able to talk to the vendors at the farmers markets and my favorite shops and have them understand me... whatever the reason, my food blog consumption has been up recently... so I thought I would share a list of the new sites I am loving (there are many others that I love, and have read for a long time - these are just the new ones)...

These are all "new to me" with in the last month or two, though many have been around for a while... and some of them are a bit more than just food... they tend to reflect my love for writing about life, with recipes... some I love for the beautiful photography, some for the beautiful words, many for both, actually... and they all have wonderful food... anyway, the list...

Always with Butter

Desserts for Breakfast

Eat All About It ... right now she is writing for the Seattle times at the All You Can Eat blog

Eat Like a Girl

Hollow Legs

Remedial Eating

Rowley's Whiskey Forge

The British Larder

The Yellow House

I would love to know what other people been reading more of recently... online or anywhere... please share...

World Poetry Day 2012...

THE SUN RISING.
by John Donne


        BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
        Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ?
        Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
        Late school-boys and sour prentices,
    Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
    Call country ants to harvest offices ;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

        Thy beams so reverend, and strong
        Why shouldst thou think ?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long.
        If her eyes have not blinded thine,
        Look, and to-morrow late tell me,
    Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
    Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."

        She's all states, and all princes I ;
        Nothing else is ;
Princes do but play us ; compared to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
        Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
        In that the world's contracted thus ;
    Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
    To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere ;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.