Food Fails

I still don't know what I want to be. Today I am a food blogger. Tomorrow I'll probably write something esoteric about the moral structure of Kurosawa movies, but today I'm talking about Food Fails.

Lists like these are pure schadenfreude. Someone sees a lovely bit of Food Porn, or Pinterest photo perfection and think "I can do that, I own a hand mixer!" Even with step-by-step photo illustrations, people across the internet are sharing their frustration with cooks holding back the keys to producing professional looking results. I want to address a few things that are leading to so many failures in our internet-enabled kitchens.

1 - Heating and Cooling

This is number one because most of these projects could have been saved with proper heat or proper cooling. Frying foods (especially eggs) requires an understanding of heat and flame that most people do not possess. Your stove might have markings that read "High-Med-Low/Simmer", but unless you know how much heat those settings produce with your personal cookware, you are going too make a mess of things very quickly.  According to the National Fire Protection Association, 40% of all house fires are caused by cooking related incidents. I would wager that most had the heat too high.

If you haven't already removed the battery ages ago.

What your stove is trying to tell you:
High: Boil Water/Burn everything else. Also useful if you can cook with a Wok without burning your house down.
Med-High = Always be stirring or covering. As soon as things start to burn, TURN IT OFF.
This setting is suggested by every skillet-ready frozen dinner on the market and assumes that A. you have a non-stick skillet of at least 12" and B. that skillet has a lid. "Keep covered" and "stir frequently" are best combination to ensure a nervous cook burns a meal that still has frozen bits in it.
Medium: The breakfast setting. Pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage - Everything cooks through, everything thing is... still burned if you turn your back for a minute. Keep an eye on it and turn it down a bit if you see smoke.
Low: Sauces, Custards and Candy. Most people have never used low heat because no one makes their own sauce from scratch, Americans like boxed pudding mix, and candy is mass produced, so why bother? You bother because it's very relaxing to cook a cup of hot chocolate from milk, cocoa powder, sugar and a pinch of salt. You bother because hollandaise sauce is fantastic and has to be made fresh. You bother because you have to melt the candy coating for cake-pops and pretzel dips. So, there are a few things.

The other side of the coin is cooling. Anyone can make a cake these days. The boxes of mix are cheap, the pans are cheap, the instructions are easy. But then why are there so many cake disasters? Cake after miserable cake has the frosting sliding off sides or melting out of the middle. The key word here is melting.

The last thing written on the cake mix box is "cool completely before frosting". Most people have no idea how long this can take. As seen here, rack cooling is the fastest method, but how long to wait? In winter, 40% humidity and 65F in kitchen means it should be cool enough in an hour of cooling on a rack. Summer? 80% humidity and 80F in the kitchen could add another hour. You can also use an instant thermometer to be sure it isn't still leaking heat and moisture from the center.
What kind of frosting are you using? Canned frosting should not melt below 80F, but can be hard to spread below 60F. Butter cream frosting has to be kept in an icewater bath when it's being mixed and applied. After decorating, all cakes need to be refrigerated immediately to stiffen the frosting and avoid a Dali-esque surrealist cake. Buy a cake cover or container and make room in the fridge before you begin decorating.

2 - Time and Laziness

The other problem with something that looks easy is that professionals have years of skill and experience on their side. I can't count how many pie crusts I've over-worked and cookies I've burned over the years. Take every step and instruction seriously. Notice how much I've written so far? That's just first and final steps in a recipe. What about "cook, but do not boil"? What about "If dough is too stiff, add 1 Tbsp water"? Experience is the only way of knowing the difference between "golden brown" and "caramelized" just by looking at a pan a cookies. What you need is guidance and practice.

Guidance is not "Google it". That how we get falling cakes and burned dinners. No, you need to find someone that has been successful preparing what you're trying to serve. Don't be embarrassed to ask your grandmother to show you around her favorite meal preparations. Most cooks learn from doing, and we are now two generations removed from people that did most of their cooking from scratch. Healthy cooking starts with learning how to cook from fresh, basic ingredients. Don't let fear of failure keep you from learning a life-skill that will pay off every generation that it is passed down. Learning to cook could affect the quality of life for your great-grandchildren if you make it a family tradition now.

Practice before you present. If you're cooking for your new boyfriend for the first time, cooking Thanksgiving dinner for 12, or baking a Thomas the Tank Engine cake for your nephew, do a dry run ahead of time on anything you've never previously attempted. If you get a less than stellar result, go over the steps again, and if need be, find a similar recipe that others have tried with greater success. Don't rush into something with too little time and expect everything to turn out. Cooking dinner can take much longer than you'd expect and baking should be done a day ahead of the event.

Watch instructional cooking shows. The most instructional of all is Alton Brown's Good Eats. He explains the methods and the science behind every recipe. Follow along as he works and you will learn so much you won't believe it. He's the Bill Nye of cooking.

3 - Equipment

A complete kitchen is a successful kitchen. Here is a list of must-haves and could-needs for every cook:

Must-have:
Quality, sharp knife set: carving [meat], santoku [vege], paring [fruit], bread [crusty foods], and a honing steel. (I will probably do a whole post about knives later.)
Spatulas (buy a 4 pack of silicone, they are the best)
Mixing bowls: the more sizes the better, glass and metal whenever possible)
Pots: Heavy bottom; anodized or ceramic non-stick surface, or stainless steel. All with lids. No aluminum interiors. Avoid Teflon
Baking pans: glass and coated metal. Again, collect a variety of sizes and shapes.)
Cooling racks
Hand mixer
Rolling pin
Instant Thermometer
Cutting boards: at least two - one for meat and one for vegetable prep; plastic is the best all around.
Hand tools: whisks, ladles, wooden spoons, slotted spoon, "pancake" turners, potato peeler,

Could need:
Stand mixer (Kitchen Aid is the best. Save up, it's worth it.)
Roasting pan
Pizza stone
Pizza peel
Pizza wheel (pizza is very special, we must take care of it)
Digital scale
Candy thermometer
Garlic press

Thanks for reading!

A step back

I'm 15 pages into my play and I'm realizing that, while it's not bad dialog, and the characters are shaping up, nothing is happening. It's boring and the themes are common. My imagination is limited by my refusal to try anything difficult to write. This is not a problem that I have with my novel. I have villages, adventure, drama, unique concepts and mechanics.

But my play about middle-class white people problems makes me want to puke. I've put hours of work into something I'd never pay to see. I know what I hate about them - they have no real struggle, no life in them. I'm not even using them to say interesting things; I just want to express a general longing for more. Which coming from a family of successful adults is a pitiful effort. It makes them sound whiny. This one goes into the "fix it" file. Maybe someday those characters will have something to say, but not from a place of strength and opportunity. I have to let them wander around in my head for a while until they have more to contribute.

In other news...
We've been waiting for weeks to have our first (and hopefully only) sonogram, but now an ice storm has pushed it back to Wednesday. I would love to say this is the most exciting appointment of the pregnancy, but we are leaving the gender a mystery until birth, so this is just a little check-up, with strange gray slices of baby-shaped love.

False Analogy

I was going to draw an analogy between cooking and writing, but the similarities are minimal. Cooking can take hours to prepare and minutes to eat. Writing takes a lot more time than reading, but that's the general difference between creation and consumption. An artist will take months to paint or sculpt something worth displaying in a gallery, but the average person will merely glance at it, or at most stare for a minute or two. Fine details are for geeks and fanatics.

If you write something that is entertaining but isn't very good, very few people will notice the mediocrity and even fewer will be able to explain the shortcomings. You have to be comfortable with the speed of your improvement or you'll never keep going. Writers that create "young adult" fiction are often treated as grade school teachers. "Sure, you're published, but all your fans are children. Let me know when you can communicate on an adult level." This is often a style choice, or even a marketing decision made by the publisher. It really says nothing about the writer other than how accessible they want their books to be. 

There is always a gap between the writer and reader, and it is up to the writer to build most of the bridge. You have to decide by the end how far you are going to reach before your concept is compromised by the accommodation. Factors that will affect the reach of your work include: limited scope, artistic freedom, literary allusions, grammar grade level, idea complexity, image density, tropes (used honestly and ironically), verbosity, etc and so on. It's all part of your style, and learning how to follow your instincts while consciously controlling these factors is the great challenge of creative writing. And it's loads of fun.

The more I read, the more I suck

This is how I write: "Rubbish rubbish rubbish. Rubbish better rubbish. Oops, I think I stole that bit. This is crap. It's just like that thing I read, but awful. Everyone will notice the similarity and think I stole it. I better start over."

If I compare my writing to my old writing, I'm much better than I used to be. If I compare myself to published authors, I'm crap. My hurdle for the day is to finish my crap first draft, no matter how crap it is.

The Merciful Silence (a very short story)

Elliot entered the apartment building through the disused side door, avoiding a likely confrontation with the seventy-two year old woman that lives in the apartment below him. Climbing the stairs to the 5th floor was a small price to pay for one more day without having to explain the shouting match she heard last night will be the last. He'd told her this before, but this time was surely the last time she'd have to hear angry exchanges with Lauren; the last time Lauren would say "I'm leaving, and I'm never coming back!"

Elliot opened the door to his quiet, sparsely decorated apartment. Looking around he notices a gap on the wall above the couch, a frame was missing, but he couldn't immediately recall what had been there that morning. Hanging his coat next to the door, his eyes next fell on the empty space where the doormat had been. A short tour of the bedroom, bathroom and refrigerator revealed that she had broken her promise and had returned, but only to collect her things, and a few of his. Elliot's cat, Ebony, meowed piteously from the corner of the living room where her favorite wicker chair used to reside. "Sorry deary, it was her chair." he tried to explain. Lauren's clothes, furniture, toothbrush and feminine products were gone, as expected, but so were the good towels, the 600-thread-count bed sheets and the shower curtain, leaving only the clear plastic liner. She had done a thorough sweep of every room, removing any and every object that might give her reason to return again. Still, she left him with a painful sense of finality, and that would have to be enough to carry him until he could replace the coffee maker.

Writing and cooking

Wow, day two and I'm writing again!

Today I'm writing a play for a contest at a local community theater. I've been tossing the idea around in my head for a while now, and I've only recently decided that I really, truly want to be a writer. I suppose I'll write plays and novels and never make any money at it, but that's usually how it goes. I've never had more free time to do so in over a decade, so we'll see how long it lasts before I have to get a job again and burn all my energies making money for someone else.

A strange note on careers.
I never really wanted to be anything as a child except a baker. I generally liked cooking and baking, and I watched the early cooking shows on TLC before they got their own channel. This is the closest thing I ever had to a dream career, but I never went after it because no one ever told me that there are professional cooks who make a living cooking good food. There are the TV cooks, with their merchandise and cookbooks and DVDs. There are chefs with expensive restaurants in Big Cities. There are chefs who work for national chains that come up with a hundred ways to sell a burger and fries. But I've almost never seen the kind of cook I wanted to be until I saw Jamie Oliver trying to sell american kids on the idea that food can be healthy, fresh, and fun to cook. He is only six years older than me, but he inspires me with every attempt he makes to put a dent in our grease stained culture of bad food prepared a fast as possible. If I could go back and choose a new path, I'd start with a being like Jamie Oliver.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Oliver

the right to write

It's a million times easier to start a blog than to write one for a week. I should know, I've started this blog six or seven times. The problem is I don't know what it's about.

It was going to be thoughts on live theatre, how relationships are built and destroyed by disagreements about amateur theatre productions. How fickle and how profound the storytelling craft can be, even within a fairly small, devoted community of players. But then I stopped acting, because life is real, and marriage is time consuming, and children need raising.

We had a super strong, eleven-pound boy and we got to keep him at home for eleven days. Then he had a severe and sudden brain bleed and died three days later. This the universe I inhabit and speak from, because nothing has so profoundly changed how I see the world as this moment in my life.

That was over a year ago now and we are expecting our second baby in July. We have mixed feelings that we can't predict. Are we not finding out the gender at the ultrasound because we want to be surprised at the birth, or because we don't want to get too attached in case something goes wrong? Would we be more happy with a girl because she would remind us less of our lost boy, or would a new boy feel like we got him back in some way? Is it bad to even have a preference? How can we possibly be so sure we're ready after such a loss? I already love this little one as deeply as I've ever loved anyone. I'm scared out of my mind sometimes. Everything is going to be okay.