An EasyBake Ovenless Life

You know you’ve had a privileged childhood when you’re biggest beef with your parents is that you never

got that EasyBake Oven you drooled over as a girl.

That’s right – an EasyBake Oven.

Even now when I see the modern equivalent, I find I am jealous, feeling somehow bereft, that I never had the chance as a girl child to cook real, albeit tiny, cakes to the heat of a light bulb.

How does that work, anyway?

And the really silly thing about this (well, several silly things, actually)?

1. I learned to cook from the women of my family on real stoves – way better any day than EasyBake.

2. If I really, really, really want an EasyBake Oven, I could certainly get one for myself now (of course, that wouldn’t be the same, but still).

3. The cakes were crap.  We all know it.  No matter how cool the pictures were on television, when all was said and done, what you were left with was really not much.

4. None of my friends (that I can remember) ever had an EasyBake Oven.  So wherever the source of my childhood obsession resides, it isn’t in jealousy.  What is it?  I truly don’t know.  The fact is, I just hate to admit that 50+ years later, I can still be swayed into a morass of emotions just by seeing a picture of, of all things, an EasyBake Oven (sigh).  And I hate even more the very real possibility that it’s as simple as the power of advertising having planted this ridiculous desire in my heart.

What is an EasyBake Ovenless girl to do?

_________________
NOTE:  After another post on our church's FB page about our upcoming Sunday's Chocolate Communion service, I went to the FB page of Baraka Presbyterian Church (in Bethlehem) because they had 'liked' the Chocolate Communion post.  And what did I see?  In far away Bethlehem, where there is so much suffering, violence and trauma, the children in the nursery at the church there enjoy -- yes -- their very own EasyBake (well, maybe not the same brand) Oven.  What a blessing!  Thank you, Lord, that these children have space in which to laugh and play, live and love, worship and praise.  Amen.

Running to the Kitchen

I used to hate the kitchen.  And I do mean hate.  My mother swears (although I do not remember it this way) that I broke dishes on purpose to avoid having to wash them.  As a teenager I got so frustrated one day trying to peel potatoes that I threw a potato across the kitchen*, tears streaming, just as my Dad came home.  To say he was not pleased is an understatement.  Even now, bread is not something I will attempt – it’s just too much time to spend only to throw away the leaden lump of inedible wheat-gone-bad I inevitably end up with.

And family gatherings drove me nuts as a teenage girl and young woman – after the meal, all the men sat down to the tv and football while all the women went to the kitchen.  Feminist me railed against the injustice, to no avail, as all in my family, women and men alike, just smiled indulgently at my protests and went back to their assigned roles.

But feeding people, I found, is its own joy.  So slowly I learned to cook.  I am a recipe cook, lacking the palate and imagination to venture off on my own very often; what I can do is follow instructions.

Thus have I found my joy in the kitchen, especially this time of year when I bake and create a whole host of goodies for family and friends.  But what I am really seeking in the kitchen is the company of saints.

Yesterday was the funeral for Bill Puffenbarger.  Bill lived to 88 and died much as he lived: quietly at home.  It was a good funeral: well-attended by family and friends, a sunny, although cold day for the interment of his body at Headwaters cemetery, and a good meal after put on by the ladies of the McDowell Volunteer Fire Department.

After the service at the cemetery, I scurried the 6 miles back over 2 mountains to the Fire Hall and helped as I could with the kitchen crew.  It’s not expected of me as the minister.  And most times I simply stick my head in and say a hearty thank you.  But this day I wanted to be with the kitchen ladies.  It was like I was running to them – my own safe haven now in the kitchen I used to hate so much.

Things have changed a little in the kitchens I frequent  – now you’ll find a few of the fellows helping out.  I am a much better cook than I used to be.  And as a grown woman, I know my limits, so I don’t peel the potatoes (trust me, no one needs that kind of grief).

Funerals cry out for life affirming action.  That’s why, I think, we so often gather to eat after.  Eating a meal is an activity of the living – it is life giving as well as life sustaining.

But for me, the funeral meal is a time and place where I can sneak back into the kitchen and hang with the ladies, carrying out the rhythms of millennia.

When I was young, if someone would say to me that I belonged in the kitchen, I would bristle with insult.  Now I just smile and say, “thank you.”  For truer words, perhaps, have not been spoke: in the kitchen, I belong.





___________
*A leftie with few, if any, motor skills, should really not be left alone with sharp instruments – it really is a right-handed world.

A Great Recipe + A Bad-Cooking Day = Disaster

Yesterday I revisited a common plight when visiting or living in another country: nothing is the same as it was at home – nothing.

If you’re a creative cook, this can make for great adventures.  If, however, you’re more like me and require a recipe road-map, this can lead to disaster – a lesson you forget at your peril.

Fortunately for me yesterday, I was cooking for a palate of one, so I can truthfully disclaim that no guests were harmed in the preparing of this dish.

What Sandra's ravioli should look like!

There is a recipe from Sandra Lee's  Semi-homemade Cooking television show that I absolutely love to make and to eat – White bean ravioli with brown butter and caper sauce.  It’s really quite good.  And to reassure you of that certainty, I refrained from taking a picture of what I managed to ‘create’ yesterday.  If you want the recipe, just click on the link above and banish all images of the below-described fiasco from your mind - this does not have to be your fate - I promise!

I had the beans I needed, but no blender or food processor, so I tried mashing them first with a fork and then with my hands.  It’s not as easy as you would think to get a bean puree by hand.  I looked at the clumpy mess I had created, reminded myself that I was dining alone, and proclaimed, Good enough!  Mistake #1.

Next I learned that no matter how finely chopped something (even something like cheese) is, finely chopped is not the same as grated.  The results are predictable, as your cheese absolutely refuses (who knew cheese was such a wilful beast?) to melt/combine/play nicely with the other ingredients.  Mistake #2.

I relearned that at some point, persistence moves from being a virtue to being its own worst-enemy kind of vice.  They didn’t have wonton wrappers at the store, so I got some fresh thin lasagne noodles instead.  But no matter how thin, unless homemade, a lasagne noodle is soooo much thicker than the wonton wrapper or the ravioli pasta that the restaurants make and use.  Thus my spooned in mixture would not be contained in the lovely triangular-shaped pasta purses I had envisioned – the dough simply broke in half when I folded it.  That’s when inspiration (translate insanity) struck: I would boil the pasta for a few quick moments to soften it up (and make it wet and slippery and impossible to work with) so that it could be folded.  Still it would not stick to itself no matter what I did.  So finally I rolled little tubes around the bean mixture, laid them in a glass pan and poured boiling water over them (this was after I kept trying to flash boil them in the water on the stove, only to have the bean mixture slide out of each little triangle, tube and other shape I tried to create).

That worked after a fashion, but what I ended up with on my plate after I had dirtied about every dish in the kitchen was fried beans with some buttered fried pasta atop them.

No worries, I thought to myself – it isn’t how a dish looks; it’s how it tastes.  Of course, I was delusional by this point, forgetting everything I have learned from the most basic of cooking shows: people eat first with their eyes.  And in this case (as is, I suspect often the case), what it looked like was a good predictor of what it would taste like.  Mistake #3

Finally, this isn’t my first kitchen disaster and it won’t be my last.  The difference a bit of age has brought to me is that I know that. So after a few bites, I resigned myself to throwing the mess away.  Maybe that’s wisdom.  Final Lesson #4




_____________________________

Mistakes/Lessons
1. What you wouldn’t serve to/give/present to an honored guest, you should not serve to/give/present to yourself - for you are your own honored guest.

2. Instructions are offered by those with more knowledge than I possess for a reason.  They are usually not intended as suggestions and I ignore them at my peril.

3. Know when to quit.  Think Kenny Rogers here.



4. “Try again, fail again, fail again better.”  –Samuel Beckett, quoted by Chef Tamasin Day-Lewis in Don't Try This at Home: Culinary Catastrophes from the World's Greatest Chefs , Kimberly Witherspoon & Andrew Friedman, Eds.