Miscellaneous.

[fabrisse]

Lunch for one

I'm at the stage that Jeff Foxworthy once called "'Rolling pennies for gas' broke." Which means that I'm eating my cupboard foods and cleaning out the refrigerator (if it's not too scary). Lunch was lentils, and very satisfying they were too.

How do I explain to those of you who don't or can't cook what making myself lentils for lunch meant to me? The cookbook that I usually use for lentils is on loan to someone else. I remembered the recipe (sort of), but decided not to make extra as they aren't a meal that I like to repeat too quickly. This meant that I used my memory and what I call my mental palate to recreate the recipe. I used the back of the container for proportions so that I didn't make too much.

And then, just for me, I cut up an onion and minced some garlic and sauted them in the good olive oil. Pepper and thyme are part of the recipe, but did it also call for bay leaf? Maybe, whatever. I added bay leaf, and as I was putting it away I saw the savory and added that too. The lentils were rinsed and picked over quickly since I wasn't using much. Some wine, lots of water, bring it all to a boil and turn it back to a simmer. Just as I did that, I realized that something was missing -- a pinch of cloves went in, and after a quick stir, I put on the lid and left it for fifteen minutes.

I came downstairs to make some more tea and added a little salt. Salt is important in so many ways. If you add it at the right time, the flavors are enhanced and blended better than if you left it out. If you wait too late, you'll need much more than if you put it in at the right time. If you add salt to lentils at the beginning of cooking, they'll be tough.

Ten minutes of simmering later I had lunch. I added a tablespoon of olive oil to enhance the flavor, but it didn't need anymore salt. That pinch of cloves couldn't be tasted, but there was a mysterious little undercurrent to them that wouldn't have been there without it.

I cooked it for me. That's something new and different.

All that Jazz and Tomcats

Last night, I saw the movie All that Jazz for the first time since it's original release over twenty years ago. No wonder it didn't go over big with the audiences of its time. I don't remember hearing the term "magic realism" until five years later. The heart attack dance sequence is still sexy and disturbing. And Paula Abdul might have thought she was "paying tribute" to the Air-rotica dance in her Cold Hearted Snake, but I call it belittling.

The circumstances around seeing it for the first time came back to me. It was a first date movie for me. Poor guy. Poor me. At nineteen I wasn't ready for the imagery -- no that's not right -- I wasn't ready to be with someone I didn't know very well and absorbing that imagery.

And, as art should, it made me do some reassessments. I've had a quiet fear of heart issues and, worse, stroke. I can't afford a doctor. But I can afford to reread Dean Ornish's books. I can afford to look after myself a little, and encourage my better habits. I'll worry about discouraging the bad ones a little later.

By the time I'd rewatched all the dance sequences, I was ready for something lighter. So, jerminating and I watched Tomcats. The movie is an R-rated commedia dell'Arte script. I'm ashamed at how much I laughed. And Jerry O'Connell? SCORCHING!

Other Things

One of my housemates has a piano at her workplace. I can go there and practice. I don't want to be unemployed, but I love the idea of taking part of my day to play music. I have a guitar at home that I rarely play. I'm not very good, but I know that I won't get better without practice, but, I was better at the piano and I know that while I'll have a steeper curve to get back in form, my abilities were always higher there.

I don't know what it was, but I realized that both my parents are 70. They're both from long-lived families, but I'm having a hard time coming to terms with their mortality.

Tutoring is going well. The girl who was told she was stupid was permitted to go into 5th grade because she proved she could read well enough. I was really chuffed because I helped her with MATH the other day. The teachers are working on factoring and I showed her a little trick to help her with some of the higher numbers. It was obvious that she wasn't following what I was saying, but suddenly, as we were doing the final pair, I made her see the number 2000 as a twenty with two zeros. And we found the final factor pair. I swear I saw the little lightbulb go on over her head.

Comments

[thamiris.livejournal.com]

I was going to say something else entirely when I clicked the "post" button, about how I started reading your evocative comments on cooking without knowing who'd written the post (the physical set-up of my LJ meant that I needed to scroll down, and I wasn't in the mood to do more than savor words), but now that I'm here I want to riff on your words about the mental palate.

On a personal level, the past doesn't interest me. Professionally, and as a locus of a fantastic and fascinating Otherness, it does, but when it comes to my own approach to life, I'm much more of a forward looking girl. In a strange way, this actually translates in part to my approach to cooking. When I cook sans recipe, I'm less trying to remember what I did before than how I can improve this new effort, spice it up, transform even the original recipe into something richer--something I didn't realize until I'd read your post. I was wondering if you feel that your approach to recipe-less cooking reveals something about your personality, about who you are, and what that is. :-)

(And given our recent conversation, let me say that I really won't mind if you answer this in a few weeks, after you've answered a slew of other questions, since this arguably requires a more, um, languid response.)

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

It's a difficult question. Cooking has always been creative for me -- after I've made a recipe once, I'll ring the changes on it. But like jazz, it's creative within a pre-existing structure.

Anyone can throw a bunch of ingredients into a pot, but what it will taste like when it's done is a different matter. I think that the best cooking I've done have been original recipes, but I always did my research first to make certain that I wasn't missing a key point.

The first recipe that I invented (I'm using it in its loosest possible sense) came out of necessity. I was fixing Christmas dinner for my sister and two of our friends at a house where we were housesitting. As I always do before a dinner party, I asked about allergies or strong dislikes. There's nothing worse than fixing a meal and having your guests pick at it or unable to eat it. In addition, since neither my sister nor I cares for turkey, I asked if duck was all right or whether they'd prefer ham.

The answer rang out -- ham, but one of them loathed cloves with an unnatural passion. This eliminated the traditional preparation, and my research showed me, many of the less traditional ways as well.

I ended up soaking the ham in port wine and spices (bay leaf, orange peel, ginger, pink peppercorns, etc.) for three days. Then I baked it with a ginger preserve glaze and cooked down a mixture of the marinade and the glaze to make an intensive sauce.

I couldn't have come up with the ideas that I used if I'd never eaten ham before nor if I hadn't scoured nearly two dozen books for ham recipes. The mental palate allowed me to read about preparations that I'd never tried and have a good idea of how the end result would taste.

The short answer to your question is that I try always to have one foot in the future, but I'm not always successful at it. I can say, without too much fear of contradiction, that I have no problem keeping one foot in the past.

Much of the best of me comes from remembering my accomplishments. Much of the worst comes from dwelling on past mistakes. It may be part of why I find meditation so difficult -- staying in the present is nearly impossible for me.

Thank you for a great question.

[kstanley.livejournal.com]

I love All That Jazz. It's a movie that I think about amazingly frequently. Not the whole thing of course--but just parts of it come to me in random moments:

The bit where Joe's mother says to Death "Oh Joe's always had a thing for you."

The part where Joe is telling Death the story of the two women he lived with. I loved her comeback--"How do you know the note was for you?"

And the final dance numbers will probably haunt me for the rest of my life.

It's a fantastic movie. Dark, brilliant, wonderful.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

I'd asked jerminating to rent it because I'd just seen Chicago. The difference between fosse-esque and Fosse is huge.

Have you ever seen Kiss Me Kate? This isn't irrelevant. Fosse appeared in several movies, but the From this Moment On section that he was in was the first he was allowed to choreograph. The other two sections are good -- Tommy Rall and Ann Miller worked beautifully together -- but it's like you can see the torch being passed from one style to the next.

Considering how many old movie houses there are in your neck of the woods, be on the look out for Kate in 3-D. It was the only musical filmed that way, and it's stunning.

[kstanley.livejournal.com]

I have seen Kiss Me Kate--but I don't particularly remember the dance sequences. I'll be on the look out for it.

[fleegull.livejournal.com]

And we found the final factor pair. I swear I saw the little lightbulb go on over her head.


That has got to be one of the most gratifying feelings in the world! The look o n children's faces when they 'get' something for the first tiime is a thing of beauty that never fails to fill me with joy.

[thamiris.livejournal.com]

I do love reading you talk about food: you have such a passion for it in all its aspects, while mine is limited to eating and hearing it discussed. Your description of what you did with the ham tickles my detail-button, which is actually surprisingly hard to hit; it requires a meeting of textures and energy, and you combine those here.

Meditation has always been too empty to engage me--and there's always the danger that negativity will creep in, those past failures you mention.

Anyway, thanks for sharing this, chica; it was lovely. *smooches*

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure it will stay with her, even if nothing else that I've done does. In some small way, I'll have changed her for the better.

It's been the type of week where I needed that.

Hugs.