Category: Life

Posted on

following the rules is overrated

i chafe at being told what or how to do something. i quit my full time job in favor of mercenary work that allows me control of my time. i avoid flu shots when i can get away with it. my way to get “there” may be different from yours since i drive for work and typically know 3 or 4 alternate routes. i don’t like punching a time clock so i have consistently avoided jobs where my punctual presence for a prescribed amount of time is required. and you already know how i feel about recipes.

some rules make sense to follow though. traffic lights are good. i wear my seatbelt. avoiding mixing bleach with ammonia is a solid idea. ignoring ikea directions is probably not a recipe for successful furniture building. theft, rape, murder – i’m ok with rules prohibiting those.

wisdom is knowing the difference.

i ignored grammar rules and avoided using capital letters in this entire post – did that affect the conveyance of my meaning? sorry to my 7th grade teacher mr whipple, but the answer is no.

Posted on

The Mindset Needed To Create This Fritatta

“Don’t let failure be final”. -Steven H. Shomler

 

I love this quote and it lends itself beautifully to the concept of embracing improvisation; in cooking and in life. If you give up after one fuck-up and remain afraid to try new things, you will never progress.

This is exactly the mindset needed to create something out of (seeming) nothing. Like this frittata. I made it this morning from odds and ends I found in my fridge and pantry. It took me some time and lots of experimentation to get a good feel for how to throw stuff together like this. Has every single one turned out perfectly? No. But so what? They were still edible ( most of the time). I just filed away the errors I made or the tweaks I thought would improve the dish and incorporated that knowledge into my next effort. Cooking without a script is so much fun though – there is reward in that all by itself.

Back to that frittata: It is a cozy Saturday morning here at HavenHome and I knew I had some goodies in the fridge from last night’s dinner and lunch last week to use up. So I chopped up the tater tots, some red onion and leftover cooked bacon. Tossed that into a greased baking dish. Added some diced green chilis from the pantry and some pepperjack cheese. Then whizzed up some eggs and coconut milk (unsweetened and unflavoured). Seasoned with salt, pepper and dried tarragon from the garden (I am obsessed with tarragon right now and add it to whatever I reasonably can). Baked it in the oven until done. So good with crusty baguette toast topped with butter and marmalade. If I didn’t have shit to do today, I’d also have a ruby sunrise (champagne and ruby red grapefruit juice. WAAAAYYY better than a lameass, boring mimosa).

Cooking is science, but it is also art. No wrong answers here. The worst thing is to become so afraid of failure that you stop trying. Cooking can be a daily, creative outlet that nourishes both body and soul. Don’t be afraid to experiment!

 

 

 

 

Posted on

Just Like Kool & The Gang Sang…

“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate” -Oprah

Everyone needs a champagne stopper. It instantly removes the barrier from going ahead and opening that bottle of sparkling wine, champagne, prosecco or, my favorite, cava. It allows us to celebrate more often without having to commit to the whole bottle (if you’re a quitter. JK).

*

Celebration and sparkling don’t have to be reserved for just ultra-special occasions. I keep a bottle ready to go in my fridge at all times because I like being prepared to celebrate at the drop of a hat. A book contract, a windfall, surviving a challenging work week, the full moon, Tuesday night. Big things, little things, silly things, why not?

*

And I believe in the inherent value of celebrating as much as possible. Because celebration is the manifestation of gratitude and that’s a great place to have your attention. Keep focused on what is good, what is working, what is right with the world.

*

So get yourself one of these gadgets, get something nice chilling in the fridge and pay attention to what needs celebrating. However small or seemingly insignificant. Try it, it’s fun!

*

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is a miracle”. – Albert Einstein

 

Posted on

The Historical Significance of Scalloped Potatoes

This dish is legendary in my family. I am the youngest of 6 (sadly, now 5) and this was a crowd pleaser when we were growing up. My mom totally rolls her eyes at us when we (still) ask her to make it. From her perspective at 81 years old, it is too fussy and time consuming and she ain’t got no time for that. My mom would never be accused of being overly sentimental, but that is definitely a big part of her charm!

I first started making it for myself and my hungry, clueless-in-the-kitchen college roommates. And it WAS time consuming. At least how it was written in The Joy of Cooking, which was my only cookbook at the time and I had yet to learn to bend recipes to my will. There was peeling, soaking, layering and pre-cooking involved. But I did it anyway because it was a taste of home and a bit of comfort to all of us big kids living away from our parents for the first time.

Many years later, my dear (late) chef brother opened my eyes to a better way. He did that a lot! He was probably my biggest role model and  inspiration in cooking without rigid recipes. He was a classically trained chef, but ironically, never followed a recipe and made it all look effortless, fluid and fun. Maybe the recipes were in his head, IDK. Anyway, he took all kinds of liberties and was something of a MacGyver in the kitchen (you’ll have to be as old as I am to get that reference). I remember one time I was hanging about while he catered a fancy meal for a bunch of fancy people at an estate deep in the wine country of St Helena, California. VERY far from any kind of market. He was making a skewered chicken app and forgot the skewers. Without a moment’s hesitation, he ripped some rosemary stalks from the yard and threaded the meat onto those. Genius! Looked and tasted fucking amazing. He would do shit like that all of the time. Miss him so.

So back to scalloped potatoes – my brother and I were together one Christmas far from home and decided to make the old family favorite. So I started to peel and chop and was about to start parboiling, layering and pre-heating the milk when he (thankfully) stopped me. “You know you can just mix that all up in a big bowl and toss it into the baking dish right?” Mind. Blown. Duh. So I’ve made them that way ever since and it is way more fast and fun and I never measure a bit. Just trust myself to make it look right, even if it is different every time. Which is part of the fun.

Posted on

From Expert To Novice. Again.

I am so not following the recipe in my working life right now! And I say that not so much in a proud way (at least today), but more in a scared shitless and totally uncomfortable way. Ugh.

I’ve managed to go from having a solid, regular, full time job in a niche in my field where I excelled to now a part-time position in a different, nichier niche where I have no idea what the fuck I am doing! And it shows!! Expert to novice is definitely not how the recipe for professional success is written, but here I am.

And how am I doing with that you ask? Not well! I like being the one who knows, the one who people look to for guidance, the one who can do the work and do it well almost in her sleep. It is so much more comfortable to have all of the answers rather than to be asking all of the questions. I don’t want to traverse this sea of mediocrity again damn it! I’ve already made that journey plenty of times! But this time the distant shore is really where I want to be: self-employed in a creative way on my own terms with plenty of time to spend with my kids while they are still at home. Guess I better suck it up and stay the course.

There is no substitute for experience though and that just takes time. Trying to force something to cook faster won’t turn out well. It will be burned on the outside and raw on the inside. And I just keep reminding myself that cooking without a recipe was not easy at first, but now it is effortless and fluid, like breathing. I’ll get there.

 

Posted on

Cooking Without a Recipe is Scary. At First.

And I think this is a good metaphor for life as well. We all are just trying to figure out what makes us happy, or in cooking, what tastes good. Recipes offer a promise that things will turn out well. The problem is, what tastes good to you or what makes you happy may not follow the recipe. Recipes are safe, predictable and offer a tested and trusted way to a specific result. But what if that is not the result that suits YOU? Or, what if the act of cooking, or living life your way is the reward in itself?

For much of my life I have stubbornly proclaimed that I am not a baker. Why? Because baking is more science-y and requires following the rules. Unlike other cooking, I couldn’t see a way to improvise to my heart’s content and also produce baked goods that were actually edible. I resisted baking for years and I lived down to my own expectations every time I did try it. I could not find any joy in the process of following a recipe.

Then something changed. I gave myself permission to screw around with baking recipes, treating them more like suggestions as I routinely do with my general cooking. Two things happened; I learned I could do it my way with good results and I was a whole lot happier baking. Now I turn out homemade pizzas, focaccia, muffins and cakes like nobody’s business. And they are uniquely, imperfectly, deliciously mine.

Now I’m applying that same found wisdom to my life. I have jumped ship and departed from the generally accepted recipe for a happy life. I no longer have a leash (steady job), but neither do I have a recipe to follow either. I am making this up as I go along, finding work that suits me and fits into the rest of my life. I’m a little (sometimes a lot) scared about it, but I just keep telling myself that I don’t have to follow the recipe and everything will still (probably) turn out ok. And I am already much happier in the process.