The Passion of the Kitchen

Recently I watched Julie and Julia, the movie adaptation of the book by the same name describing one woman’s goal of cooking all of Julia Childs’ recipes from her original cookbook in the span of a year. As much as I can empathize with Julie’s desire, if the scenes detailing Julia’s rise to kitchen stardom had not been included I would have turned the movie off in the first thirty minutes. Despite the unlikability of the focal character, her desire to do something daring in the kitchen struck a chord in me.

Each week,  I spend one quarter of my weekend making my food for the coming week as I rarely have time each evening to cook food from scratch. After gaining nearly 20 pounds from eating out multiple times a week during my last round of graduate school, I determined to never do that again, and cooking and pre-packing my meals for the coming week not only helped me lose those twenty pounds, but keep them off. Nevertheless, the idea of cooking, sometimes multiple, new recipes each evening seemed especially fascinating to me as someone who goes to the grocery store once (only by necessity twice) a month. I do not do a weekly menu; I do a monthly one.

Still, as a person who LOVES to cook and to teach others to cook in the way I learned from my grandmother and mother (smell is EVERYTHING), the idea of doing something challenging such as cooking a new recipe (the steps and ingredients of which I normally take as suggestions rather than directions) each night absolutely fascinated me. I have a wide variety of cookbooks ranging from the 75th Anniversary Edition Joy of Cooking to collections of recipes from various churches and high school classes. My favorites are those collections of recipes real people use on a regular basis. I know they are good because people shared them when they had the opportunity to give the one recipe they knew was good.

Discussing the value of taking on such a challenge, my roommate and I brought up a number of ways such a challenge could be taken and what ways we would do it differently. While the idea caused me to reflect on what kind of cooking challenge I would undertake. Living in Austin, Texas is vastly different than a borough of New York. I drive past a dozen grocery stores each day, but none of them are an easy access off and on the interstate routes I travel. That is why I only go to the store once or twice a month. If I lived in NYC, based on what I have seen in the apartments of the friends I have visited there, I would have to shop and cook each day; that is not my reality.

In the week that followed, the more I reflected on the idea of some kind of cooking challenge the more I realized I do not need a challenge to demonstrate my passion in the kitchen. My weekly meals and the other meals I prepare for friends from time to time all come from the passionate cook within. It exists in every dish I make and that is what I want to sustain.

Gone to the Dogs

         The National Dog Show came on as I was sitting in my recliner in near turkey-coma. My dog sat looking up at me wondering why he could not have the things I had eaten (too many jalapenos in the dressing). With all the treats the dogs were getting from their handlers, he was probably wondering why I was not slipping him a treat every time he moved.

         Nothing about the dog show interested me. The extreme to which dogs have been bred to specific purposes has created some genuinely ugly dogs. The announcers kept pointing out that the viewer needed to “imagine the dog doing what it was bred to do when judging from home.” I could not imagine some of the dogs, especially some of the terriers, being bred to do anything but scare rats and tasteful tourists out of the village.

         Seeing these coiffed canines made me happy with my mutt. A bath now and then, a few toys from the discount store and we are set. You will find no special products or handlers around here.

         As much as I was not interested, I could not turn away. Much like NASCAR, which is most fun when wrecks disrupt the race, I kept waiting for the Rottweilers, Dobermans, and German Shepherds to get into it - or for the Great Dane to snap up that ugly toy breed winner for a snack. I could not turn away. Alas, these dogs are too well trained and the choke chains the handlers use keep them under control. No fights. No inappropriate sniffing. Nothing exciting.

         Just calm voices talking about how wonderful each breed is for what it does.  And there were many commercials for pet food and pet toys. One feature even advocated taking dogs to work. My energetic dog would cause chaos. There were no ads for animal tranquilizers.

         Instead of calm, knowledgeable voices, I want Fred Willard, in character from Best in Show, to analyze the proceedings. That hilariously inappropriate chatter coupled with the behind-the-scenes antics of the various dog owners/handlers fills the imagination with what might actually be happening in the parts of the show edited out so that the show ends just in time to cut to the football game.

         I must confess, this is at least the third year in a row I have watched the show. As much as I wish NBC would take a cue from the movie and broaden the antics of the show, I doubt they will. However, I will likely keep watching from year to year – hoping sometime life will imitate art.