So the way this blog works is that I talk a lot about writing and cooking (and subsequently eating) and how they mash up in my life.
But that's a little skeletal.
My big plan is to recreate dishes I read about in books. I find that some of the best food writing I have come across is incidental, buried in a non-(culinary)-genre works of fiction--like the ham biscuit in Jack London's "To Build a Fire;" the meager meals cooked in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn; the salted pork in Little House on the Prairie. The delicious dinner at the men's college that Virginia Woolf describes in A Room of One's Own. (Hell, for that matter, the not-as-great dinner from the women's college too.)
The problem is that these dishes are mentioned with such art and imagination, but the reader is left only to imagine them. So through misadventures, mistakes, and a little creativity, I'm going to recreate those meals and dishes I read about in books.
I don't flatter myself that I'll have people flock to my blog, but since I am sharing the link with my friends, maybe you'll help me out. If you find a great dish described in a book somewhere, let me know about it. My first big project will start in October, when I'll be reading The Cider House Rules and going apple-picking: something I consider a very "Virginia" thing to do, and something I've never done before. Beyond that, I have no plan except to read and cook. (My life is so hard.)
:)
Monday, September 27, 2010
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Whisking and Wording
A cook typically uses a whisk to blend ingredients smooth, working out lumps. Alternatively, a whisk is also used to incorporate air into ingredients, such as eggs or cream.
A writer uses words in much the same way: to smooth out ideas into a tangible form, working out the dizzying mess of thoughts and images. Alternatively, words are also infused with life, air, inspiration, etc.
Essentially, both cooking and writing involve the process of making something out of nothing using a few tools and raw materials. That's what this blog is about.
When I was in high school, I wanted to be a pastry chef. I thought nothing would make me happier than to stand in a kitchen all day and play with chocolate. (Side note: that actually still makes me pretty happy.) But after doing a trial run for a culinary school scholarship competition--wherein I attempted strawberry cream-cheese stuffed crepes, paying attention to mise en place as well as actually cooking the blasted things, in under three hours--I discovered I don't cook well under pressure. More importantly, I didn't like cooking under pressure. That was the first step in ending my culinary career.
I became a writer instead. I felt much more adept at sitting in my room, computer in my lap, making up stories, writing literary analyses, reading books and staring out windows. I got my MFA in fiction from Old Dominion University, the best possible place I could have spent three years learning how to write stories.
I graduated in May, and when I'm not toiling away at a law firm during the day or writing stories or book reviews at night, I cook. I live with two writers, and it isn't uncommon for them to emerge from their bedrooms, eyes bleary with ideas and coded dreams, to find me in the midst of baking brownies, or chopping vegetables, or even just making sweet tea.
I used to joke during graduate school that I cooked the most when I was up against a story deadline. Those were the times when I needed to make pasta, banana bread, cookies, chicken soup. But I found that writing was part of my process; food was part of my process. In the kitchen, my hands are mechanical, my actions memorized, my mind free. I can breathe, and ideas can grow. For me, writing and cooking are linked. I am determined, it seems, to spend my life making something out of nothing.
A writer uses words in much the same way: to smooth out ideas into a tangible form, working out the dizzying mess of thoughts and images. Alternatively, words are also infused with life, air, inspiration, etc.
Essentially, both cooking and writing involve the process of making something out of nothing using a few tools and raw materials. That's what this blog is about.
When I was in high school, I wanted to be a pastry chef. I thought nothing would make me happier than to stand in a kitchen all day and play with chocolate. (Side note: that actually still makes me pretty happy.) But after doing a trial run for a culinary school scholarship competition--wherein I attempted strawberry cream-cheese stuffed crepes, paying attention to mise en place as well as actually cooking the blasted things, in under three hours--I discovered I don't cook well under pressure. More importantly, I didn't like cooking under pressure. That was the first step in ending my culinary career.
I became a writer instead. I felt much more adept at sitting in my room, computer in my lap, making up stories, writing literary analyses, reading books and staring out windows. I got my MFA in fiction from Old Dominion University, the best possible place I could have spent three years learning how to write stories.
I graduated in May, and when I'm not toiling away at a law firm during the day or writing stories or book reviews at night, I cook. I live with two writers, and it isn't uncommon for them to emerge from their bedrooms, eyes bleary with ideas and coded dreams, to find me in the midst of baking brownies, or chopping vegetables, or even just making sweet tea.
I used to joke during graduate school that I cooked the most when I was up against a story deadline. Those were the times when I needed to make pasta, banana bread, cookies, chicken soup. But I found that writing was part of my process; food was part of my process. In the kitchen, my hands are mechanical, my actions memorized, my mind free. I can breathe, and ideas can grow. For me, writing and cooking are linked. I am determined, it seems, to spend my life making something out of nothing.
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