Everyone has their therapies, actual or otherwise. Now some people's therapies are destructive and others are constructive, but the whole point is to create a semblance of internal calm if only for a minute. My therapy sometimes comes out as a wash and can inhabit the extremes. This of course is cooking.
Its good because when its good (not necessarily the final result, but the process) its good. Of course the opposite of this is true, when its bad its bad and not helpful in anyway. Generally it all ends with frustration and then sadness (sometimes people don't want to admit that they're not doing well and everyone can see it but them... anyway if my cooking is messed up then i know that there is something else going on). It can also be destructive because the stuff I like to do is not really conducive to weight loss, but sometimes you just gotta. Plus, what makes cooking even more therapeutic is that you have to have your attention in the kitchen. There are knives, hot things, spills (if you're spastic like me), loud machinery (if you happen to be so lucky), and really heavy Le Creuset stuff that could easily cause some damage. And how many times have you accidentally thrown out the good bits of carrots and put the ends into a dish? Exactly.
Well, I hadn't cooked for about two weeks because midterms tried to kill me. And so I decided to celebrate my return to the kitchen (and return to my weight loss plan) with a hello/good bye party. Hello weight loss and the return of cooking and good bye deliciously bad for me food. I thought I would do this with gumbo, a not very healthy food. But the day before my hello/good bye party I got some distracting news and I just didn't want to. The day of my hello/good bye party I sat on the couch for about an hour trying to figure out if I really wanted to cook. (I really wanted to watch Paula Dean's fried Thanksgiving special because she fried cranberry sauce and a cake! I got to watch some of it, but seriously that made my day. It was such gross entertainment. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with fried food. But for the love of all things low in cholesterol and not heart attack inducing, a whole feast of fried-ness?! Paula must be a robot created by the South in attempts to endear the South to liberal Northerners.)
Back to the couch, all I could think about was pie (which I do no think Paula fried). I had a sugar pumpkin on my table for what felt like forever and I had been wanting to make pumpkin pie from scratch. Now, if I had pumpkin pie I'm going to want stuffing and then it felt appropriate to roast a chicken. And well then I had to have some sort of vegetable to ease everyone's mind. So I switched the menu. Now I don't do this because I tend to plan out dinner parties and figure out timing. Needless to say we didn't eat until 8 that night.
My therapy was a mixed bag. It reminded me that I really love to be in the kitchen. It also made me feel rushed and sloppy in the kitchen (which I was, beyond the norm). I like to take my time in the kitchen, do each step right. I didn't really have that luxury because obviously roasting a pumpkin, then making pie, stuffing, chicken, spinach, etc. takes longer than gumbo. Nothing turned out the way I wanted it to. It was all good, but nothing was great. The pie was tasty and my biggest success, but I was impatient to get the crust into the oven so it shrunk up on me... however, I had a little pan of pumpkin pie filling custardy goodness in my fridge that I am looking forward to... so maybe the shrinking was a success. I forgot to add the eggs into the stuffing so it was drier and crumblier than I normally make it. I like to be able to carve my stuffing. The spinach was bland and a disappointment, but lets face it, no one was there to eat spinach.
The bird though was the biggest annoyance ever. My good thermometer is MIA and so I had to replace it with a craptastic super market on sale thermometer of lies. Needless to say the breast were done, but the thighs weren't so I carved those off and put them back in the oven. (To be clear, I had measured the temp of the thighs and according to my thermometer it said that the thighs were well past done, and no, I didn't hit the bone.) O, and this was the first time I ever cooked an entire bird. I have this fear that I will kill people with uncooked poultry. Plus, I don't really eat much meat.
If you're curious about where the recipes came from I would suggest checking Martha Stewart's website. (But you won't find the stuffing there, stuffing and soup are like jazz- you just sorta roll with it. And the chicken was a complete experiment that we don't really have to document just carrots, onions, celery, thyme and rosemary in the cavity and underneath it with a little water and a rosemary, thyme butter under the skin and a little olive oil on the skin.... not weight loss friendly...)
It was all good, but I was obviously distracted. The fortunate thing is when you're friends are college students who just want it to be Thanksgiving and to have a break they don't care what you cook or how it turns out. Especially if its free.
PS I just found my good thermometer...
You're back!
Posted by: kevkev | November 15, 2007 at 01:23 PM