Ars Culinaria

I love food. I mean that’s pretty obvious even if you’ve never met me or seen me in person. If you read this blog you know that. No one who doesn’t love food starts a food blog or goes to culinary school (or at least they shouldn’t, especially on the second thing). I’m sure there are psychological reasons why some people become “foodies” and some people don’t. There have always been people who live to eat and those who eat to live. If some Freudian wanted to root around in my childhood and adolescence, I’m sure they’d find all kinds of reasons why I am what I am. I’ve already disclosed that I was anorexic in high school. I think that set up a lifetime of disordered eating that I still wrestle with occasionally. When you have disordered eating there is a tendency to assign some moral value to what you eat and therefore yourself based on what you eat.

Hell, I don’t think you even have to have an official diagnosis of disordered eating to assign a moral value to food. How often do you hear people talk about food as sinful or naughty? People “cheat” on their diets. There are probably 10000 blogs and Pinterest boards dedicated to “clean” eating. As opposed to what? Dirty eating. And what does that look like? In my mind it looks like a one year old face deep in chocolate birthday cake. And that looks like fun. But I’m pretty sure they mean something closer to shame eating that chocolate cake, crying and standing over the sink.

I can’t say that I don’t still assign some moral value to what I buy and cook and eat for myself and my family. I try really hard to source most of what we consume locally and organic as much as possible. If it’s not a moral value, it’s an ethical one, but I seem to have an easier time with that. I apply the don’t be an asshole rule when eating with others – I’m not going to turn my nose up at something that someone else lovingly prepared for me because it doesn’t fit my worldview, unless it will make me sick, like raw bananas.

While I was assigning all this moral and ethical value to my food, I was also assigning it to myself. I genuinely felt like I was a bad person because I had a piece of cake. Let me tell you, gentle readers, that way lies madness and binge eating and laying in bed night after night cataloging my eating sins of the day and how I would pay for it the next day. One who wishes to function well as a human being doing adult life things should not sacrifice sleep for mental hair shirting. And for the most part I don’t anymore. Some expensive therapy (which I probably should have done WAY sooner), lots of reading on why people (especially women, but everyone) have screwed up relationships with food, and the insights of a host of bloggers who run the gamut from people pulling themselves out of that pit of despair themselves to professional nutritionists and psychologists have been invaluable to not spending my nights figuring how many naked spinach days I have to endure for a slice of wedding cake. It’s so much nicer.

Am I completely “cured.” Um, no. I think it’s its own wagon, this journey. Occasionally I will have a really bad day and find myself swearing to fast to go to some event or beating myself up because I haven’t eaten enough different colored vegetables for the week. Mostly though I strive to eat a varied diet that includes whole foods and not so much processed stuff. When things are bad and I am whipping myself into a moral panic over chocolate chip cookies, I think about Michael Pollan’s food rule: “Eat food. A little less. Mostly plants.” It’s pretty simple and keeps me on track. And I try to move my body around, nothing gym goddess worthy, but a walk or some yoga, or a solo pants-off dance-off in my kitchen to some Shakira. And honestly, there’s no shame in that. I no longer believe in guilty pleasures. If you like something, like the hell out of it. If you are going to eat the chocolate cake or peanut butter cup ice cream, enjoy it. Savor every bite. Make sex noises. Whatever.

And then I realized what that all mean. There are no guilty pleasures. If you love something really love it. That means me, too. If I’m going to like me, I’m going to love me, cellulite, jiggly bits, a few wrinkles and gray hairs, everything. I’m not a lab frog. I don’t get to dissect what I don’t like and cut it away. Boy. That’s a tall order for a woman who’s spent let’s say age 9 to age 40 wanting to change everything about herself (except my nose and eyes, I’ve always liked those funnily enough). So I’m three years in to this food’s cool, I’m cool journey. Falling off the wagon hurts like a dammit but I get back on. I have too much other shit to do in this life to waste it preoccupied with the fact that my thighs touch. Actually they pretty much make out with each other all damn day and I’m cool with it. Mostly.

I don’t think I’d quite realized it, but I spent almost twelve years figuring out who I am as a cook, professionally and now more not, in Nashville. What I eat, what I make, what I’ve taught others to make is largely predicated on where I’ve lived for the last decade plus with an underpinning of family tradition and my travels. I think everyone’s on board with the idea of regional cooking but inside regional cooking are smaller pockets of local foodsheds influenced by the terrain, the tradition, the farmers & artisans, and the incomers.

Nashville and Knoxville are just far enough distant from each other and the terrain is just enough different that the foodsheds, though sharing the generalities of regional southern cooking, have some striking differences. Hot chicken is not really a big thing in Knoxville. (Well, it is kind of a trending thing everywhere at the moment.) The downtown, main farmers markets are very different. Not just physically but in the array and expanse of what is on offer. I haven’t quite learned all the who’s who at the Knoxville market but two weeks in, we’ve found a few vendors where  I think we’ll always stop to see what they have.

Today I discovered a new locally grown grape I’ve never had before. It’s called Marquis. It’s small, pale green, and perfectly round. It pops in your mouth like a muscadine but is incredibly sweet and the skin doesn’t have the leatheriness that muscadines can have. We bought apples and cucumbers from the same farm last week and more apples and the grapes this week. We’ve switched from the Hatcher milk we preferred in Nashville to Cruze Farm milk here. They make an excellent coffee milk but I was disappointed that the whole milk is homogenized. I know it’s weird that I actually like having to shake up the milk before I pour it into my coffee. I’ll get used to the change.

There are restaurants that I am going to miss (and probably take every opportunity to eat at when we visit Nashville). Keifel and I have had so many breakfast dates at Marché in East Nashville that we always get seated at the same table. But there’re also our favorite Thai and Vietnamese and sushi and fancy places for anniversary and birthday dinners. We’ll find ones we like here, too. It took awhile in Nashville and it’ll take some time here as well. I’m on the hunt for “my” coffeehouse. Somewhere with excellent coffee, a little bit of food, and ample space to read, take notes, or write when I need to get out of the quiet of my office at home and require the low drone of human activity in a coffeeshop to be productive. I tried K Brew in North Knox. Excellent coffee but tiny space with limited options for camping out for a couple hours. Knoxville isn’t quite as littered with Starbucks as Nashville but they’re here and that is decidedly not what I’m looking for. I’ll find it, but I’m happy to take suggestions.

I don’t think I’d quite realized it, but I spent almost twelve years figuring out who I am as a cook, professionally and now more not, in Nashville. What I eat, what I make, what I’ve taught others to make is largely predicated on where I’ve lived for the last decade plus with an underpinning of family tradition and my travels. I think everyone’s on board with the idea of regional cooking but inside regional cooking are smaller pockets of local foodsheds influenced by the terrain, the tradition, the farmers & artisans, and the incomers.

Nashville and Knoxville are just far enough distant from each other and the terrain is just enough different that the foodsheds, though sharing the generalities of regional southern cooking, have some striking differences. Hot chicken is not really a big thing in Knoxville. (Well, it is kind of a trending thing everywhere at the moment.) The downtown, main farmers markets are very different. Not just physically but in the array and expanse of what is on offer. I haven’t quite learned all the who’s who at the Knoxville market but two weeks in, we’ve found a few vendors where  I think we’ll always stop to see what they have.

Today I discovered a new locally grown grape I’ve never had before. It’s called Marquis. It’s small, pale green, and perfectly round. It pops in your mouth like a muscadine but is incredibly sweet and the skin doesn’t have the leatheriness that muscadines can have. We bought apples and cucumbers from the same farm last week and more apples and the grapes this week. We’ve switched from the Hatcher milk we preferred in Nashville to Cruze Farm milk here. They make an excellent coffee milk but I was disappointed that the whole milk is homogenized. I know it’s weird that I actually like having to shake up the milk before I pour it into my coffee. I’ll get used to the change.

There are restaurants that I am going to miss (and probably take every opportunity to eat at when we visit Nashville). Keifel and I have had so many breakfast dates at Marché in East Nashville that we always get seated at the same table. But there’re also our favorite Thai and Vietnamese and sushi and fancy places for anniversary and birthday dinners. We’ll find ones we like here, too. It took awhile in Nashville and it’ll take some time here as well. I’m on the hunt for “my” coffeehouse. Somewhere with excellent coffee, a little bit of food, and ample space to read, take notes, or write when I need to get out of the quiet of my office at home and require the low drone of human activity in a coffeeshop to be productive. I tried K Brew in North Knox. Excellent coffee but tiny space with limited options for camping out for a couple hours. Knoxville isn’t quite as littered with Starbucks as Nashville but they’re here and that is decidedly not what I’m looking for. I’ll find it, but I’m happy to take suggestions.

I don’t think I’d quite realized it, but I spent almost twelve years figuring out who I am as a cook, professionally and now more not, in Nashville. What I eat, what I make, what I’ve taught others to make is largely predicated on where I’ve lived for the last decade plus with an underpinning of family tradition and my travels. I think everyone’s on board with the idea of regional cooking but inside regional cooking are smaller pockets of local foodsheds influenced by the terrain, the tradition, the farmers & artisans, and the incomers.

Nashville and Knoxville are just far enough distant from each other and the terrain is just enough different that the foodsheds, though sharing the generalities of regional southern cooking, have some striking differences. Hot chicken is not really a big thing in Knoxville. (Well, it is kind of a trending thing everywhere at the moment.) The downtown, main farmers markets are very different. Not just physically but in the array and expanse of what is on offer. I haven’t quite learned all the who’s who at the Knoxville market but two weeks in, we’ve found a few vendors where  I think we’ll always stop to see what they have.

Today I discovered a new locally grown grape I’ve never had before. It’s called Marquis. It’s small, pale green, and perfectly round. It pops in your mouth like a muscadine but is incredibly sweet and the skin doesn’t have the leatheriness that muscadines can have. We bought apples and cucumbers from the same farm last week and more apples and the grapes this week. We’ve switched from the Hatcher milk we preferred in Nashville to Cruze Farm milk here. They make an excellent coffee milk but I was disappointed that the whole milk is homogenized. I know it’s weird that I actually like having to shake up the milk before I pour it into my coffee. I’ll get used to the change.

There are restaurants that I am going to miss (and probably take every opportunity to eat at when we visit Nashville). Keifel and I have had so many breakfast dates at Marché in East Nashville that we always get seated at the same table. But there’re also our favorite Thai and Vietnamese and sushi and fancy places for anniversary and birthday dinners. We’ll find ones we like here, too. It took awhile in Nashville and it’ll take some time here as well. I’m on the hunt for “my” coffeehouse. Somewhere with excellent coffee, a little bit of food, and ample space to read, take notes, or write when I need to get out of the quiet of my office at home and require the low drone of human activity in a coffeeshop to be productive. I tried K Brew in North Knox. Excellent coffee but tiny space with limited options for camping out for a couple hours. Knoxville isn’t quite as littered with Starbucks as Nashville but they’re here and that is decidedly not what I’m looking for. I’ll find it, but I’m happy to take suggestions.

We’re having a friend over for dinner tonight and my brother and his family are coming for waffles in the morning. Tonight I’m making a version of Moroccan chicken that I’ve been making since I lived in Knoxville the last time and waffles, well they are waffles. What I cook won’t change immediately or completely. But I am looking forward to finding what’s new to me here and how that will push, change, and help me grow as a cook. Now, if I can figure out the cooking for only two people thing…

You’d think as often as we have moved, now officially once a year for the last three years, I would be so pro at it that I could crack a whip and the plates and books would wrap themselves and hop into a box. You’d also think that it wouldn’t wear me out. You’d be wrong. This move, more than the last two, has really taken it out of me. We did move to a different city, not just across town, but I think it’s more than that.

I’ve been on a downsizing, minimalist kick for a few years. I’ve written about it here and mentioned it in umpteen Facebook posts, but I felt it in my bones this time. At one point just a day or two before the movers arrived to pack the U-Haul truck, I really wondered what it would be like to set everything out on the lawn and let whoever was willing to haul it off have it. The though of having to take a suitcase full of things, and nothing more, seemed like the most freeing thing in the world. I also thought of all the money, all the actual work hours, represented by everything I wrapped to move or placed in the donate box. Why had I purchased this thing I no longer needed or wanted? Why had I hauled it through how many other moves to just now discard it?

The other thing that floated through my mind was the prospect of what the next move might look like (yes, that was probably borrowing trouble). Keifel and I really want to live overseas for awhile. It’s a long term goal but I did think about what moving again would look like if our next move was to Europe. The things I would take would only be those things we could not replace once we landed: family treasures, photos, unique items we love, and some artwork (and that cats, of course). What would it feel like to sell everything? I can tell you the thought of it was completely thrilling. It isn’t a completely abstract thought for either of us. Keifel spent four years traveling and working and living out of suitcase, often buying clothes when he landed and donating them when he left for a different climate. I spent a year and change in Slovenia in college. I left with a backpack of everything I thought I would need for a year and acquired a few things there and had a few additional things shipped from home but it was just so much less stuff to clean, to keep up with, to worry about.

And now with all of this, I can’t help but wonder, how much could I get rid of now? How little could we comfortably live with?

I haven’t had many Saturdays lately that were just Saturdays – days without real plans, made for puttering and experimenting and maybe daydreaming. Today, this Saturday, is pretty much all mine. I drove Keifel to work very early for a weekend, dropping him about 7:45am. It was too early to go to the market but silly to drive all the home so I popped into Provence on 21st. I’ve been disappointed the last few times I’ve been there, the service has been off or the floors have been really dirty. Things seem a little improved today and I got an almond croissant, my favorite, and a latte and scrolled through some social media while the other early birds flocked in.

By the time I got to the market, the day was in full swing. I got milk and fruit. There were some gorgeous eggplant but no one at my house will eat them but me and as much as I love it, I don’t want to eat leftover eggplant for three days. The Peach Truck is still going strong so I picked up a bag of peaches and traded dollars with a couple other farmers for some huge blackberries and some tiny red plums I had never seen before (I wish I had thought to take a picture…).

The house was still quiet when I got home, so I dragged out the laundry baskets and made some coffee and set about making a batch of plum jam. I bought Food in Jars last spring with grand dreams of making Christmas presents of jeweled summer fruit in jars after a Saturday spent making some iffy strawberry jam with Andrea. Since purchasing the book I have perused its pages many times and made exactly zero things from it. I have actually made (so much better) strawberry jam a couple times and some devilishly good pickled onions but nothing from the book. I even bought a Kuhn Rikon pan with a rack insert big enough for exactly one pint jar… still nothing from the book. With my bounty from the market laid before me on the counter, I was determined to make something. I settled on the recipe for Small Batch Mixed Stone Fruit Jam thinking the plums wouldn’t equal the three cups of chopped fruit required and I would need to throw in at least one of the peaches.

The plums were exactly three cups. I grated in the zest of one lemon, pouring its juice in after and sifted the desiccated vanilla bean pods out of my jar of vanilla sugar (Ms McClellan had suggested adding a vanilla bean) and topping it up to two cups from the sugar canister. The sugared, lemoned plums hung out in the fridge while I started laundry, put the dishes away and had lunch with Julian (his breakfast). Then, on to serious jam making.

The recipe says the batch should be enough to fill three half-pint jars. Apparently I don’t have any half-pint jars. Apparently I have a whole box of wide-mouth pint jars (no idea), a couple small-mouth pints and two 1/4 pints. I set everything up best I could as I have not invested in a canning pot proper but use my pasta pot with a steamer in the bottom. This is not ideal as the pint jars are actually a little tall on the rack. The directions in the book are pretty spot on though it took a lot longer than I thought it would to reach the temperature suggested for a good set since there’s no added pectin. My batch made one full pint and one 1/4 pint of deeply purple jam. Of course I tasted the slick of jam left in the pan. I am always amazed at the natural spiciness of cooked plums. If it sets it’ll be wonderful.

As I typed the last line I heard the favorite sound of all home canners: the ping of a sealing jar.

 

It has finally hit, the overwhelming knowledge that my son, the boychick, is graduating from high school. He’ll soon be moving into an on-campus apartment which includes a mandatory meal plan. He’ll still need a few kitchen things for his first kitchen. His. First. Kitchen.

When I started this blog ten years ago, Jules, the aforementioned boychick, was 7. One of the first entries I wrote was about things in my kitchen that are precious to me. One was a knife my father gave me for my first kitchen in my on-campus apartment at the very same university. The amazing purple bowl, which the accompanying photo is a good example of, was purchased at a junk shop along with a rolling pin made in Yugoslavia to add to my kitchen items for my first married kitchen.

I no longer have that rolling pin, or that husband. I do have the purple bowl. Mine is now a little scratched but is still the go-to bowl for everything from making pancake batter, soaking apples in lemon infused water, to marinating chicken for the grill (whenever that happens). It’s a workhorse in our kitchen and everyone uses it. It’s bounced on the floor a couple of times and survived. It’s been knocked against the sink and stone counter tops and moved to exactly 7 other kitchens with us (yes, we’ve moved a lot in 14 years).

It’s almost time to let it go. It will get packed up with a new knife and some other basics to set up Julian’s kitchen. He won’t need it for everyday. He’ll have whatever college cafeterias serve these days to keep his belly full and his body healthy (I hope). But if he does decide to cook something, he’ll have The Magic Bowl that’s been part of preparing countless meals, loaves of bread and stacks of brownies. Like my dad’s knife, it will be a little part of home, a connection to our cooking together, and a start for all his kitchens to come – until it breaks or a replacement is needed. It is just a bowl after all. The important thing is the memory and the love of the person using it.

Heat be damned, I have cooked more in the last week than in the last two months. I’ve tried to carve out time for both shopping and cooking and I have to tell ya, it feels much better. I don’t mean to sound all Suzy Homemaker superior (the universe knows Saint Martha would be appalled by my baseboards) but it’s really that I get sick of restaurant food quickly. And with the heat, all I’ve really wanted to eat was fruit and more fruit. Sadly, the local batshit crazy weather has made even seasonal fruit crazy expensive but we stocked up anyway. I am convinced that it might be possible for me to become a fruititarian. Not to worry about my sanity though really; my family would desert me for the siren call of cow and pig flesh inside a week. In light of that we’ve had brats in beer, a yummy blackberry cobbler, salmon cakes, stir-fried bok choi, teeny marble-sized new potatoes, and ribs and a coffee and ancho rubbed shoulder roast. I won’t my dryer because of the heat but I did crank up my oven. Insanity thy name is hunger.

And for the usual non sequitur, the aforementioned weather and my own laziness prevented any real gardening aside from a leggy thyme plant on the kitchen sill. However, I have been watching Britains of the 1980s re-enacting gardening of the posh Victorian and starving WWII eras. The Victorian Kitchen Garden, The Victorian Kitchen, and the War Garden & Kitchen are fascinating and strangely addictive in that way that can never be fully explained by the anglophilic addict. If you find yourself somewhere loathsomely hot (with electricity and the intrawebs) and some time to kill, you could do worse than watching someone toil in the gray British summer and stifling smoky kitchens of yore. Bonus points added for an adorable ’80s professorial presenter with a spindly mustache in Peter Thoday (I can’t believe he doesn’t even rate a Wikipedia article; he really is fun to watch).

Best of luck to you on the weather crap shoot this summer and safe and happy 4th.

And, so, life moves on. Quickly as it turns out. In my last draft to you, dear readers – those few who might still be hanging on waiting for some thread of noise on my end – I was leaving my kitchen and house behind and taking off into the unknown of post mortgage apocalypse and weird job-cobbling. We are now well and truly settled into our rental digs with the quirky, Escher-esque rooms and uneven floors. I have made peace with my fridge facing away from all the relevant work surfaces in the kitchen. The cats are cozy and we’ve survived a snowy winter and stormy spring in our little bungalow.

But what of the culinary life? There has been cooking, big and small. Daily and not so much. I took a full-time job with a non-profit in January that has brought us financial calm and daily schedules that look the same most M-Fs. It means that part time teaching is no longer a real option. My cooking professionally will now be mostly cooking as a volunteer. It’s new to you, but I made peace with it a few months ago. I am hoping that some stability means more time now that I am settled into the new work. It’s coming. To carve out some time means saying no to a few things asked of me and that was hard but has also already happened.

So that brings me here. What do I do with a foodblog started when I was looking at being a food professional? That is the $64 question (we’re pretty low-stakes around here). I have a few ideas, one I’ve been tossing about with Cajun Scorpio Girl who is looking at blogging about living green. I’m thinking there is some overlap. Now that I’m not cooking for dollars and can really cook just for fun. I think I’d like to really cook for fun and just document that. Homemade marshmallows (probably not til fall now), crackers, canning and preserving, making sausage and charcuterie… Stuff I didn’t have time for before and for which no one had enough money to pay me. I also want to throw tea parties with my girlfriends. I have all the frippery and the hat. This needs to happen and be documented of course. I also think it’s time for a redesign and for that I’ll have to hit up the Keifel, but I’m sure he’d be willing if I bat my eyelashes. Oh, there will also be the occasional salon/dinner/concert and a few charity gigs here and there to let you in on. I hope the fun – and the quality of the writing – will make up for the drop in intensity (though few and far between those posts have been). It’s a new leaf. Let’s see how it tastes.

Yesterday I had the great good fortune to mosey on down the road a short way with Keifel and Julian to meet two lovely couples, one with equally lovely offspring in tow, for breakfast at the still fairly new restaurant The Farmhouse at Fontanel. Keifel and I had gotten excited about it when I found it while looking for local food sources on the web, but schedules and budgets had kept us from trying it ’til yesterday. It’s on Whites Creek Pike which makes it very conveniently located for us North (of) Nashville types. They also source their ingredients locally, from many of the same producers we have been buying from for months.

Between the eight of us, we almost covered the breakfast menu. The omelets were of that particular shade of yellow only achieved by using the very freshest of eggs straight from farms where chickens eat what chickens are suppose to eat. The grits, courtesy of Falls Mills, were — with only the exception of those enjoyed at my mother’s table, made by her hand — the best I have ever eaten. I know grits are a love ’em or leave ’em proposition and most people I know are in the leave ’em camp, but these were every bit as creamy and light as the finest Italian-grandma-made polenta laden with shallots and Parmesan. I ordered the Whites Creek Benedict: buttermilk biscuits with country ham, a light cheese sauce and two perfectly poached eggs. Julian took a piece of my biscuit and said, “You just handed me a cloud.” Boy knows from biscuits.

Jules got the Mile Marker Zero BBQ Omelet. He was leaning toward the French toast but his serious BBQ love won out. And good thing. The pulled pork was perfect and the combination of fluffy yellow omelet with tangy sauce just goes to show that sometimes a great notion comes from coloring outside the lines. Keifel’s farmhouse breakfast arrived all of a piece: a perfect succotash of sweet corn and buttery limas layered with crumbled sausage and home fries topped with two (again perfectly executed) over medium eggs. None of this fifteen different plates and bowls like the similarly named breakfast served at that familiar interstate exit country eatery. (Don’t get me wrong, I have been saved many times by the checkers and rocking chairs beacon when travelling through the seas of fast food sludge served on plastic tables.)

There’s our three. I had nibbles of the others but saved the gusto of my appetite for my own choice. However, I was tempted and succumbed to the sweet siren song of fig jam and sweet potato butter that came with the toast plates. Vocabulary fails. Oh my. I love fig jam and well, that was amazing. Period.

Of course, I cannot be 100% fawning. Not because I’m afraid you won’t believe me or because I will seem like some paid sycophant. There actually was a teeny flaw. And honestly, it’s a pet peeve of mine and no one else seemed to mind in the least. I prefer a crunch to my hash browns/home fries and none registered with those that Keifel or Jules got with their meals. It’s a tiny but important thing, to me. So, I will always choose the grits when given a choice. Problem solved.

We are looking forward to going back for lunch or dinner and checking out the trails on the property. It’s a beautiful setting. It always amazes me how close we are to a rural area when we can be downtown in about 7 minutes. The new enterprise at Fontanel is icing on that best of both worlds cake. Oh, they are currently building a gallery/artist space, as well.

Go. If you aren’t as lucky to be as close as we are, it’s worth the drive. It’s the same folks that run The Loveless, but having eaten at both, The Farmhouse wins by miles. Must be all that great local produce, meat, eggs and dairy.

Yes. I am lame and have fallen sadly, woefully behind in posting. Life is, well, life is good but many other things bid for my time. I wish you and yours the warmest Thanksgiving wishes with friends and family (the birthed into kind and the chosen) around a big table laden with all your holiday favorites prepared most traditionally down to the Durkee crisp onions or with the wildest gourmet flights of fancy, whatever floats your gravy boat.

I’m not sure what happened to the January thaw, though we may be getting it now. I will say that being under the weather when the weather involves single digits and windchill factors is no fun at all. I am on the mend now despite the fog horn cough and still feeling like standing up long enough to do the dishes is enough exercise for the day. It has given me time to ponder what constitutes comfort food for me. Given the dearth of groceries and the fact that everyone was sick over the course of the week and therefore grocery shopping wasn’t happening so much, what I was craving and what I was actually cooking and eating weren’t entirely in sync.

I have long established that when I am sick, I tend to want gruel. I know that sounds terribly Dickensian but it’s absolutely true. Though if by gruel you mean watery gray ick with chunks in, we are probably not talking about the same think. What I really want to eat might more appropriately be called porridge. For lunch this week I had polenta made with milk so it is kind of like corn pudding with a little butter and salt and later in the week steel cut oats made an appearance, also made with milk to the same effect but I added some cinnamon and a little raw sugar. I also really craved eggdrop soup which my faithful and dear husband supplied via China Dragon. The proprietress swears by hot and sour soup which Keifel said made him feel better but when it was my turn, not so much. I find it bitter rather than sour and it had something oddly textured in it which did not appeal. When you can’t actually taste anything, texture is pretty important.

The thing I really wanted was my mom’s potato soup, which has, of this I am certain, Herculean healing powers. It is a fairly simple milky broth with herbs and a little butter, onions and potato chunks cooked until the edges are soft and sloughing off to thicken the soup. Sometimes she adds some cheese to make it a little richer, but really the peasanty version is the real deal and what I would prefer when I am on the couch under three layers of blankets and shivering. When I was little (and sick all the damn time), I don’t really remember much about what Mom or Dad made. I do remember orange sherbet or lime if the store had it and lots of Gatorade, because that was before the days of Pedialyte and its ilk. I also remember chicken noodle soup, but I think it might have been Campbell’s. The potato soup doesn’t enter my memory bank until later. College maybe? When I had my wisdom teeth out. Another thing I am also certain of is that Mom’s potato soup also has the power to make even the deep ache of heartbreak lessen, if even for a brief moment or two. I think I may have lived on potato soup for a week or two during at least two of my most trying times. There really isn’t a recipe so much as a talk through:

Mom’s Potato Soup, as I recall:

1 pound floury potatoes
1 large yellow onion, halved and sliced pole to pole or julienned
About a tablespoon of butter
1 quart of liquid, about half milk and half chicken stock or water
Fresh thyme leaves
Salt and pepper to taste
Handful of grated cheese, Parm or Gruyere being the better choices (optional, of course)

Peel and slice the potatoes about 1/4″ thick, cutting the bigger slices in half if necessary. Set aside in a bowl of cold water, while you do everything else. In a soup pot that will hold about 2 quarts, melt the butter over medium heat until foamy. When the foam subsides, add the sliced onions and saute until softened and translucent. You really want to cook them just about as done as you want them here as they won’t soften much after you add the liquid.

Once the onions are to your liking, add the liquid (milk and broth) and the drained potatoes, the thyme and about a teaspoon of salt. Cook until the potatoes are soft and the edges have started to round off. You can make a choice here to leave as is or take out about a third of the soup and puree in a blender to add back as a further thickening agent or you can hit it a couple times with a stick blender (which is safer and less messy–if you are using a blender remember to take the little cup out of the lid and loosely hold a towel over the hole while you puree the soup portion. This will keep you from scalding and painting yourself with exploding potato soup. Trust me.) When you are happy with the body of the soup, taste for seasoning and add more salt and the pepper as you desire. If you are going to add the cheese, take the soup off the heat and add a small amount at a time, stirring until it melts before adding more. If you add the cheese it is very important that you do not allow the soup to boil. Serve immediately.

I can almost guarantee that you will never be served this soup in a four star restaurant, but sometimes that just isn’t what I’m looking for.