Cheryl Katz

Michael Ruhlman has been addressing an important question on his blog (Ruhlman.com):  Why do we cook?

I’m cooking a lot now because I’m in culinary school, but what led me to finally make a real career choice and seek training in culinary arts was that after I stopped working, and left to my own devices, I failed to make any other choice, but found myself cooking on a daily basis.

What drove me to cook then, and the basis for choosing a life that will without question revolve around food, is a question with so many answers that I can hardly decide which one to describe first.

I started cooking after I left my job because I didn’t have any reason left not to.  I didn’t cook as much while I was working because I felt always rushed for time, and to satisfy the time vs. hunger balance I wound up making a lot of quick and easy meals  – from scratch as I was able.  Being a full time stay at home mom afforded me the time to plan and explore, which resulted in more elaborate food adventures and a constant expansion of my skills and knowledge.

I was motivated to cook once the time was available because I viewed it as my new job description – feeding my family well was part of what I understood to be my contribution to family life in lieu of money.  I wanted to eat well, and I wanted a kid who doesn’t throw a fit when you feed her something other than chicken tenders and PB&J.  While these are simple goals, they require a lot of food-focused effort.

My friend Elizabeth Willse recently posted a review of Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant.  This book of reflections from writers and foodies about what they eat when they’re alone is now on my plan-to-read list.  Her review got me thinking about the things I like to cook, and the completely separate category of what I like to eat when I have only myself to think of and/or don’t feel like cooking.  I eat more bread and Camembert or triple creme cheeses than any one person probably ought to, but then even the cheeses I choose often have identities defined by where they come from or what they are made of.

If it were just about the food, I wouldn’t have pursued a structured culinary education, and I wouldn’t be writing this post today.  By now my constant search for patterns and meaning is no secret to anyone who would be reading this entry.  A fellow student once asked me, “Can’t you just be cooking food?”  I can’t.  I cook and I eat not for the love of food alone, but because I became aware of the experience of food, beyond the flavor to the story that starts in the ground and ends on my plate, through eating; I’m here learning what I learn, doing what I do and planning my future moves because I want to be an active author in that story.

When is a carrot just a carrot?  It never is.  It’s always a note in a chord in a song, no matter how simple or complex a song, and it’s a note with context and history and endless lifetimes of associated meaning that is viewed from different angles when used in different ways.

I cook because when I do, I feel connected to what I eat, to the environment that produced it, to who I am and who I will be as a result of the eating and the cooking.

I’m posting this largely for the benefit of @noirbettie, but figured it might be of interest to others as well!  When I want brownies and find myself without any of the usual suspects for making brownies (unsweetened chocolate, cocoa powder, etc), the Butterscotch Brownies recipe in Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything is a go-to indulgence. I almost always have all of the required ingredients.

This happened the other night, thanks to what I consider just about the only shortcoming of HtCE : there is no recipe for oatmeal cookies.  Period.  Barring that, and finding myself woefully out of cocoa powder for brownies or oatmeal for the cookies anyway, I happened across this page and wound up making the Blondies (their subtitle) instead.  I tossed in the handful of semi-sweet chocolate chips I had on hand to get my chocolate fix.

Butterscotch Brownies
makes 1-2 dozen

Time: 30 to 40 minutes

Maybe you’re allergic to chocolate, or don’t like it, or are out of it.  Maybe you just feel like a change.  These will fix you right up.  Add one cup of chocolate chips to the batter if you want to hedge a little; nuts, or any of the other ideas above [not included here], are also good.

8 Tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened, plus a little for greasing the pan
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract or 1/2 tsp almond extract
Pinch salt
1 cup (4 1/2 oz.) all-purpose flour

1.  Preheat the oven to 350˚F.  Grease an 8-inch square baking pan [N.B. I used a heart-shaped one, but who's counting?], or line it with aluminum foil and grease the foil.

2.  Melt the butter over low heat.  Transfer to a bowl and use an electric mixer to beat in the sugar until very smooth, then beat in the egg and vanilla, stirring down the sides of the bowl every now and then.

3.  Add the salt, then gently stir in the flour.  Pour into the prepared pan and bake 20 to 25 minutes, or until just barely set in the middle.  It’s better to underbake brownies than to overbake them.  Cool on a rack before cutting.  Store, covered and at room temperature, for no longer than a day.

Imagine wanting brownies if you don’t like chocolate!  Sigh.  What a depressing thought.  In any case, I sort of bungled the ending of mine on Thursday when I didn’t wait quite long enough for the pan to cool, and the soft, gooey middle dripped out.  It had come to a perfectly brownie-like consistency not ten minutes later.  (P.S.  It was delicious despite the mess anyway.)  So patience is the order of the day… don’t make these if you wanted chocolate yesterday.

I’m reading The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon.  Another interesting fictional look at Jewish history with a sort of “what would’ve happened if…” twist on it.  Jews saturating Alaska?  How interesting!

Several times already (i’m less than halfway through) I’ve had to stop and read a phrase or a short paragraph out loud just to feel it again. This writer has an amazing gift for flipping words around and unleashing their awesome back on themselves.

Case in point (p. 163):

“Jesus fucking Christ,” she says with that flawless hardpan accent of hers. It is an expression that strikes Landsman as curious, or at least as something that he would pay money to see.

Not only an unexpected twist on what you’d expect to come at the end of that line, but right up my personal humor alley.  Sometimes writers completely bypass the phase where they inspire me to write my best, and jump directly to the phase wherein I wish I WERE THEM.

A few days ago I finished reading Those Who Save Us,  a novel that examines the gray areas between the victims of the Holocaust and the active perpetrators of the violence and atrocities.

The book is a well-crafted story about a young German woman, mother of a baby whose father is Jewish, who is forced with choices like the ones I described above as she struggles to protect her daughter.  It is also the parallel story of the grown child, who struggles herself with the shame and guilt over the SS officer she believes to be her birth father, and what this in turn means for her mother’s actions during the war.

The way the Holocaust is presented in history classes might lead one to believe that it was a direct clash between active evildoers and helpless victims.  I don’t feel that I had ever really considered before what it might have been like for someone who didn’t necessarily believe in what Hitler’s government was doing, but who felt intimidated by the massive military forces and didn’t know what to do to fight the powers or help the victims.

It is all too easy to think that, in the shoes of an average German citizen, one would always “do the right thing.”  I like to think that when asked to be complicit in a government conspiracy to kill millions of my neighbors, that I would stand up and do something to fight it, too.

However, this book phrases the question in more realistic terms.  Would I, if staring down the barrel of a gun or worse, seeing a gun pointed at my child, hide and aid an active officer of death?  In my heart, I would never align myself with murderers.  In reality, I would do whatever it takes to keep myself and my child alive, doing what I can to aid victims without putting lives at risk.

This is a sad fact, and one I hate to admit out loud.

Nonetheless, Those Who Save Us is an interesting, seemingly well researched and thoughtful look at what life was like for the non-victims.  It is structred in flashbacks between the present-day struggles of the adult daughter, and the 1940s story of her mother and her baby self and their struggle for survival.  Frankly, I found that the modern struggles with German identity and guilt paled in comparison with the historical struggle to literally stay alive; that said, each story lent perspective to the other and the juxtaposition and intertwining of the stories was an addition and not a subtraction from the story.

It was neat to get to explore the past and the present side by side, the way that early childhood memories played out for the modern protagonist when she was older.  As it turned out, the modern character was also an historian of WWII Germany with a focus on critical women’s issues, which allowed for the modern scenes to offer a parsing of the past scenes.

I could not put this book down.  It hooked me in both narratives and in the more meta- areas of building an identity in relation to Judaism and the Holocaust, and my interest in gender studies.

I know that there isn’t generally such a thing as being half-Jewish – in conventional wisdom, as far as I can tell, whether inside or outside Judaism people are either Jewish, or not.  Typically this thought process applies to people with only one Jewish parent, though I am considering this entirely differently.  I sometimes consider myself half-Jewish in the sense that I have a whole pre-established identity separate from the idea of Judaism (though of course even that identity was informed by the presence of Jews in areas of my life… but perhaps this is an aside to be discussed another day), and then a line in the sand after which I began laying the foundations of a Jewish identity that I am building for myself day by day.  I have the fortune of being able to choose what I want to be part of my identity, and what is important to me that I want to incorporate into my personal history, but on the other hand this identity-building enterprise is a lot of work and can be overwhelming sometimes.

This work of identity building and self discovery has led to a lot of good things, a lot of research and exploration, and not, I presume, unsurprisingly, the undertaking of a lot of Jewish-themed fiction reading.  Reading fiction about the entire spectrum of Jews out there, from the most Reform to the most Orthodox, is at least allowing me some perspective about where my personal beliefs lie and in general a vague idea of what makes people tick.

I read another book recently wherein several supporting characters were Reform Jews, the wife having converted “for the wedding.”  This is a common stereotype, but I found that reading this fictional account of a woman who was nearly completely apathetic about Judaism after having actively chosen it, and having it be ‘in name only,’ I found myself feeling very angry.

I should explain.  I don’t look down on Jews (hah! like my husband) who are less religious than I am.  My position tends to be, “well, who am I to judge?”  When I start judging others, I am inviting others to judge me, or at least I am within my own head.  But it does irk me to think that there are people who undertake the business of converting to Judaism who don’t value the rich tapestry of heritage to which they have made themselves heirs.  It really irks me, even as I refuse to look down on anyone.

In any case, not having all this cultural background in my life, I’m finding this through fiction and forward experiences.  I fully recognize that life imitates art imitates life, and I don’t confuse reading for reality.  Though it does pass time quite enjoyably, and give my brains a workout.

Hold the sunshine, please!  It’s 900 thousand degrees outside, so the outdoor activity segment of our day has been suspended.

But nonetheless, a good day.  I realize that from reading my blog one might think that I hate being a mom and that every day is thoroughly excruciating.  That isn’t really true, though I’m more likely to blog about the frustrations than I am to write about the normal moments.

Today we made whole-wheat orange muffins (recipe courtesy of the Tassajara Bread Book, thanks for the rec, Jess!)  I fill the measuring cups, Sami adds the ingredients to the bowl.  There’s always a little tension when it comes to the eggs, because of the way Sami likes to stick her fingers unpredictably in her mouth, having them covered in raw egg makes me nervous.  Ditto for licking the spoon after the wet ingredients are mixed.

But we get by, and total cliché though this may be, it seems like the more fun we have in the baking, the better the muffins taste.  These ones turned out really well, especially considering that they’re made with 100% whole wheat flour.  Usually it doesn’t rise very well, but these are moist and fluffy the way you’d want from a muffin.  Orange juice seems like a decent replacement for milk, and meant that I could dramatically reduce the amount of added sugar.

Sami was practically chewing the paper liner, she liked them so much.

The temperature, the smell of heat, revisiting the music of my youth have reminded me what I looked forward to in summer vacations as a kid.  Sprawling on the lawn with a book, climbing trees, running through the sprinkler.  Ice cream all over my face!

Many of my memories are integrally linked to books, music and the swingset.  When I wax nostalgic, these are the things I turn to, even though as an adult I don’t run through the sprinkler or laze about devouring whole books in a day.  (Ah, the wasted treasures of youth.)

What defines summer for you?  Where does your mind go when the hot aura sets upon you?

Michael Jackson died.  You may have heard.

Aside from initial nostalgia for the defining cultural presence of my childhood, the liking of whom decided one’s coolness in the first through third grades, this is not life-changing news.

What is significant is the self-awareness I discover upon reflection.  In the past few days I’ve become pretty emotional, because the way I see people reacting to the death of Michael Jackson isn’t something I like.  It’s bringing out some of the uglier instincts of humans, and I don’t like seeing this in people I like and people I love.  (Or myself, but I’ll get to that below.)

So when someone wonders aloud how we can make this enormous hoopla mourning a, yeah, brilliant musician and showman who was more importantly a child molester, I get upset.  I’m not upset because of the facts of the situation, necessarily, because neither I nor anyone I know was there to tell me what happened to any of the kids whose families sued MJ for alleged child abuse.

But I can say that I’m human, and would hate to know that when I die what will overshadow any positive legacy I leave is gossip and mudslinging about my mistakes, when gossip and mudslinging do not change the past.

It’s smart to take the Michael Jackson cases and say to oneself, how can I use this to improve my life?  Can I make sure my kids are safe and with trustworthy adults?  Absolutely.

Does it change anything to trash Michael Jackson as a child molester?  Does it make any kids anywhere safer to say that Michael Jackson’s musical legacy is a pittance compared to the charges leveled against him?  Absolutely not.

Incidentally, at the time that these thoughts were arising in my head, I had been reading The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs.  In it, he attempts to be a complete literalist in following the laws of the bible, both the Hebrew and Christian texts.  Having already been troubled by the gossip surrounding Michael Jackson’s passing (and jokes even I had made at his expense throughout adolescence which I regret) I was intensely interested in the day he spent reflecting on the many prohibitions against gossip which occur in the bible.  He specifically mentions Psalms 34:13, “Keep your tongue from evil,” Ephesians 4:29, and the Talmud, but there are others even within the bible itself.

He repeatedly struggles to keep from saying anything negative about others, and it made me aware of how much humor is made at the expense of others.  How much time we spend hashing out the faults of others for no purpose other than to entertain.  (I have enough faults of my own, why do I need to expound on the failings of other people?)

Of course, my own reaction to others’ gossip, especially on the topic of Michael Jackson, has been problematic.  I haven’t been shy about sharing my opinions of gossipers, and in this regard I’m just as bad as they are.

I’m reminded of the Denis Leary song, “I’m An Asshole.”  Gossiping about the unchangeable past is probably behaviour we all could all stand to excise from our daily habits.  In my quest for “fairness” or something, my outing the gossipers is just as bad.

If I don’t have something nice to say, next time I just won’t say anything.

And maybe I’ll go read some world news headlines, for a little practical grounding.

The Ladies’ Auxiliary
Tova Mirvis

I simultaneously loved and hated this book through a lot of it, and here is why. AS a person preparing to convert to Judaism, I strongly identified with the protagonist, her enthusiasm for Judaism, her outsiderhood and her search for acceptance within a close-knit Jewish community. I strongly identified with this “convert out-Jews the Jews” phenomenon – the difference between people who follow conventions because it’s “what they’ve always done” and people who choose to follow them because they find them personally beautiful and meaningful.

With this in mind, I found the story irresistable – I literally fell asleep reading it night after night because I just wanted to finish one more chapter. And yet I felt a strong aversion to the collective narrator (the story is told in first person plural, a “we” ostensibly representing the existing Ladies’ Auxiliary crowd) and the way conclusions were jumped to about the protagonist’s motivations, intentions, and past.

It was incredibly well written, conveying the way close communities like the featured Orthodox Jewish enclave of Memphis probably do function almost as a creature with a personality of its own, separate from the personalities of its members. I really appreciated the personification of the organization. I really appreciated the examination of what faith really is, about the value of going through the motions and committment to tradition and form without thought of the meanings behind it.

I think that this is a story with applications outside Judaism – that someone from almost any background could take away a lesson from it about what it means to be an outsider, or what it means to greet an outsider from the inside of any established group. What is the place of having one’s values challenged, and what does any individual’s response to the challenge indicate about who they are and the nature of their faith?