I wrote this at the end of last week, while in a bit of a rage. Normally I’d write something like this and then go back to tone it down, but my editor (Braeden) said to ship it, so here you go: a glimpse into my post-work angry writing energy.
There’s a few lines in Butter,1 after Rika and Reiko go to a cooking class, about the physical force involved in cooking. Reiko notes that you could probably kill someone with a terrine weight or crush someone’s fingers in a moulinette (a food mill). Rika responds, “You’re right. When I hear about cooking schools, my image is of something dainty and domestic, but it’s actually a strength contest.” I think about that every time I exert myself in the kitchen, which these days, is often.
I mixed up a big batch of cobbler topping at work today. Three batches with 10 pounds flour and almost four pounds of butter each, bound together with five quarts of heavy cream. (Also baking powder, salt, etc.) If you haven’t worked with something like that, just know it requires muscle. Mixing the dry ingredients is easy. Incorporating cold, shredded butter with your fingers gets a little tiring but I’m conditioned for this now, so it’s also easy.
It’s the heavy cream that makes things difficult. The dough turns sticky, dense. The fat and protein and gluten all cling together to make a truly unruly mass that has to be squished, smooshed, and forced together until no dry spots of flour remain. You have to be firm but gentle at the same time, being careful not to overdo it, or the topping will be tough.
Does the average American not think about who’s picking their fruit, working in the meat processing plants, or what? Do they not wonder about the mass network of people sweating for such small wages in terrible working conditions? Do they not consider the humans behind their bounty?
After a day like today I get home very tired, but not drained. There’s a difference. A beer after working in the kitchen is really the only thing I want. (If I don’t want alcohol, I go for a Hoplark, because it turns out it’s the carbonated hop flavor that I want.) Tonight, though, it’s beer. Foolishly, I read the news while I rest my feet. It only makes me mad.
Do people who consume different news sources than I do really look at images and videos of other people, other humans, being dragged to the ground, taken away to be lost in who knows what prison, and think that’s the right thing to do? That’s the correct way to deal with a broken system? That’s what god wants? Really? The god and the Jesus who said to love your neighbor, love each other as I have loved you, blah blah blah? Did your god only mean certain people, descended from other immigrants who came here before there were laws and stole this land from the ones who already took care of it? Oh, sorry, did your family immigrate the “right” way? Is everyone who came after you somehow less deserving? Are they not also due basic human rights and dignity?
(To hear from someone helping people at the border and expressing herself in a much more graceful way than I currently am, watch Pati Jinich’s La Frontera Season 1, episode 2, starting at 43:21: “We don’t have an immigration problem, what we have is a human reality — a crisis. Humanity is hurting at the border. You need to come, you need to see, because if you see that face and you know that person and you know their story and you know their name, it’s no longer just something out there, it becomes very real, right here before you. This is why we’re here on this earth, you know? To make this world a better place for all of us.”)
I think about the Butter line again as I’m quickly chopping vegetables to go into a pasta salad. The pasta is leftover from work; egg noodles mixed with herb oil, so good and simple that it’s silly.
I need to chop quickly because I’m filled with rage and this is one way to get it out. I’m comfortable doing so despite my slightly tipsy state because I’m good with knives. And my knife is sharp. (Linked because I genuinely love this knife, not because I’m also paid by Made In to write blog posts.)
There’s a bottle of vegan mayo in the fridge, leftover from recipe testing, and it tastes great but whoever designed that bottle needs to go back to bottle design school. After using about a third of the mayo, it’s impossible to squirt the remaining mayo without a fart-sounding smrloooghsh and mayo spraying everywhere. Annoying. To fix this problem, I add apple cider vinegar, lemon grass powder, celery seed, mustard, and shake shake shake. That’s the dressing for the pasta salad.
Needs protein (I’m not protein-obsessed; I appreciate balance), so I add a carton of soft tofu. (It was either that or tinned fish, which I’m not really feeling.)
The vegetables: onion, carrots, green bell pepper, kale stems. They sizzle and caramelize (fine yes actually, they burn a bit) while I’m writing this. It’s fine. Color is flavor.
When I’m cooking I often find myself drafting these little missives in my head, thinking, “oo yeah that’s good, I’ll definitely remember that” and then I never do. So this — letting the vegetables burn — is me writing it down in the moment.
But really. When you see images from, for example, Gaza, are you not horrified? When you see a senator dragged to the ground because he’s asking questions at a press conference, do you think that’s an appropriate response?
Why is any of this ok? If your god is telling you this is ok, that is not a god that I want any part of.
I made a playlist of songs specifically for dancing it out in the kitchen. By dancing it out I mean: the feeling you get when you’re filled with too much energy, maybe a smidge of anxiety, a pinch of anger, and you need to blast something upbeat and dance.
The playlist needs more songs. Why did Spotify take away the playlist radio option? AI does not excite me; I don’t want to use smart shuffle. I know I should quit Spotify. I only just deleted my Facebook, after 25 years. Give me a minute.
Every time I listen to Supersad by Suki Waterhouse, and then go to her profile and look at the top 10 songs people listen to, I am SHOCKED that it’s not in the top 10. Don’t sleep on Supersad.
Pasta and veg salad
You don’t really need a recipe for this, but for old time’s sake, here you go. Use whatever vegetables you want to use; this is what I had on hand.
Oil for cooking
1/4 to 1/2 onion, chopped
2 to 3 carrots, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
6 ish leaves kale, stems and leaves separated, stems chopped, leaves sliced
Salt as needed
Smoked paprika
3 ish cups cooked pasta
1 block soft tofu (I’ve been buying the shelf-stable Mori-Nu brand)
Your mayo-based dressing of choice, or a mix of mayo, apple cider vinegar, celery seed, whatever other spice that would go well and you need to use because it’s been in your pantry for at least 2 years
Heat a little oil in a skillet, add the chopped vegetables (minus the kale leaves), season with salt, and cook over medium to medium high heat for as long as you want, stirring as often as you feel like. If the vegetables start to get too dark, reduce the heat and splash in a little water to deglaze the skillet. I like them with lots of caramelization.
Once the vegetables are cooked as you like, make a little room in the middle of the skillet, add another little splash of oil, sprinkle a spoonful of smoked paprika over that oil so it sizzles, then stir it all into the vegetables and cook for another minute. Remove from heat and let cool a few minutes.
Mix the cooked vegetables, cooked pasta, tofu, and sliced kale leaves together in a bowl. Add as much dressing as you want. Taste and salt as needed. (Mine — shocker! — needed more salt.)
Elsewhere: Our prickly pear is blooming and I wrote my first article for FoodPrint, an online publication that focuses on food production. The article is about what it’ll take for farmers to grow more rye (and why they’d want to do so).
This is the type of writing I’m looking to do more of — an agriculture focus with an environmental angle, talking with farmers about various issues and things they’re interested in, and distilling that info in a way that a non-farming person would find informative. If you have any topics or story ideas that you think I should pursue, please respond to this email. I’m all ears.
I didn’t like Butter as much as I wanted to, but it was extremely cool to read while in Tokyo and recognize places in the book. We went to Japan with friends in March; it was as amazing as everyone says it is. The photo at top (spell it out!) is from the Tōfuku-ji Temple in Kyoto, where the light and shadows filtering through new green leaves was exceptional.