Ragged Feathers

I might post tomorrow, I might not. In any case, all the social stuff is done. I miss my sisters already. I’ve had a full house for two days and find myself wondering what I have to cook next and then realizing that it’s back to the normal schedule.

The kids have settled down to watching Marx Brothers movies and I’m considering getting back on the treadmill. A couple days off is a nice, but I need to get back in the swing of things. An odd thing has happened, though, I’m getting wordcount just falling out of my head in dribs and drabbles. Something about cooking just makes the words come faster, no matter if I have to squeeze them in between stirring and roasting. Fortunately all the dinners have gone off smoothly. I won’t be sure how smoothly the writing has gone until I finish this draft.

So, if I don’t see you here on Christmas Eve, have a happy holiday. Regular blogging will definitely resume Monday the 28th. See you ’round, guys.

Posted from A Fire of Reason. You can also comment there.

I shouldn’t Twitter on a sugar high. Last night I gave some choco-chip cookie tips, and did promise to give my recipe. It’s adapted both from my mother’s and from Better Homes & Gardens.

BE WARNED: this makes a LOT of dough. I’ll tell you why in a little bit.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

2c butter
1.5c brown sugar
1.25c granulated sugar
2.25 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. table salt
5 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
5c cake flour
1.25c-1.5c regular flour
1 pkg. of the best choco chips you can afford (I use Ghirardelli’s.)

OPTIONAL: 2.5 c. chopped nuts, or half a package of Heath toffee bits.

How you do this:

First of all, buy the best butter you can afford. A lot of cookie recipes tell you to use butter and shortening, but to me that is an abomination. (Shortening belongs in biscuits, not cookies.) I know it affects the texture of the finished cookie, I just can’t bring myself to think that change is for the best. I bake with butter unless there’s a compelling reason, taste-wise, not to. And for these cookies, there just isn’t.

Melt the butter in a very heavy saucepan over low to medium heat. (I have a Le Creuset saucier that works very well.) While it’s melting, measure out your sugar and brown sugar into a heat-proof bowl. (I use the metal bowl for my KitchenAid mixer.) Whisk the sugars together.

When the butter is fully melted, pour and scrape it into the heat-safe bowl with the sugar. Whisk it together until it looks like, in the Princess’s words, “swampwater.” (It will smell like caramel, and if you heated it to soft-ball stage it would be.) Now put a plate or something over the bowl to keep any critters from trying to sample the deliciousness, and let it sit for a minimum of 15 minutes. (This recipe owes a lot to the NY Times, courtesy of Pim. But this step–melting the butter–I stole from a Cooks Illustrated magazine.) If you’re like me, you’ll wander away, and come back to it twenty minutes later when you realize you were indeed doing something in the kitchen before you got distracted. Or you’ll clean the kitchen, then move into cleaning something else until the timer rings and you wonder what it was for, then you realize you’re making cookies.

Anyway, once the wait is over, measure out your dry ingredients–cake flour, 1c of the regular flour, salt, and baking soda–in a separate bowl. Mix them together thoroughly. The low-protein cake flour is to give the finished cookie a more tender crumb, and you only need to start out with 1c of the regular flour. Use table salt for this step, too, not kosher. (Kosher salt comes later.)

Now put the butter-and-sugar swampwater (it will have a shiny glaze to it) in a mixing bowl, careful to scrape it all out. (I’m a fanatic about scraping.) Use a whisk attachment and whip it, whip it good. Whip the snot out of it. (This step is to incorporate little air bubbles in there.) Turn off mixer, add the eggs and vanilla, whip on low to blend, scrape bowl, then whip on medium for a minute or 90 seconds to get some more of those air bubbles in there. Those air bubbles help, with the baking soda, the cookie be “fluffy.”

When it’s all whipped, switch to a paddle attachment on your mixer and slowly (like a serving-spoonful at a time) add the dry ingredients. (If you don’t have a paddle attachment, don’t fret. Use what you’ve got. The type of mixer with dual beaters just means you have to go slow and scrape the sides a little more frequently.) When they’re all added, shut the mixer off and test the dough. It will be a lot softer than you’re used to, but you can still judge if it needs more flour. Sometimes humidity seems to play merry hob with my cookie dough. Anyway, add up to another half-cup to a cup of regular flour to make it stick together like a cookie dough should. But keep in mind, this dough will be soft.

I know you’re not supposed to, but I often just keep my mixer on low and slowly dump in the chocolate chips. (Plus toffee bits, if I’m feeling frisky. You can add nuts if you like…but not me. Oh, no. Not me.) Then, voila, turn your mixer off. You have ambrosia.

But some people will want to cook their cookies, and not just get sick on the dough.

Here is an important step: cover the mixing bowl with plastic wrap and put the dough in the fridge for at least twenty minutes while you preheat your oven to 375. (Preheating is important. DO EEET.) This will “set” the dough and make it behave when you shape it.

A few things about baking these cookies: they’re meant to be big. I use my bigger spoons to measure out the dough, not my wimpy teaspoons. Line your baking sheet with parchment paper–it’s cheap, it will keep the cookies from burning, and it makes cleanup so easy. And please use baking sheets with no sides. Jelly-roll sheets with the sides do sometimes prevent the cookies from browning right.

I usually do about six to an oven batch on my huge Ikea-bought cookie sheets. (Oh, Ikea. I love you so, so much.) First I measure out the chunks of dough, then (like the OCD baker I am) I use my fingers to shape them just slightly so they are lovely and round and perfect.

Then I sprinkle each cookie with just a little bit of kosher salt. Kosher salt is finer than table salt, and the extra bit of it makes these cookies GOOOOOOOOOOD. Don’t believe me? Try it. I am such a salt fiend, too. I swear I was a deer in a past life, a deer with a yen for salt licks.

Cook in 375 oven for 8-14 minutes. Ovens vary, and the temperature of the dough makes cooking times vary too. I check the cookies at eight and twelve minutes respectively, and I do three or four batches to varying done-ness because some kids here like crispy cookies, others like soft cookies, and still others just want the sugar. Much of cookie baking is practice–you will be able to smell when these are done. Cool on the pan set on a wire rack, for five minutes, then transfer cookies carefully to another wire rack to finish cooling. (Note: cookies are most fragile right when you take them from the oven. They will cook slightly more and firm up in the first five minutes on the cooling pan. Again, practice makes perfect.)

Now, here’s why I make this dough in job lots. To get the best effects from it, you need to cure it, tightly covered, in the fridge for 36 hours or so. It really does make a difference, but if your ravening hordes demand OMG COOKIES NOW you may have to do a few batches so they don’t tear down your battlements. Plus some people (NOT ME, I SWEAR!) may snitch bits of dough.

I line a big Tupperware bin with parchment paper, scrape the dough into it, cover the surface of the dough with plastic wrap, then put the lid on tight. It sits in the fridge for a day and a half, and after that I measure out batches of cookies, put them on a lined baking sheet, and plop the sheet in our big freezer for a little bit. When the shaped balls of dough are half-frozen, I pile them in more Tupperware and keep them in the freezer. I get the whole chunk of dough frozen like that, in shaped cookie bits. So that whenever we want cookies, I just go out, load up a baking sheet with frozen shaped ones, and bake them–370F for about 12-13 minutes. (That extra five degrees cooler just seems to make frozen dough react better. YMMV.)

And that is why I make tons of dough at a time. If my kids ever move out I am going to go on mad quests for more hungry people to feed.

The cookies are best slightly warm, with milk. I prefer the crispy ones myself, until they’re about a day old. Then I like the soft ones.

There’s some survivors in the kitchen calling me right now, as a matter of fact. I have a proof to eyeball today, too. I wonder if I can get that done on a sugar high?

Over and out.

Posted from A Fire of Reason. You can also comment there.

I’ll keep food out of politics when politics stay out of my food. (nonhipster mom)

I came across this NYT food blog (hat tip to Kitchenbeard for the link.) The comments are the most instructive part of the piece, don’t skip them.

As someone who delights in (you might almost say, is obsessed with) food, I think about this issue a lot. Food accounts for a huge bit of my budget, and I’m supporting three other people. Right now things are pretty easy, because there’s a supermarket within walking distance, a Trader Joe’s ten minutes down the road, and a working car at my disposal. Not to mention a few bucks from the writing to keep us fed and warm.

Things were not always so good. I remember being poor and I suspect, the vagaries of the writing career being what it is, that I will again confront the problems of the hidden costs of food at some time. Those costs include time, transportation, storage. I’ve invested in a secondhand freezer (dude, twenty bucks for a working freezer? Plus delivery to my house? You bet your sweet bippy, neighbor!) and I have high-quality cookware that is going to last a while. Still, the two huge things necessary for “cheap” home cooking are transportation (got to get the food home) and time. The investment of energy is also a function of time. If you’ve worked for fifteen hours and spent two hours on a bus getting home, you’re not interested in cuisine. You’re interested in cramming something in your mouth and getting to sleep. There’s also the problem of keeping the electricity/gas on.

On the NYT piece above, the commenters seemed largely split between: Those who thought being poor automatically means you’re lazy and obese and so, your food problems are your own concern, quit whining; those who thought a year at college eating Ramen meant they were qualified to talk about what being poor really means; and those well-meaning souls who wanted to help the poor by suggesting they find the time to make beans and rice.

In the course of this I came across the Nonhipster Mom’s analysis of the whole thing.

I think we should have a real discussion about the politics of food in America’s poorest communities, but I think that when the focus of this discussion is about why America’s poorest communities aren’t growing their own microgreens or baking their own bread, we are missing the point so massively that it makes me sick. I want to talk about why there aren’t incentives for major grocery stores to move into neighborhoods where accessability to fresh, affordable food is a major roadblock. I want to talk about the correlation between food and education, especially early childhood education. I want to talk about why people whose food budget exceeds $1200 a month think it’s okay to tell someone who doesn’t own a car that they shouldn’t eat junk food and only does so because that person is stupid.

I want people to understand something about modern poverty: the solutions to this problem aren’t fixed by organics. They’re fixed by understanding what the problem really is.

The problem is the deck is stacked. The deck has ALWAYS been stacked in favor of the rich, and even in countries with social safety nets the game is still rigged. (Incidentally, we like to pretend America has a HUGE social safety net. Thanks to well-fed conservatives dismantling a ton of programs from Reagan’s time to today, we really don’t.) The rigging of the game happens in various ways–John Scalzi wrote about what it’s like to be wrenchingly poor, and Barbara Ehrenreich wrote about the hidden costs of being poor. There are hidden costs everywhere when you’re trying to live on $8-$10 an hour.

The problem is manifold, and it includes (but is not limited to):

* The idea we have that in America, if you’re poor it’s your own fault. Against-all-odds success stories do not prove this any more than spending a dollar guarantees you a lottery jackpot. We have (from most conservatives) the idea that the poor are all lazy, shiftless assholes and (from some liberals) a woolly-headed “Noble Poor” thing, not to mention (from other liberals) the idea that organic or microgardening is the solution. Sound bites like this don’t help, and our social habit of sound bites over reasoned, nuanced analysis doesn’t help either.

* A prohibition against safe, cheap, effective birth control for all women. Don’t even get me started on this. Plenty of people who go on and on railing against abortion and birth control don’t give a damn once the baby’s actually born and needs to be fed and raised. And then there’s the Mommy Tax.

* Decades of corporations and the top 1% of the wealthy systematically throwing money at their interests in our government, and getting concessions to make them richer and the rest of us poorer. Money well spent for them, reasonable to expect them to spend it, not so reasonable for the rest of us to roll over and let them buy the advantage.

* The idea that it’s filthy to organize for better working conditions, and that it’s just “natural free trade” when corporations outsource to countries where worker protection is even more dismal, because it improves their bottom line in the short term. Don’t even get me started about this, either.

* Complete and utter separation from, and ignorance about, how most of our food is produced.

* A collection of junk-food and huge agribusiness lobbies that throw a bunch of money at Congress to make things more comfortable for themselves, and consumers who, due to the above separation and ignorance, don’t see how they can begin to protest.

That’s a very short list. I could go on and on. I have ranted about this many a time in the privacy of my home. I’ve struggled with my weight and with the cheap junk that was sometimes all I had energy for, sometimes all I could “afford” because I didn’t have the time to cook cheaply. I’ve also been poor enough to have a bag of flour and that’s IT, to somehow feed myself and another person on. Right now I’m staying up late at night, going over and over the fact that I have the money now, but if I get sick and can’t work…or if someone in the house gets sick and we get medical bills…or, or, or. Right now this is only a passing fear, one I save against.

I’m goddamn lucky it’s not a reality. I know what it’s like to feel that fear every day, to have it gnaw at your vitals. I understand both that I am in a position of privilege now, and that I may not always be. I’m lucky to have decent cookware, access to the raw materials for cheap cooking, and a freezer. I’m lucky that I don’t have to make those choices. But that does not mean I think those who don’t have all those things are lazy, or stupid. I think the majority of people are doing the best they can and looking out for their own interests. The rich just have more money to throw at their interests, and in our world that speaks louder than altruism or justice most of the time.

But it doesn’t have to, and the solution starts with you and me.

Like I said, I could go on and on. But I’ll content myself with offering a couple of links about cooking on a budget, even though it largely doesn’t approach the problems I’ve been ranting about here. And a couple links about hidden costs:

* CookForGood. If you’ve got access to the raw materials, this is a good site about cooking cheaply.
* The BrokeAss Gourmet: Advice on how to stock a “pantry” and then make meals for under $20. The pantry-stocking section is great.
* The hidden cost of cheap food.
* Nickel and Dimed. Really, if you haven’t read this and you think poor people are “just lazy”…please, please consider reading.

Now I’m going to go hug my kids. Over and out.

Posted from A Fire of Reason. You can also comment there.

First, check out Nathan Bransford’s excellent post on tropes and originality. This is why I tell new writers “be honest and the originality will follow”. The ring of absolute honesty will shine through a tired old story and make it new again; when it comes through your uniqueness as a filter it will be unique.

If you’re bored with posts about weight, body image, and food, you might want to skip this one. Just warning you.

Last Labor Day I started an exercise regimen. Slowly and carefully, I’ve dropped almost five sizes. I’m shooting distance from a size 16; 14 is my eventual healthy goal. It’s taken me months, mostly because I don’t want to yo-yo. I want to steadily get into the habit of being healthier and more fit. And because, well, I love food and see no reason to set up the nasty boomerang of denial and binge. I have enough to feel bad and guilty over, I don’t need binge to add to it.

I suppose that I could cook low-fat. I really could. But why? Real butter, real vegetables, real cream, all these things satisfy in a way ersatz doesn’t. A very small bit of the “real” will satisfy more than a ton of the ersatz. For example, a small square of high-quality, very dark chocolate will satisfy me more than three or four Snickers bars. A small serving of pasta with this roasted red pepper sauce made with heavy cream (Oh. My. God. Worth the work, I SWEAR) will satisfy me more than a pound or two of fettuccine alfredo from that chain Italian place down the street. The real may be chock-full of Bad For You fat, but I end up eating less–and less chemical preservatives, high fructose corn syrup, etc. etc.

But this is only working, I suspect, because of the other half of the equation. It’s hard hauling my ass up on that treadmill every weekday. The weeks that I get in five whole weekdays of workout are few and far between. I get three or four days in every week, and my energy level has risen to the point where I’m also getting in a lot more playing with the kids and going for longer evening walks. Five days a week of treadmill and shovelgloving is the goal–but like the Pirate’s Code it’s more of a guideline.

Some days I hurt. Some days I’m sick or there’s an Event or some kid is throwing up or having a Bad Day. Some days it’s the story burning up inside my head. Some days I just plain don’t wanna.

But most days, I do. When I’m ill and I can’t get the exercise in, I feel it. I suppose I’ve reached the point of being addicted to running. And addicted to swinging a sledgehammer around for fifteen minutes or so.

Now, I am never going to be a supermodel. I love food far, far too much and I have a sedentary job. Besides, have you seen supermodels these days? They look like shit.

I’m sorry. I really am. But “starvation” is not something I find attractive. I like a girl with a little flesh on her, just like I like easygoing men with a little flesh on them. And I have all sorts of problems with the persistent message from mass media that women need to starve themselves to paper-thinness. Our place in the world is already small enough, for Christ’s sake.

The more I don’t watch television, the less I find I have in common with a lot of advertising. I never realized how pervasive this crap was until I took a year and a half off the telly (way back when I was first dating the Muffin, lo those many years ago) and found I didn’t miss it. Not only did I not miss it, but my sense of proportion (ha ha) came back in a big way.

Another thing that’s dropped by the wayside: fast food. Cheap fast food…isn’t. In terms of community cost, health cost, and my pocketbook, cheap fast food isn’t. Once in a great while I’ll take the kids to a local burger chain, and the little dears are always very excited. But burger-and-fries doesn’t taste as good, and even the fries–I have such a weakness for fries, you would not believe–don’t move me the way they used to. It’s like soda–once I was off it for a long while, all I could taste were the chemicals when I tried it again.

This is turning into a foodie post instead of a weight post. Which probably means I’m avoiding the subject.

So, I’m spitting distance from a size 16. Dropping steadily through clothes sizes has meant getting new clothes, which I absolutely hate. If there’s anything I hate with a flaming fiery passion it’s clothes-shopping. Just the thought of it makes me shiver. I will buy six of something at a time just so I have a “uniform” and I don’t have to pick clothes every day OR shop for them again. I mean, why spend time on that when I could be reading? Or cooking? Or playing with my kidlings?

Along with the steady weight loss has come an unpacking of hurtful assumptions and trauma from growing up. Food has been an anodyne most of my life, and grazing on trash-cooking full of preservatives and corn syrup was the only thing keeping me reasonably sane during a large proportion of my young years. Food didn’t mock and it didn’t judge, and when I felt empty inside it provided a type of fullness. Like any substitution, though, it had to be paid for. And I did. Over and over again.

I’m also beginning to unpack the sense of security having a fat layer gave me. You can hide inside a mass of yourself, you know. For a girl who equated fisticuffs with attention and any attention, good or bad, with the only approval I could get, the extra poundage was a blessing. It absorbed much more than punches.

Which means that, as I’m slimming down, I’m having to face parts of myself and my life I frenetically ate to avoid. It’s probably no accident that I’m writing YA through all this and really remembering what it was like to be young. On the one hand, I wouldn’t be between twelve and twenty-five again if you PAID me. There isn’t enough money in the world to put myself through that again. But on the other, I can’t hope to achieve any sort of peace within myself without looking hard and long at these things and Dealing With Them. Dealing is better than Drugging Yourself With Food or Frantically Avoiding Dealing With Things By Chopping Off Bits Of Self Or Engaging In Crazymaking Behavior.

I console myself with the thought that the most awesome and stunning people I know had Bad Young Years and didn’t Find Themselves until their late twenties. Being forced to find resources within yourself pays off, if you survive long enough and intact enough. The layers of fat were a survival mechanism, one I am trying to teach myself not to need. It was good while I needed it, but now I don’t–and the price of poor health, acceptable while I needed the fat to preserve some kind of psychic integrity, is no longer one I can continue paying.

It was a good cocoon. It kept me safe and it kept me sane, and I’m grateful. But now I’m almost out of it, and spreading those papery, wet wings. Sooner or later this girl is going to fly.

That, dear Reader? Is the very best revenge at all. I wish I was a bigger person and didn’t need that for motivation. But I realized a long time ago that I wasn’t. And I’m taking what I can get. There’s a certain amount of freedom in recognizing that you may not be a bigger person, but you’re going to do what you can with what you have.

Over and out.

Posted from A Fire of Reason. You can also comment there.