cooking

A New Idea

/ momshieb / 29 Comments

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know that it has been a reflection of my emotional life for the past dozen or so years. I started it on the advice of a very good therapist who I was seeing to help me process the depression that I felt when my three children grew up and moved out.

Over the years, this blog has helped me to express my feelings about moving into the “Empty Nest” years and learning to accept myself as something other than Momma.

If you’ve been reading my words for a while, you’ll know that I’m now a very happy grandmother, and that my grandchildren have more than filled the hole that was created by the absence of my kids.

I’ve written about politics (grrrrr), teaching, aging, friendships and life in general.

But now we’re caught in the horrors of 2020. No more visiting, no more vacations or travel or dinners out. Now my world has closed in around me.

It can be more than a little difficult to cope.

But luckily for me, there is always food to keep me sane! I love to eat. Therefore, I love to cook.

So I had an idea.

I am thinking that I’d like to start a new blog. A cooking blog. But not one of those pretentious, sous vide, balsamic reduction, adorable presentation blogs.

Instead, I want to write a blog for people who think that they ‘can’t cook’. You know, people who are intimidated by roasting a chicken. Or making a salad.

I know those people are out there, because some of them are my friends and relations! I want to convince them that anyone…..anyone…..can cook well enough to eat happily at home.

If I do that….will you follow me? Will you come along on my new journey to bring sanity, humor and fun into the average American kitchen?

I hope so. I am excited to try this out.

I do need a catchy name for this new site, so please weigh in if you have an idea. Maybe something along the lines of “Oh yes you CAN make dinner.” Or “Demystifying Dinner”. I don’t know. I trust you guys to be more creative.

Anyone?

 

I’ll Cook My Way Back to Sanity

/ momshieb / 7 Comments

We are living in horrible times. We are witnessing the destruction of all that two generations of women have worked to achieve.

As far as I am concerned, we are seeing the complete collapse of the two party system in the US. I’m pretty sure that 90% of us would vote of “None of the above” if they were on any ballot.

So.

What’s a sad, angry, anxious old Italian lady to do?

Yup.

I’ll cook my way to relative sanity. l have bone broth on the stove. There’s a nice sourdough starter on my counter. I have canned tomatoes for sauce and locally sourced ground beef and pork for the meatballs.

I can’t make Mitch McConnell go up in a puff of smoke for his hypocritical bullshit. I can’t save the Supreme Court of the US from becoming infected with a total and complete lack of impartiality.

I can’t make Mueller hurry the freak up and get that awful, ugly, ignorant, hateful, nasty egomaniac out of office.

I can make ravioli and roasted peppers and maybe a nice ricotta pie.

If there is a Heaven, I will still be at least relatively sane when this insanity comes to its inevitable end.

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Is This Healthy? Or Am I Kidding Myself?

/ momshieb / 10 Comments

The thing about summer is that all of the veggies are amazing.

Right?

It’s July now. So I can drive up the street to the local farmstand where I can buy fresh, buttery lettuce, fresh peas, tomatoes still warm from the sun, cucumbers that are as crisp as breadsticks.

I can run up to the weekly farmer’s market and get garlic scapes, fresh spring onions, tender, fresh kale.

I can go home and microwave some beets, then cool them and mix them into all those fresh, tender greens with a bit of goat cheese.

Holy delicious.

I am the healthiest eater in the world from June through October.

But does all that delicious green goodness buy me extra time on this earth if I refuse to touch salad in the winter?

I mean, I try. Every single year, I try to eat salad in the winter. I buy grocery store lettuce (bitter!) and grocery store cukes (flabby!) and grocery store tomatoes (tasteless!).  And they sit in the fridge until they begin to liquify, at which point I give up until the following summer.

So am I still healthy if I sort of stock up for six months? Can I still call myself a healthy eater if I only eat roasted carrots, beets, potatoes through the fall? Is it still a good veggie side dish if it’s roasted butternut squash with butter and real maple syrup?

My theory is that New Englanders learned to eat a whole pile of greens all summer (I DO!). And then they learned to preserve summer veggies like corn and tomatoes and beans (I DO THAT, TOO!) so in the winter they could eat pig fat while telling themselves “Well, at least we have veggies put up in the old root cellar.” (YUP, THAT’S ME.)

The early New England settlers managed to survive without eating hothouse tomatoes. They didn’t die of scurvy just because they refused to eat hothouse kale.

And I won’t either.

Right?

By shucking the corn and taking the peas out of their pods all spring and summer, I am earning my way into ‘healthy eater’s heaven’, aren’t I?

I love summer food. The peaches, the cherry tomatoes, the ripe berries all over the yard. I love it. I could forage all summer on the garden delights that surround me, as long as I could get a free pass to eat pork and butter my bread all winter long.

What do you think?

Am I delusional, or can I really save up my health points before the cold New England nights set in once again?

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