Rich's co-worker Kim has a birthday tommorrow so I made her a gloriously bright lemon cake (left) to keep my cake baking skill sharp. And tonight's dinner are thick rib pork chops, bone in, with sauteed kale and pureed (mashed) parsnips....
Later. End of day. It's been a long one. Dinner turned out great, pork chops came out with a great savory crust while remaining moist and flavorful. Didn't quite have enough parsnips or kale so I supplemented the parsnips with white carrots from the CSA and the kale with some apple, also from the CSA. Both were delicious. Dinner was late though, I never remember that the first time I make anything always takes longer than I think it will.
I am tired enough now that I wonder why I do it. Surely someone in my current physical state could find something better to do with his spare time than heat egg yolks, sugar and lemon juice to 170 degrees to make lemon curd or rub salt into pork chops. I don't guess I know the answer. Mark Twain once noted that work is anything a body is obliged to do and play is anything a body is not obliged to do. Well unless we are wealthy enough to hire a cook or to go out to eat for every meal, all of us are obliged to cook sometime so cooking, food preparation, will always be "work" from some perspective - including mine.
But even as its work, for me its the sort of work that is about 180 degrees away from my weekday job, which frankly involves a lot of gathering of information, processing it with my little gray cells (as perhaps Hercule Poirot) and spitting it back out again. By contrast today I have practiced chemistry to give me a cake with a tight crumb and satiny softness, physics in getting egg whites to whip up correctly in the cake frosting, and still more chemistry in getting salt rubbed onto the surface of a pork chop to flavor the whole chop. Plus I have worked with my hands, been standing instead of sitting and have had the added satisfaction of having someone else eat what I have prepared and moan in appreciation. That seems like a pretty good trade to me. Besides, if you are going to cook anyway, why not do it right?
One of pet peeves is Bisquick, the dry ingredient mixture you can buy in a box and use to make biscuits, pancakes or whatever. I mean, look at a list of ingredients in Bisquick. The ones you can pronounce are all readily available in your store for not a lot of money and do you really want to eat the ones you can't pronounce? And if you can buy a box of Bisquick, bring it home, follow its directions to make biscuits, you can make your own biscuits yourself without the mix. And you will teach yourself a new skill. And you might tempted next time to try something different with your biscuits and come out with something unique, completely yours and delicious. All because you decided to do your own cooking and not to just eat out of a box.
So, off the soapbox. Hope everyone had a good weekend and I will write more soon.
