Tonight it is cocoa powder, flour, sugar and vanilla that bring me and my daughter together. The kitchen our mixing bowl, time our whisk. The more we’re together the more we laugh. How easily distinct ingredients become a whole. Easy as following a recipe for chocolate cake, we slip into the familiar banter, the joyful two-step, the sweetness we’ve been distilling since she could first hold her own spoon. In the air, hum of the oven preheating, sound of us teasing, clang of the whisk against the glass bowl. The cake, it’s basically a delicious artifact, a testament to this scent of intimacy, like chocolate cake, only much, much richer. |
Posts Tagged ‘cooking’
Dessert
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged chocolate, cooking, daughter, dessert, love, parenting on February 14, 2021| 1 Comment »
Making Breakfast with Dolly
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cooking, Dolly Parton, kitchen, shoes on December 15, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Tonight I read
that Dolly Parton
always wears
high heel shoes
in her kitchen.
“Don’t you?”
she asks.
I don’t.
I wear old brown
wool slippers.
With orthotics.
I try to imagine myself
strutting into the kitchen
before the kids
go to school,
making smoothies
and scrambled eggs
in my yoga pants,
my long gray sweatshirt,
and my four-inch
lucite stilettos.
Click, click, click
go the heels
as I teeter toward
the tea cups.
Click, click, click
as I strut
with paper towels
to the place
where the cat
has retched.
Oh Dolly,
as I slip into
these high-heeled thoughts
I thank you
for dressing up the day.
They two-step
through the morning chores,
while meanwhile
my slippered self
marvels at the fun,
but shrugs—
she’s just so darn grateful
for her arch support,
for the rubber soles
that ground her
as she sweeps
up the crumbs,
as she wipes
the counters clean.
Grateful that when
the high heeled thoughts
start to sing,
they invite her
to sing along.
Making Apple Turnovers with my Daughter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cooking, directions, life, parenting, time on April 30, 2020| 4 Comments »
My own fault for not reading all the directions
on how to make puff pastry from scratch—
how after the shaggy dough phase, you shape
and then chill. And then roll and fold and roll
and shape the dough. And chill. And then roll
and fold and roll and fold. And chill. Then roll
and slice. And chill. And fill. And chill. So often,
mid project, I find myself thinking I would never
have started this project had I known
how long it would take. Flour on my pants,
on the floor, on the table.
Six hours later, nearly midnight, my daughter
and I baste the chilled triangles with water,
sprinkle them with cinnamon and sugar,
then put them in the oven at last. We are tired,
but the house fills with the sweet scent
of baking apple, the home-rich scent of crust.
What is life, but a big project we are in the middle of?
A project I’m in no hurry to finish.
In fact, these days are like puff pastry dough,
guiding me to take it slow, slower, to rest
between steps. I haven’t read all the directions.
For now I am laughing. It’s so much more
than I thought I was in for. But I’m here,
hands ready. I’m willing to work, to clean up the mess.
- photo by Finn Trommer
Making Choux Pastry for Eclairs with My Daughter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cooking, daughter, kitchen, love, mother, parenting, poem, poetry on August 31, 2019| 2 Comments »
First, you must weigh everything.
Precisely. The butter. The water.
The sugar, the salt. You must
catch the mixture just as it boils,
then add the flour, sifted and weighed.
You must set the timer to dry the dough,
must add the eggs slowly, must not
let it be too dry, too wet.
There’s more, my friends. The angle
of the pastry sleeve, must be 45 degrees.
You need to use the French star tip.
And then, you must not open the oven
lest the steam escapes and the eclairs
don’t crust. So many musts. So many dos.
And still they don’t always turn out.
It is not at all the way I love you. Though
sometimes I’ve tried to find the recipe.
Though sometimes I’ve wished it
were as easy as measuring well and using
a timer. I have wanted to do it right.
I have studiously wanted to make yours the best life.
But the only way to be a good lover
is to love. It has nothing to do
with following directions. Has
everything to do with the doing.
Like making choux pastry dough
together. Taking turns at the stove.
Reading the directions out loud to each other,
four times. And then watching the dough,
astonished as it goes from slimy to smooth
to something sturdy that shines.
Simple Tools
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cooking, kitchen, poem, poetry, spatula, tool, unity on July 20, 2019| 9 Comments »
for Christie
I am so grateful for the rubber spatula,
the way it sits quietly in the drawer
yet is always ready for action—
is game to scrape the walls of the blender
or to fold chocolate chips into cookie dough.
It evens and swirls the frosting on cake
and welcomes the tongue
of a child. In a sharp world,
it knows the value of being blunt;
it knows that to smooth is a gift to the world.
Some people are knives, and
I thank them. Me, I want to belong
to the order of spatulas—those
who blend, who mix, who co-mingle
dissimilars to create a cohesive whole.
I want to spread sweetness, to be a workhorse
for beauty, to stir things up,
to clean things out. I want to be useful,
an instrument of unity, a means, a lever for life.
A Little Secret
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cooking, dinner, food, mac and cheese, poem, poetry, prayer on March 27, 2019| 5 Comments »
The white sauce whisked to smoothness
before the cheese is added,
and the elbow noodles boiled till they’re al dente,
the Pyrex buttered with long looping swirls of the fingers,
the cheddar spread evenly on top.
It is not easy for most people to see
devotion in the mac and cheese.
It doesn’t look like prayer.
But it’s there.
Making Apple Pies with my Mother
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged apple, apple pie, cooking, daughter, fanny farmer, mother, poem, poetry, thanksgiving on November 23, 2018| 2 Comments »
We begin by talking for an hour
about the kids, her church, dad’s health,
and how we both cry when we see acts of goodness.
We clean the kitchen. Address one mess
before starting the next. Then we peel apples,
marvel at their size—how much larger
they must be than in the time of Fanny Farmer,
who thinks we might need eight tart apples
for our nine-inch crust. Fanny, even a hundred years later,
you are still synonymous with precision,
organization and good food. And, as I recall,
you, too, practiced your art in your mother’s kitchen.
As it is, seven apples in 2018 are enough
to fill two generous crusts. Oh Fanny,
some things have changed, for instance
this Granny Smith, large as my fist. But some things
are exactly the same. A level teaspoon
is still a level teaspoon. The simplest recipes
are still often the best. And it’s still so good
to make a pie with your mother, talking
about all of life’s loose ends, measuring sugar,
filling the crusts, then cleaning up the mess
as the scent of sweetness touches everything.
While Putting Up Jars of Roasted Red Pepper Sauce
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cooking, love, poem, poetry, red peppers, sisterhood, unity on September 22, 2014| Leave a Comment »
They are so red, the peppers,
it is impossible not to admire them
before I put them on the grate
to char their skins and sweeten their flesh.
I think of all the other hands that touched
these fruits, and I thank them: whoever planted
the seed and watered the plant, whoever
weeded and hoed and broke the green stem.
I think of all the other women around the world
speaking languages I will never know who,
in these weeks of autumn, are also standing
beside a fire, turning the peppers to roast them evenly,
all of us breathing the same smoky scent.
All of us rolling up our sleeves as we prepare
to pull off the blackened skin. All of us relieved
when the seeds fall out easily. All morning the house
smells of sunshine and basil, red peppers and gratitude.
I think of all of us doing the work to feed the people
we love, our knives keeping time against wooden boards,
our hands sticky and red with devotion.
Using the Last Bit of Red Onion Left by Rachel
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cooking, friendship, missing, nostalgia, onion, poem, poetry on July 3, 2012| 6 Comments »
Using the Last Bit of Red Onion Left by Rachel
Lost for weeks in the corner of the crisper drawer,
it appears just in time to save the carrot soup.
One large hunk of red onion, partially used, still good.
I get nostalgic, remembering how Rachel, gone for three weeks,
served it with eggs, and though I didn’t eat them
I remember how delicious the kitchen smelled then.
It is her hand that chose it, her hand that sliced the rings.
I laugh at my own nostalgia. But I miss her, the all of her,
the giggling on the couch with her, the singing in the car,
cayenne and hot chocolate late night, poems, wine.
And slicing the onion, thinking about how Rachel she is,
it is right somehow that I should start to cry.