Dandelion Coffee

First you have to move to the country. If you are still in the city you have to visit me in the country, or if you cannot visit me, do your best to go somewhere with no chemicals.

The dandelion has deep roots, and it holds on tight in packed soil. What you want is turned soil: last year's garden, the front pasture, something like that. Some people wait until they are pulling the potatoes to do this but this is the first month without snow so some people really need something right from the ground right away.

While you are looking around for a dandelion patch, you can check for new sweet leaves, the ones without a big bitter vein. Those ones are good for salad or chopped into your soup.

The best is if you walk around after the harrower, the same wet morning the sod is turned. Dandelion roots are stronger than the folding mat of pressed grass, they will point skyward inches above the bared soil. Take them now when they are firm, when the soil can be wiped from their thin skins, when you can twist their crown from them and stain your fingers bitter and browner.

Throw the crown filled with drying mud back into the soil. Every root will look precious your first day on the land after the snow is gone, like the first day after sickness walking thigh-deep in glistening, irridescent snow. But it is worth it when the excitement wears off to look for the largest roots, they are easier to clean.

A nylon scrub brush, like used for surgery or physiotherapy, is the best way to clean the roots. Cover them with water, let some mud settle naturally, and drain through a colander. This could happen ten times or two. There are pieces of the root, though, that will stay richly brown, a thin covering of the parsnip root that is not dirt. This is the flavour, keep it.

Here you can chop up the roots or you can dry them and break them up later. I do not like to bath my kitchen in the bitter juices, so I dry the roots as I gather them day after day. As they dry in the field they will blend in with the soil, become less remarkable, and harder to pull when the crown fights death and grasps tighter. You can gather them in an apron pocket, and leave another apron pocket for the Heiniken or the herbal tea or the corn chips.

Next time you need to roast something in the oven, put a tray of these dry, clean roots in there too. This is when either you will be glad to live alone or your housemates will wish you lived alone: the smell of roasting dandelion root is tonic, pervasive, and persists for three days. It is an important smell, though: you will know you are done when your nostrils flare, when the roots are crisp and dark brown along the length.

When cool, grind the roots. They are lighter and dryer than coffee beans, and cleaner too, unimbued with slavery, servitude, and the emptyness of labouring hands that grow cash instead of food. The powder will hang in the air after the grinding, released in a suspension from the cycle of yearly rebirth. In a blender you can make two trays of roots into a quart jar to be used spoon for spoon like coffee from beans and land far away.

The bitterness is different in dandelion coffee. It is familiar and creamy and it does not make the tongue shrink against astringent thin brew. The smell in winter will be of bare feet caked in dew and sod.

procrastination pizza

You first make some polenta. You could buy it in a tube too, but that seems like a lot of bother, when all you gotta do is boil a mug-and-a-half of water, some salt, pour in half-a-mug of corn meal, stir until really thick. When it starts spitting at you with its little polenta mouths (to paraphrase W.O. Mitchell), turn it down.

Then when it's all thick, get out a 12-cup muffin tin. Grease it, don't grease it, really it doesn't matter. Sometimes, the more butter in your life the better--you be the judge. Spoon a spoon of polenta into each cup, about a half-inch layer in each.

As soon as the polenta is off the stove, it will have started to firm up, so maybe you'll have to spread it around a little in each cup to make it flat. And really, flat is the only thing that is going to keep your procrastination toppings on, because the only thing that sticks to polenta is more polenta.

Then do it up. A slice of fresh tomato fits nicely (coughseasonalinsomeplacescough). Pesto is a good sauce if no one is allergic to nuts. Slice mushrooms top to bottom, keeping the round shape. All the cheese you can handle, though that won't stick to the polenta either so may as well put it on top where you can broil it.

Now that I think of it, I wouldn't have been so ambitious if it weren't for the in flight magazine and also the food in the Park Slope bathroom magazine. I actually just would have stirred cheese and tomato into the polenta porridge, and eaten while reading.

Did I say broil it? I meant to say broil the tray full of little corn pizzas, til the cheese melts. You can get them out with spoons or what-have-you.

These are slippery like oysters at times, don't come crying to me if it shoots across the kitchen and you have to pick a cockroach off it, I warned you.

crepes in ruby's virginia kitchen

There are many cookbooks in the cupboard. If you are worried about the old and big ones falling apart, maybe try to find a sturdier one.

Just because a crepe recipe is in french doesn't mean it's the best. Especially if you can't read french.

What you need is some eggs. Take three and delayez bien avec un cuillier du bois. My best guess is that means beat the eggs with a wooden spoon. I also guess that you are to beat them in a bowl, and possibly remove and discard the shells first.

Then you need 125 grammes de farine de gruau. That's some kind of flour, but 125 grams? Sure, that's about five ounces, but what else is it? If you're in Ruby's kitchen, don't panic, just root through the cupboards until you find a magic container that gives the weight of all kinds of dry ingredients along the side.

Maybe you didn't know such a thing existed, because previously you always measured things in cups, recklessly unaware of the problems of compacted or sifted flour fucking with your recipes. Don't worry, surely in the "Conversions of weights and measures" section of some other cookbook (not the one in French) there is some clue about how much flour makes 125 grams.

I'm telling you, it's not an even measure. Like, maybe, just over seven-eighths of a cup. For g*d's sake, don't quote me on that.

So, ajoutez le farine peu a peu dans les oeufs. I mean, it might be lumpy when you add the first few spoons of flour, but if you beat it all in well the lumps will smooth out. Sometimes the flour just lumps because it is lonely, and needs more flour.

Then you gotta faites boullir 25 decilitres du lait, a cup of milk if you don't feel like looking it up. I don't know why else, but it sure helps to have hot scalded or boiled milk when you need to mettez-y le buerre hors de feu. Butter: 30 grams, a couple tablespoons but I'm not worried about that being exact. Should I be worried?

You need 5 grammes du sel fin, which should fit in a tiny pile in the palm of your hand.

Beat it all together, and if you know what it is, add 2 petites cuillerees a cafe d'eau et le meme mesure de rhum. Well, if you don't put rum in, put in total four teaspoons of water, or the batter won't be thin enough.

Ruby saved me at this point by waking up, and showing me how to run the crepe pan and the gas stove at the same time. Scoop up some batter in a ladle, pour it on the medium-hot ungreased crepe pan and tilt the pan all around quickly so the batter runs to the edges. Peel up the edges off the pan as they dry, so they don't burn, then turn the heat down and flip the crepe. Ruby would coach you on this too, and I tell you, it's easier than it looks.

If you have any feeling left in your fingertips at all, use a wide plastic spatula to take the crepe off the pan. If you have been working as a dishwasher or making chipathi or roti, you can just use your clean fingers.

But who has a crepe pan? Not you? Use cast iron instead, or even teflon, but for both you gotta put a small amount of butter or oil on the pan. When the fat is hot, spread it around the surface with that spatula. The first crepe will likely suck, because it will be too greasy, but the rest will be delicious.

date.not.date main course

There must be lots of things to chop for the date.not.date, it helps the nerves, especially if the knife is good and there isn't enough room for the date.not.date to help. Other things that are useful to fuss over are roasting things that smell good but need to be checked frequently, and maybe something that can't be prepared until it's thawed.

Dinner must, under no circumstances, be served on early or on time. The point of chopping is to focus on the hands. It is easier to miscommunicate when one person is working and the other is relaxing.

Some might say recalcitrant foods, such as slippery roasted red peppers and tough-shelled nuts, are a little too literal for the date.not.date, but they are in fact the perfect projection surfaces for debilitating ambiguity and lingering sexual tension.

It is OK to serve onions, garlic, leeks, and shallots if your date.not.dater is not Buddhist or allergic--you should both eat them with a poker face. Give your date.not.date a couple seconds of privacy so you can both surreptitiously check your breathlessness.

Do not, under any circumstances, serve chamomile tea or fresh ripe mango. They will put you on a path to calling the bluff.

African Peanut Soup

I am repeating the title here for posterity, not because I believe for a minute that it is a good title for soup just because it has peanuts in it. I'll call it instead

LCT's favourite soup

2 medium onions, chopped
2 large bell peppers, chopped
1-3 large or 4 medium cloves of garlic, mashed
1-2 tbs canola oil
28 oz. can of tomatoes with juice, chopped
8 cups vegetable broth
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 cup uncooked short-grain rice
2/3 cup smooth peanut butter (sans salt & sugar)
chopped roasted peanuts (optional)

In a large soup pot, saute onions, bell peppers + garlic until inions begin to brown @ edges, ~ 7 minutes. Add tomatoes + juice, broth, pepper + red pepper glakes. Simmer, uncovered, over low heat for ~ 15 minutes [he crossed out "until rice is tender"]. Add rice, cover + simmer until rice is tender, ~ 30 minutes. Add peanut butter + whisk until smooth. Heat to a simmer + serve immediately, garnished with chopped roasted peanuts, if desired.

Serves 8.

Per serving: 236 cal/7 g protein / 10g fat / 29g carbohydrates / 0 cholesteral / 114 mg sodium / 4 g fiber vegan (whatever that is!!)

--Don't you just love my handwriting? It's especially fine today because I have been out riding my new bike all day.

--This is the sort of thing that one should have about the place most of the time.

[LCT's daughter has been good about calling me and I haven't called her back yet. Maybe I should tell her I finally made this soup, though LCT had given me the recipe seven years ago after I ate almost half a pot of it at his house. This was when I was 160 pounds and he was worried about how skinny I was. I'm sure he didn't need to see me at 120 but if it meant more soup I would be game.

LCT likes leaving instructions. I have still a sticky note from the Blood Sweat & Tears cassette he gave me when he finally bought the CD. Instructions for adjusting the bike seat (to be posted at a later date on Any Indian Will Do). Ten years of letters, from the dawn of e-mail in our lives until a month before he died, all filled with ways he was willing to help me. ]

Kitchen Wreckage

I have never seen such culinary disaster as the last three days. How could I manage to fuck up this major part of my life so consistently?

The blueberry muffins, now that could have just been the aggression I was beating into the batter, or as my old boss so generously offered, the crap recipe in Moosewood. At any rate, they were not so bad blueberry biscuits in the end, but still disappointing to fail.

The apple crisp, banana bread, and carrot cake could all have been casualties of an unfamiliar kitchen with no butter. I accidentally used cake flour for the banana bread, and some roasted oats for the crisp part of the apple crisp. [Ed. Note: previous reference to these oats as "stale" has been refuted by owners of oats, who claim to eat them every day. I revise my assertion, claiming that roasted oats just weren't meant for crisp. People who want good baking could maybe leave their favourite recipes out on the counter.] But the carrot cake has no excuse for roundly sucking: everything was meticulously measured, I pulled the carrots out of the garden myself that morning, I substituted nothing for anything. My buddy offered that the Joy of Cooking is a terrible cookbook, but declined to return the banana brick to me, he wanted to keep it as an exhibit for his partner who has had to listen to me go on about baking for four months.

My memory for ingredients is pretty good, and a bit too persistent. I don't mean remembering to put them in, I mean remembering too late what I had put in. I woke myself up the night before going to NYC with the thought of how I forgot to put sugar in the banana bread. I called it the vegan co-op banana bread after that, and we ate it in that hollow late morning hour when breakfast is cooking but not nearly ready enough.

I forgot eggs in the pancakes once when Mom's mom made a rare appearance, and though we all expected to be pretty bound up by the experience, they were actually good and digestable. I have no faith that that could be repeated, the pancakes were tender and tasty because of the sheer will I put into them while listening to Grandma's wild stories of all the pictures she took of Disneyland's fancy heritage houses on the way from the ferry.

Chocolate cake doesn't bake without sugar. No amount of icing will save it. It is gross. Do not eat. Do not pass go.

To restore my good baking name I've gone back to basics, to the kid's cookbook we used growing up. I mean, there was no sugar in the house, but that should be fine because I replaced the pumpkin with overripe bananas. Right?

Cookies

Did you know I gained ten pounds maybe this semester? It's all thanks to our new oven, way to go KCK! People with ovens can stand over them all day and it's really warm. Given recent weather events in the greater ave du Parc area, this is very important.

So, for most cookies, you start with butter and brown sugar. You have to take the butter out of the fridge and let it sit on the counter first. Actually, slice off the measure you need, put it in the big mixing bowl, and break the butter up into small chunks so it can warm up and thus be easier to cream. Mom always had that big box of margarine squares, which made measuring a lot easier, and was a lot cheaper than butter. But here in Quebec the margarine is white and creeps me out. I shell out for the butter.

One small thing that might have interfered with my weight gain is the time spent creaming the butter and sugar together in cookie recipes. Feel my arm! You don't have to beat as much if you use shortening, but maybe let Hostess be the purveyors of hydrogenated fat. Mom had a pastry blender, which helped a lot. If you are using a fork, don't use a wimpy one or one with a plastic handle. They break. You don't want to answer for that. If you use a wooden spoon, make sure it's sturdy. They break sometimes too. You can use vegetable oil for some recipes, but it might make the dough too soft unless you cut back on other liquids.

Did I mention you need two bowls? One big one for the wet ingredients and mixing the final recipe, and one medium to sift all the dry ingredients together.

The sugar shouldn't have lumps if you want to make your life easy. If it's a solid bag-shaped block, put a slice of apple in and make cookies tomorrow instead. The sucanat and dried cane juice, or other kinds of raw sugar should work ok, I've never tried them. I have no idea what to do about stevia--it's sweet and that's good but does it contribute to the cookie properties we so desire? Mom always used demerara sugar, so any lighter sugar looks really strange to me. We were a brown family. Only use white sugar in a cookie emergency, it is kind of boring.

If you use eggs, beat them a little first. Just lightly, Spanky, they're going to get beaten into the sugar butter as well. You can use egg replacer or flax eggs too. Ask some vegan how to make those. I can't help you. Eggs shells back in the carton? Who knows why Mom did that. Was she saving them for something? You'll also need some vanilla at this point. Teaspoon by teaspoon, it's worth the extra expense of real vanilla. Maybe you could make your own extract if you buy a vanilla bean and some alcohol. Mom had some big jars of co-op vanilla she couldn't afford, so she traded her first-born for them. That's all I'm worth? Four litres of real vanilla?

The dry ingredients are something else entirely. If you buy whole wheat organic free trade dolphin friendly flour, and if you don't live in the outdoors in midwinter Quebec, keep the flour in the fridge. There are bugs everywhere, and they love co-op food. WWOFTDF flour also goes rancid, even if bugs don't get to it. If you don't remember when you bought your flour, and it wasn't sealed or in the fridge, quickly sift through a cup or so of it to look for bugs. My roommate says if you pick them out, it's all good, because it's going to be sterilized in the oven shortly anyway. I just throw that flour out and try again. Mom had a good point once, in that flour with bugs in it shows you that at least something can live in it.

Baking soda and baking powder are generally not things that bugs can live in, so that's not such a worry. They will last you a really long time. Maybe best to seal the soda in a jar after you open the box, though, so it doesn't absorb the superpowers of everything around it. Once--OK, lots of times--when I was a kid--OK, I was fourteen--I couldn't tell the difference between the two jars of soda and powder, so Mom marked the inside of one of the lids "soda". That worked until I used the lid to make cleaning paste. If you haven't marked the jars, soda is the grainy one, the one Mom was asking for when she was cleaning, the one in the white jar, and powder is the powdery one, in the blue jar. Best to bring her both jars if you're not sure.

Salt--well what could go wrong? Mom never added salt to anything. I don't remember any cookie deficiency in her baking, so maybe it's not necessary. But then again, maybe she had magical powers that could take over for the chemical reaction salt provided in the recipe.

There are other things, like oatmeal, wheat germ, oat bran, coconut and so on that go in the dry ingredients. Are there flax seeds in the oatmeal? Were they there when you bought it? Count the legs. Do you still think they're flax seeds? Wheat germ goes rancid easily too, keep it in the freezer or fridge.

And what is with this sudden obsession with food hygiene? Nothing to do with the two garbage bags of "food" I threw out in September, the crusty bags of former nourishment that even the mice abandoned sometime in 2003 (judging by the age of the mouse shit surrounding the area). Always take a good look at the food you're about to eat. Finding a hole chewed in a bag after you've been chowing down is just too little, too late.

Then you mix the dry ingredients into the wet. It doesn't stick together? Put in some water, a tablespoon at a time. NO amount of baking will make dry cookie batter stick together.

Grease the cookie sheets or don't grease the cookie sheets. If you do, use the foil wrappers from the butter or margarine. Mom keeps them in the door of the fridge. If you don't, you might wish you did. Or, maybe there's enough butter in the cookies already so it doesn't matter.

Here you might "drop the batter by spoonfuls" or "roll into one-inch balls and flatten with a fork" or some other such standard cookie-production mechanism. Really, that's your business, I've done all I can.