DIY

The Problem with Baking

November 25, 2009 by Jess in DIY, Family | 2 Comments

Lately, my husband has been saying things like, “I remember when my wife used to bake me cookies…”

It’s true, I haven’t baked cookies–or anything, really–since the pie I made last Thanksgiving, which accompanied the Thug Turkey I basted with Hennessy. And this Thanksgiving, I won’t even bake my own pie–I’m gonna be lazy and buy one at Lucky’s! (I will cook a turkey, btw, and am considering whether I want to repeat the Thug Turkey with its beautiful juicy brown skin. But when I mentioned all the pie ingredients I needed Chris to pick up at the store, he asked me if it would really cost so much more to just buy a damn pie, and I realized that actually, it was about the same minus all the aggravation.)

Still, it got me thinking. Last night as I tried to fall asleep, I asked myself, “Why don’t I bake anymore?”

I used to find it relaxing. In college, finals week always found me in the kitchen, baking up a storm of brownies, cookies, cakes. It was a great study break. During my MFA program, I also baked more regularly, though I think that had something to do with my sweet tooth and my desperate need to stay skinny and so I’d cook low-fat versions of my favorite recipies a lot. Anyway, I also remember a terrible crush I had on a guy and the things I’d bake him. I’m not sure he picked up on the giant clue that was in front of his face everytime I appeared on his doorstep with cookies, but looking back, he wasn’t the sharpest tack of the bunch anyway. Thank God, sometimes we’re saved from ourselves by sheer luck. Or, in this case, somebody else’s stupidity.

As I was trying to figure out when I lost my interest in cooking last night, I remembered how the first two men I lived with didn’t see any point to eating together unless we were going out to dinner, and how easy it was to lose the joy in cooking when it wasn’t going to be appreciated or if I was going to be the only one eating it. The boyfriend I lived with in my mid-twenties was just as happy opening a can of Ravioli as eating what I cooked, though maybe my vegetarianism could be blamed for that. Sorry to my veggie friends in the world, I now realize what a difference meat makes to the flavor of most dishes, with the exception of Indian food. Indians know how to do vegetarianism right! And as for my first husband–I don’t know, he just didn’t seem all that interested in eating, period. So I got out of the habit of cooking. And now–though Chris appreciates whatever I cook or bake with the exception of pasta, which he’ll eat once a month, dutifully, because I love it–I only cook when I have to and I make enough for leftovers to last a long time and I don’t bake anything at all ever. I’m not blaming those two guys for my loss of interest–maybe it accelerated what would have happened naturally anyway or maybe I should have told myself I was cooking for me and to hell with them.

Whatever the reason, I got out of the habit, and now I’m realizing how small my interests have become. Oh, I’m interested in a lot of different topics–fertility, anything related to Africa or the U.S.-Mexico border, anarchy, health and healing, alternative health, etc etc etc. But in terms of what I actually do everyday, it doesn’t vary much. I write. I read. I grade papers. I go to the gym or I go for a long walk. We go to at least one concert a month, as many as we can afford.

I think it’s time I got out of this ol’ rut and started baking again.

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Thug Turkey

November 29, 2008 by Jess in DIY, women | Leave a comment

When my mother was my age, she had three kids and had cooked many a Thanksgiving dinner. I have been blissfully child-free all these years and able to mooch off the largesse of those families who actually “do” Thanksgiving.

But this year, I decided I’d “do” Thanksgiving, turkey and all. But I was kind of nervous about it, since it seemed like a honkin-ass big bird (“I got the smallest one I could find, honey!”). I wasn’t even sure when to take it out of the freezer. So I asked the three lovely ladies in my writer’s group, who, among other things, all seem to be blessed with domestic skills I lack. One of ladies suggested that I baste my turkey with cognac. She is French and I suspect everything she ever puts in the oven turns out bee-yew-tifully!

I asked what kind of cognac to use but then I lost that note among the four hundred and twelve other notes floating around on top of my desk. But I did remember that one of them had said it was a cognac mentioned in all the rap songs, so I told that to Chris, who immediately said, “Hennessy. Hennessy is the thug cognac of choice.”

Well, I knew that wasn’t the right cognac, or at least it wasn’t the one they had mentioned,  but we decided to go with it. And Chris was right, if you look up Hennessy drinks online, they’re all badboy drinks: “Headcrack” or “Hustler’s Paradise” or “Green Hulk.”

I went online to look to check out “basting with cognac.” There was one recipe called “Turkey basting made sleazy,” which recommends basting the turkey via the rear end while it’s still alive. Ew. But I found another recipe that recommended basting it with Hennessey and milk, 24 hours before cooking. So I did that. Then I continued basting throughout the cooking process, adding more Hennessy as desired.

Wow, that turkey looked beautiful. It really did. I have never seen such a great brown skin on a turkey before. My first turkey. Sob. And I owe it all to thugs.

I used the thermometer–it said it had reached 180 degrees so we took it out and cut into it and I thought it looked suspiciouisly pink. Maybe it was fine. I don’t know. There was one swab of flesh that looked pinkish to me, not bloody, just pink more than white. So we put it back in for another hour. By the time we took it out, it was cooked, maybe a little too well–kinda dry and tough because, after all, we had sliced it before dumping it back in the oven.

Oh, well,  the method was obviously fine. The skin? Tasted effin fantastic! I just needed to leave the flesh in longer….

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Just Be Your Quirky Self

October 30, 2008 by Jess in Africa, Books & News, Catalyst Book Press, Catholicism, DIY, homeless, immigrant rights, literature, pacifism, peace, publishing, religion, sex, Social Issues, Uncategorized, violence, war, women, writing | 5 Comments

jessica-sexy-gun-model-2.gifI am reading Ariel Gore’s How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead because, of course, my daily angst is all about how I’m not a famous writer yet. It’s a great book. Read it. You can buy it directly from Ariel herself at Yo Mama’s Bookshop and she will make more money than if you buy it from Amazon or in your bookstore. That way, you are supporting your local artist (or not so local, if you don’t live anywhere near Portland) instead of the evil corporation that is, in this case, Three Rivers Press (a division of Random House, which is also my publisher, and WHOM I LOVE.) I love Ariel’s DIY philosphy which pervades every page of the book. She’s not saying, “Don’t go with the big presses,” she’s simply pointing out the myriad of ways (yes, Ariel, I used the word myriad!) to get your writing out into this world. 

Here’s my problem with books like this one: Now I want to be an anarchist! Now I want to create and print hip zines and declare my allegiance to the underworld! Now I want to become a radical feminist lesbian communist revolutionary and publish things that really change the world!

Only my problem is, I don’t know anybody in the underworld. Unless you count the homeless teenagers I work with every Friday afternoon in San Francisco’s Haight district.

And frankly, I’ve never been good at revolution: I was never into the punk scene; I have always been pretty straight (with some bi inklings on occasion, like when I kissed a girl on the neck and thought, “Wow, she smells really nice,” but that sure never flowered into full-on gay fruition); and unfortunately for my image, I never joined a revolutionary movement (but I am pretty damn sure I would look sexy in fatigues, holding a machine gun. SEE ABOVE & BELOW!). jessica-sexy-gun-model-copy.gif

I’m just this pacifist, who isn’t very radical about it though I kind of want to be; a truly terrible Catholic–at least, any conservative Catholic would be pretty much appalled by my viewpoints which I won’t list here for fear of appalling a number of conservative Catholics who read my blog regularly, but they’re probably all the things they’d guess at anyway, that anybody reading this would guess at; an advocate for immigrants and a lover of all things African except, of course, genocide and kleptocracies; recognized by some as a hippie, others as a lover of reggae & Afro-pop & indie music; and obsessed with studying liberation movements of all kind, especially those that link religion with Marxism, or religion with violent revolution.

Probably the weirdest thing about me is how much I like teenagers, whether they’re dorky, goth, depressed, cool, smart, not so smart, suicidal, druggies, pretend druggies, alternative, mainstream, artsy-fartsy, science-geek, etc etc so on and so forth. The only teenagers I don’t like are cheerleaders, which I have tried to get over so I could like Claire of save the cheerleader, save the world fame.

And that, of course, is all part of Ariel’s message in the end: just be your own quirky self, gravy stains on your T-shirt and all.

Yeah, so I guess I won’t be going the way of radical revolutionary anytime soon. But I am becoming a publisher, or rather, I have become a publisher, and I hope to venture into the world of ezines and zines in the next couple of months, and in the meantime, I keep writing my stuff for publication in traditional formats.

It’s all part of feeding the beast.

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