Cooking

I have been working upon a post including recipes of my last two ventures into Sunday Night Dinner. How do people blog and include recipes so regularly? It is beyond me, but I am justifiably awed. I have been reading some more Saveur and M.F.K. Fisher. There is perhaps nothing as tempting as an articulate article or book concerning food to me. Have you ever read about a cooking process in which each sense is employed? How a family's memory can be exemplified by a meal or even a shared dish? How luscious an unknown dessert tastes? I have lists of cookbooks, books and memoirs concerning food that I wish to own and read. Did you know they have culinary themed mysteries with recipes included? I delight in those as well. What is better than food and a murder mystery after all?

In the stacks of reading material next to my bed (Of course I need not include the magazines and books on the bench at the foot of my bed nor the slipper chair now devoted to holding a couple of stacks of magazines and cookbooks nor the stack of magazines on my wooden chest. Let me not also include the books and magazines in my closet, under my bed, those two or three magazines placed on my dresser nor those actually organized on shelves) are various current cooking magazines such as Fine Cooking and at least two cookbooks I am reading through (yes, I actually read them like they are novels when I have the chance). Of course in the process of reading The Tex-Mex Cookbook and the like, I am also reading bits of Northanger Abbey, flipping through various art related publications and less illustrious books. I love the time researching, reading and learning about food as much as actually eating or cooking food. This may be because I am more a thinker (let us not qualify the quantity of my thoughts) than doer. I am not one to jump into doing something without educating myself about it. I wonder why then I spend so much time with cooking related books and dedicate so little time to learning about systems of government, democracy, my government or even citizenship?

I have only recently ventured into visiting websites of Ron Paul, Barack Obama and John McCain. Next I will need to examine Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton--I have given her a lot of slack because I have wanted a serious woman candidate for president. Too often I vote for a rather odd reason: diversity. I will vote Republican if the candidate is a woman or a minority. I try to vote outside the two parties too. My belief being that few candidates actually represent what I want, but I can vote for people to represent more of the population than just white Christian males. I want to promote questions. I want discussion and debate--not ideological bickering, but serious thought on what problems we face, the possible alternatives and ways to compromise. I want politicians to examine and reexamine the details of a decision, which has ramifications for their constituents. If we are going to consider war I want there to be due process before declaring war--I want it to be difficult to commit our troops. I don't want to be told that there is only one acceptable family structure. I do not wish to encourage complaisance and derision of others by touting our country’s superiority. Yes, we are fortunate, but we also always need to grow and improve and we have much to learn from other cultures, countries, religions and governmental structures...to not let empty self-righteousness and arrogance erode what traditions should be continuously remembered and built upon.

Personally, I see many ways we can improve as a nation and as individuals. We are not meant to remain frozen and nature will do everything in her power to cause change. One thing I learned in my cookbooks and ventures into the cooking world is that recipes aren't exact (baking though is more like science) and they are meant as guidelines for a process. We want pat equations and answers and there aren't such things. If you continue to use the same recipe your meal will still not come out exactly the same each time. Much of life is a lot like cooking--you make do with what you have on hand, use your best judgment from experience (ask your family and friends for further help) and improvise as best you can.