Food Musings

A topic of conversation that seems to come up a lot lately is whether or not one could kill an animal in order to eat it. Last summer, I lived with these guys. The turkeys wandered around camp, eating little bugs and pecking at anything shiny. When they were still babies, they would hop in my lap and I thoroughly enjoyed petting their feathers. This spunky guy tried to get into my tent.

But I had no amount of disconnect about the reality of the situation. Turkeys are food. When they wandered close to the fire pit, I would joke, "Yes, make yourself ready!" Why can't you play with your food and eat it too? Let the turkey live a nice happy spring and summer and come late autumn, he becomes dinner. But the question always is: could I kill the animal? Could I make dinner out of a living creature instead of a sterilized package?

Two years ago, I would have said certainly not. I also had trouble, for a while, cooking with raw eggs because they gave me the willies. But the more I learn about food, the more comfortable I am with the process by which it has come to me. I remember when I cooked a roaster one night in college and I spent so much time trying not to think about the weight of the animal in my hands or the feeling of its skin. But now, I can look at meat and imagine where on the animal it came from, what the animal must have looked like. I try to thank it for playing a role in the continuation of my life. So, I believe, with gratitude in my heart, I could turn one of my pets into my dinner. I've never had this opportunity, though I haven't sought it out either. Maybe that's a goal for next fall.

But this feeling of connectedness with my food is what makes me a comfortable omnivore. I am content to eat meat with the knowledge that it was at one point an animal. But what about the rest of my food? What WAS all of this at one point? I find myself, after having read so much about the American food industry, sticking to the outside of supermarkets--even here in the Czech Republic where the food industry is starting to follow the American standard. I get fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh bread, meat, and dive into the aisles only for grains and spices. Yesterday, however, I needed to make a banoffee pie. It was an urge I could not control. I had to find condensed milk and digestives. I knew that the can in my had contained milk that had been cooked down, I think, to be thicker. Okay, I can handle that. The digestives were the next step. More appropriately than in American supermarkets, the cookie aisle was one with the candy aisle. I scoured the shelves for something not made by Opavia, a Czech company owned by the one and only Kraft Foods. I pretty much came up empty on that front. So, I headed over to the natural foods section of DM where I was able to find cookies not made by Opavia and with a fairly short list of ingredients.

When I got home, I put away my groceries. I wondered why every week I suddenly felt by Friday like I had no food left. I made two piles of food as I unpacked my groceries: fridge and counter. That's why. Almost none of my food goes into a cabinet to store for later. I buy very few things with any sort of shelf life or which I don't intend to use within a few days. And while it's frustrating because it's not how I've been taught by society to shop, it's actually the most natural way to do it.

Simply Seeds

This past summer, I spent a few weeks at my father's house for the first time since I was fourteen. It was late August and we were struggling to keep up with the harvest of tomatoes and peppers. My whole childhood, I enjoyed the bounty of our backyard. Being the sixth generation of my family to live on the street meant that our backyard was a paradise of fruits and vegetables. We had rhubarb for pies. Gooseberries and currants were for making jelly. Our pears were really canning pears, but as children, we ate them off the tree and enjoyed their crisp texture and tartness. Red and black raspberries never made it to the kitchen before our pudgy hands would stuff them into our stained mouths. There were plum trees in our yard while next door there was an apple tree that we were welcome to pick from. We also enjoyed our neighbor's blueberry bushes and occasionally picked the June berries from near the road. While all of these plants gave us their delicious fruit year after year, we had little understanding, nor interest, in our father's gardening. Who cares about tomatoes when you have raspberries?

But in 2009, as something of an adult, I had much more respect for the two gardens my father had been keeping. It was difficult not to feel a sense of awe when looking at them. The tomato garden was overflowing--and certainly not just with beefsteaks! "Did you see the yellow plum tomatoes?" my father would greet me as he came in from the backyard. The day that we found what appeared to be a purple heirloom was a day of wonder and delight. I had chopped so many tomatoes and peppers (and not just bell peppers either--"I think this is an orange Scotch Bonnet!") for salsa, roasted tomatoes, and my own bean chili. I felt like we would never keep up. The fruit drawer in the fridge became the tomato drawer, while our windowsill was covered with vegetables awaiting the chopping block. As we looked at the purple heirloom, we debated what to do with it. "I think I'll save it for seeds," my father said. I began to notice the little yellow seed envelopes on the counter--most unlabeled. Of course! This garden, while magical, didn't just appear one day! My father was saving seeds and planting them year after year. The tomatoes and peppers that we eat provide more than just delicious sustenance--they also provide for the future. They are full of possibility! Inside of each one is dozens of possible plants for the future. Our garden was full of surprises not because these things just appeared but because my father has no interest in labeling envelopes. But this is part of the magic of our garden!

My father's crown jewel this summer was the watermelon plant that managed to make its way into the pepper garden. Had a watermelon seed somehow gotten mixed in with the pepper seeds? Had someone at a barbecue spit a seed in the direction of the garden and it managed to germinate there? The watermelon was gorgeous and huge, though I didn't eat it so I'm not sure how it tasted.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how I can bring the magic of our backyard to my school. I'm planning out a garden in my head, which is a completely foreign concept for me. I decided to buy a book from my favorite press (Hawthorn) called Gardening with Small Children. I hope it comes soon! I desperately need some guidance on this subject. But at snack today, I was cutting up apples and noticed the seeds. I put them aside and after snack showed them to the children. We put them in one section of an egg carton and labeled it "green apple." I doubt that we'll have any sort of orchard in our small backyard, but if just one of these seeds becomes a tree sometime in the future, imagine having snack time from our own tree in our own backyard! I marveled at the simply beauty of seeds in an egg carton, hoping my students felt my sense of wonder at the magic of the world. These little brown things, that we spit out with a "p-tooey" of annoyance, have the possibility to become trees which will produce more apples for us to eat and more seeds for more trees with branches to climb and leaves to collect! And what more beautiful sorting and storage container than a recycled egg carton? Look how much the earth has provided us with and how it continues to provide!

So, this afternoon, I went to the fruit shop and, using my little and bad Czech, got a few peppers. I cut them open and again felt joy in seeing the magic of nature. All of those seeds, which usually stick to my knife and drive me crazy while I cook, were the start of this summer's vegetable garden. Unlike my father, I carefully kept and sorted them.



I cannot wait to plant them this spring and to enjoy my own pepper harvest this August. Working with children is like observing the evolution of humanity. They make new discoveries every day which our species took thousands of years to come to. So far, my children have been living in the hunter-gatherer stage of human evolution. Agricultural revolution, here we come!

Chapter Thirteen: Gratuitous Food Blogging

So, it's about time to post about my cooking this week. It all started with last weekend's trip to HomePlus once I overcame another awful kid-virus. Being a teacher means getting sick in ways that you had completely forgotten were possible after elementary school. Anyway, pictured above is the batter for my sesame cookies. I thought they would be a great "fusion" dessert for my Seoul Food night (which ended up being more Soul Food That I Can Make in Korea From Typical Korean Ingredients).

Here they are cooking. For this little bit of alchemy, I figured that I would need to make it so that the bottom of the cookie pan (or aluminum foil pie dish, as it were) did not touch the bottom of the pot. If it had, I'm sure they would have just been badly burnt and never turn out like cookies. What I did was line the pot with an inverted pie dish, then place one right-side-up on top. That way, the heat filled up the whole "oven" instead of being focused at the bottom of the pan. Pretty ingenious, if I do say so myself. This recipe wasn't even for stove-top baking, but I successfully made an oven that cooked the cookies nearly as evenly as if they were in a real oven. It did take about 40 minutes to cook a tray of four, but it was worth it.
The recipe, if you're interested, came from Martha Stewart, my favorite domestic goddess. I don't care what that says about me. Actually, I might be a proud fan.

As you can see, I added in some dried cranberries. Sesame seeds have such a nutty flavor and I thought I needed something tangy to balance it out. I'm quite pleased with the results.

My HomePlus purchases! I've never seen vanilla powder before, but it was the only kind of vanilla I could find. I kind of like it now, though. I can add it to just about anything that could benefit from a hint of vanilla-and it's much easier and cheaper than real vanilla. Next to it is my baking powder! Sweet nectar of the gods! I am so excited about all of the things I can do with real baking powder instead of my baking soda+acid concoctions.

Finished cookies! Don't they look tasty and perfect? On Thursday, I took the left-overs to work. No one seemed phased by the idea of sesame cookies, so I must have picked well in my choice of foods that are both Soul Food and Korean food. Hmm. The next dessert is the real link between the two. When I was searching for recipes, all I got were sites about Soul Food and Korean food.

Preparing the ingredients to make the custard base... What could it be?

Cooking up some Korean sweet potatoes. They have a really great, unique flavor. It kind of tastes to me like cardamom. They are definitely not your grandma's sweet potatoes, but they will work.

Making a puree.

Mixing it all together... More on this later.

I need to pause for a moment to show so photos of how beautiful cooking can be!

This stainless steel pot full of cherry tomatoes just waiting to be stewed down to be a red-bean chili base is so pop-art, isn't it? I love the way that the pot reflects the tomatoes.
It's just pretty! And the chili turned out pretty good too. It was too sweet, though, from the red beans and the sweet tomatoes. Next time, black beans and regular tomatoes.
Now, back to the sweet potato dish:

Ice cream! It was amazing, even if I did screw it up because I fell asleep before I was done churning it and it turned into one big rock. I spent a lot of time moving it from fridge to freezer and back again. Unfortunately, I cannot find cream in Korea so I couldn't get it nice and smooth. It's also really difficult to make without an ice cream maker. It turned out okay in the end anyway!

Another dish that I kind of made up: Corn custard! Corn is just about the only canned vegetable you can get in a normal Korean grocery store which leads me to believe it's a pretty popular one. Also, they're big on eggs. Since I don't have an oven in which to make a real corn pudding (don't be fooled by the name, it's a nice savory side-dish), I had to make do on my stove top and cread a corn custard. I think it was really tasty and Chris ate a ton. Also, I made this entirely without a recipe. I just threw stuff together in a pot and saw what happened. Think, corn quiche without the crust.


But wait, there's more! It's Saturday. I had planned to go hiking today, but after a long night of Outback Steakhouse, Ice Bar (where you throw your ice beer mug at a target to try to win free food and drinks), and Norae Bang (Korean karaoke), I slept in this morning. I got up and thought, "Saturday, overslept, can't go hiking... French toast it is!" It was the best idea ever. Korean bread is also very thick, I can't imagine it being used for anything else! Luckily, at HomePlus last weekend I also bought Korean "cake syrup" which was certainly not Mrs. Butterworth's, but it'll do.

Mmm, happy Saturday!

Lastly, what the ice cream really looks like. It looks freezer burnt, but you can't taste it because of the strong flavor. Did I mention that it really tastes like chai? I put a decent amount of vanilla and cinnamon in, plus the natural sweet potato flavor made a nice chai taste. It even looks the right color to be chai ice cream... maybe next time I'll make chai ice cream for real?

Chapter Eleven: The Lone Ranger Does a Dinner Party or Kitchen Alchemy

The first night I was here, I said something to Cordelia about exchanging food for favors. The fact that I cook quickly spread to everyone else. Apparently, no one else here really cooks. When Arthur first got here, nearly two years ago, he was asked if he cooked because everyone was hoping he would be "that kind of person for the group." Now, a few generations later, I am determined to be that kind of person for the group. On Wednesday afternoons, I have absolutely no classes and it makes me feel awful because everyone else is working. So, I've decided to spend that time preparing dinner for the other Western teachers. Since I only have one burner, I needed to start in advance. On Tuesday night, I made some zuccini pancakes. I left out the cheese and used flour instead of breadcrumbs so that they would have the very subtle Korean style. They turned out perfect and definitely had clear Korean inspiration. This first picture is after I shaved the whole zuccini. Normally, I use a cheese grater but since I don't have one, I had to make do. I shaved it, then used my scissors to make it a little smaller.

Frying them up and packing them for tomorrow!

Making caramelized bananas to go on top of my cake for dessert.

The containers still steaming, sitting in my fridge getting ready for Wednesday!

The cake in its "oven." In order to make the cake, I found a recipe online for stove-top coffee cake and modified it. First of all, I had yet to find baking powder so needed to create my own. This is where the alchemy comes in. Baking powder is a combination of a salt (baking soda) and an acid (or two) that creates the reaction causing instead leavening (rising). I needed to find an acid to react with my baking soda, so I chose yogurt. I wasn't sure how well it would work or how the cake would taste. In the end, it worked pretty well: the cake rose, it baked all the way through, and it tasted like cake. It was a little funky from the baking soda/yogurt combination I think, but when topped with banana, you could hardly tell.

Before it started to rise.

Meanwhile I chopped up tons of vegetables for my soup. I must have had a pound of everything here: potatoes, onions, peppers, carrots... okay, maybe not a pound of garlic though.

I had to taste a piece of my finished (and risen!) cake before declaring it a success. It took about 2 hours to cook, more than twice the time the recipe called for, but that's okay. It worked! Who would have thought I could make it on a stove-top?

The soup cooking, mm, nice rolling boil.

The last piece of completed cake. Everyone loved it.

Arthur did so much that he's on his second piece here.

On Thursday, I decided, "Let's try this again." Since the other cake was kind of dry and the batter was more doughy, I added more juice. Also, I added a ton more sugar to cover up the baking soda/yogurt taste in the last one.

Gettin' ready to go in the "oven."

To show that this cake is actually made from batter instead of dough.

Cooking, next to my totally sweet cereal box. For some reason, Korean Kelloggs brand cereal comes like a normal cereal box but has special scoring so you can fold it and make it all flat at the top. I had to try, but I'm not really sure why I would want it this way.

My spice collection, of which I am actually quite proud, salt, pepper, turmeric, garlic, and sesame oil. What else do you need? Morgan probably remembers from my college cooking days that I really don't use much else. I've always believed that turmeric makes anything taste better.

Left-over soup! This is all that's left after I made Arthur take some since he was getting sick. Huge pot down to one little container. Tonight, I finally finished it off. Many, many days of chicken soup.

Cake #2 cooking away. Look, you can see how much it rose!

Cake #2 finished. It was very gooey on top and definitely had an orange-creamsicle taste from the orange juice and yogurt. I kind of liked it, though! However, it took over 3 hours to bake this time. I'm not sure if the added moisture was necessary or good. Friday night, I got some chocolate and melted it down to put a nice ganache on top. We ate it on the roof and it was quite nice.
Today, I got baking powder so the alchemy of replacing baking powder is no longer necessary. It's good because then I don't have to worry about a yogurt taste in my cake. Next time, I think I'll make it an aloe juice cake-yum!
I've already started cooking for this week's dinner (really, one burner, you have to plan way ahead) which will be themed "Seoul Food"--a combination of American Southern and Korean.