On Love and the Art of Cooking

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers, condolences, encouragements and emails. It was really wonderful to come home after such a sad time to so many kind comments from this community of friends....sort of like a big, much-needed virtual hug. I truly, deeply appreciate you all.

I have been feeling somewhat listless and unmotivated since I returned home...avoiding the kitchen and really not doing much of anything at all except for lots of catching up on sleep. I'm not sure why I haven't felt like cooking this last week, given my love for anything to do with food, but perhaps it felt like too much work to go shopping, to get out all the necessary equipment and do the necessary prep work...or too much hassle even to decide what I wanted to make.

Perhaps in times of stress, your mind becomes so bogged down that it's easy to forget the reasons why you loved something in the first place: because it soothes your soul, it grounds you and brings you home, or it relaxes you (or energizes you) so completely that the rest of the world fades away... and then suddenly you realize that you have forgetten about what was stressful, and find yourself humming a tune as you roll out dough, chop vegetables or create your mis en place. It might be sort of like exercise - how I avoid it, make up excuses and exclaim exhaustion all so that I won't have to go, even while subconsciously I am very much aware that I feel so much better and have so much more energy when I do actually drag my @$$ to the gym.

But this weekend, the kitchen could be avoided no longer. I had promised to make my roommate a birthday dinner and cake on Sunday night, and I knew that I had Book Club on Monday evening. Our book this month? The Julie/Julia Project, whereby Julie Powell cooks her way through Julia Child's first volume in the Mastering the Art of French Cooking series and begins her own blog to chronicle her adventures and disasters. I loved the book - the relationship between Julie and her husband reminds me so much of LB and I that it's almost uncanny and she often had me in stitches with her comments about one thing or another. Since we had decided at our first meeting that we would be called the "Food 4 Thought Book Club," and this month reading a book about food, we - of course - had to have French food to go with it.

So, even dragging my feet and having done everything possible to avoid taking those first steps into the kitchen, I dutifully did it anyway. I figured that I'd probably feel better after I ate something tasty anyway, so I chose my recipes and trudged my way over to large expanse of counter that divides our kitchen. I pulled out the necessary ingredients, the measuring cups, knives and cutting board, and began slowly, one recipe at a time. I began with the simple French cookies I had selected for book club: Pistachio financiers...

...only to find that I instantly relaxed into the act itself. The knots in my shoulders began to ease as I chopped nuts and measured sugar. There was a certain satisfaction in spooning flour into a measuring cup and swiftly dragging the back of a butter knife across it, leveling the top. As I cracked eggs and whisked dough together, the whir of the Kitchenaid mixer took the sadness of the last two weeks slowly out of my muscles and the feeling of listlessness floated quietly away. When I finished with the financiers and began to make dinner, I found I was finally focused on the task at hand; my mind no longer wandering incessantly. And by the time the cake was iced, dinner was on the table, and we were sitting together and chatting about the day - I heard that first sound of 'mmm...,' and I was feeling more like myself than I had in a long time.

The hardest part of being home with my family was that I felt so incredibly helpless watching the people that I love most in my life wrought with grief. A job that has literally been at a standstill, as I wait for products I've ordered to come in, did nothing to assuage the ennui that developed once I had returned. But finding my way into the kitchen, although struggling with those first few steps, brought the realization to me that this is why I cook.

I cook because it's one way I can take care of the people I love. Through the carefully constructed sustenance that I offer them on a plate, I am not only feeding them, but also giving them a gift straight from my heart, filled with ingredients selected with their happiness in mind, and made with my own two hands... and sometimes with the ache in my feet and my back and the sweat of my brow (especially in the summer!). But the smiles, the widened eyes, and those delicious sounds of enjoyment I get in return after that first bite, is all I need to feel gratified...like I've made some difference to them, helped them in some way, comforted them even the tiniest bit.


Pistachio Financiers, from Food and Wine magazine
A recipe I picked up while I was looking for reading material for working out on the stairclimber this last week...

1 cup whole blanched almonds, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup sugar
2 large eggs, beaten
5 tbsp. melted unsalted butter
3 tbsp. all-purpose flour
25-30 shelled pistachios

Preheat the oven to 400F. Butter and flour 30 mini muffin pan cups. Grind the almonds in a food processor to a fine powder (or use 1 cup almond meal/flour). Whisk together the sugar and almond powder together in a large bowl. Whisk in the eggs until incorporated, then the butter and followed by the flour. Spoon the batter into the mini muffin cups and decorate with pistachios. Bake until golden brown - about 16 minutes. Let cool slightly, then run a knife around the edges and remove from the pan onto a cooling rack. Store in an airtight container.

NOTE: The recipe said this made 30, but I used a tablespoon to fill the mini muffin cups and only got 16 - so, taper accordingly for your needs.