You've all clicked your way over to Shea’s “other” blog, Cooking With Hoover, by now, yes? For those few who haven't checked it out, go ahead, go now. Take a look….
Ok, back now? Here’s where I am going with this. My dear, old friend is constructing some seriously artful meals. Well thought out. Beautiful. Mouthwatering dinners. You can tell that he is a real honest to goodness chef. And he’s giving me major league stage fright. How is one supposed to compete with that? He’s an impossible act to follow.
More than half-okay realistically closer to 90 percent- of meals I cook these days are those slap-dash affairs where I’m rummaging deep in my cabinet looking for something, anything to use to turn the disparate ingredients I’ve mined out of my refrigerator into a semblance of “dinner”.
I do the requisite grocery shopping, I make the pilgrimage to the farmers market and come triumphantly home with anything pretty and fresh I find there. And I read and collect recipes compulsively, like some people collect stamps or coins or whatever it is people like to accumulate excessively large collections of. I try to maintain a working “pantry” of those ingredients that you should always have on-hand.
But despite all that I still find myself on most nights doing mental gymnastics to get something that resembles a balanced meal onto my plate. I can usually get one element right...but really there's only so much a side dish can do.
My meals look nothing, I repeat NOTHING, like those lovely pictures Shea posts. My approach of late has resembled a patchwork quilt gone awry. Lots of clashing colors, and as yet no discernible pattern. Recent hits: A variety of sauteed summer squashes over bland Israeli cous cous. Egg salad-always a perennial, lazy favorite when home made. Tuscan kale with garlic scapes and pine nuts-delicious but clearly a supporting actor in need of a star that never showed. And the low moment a couple weeks ago, brats and....wait for it...frozen peas. So much for the culinary arts.
I fear it’s a reflection of my general state of mind this summer. I miss nice orderly, matching meals, with a main protein and two sides. I’m capable of them-if I take the time to plan ahead. They’re just not in the cards for me lately. And with summer rolling in, it’s looking unlikely for the near future.
Until some coherence returns I plan to live vicariously through Shea’s well-tuned meals. And in the meantime, I am seriously borrowing a few of those recipes for future use, when my planning skills return. Spiced banana sundaes? Really? Yum. I'm pretty sure they should qualify as a "balanced meal."
I really have the utter horror of singlehood to thank, the "oh my god, I have so much time on my hands" what do I do with it? How do I cram my day so packed that I can avoid wallowing in selfpity? I know, I'll spend a minimum of five hours planning, cooking, photographing, eating, photoshopping, writing out a meal. That will show her. And oh, I'm not without failures, crab cakes come immediately to mind, but also a roasted chicken that sucked, a rare lamb chop that also sucked, some thai sticky rice that was just little white pebbles on the plate. Really though, if you're looking for matching the sides to the main and vice versa, you need this book, my go-to guide for flavor pairing, Culinary Artistry, by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg. Essentially, pick the main flavor you've got, Rosemary say, and that gets you beans, chicken, fish, game, grains, lamb, mushrooms, onions oranges, peas, pork, potatoes, poultry, salmon, spinach, steaks, veal, suckling pig. Cross reference those as key words in a recipe search engine and boom, you're there.
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