I was schooled by an endive

Earlier this year, I started out 2008 with a bang (or really a slow and potentially deadly leak) and almost inadvertently killed myself after braising an endive. It’s too bad really, because I’m afraid that the whole experience has put me off braised endives forever. I had decided that braising was the culinary skill I wanted to hone this winter during the eerie post-December months when there’s nothing to do but apply yourself to tasks with a vigor meant to desperately lift yourself out of a seasonal mood disorder.

For the past two years I tried to master the art of steamed puddings, simultaneously with hand quilting. Ack. Could I be any more Martha, people? The first winter, I bought a steamed pudding dish (a bowl with a nice little ridge that is super heatproof so you can tie a cover on top and drop the bowl into hot hot water to steam). That’s about as far as I got—I bought the bowl but then promptly misplaced it. After losing it, I became obsessed with the idea that my ex-boyfriend has maliciously lifted my pudding bowl and taken it with him when he packed up his stuff, and himself, and head off. I finally bought another pudding bowl the next winter, but by then, the stewing over the alleged bowl-lifting had ruined my not-yet hatched hobby. Plus, the whole idea of me, single white quarterlife spinster, huddled over the cooker with special cooking string and a hunk of suet, made me feel tired. Braising for one seemed much better—take something tough, and often cheap, and make it tender.

Months before, my father had let me borrow (or lift) a braising book. The recipes were overwhelming requiring a massive kitchen kit. I was ready to put it in a hard to reach place where I could admire its spine, thinking, hey, I may be a quarterlife spinster, but I have a whole book dedicated to braising. Then, yes friends, I realized that I may be a quarterlife spinster because I have a book on braising. So I decided not going to just look at the book, trying to decide what its place in my apartment meant about me as a person, globally speaking. I was going to use it, and I would start with one of the multiple suggestions for braising endives.

After a few tries, the way I have been making my braised endives is a loose loose interpretation of braise. I cut the endive in half lengthwise. I brown it in some fat after I’ve cooked up some bacon, cut in postage stamp sizes, and set the piggy crisps aside. Then I figure out whatever kind of liquid I feel like/have on-hand—chicken broth mostly, sometimes a little sherry, and some water—and cook it slowly over low heat until the leaves are delicious and mushy and not at all bitter and eely like endives are normally. In the meantime, I cook up some white, refined, bad ass/for you rice.

The irony of my endive trouble is that I have spent a few evenings cleaning up the meal, worrying about toxins—those used in the growing of the endive in a Holland greenhouse, not the gas used to heat up my skillet. The Whole Foods (yes, I’m bougie, wanna tussle?) only has a basket of endive, “conventionally” grown flown all the way here from Holland—or, the kind of vegetable that would make Michael Pollan tsk. I felt bad about the fossil fuels involved in my braised endive, but honestly, the pesticides that I imagined had been slowly cooked into the leaves, worried me more. I would soak the rice saucepan, and scrub the braisepan, and feel guilty.

On the night when the endive lost me as a customer, I was cooking up my meal of (singledom) champions and talking on the phone. The whole time I was thinking, this is fabulous—you’re well on your way with your seasonal disorder hobby. And you’re not making yourself cereal for dinner. And protein in your favorite form: bacon. Maybe partly due to my self-congratulatory state, after I had lifted the endive onto my plate, I left the stove on its low-so low to braise—level.

Despite my braising skills, I didn’t enjoy the dinner. I was nauseous—what a bummer! I tried to read but felt distracted. Spaced out, I watched tv instead. I shuffled off to sleep a little early. All the while natural gas was filling my studio apartment, where my bed is closer to the stove than most of your beds are to your toilets—or your freaking nightstands.

Early the next morning I answered the door to see a posse of gas-smelling neighbors from my hall and a security guard. A handful of them came into the apartment to check the stove—saw that it was still braising an imaginary endive into absolute oblivion—and barked orders at me to open the windows, the guard shouted something into the walkie talkie and then everybody left. I’m on the 36th floor, with complex “suicide-proof” windows, so opening the windows in my gas-induced haze was easier said than done.

Oh well, inadvertently almost killed myself. I guess I can check that off the bucket list. I don’t have that single-woman-living-alone-in-the-big-city scary thoughts thing about cats, piles of newspapers, and rows of sensible shoes—although I’m living in an apartment recently occupied by just such a lady. In the end, I’m choosing to focus on what my ever-optimistic slash cripplingly worried father said to me after I told him the story: well, at least you got to meet some of your neighbors, right? I’m going to be sure to give Harriet, the toothless lady living in the studio down the hall, my braising recipes—they’ll be perfect for current eating capabilities.

A New Blog You Should Check Out...

So, even though I said I wouldn't set up a new blog, I just have to. It's non-negotiable. The world needs it. I've set up a blog to chronicle our experiences with the dating affliction I have decided to call "dry dating." Please check it out and post there with your stories. And even though I really want to be rigid and weird about the rules of dry dating and what counts as dry dating and what doesn't, I'm not going to be that way. If you feel like it was dry dating, I'm going to let you post it, and then I'll tear it apart with all the reasons why it's not the affliction I named and have grown to love, pathologies and therapists be damned. The link is also to your right.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year people. After a rocky two months, I’ve decided to return to ranting. I didn’t notice any difference during my break, so I’m back. Unabashedly back. With lots of rant-worthy topics that have been piling up during my hiatus. Sidebar: Yesterday I woke up too early in a haze and stayed in bed to think about silly things while I listened to my fridge rumble—this is one of the new glories of my studio apartment. I obviously don’t have such a handle on my low-grade anxiety problem because I spiraled out of control thinking about how in a couple of years we’re going to have this problem with the 20-teens dates. It’s stressing me out. I already have a bankcard that expires in 2011. Whenever I have to tell people when the expiration date I always falter for a second. You can’t really say “11” yet which, for some unknown reason, bums me out. I know most folks would say, “whatever, just say twenty-eleven.” But that sounds weird when you say it out loud sometimes. So I’ve just taken to saying it: two thousand and eleven. Then I feel like a tool.

You should know that my posts may veer off into the food category every so often. I thought of starting a separate blog for my handful of faithful readers (I read your blogs too!) but decided that was lame since, you know, I have a hard time keeping this one looking so high tech and updated and all. Why food? Well, apart from protecting our rights to decide how we manage our lady-parts, I really like eating, reading, and talking about food. At the end of last year I thought that I could both indulge my interest in food and actually take my therapist’s advice of branching out of my comfort zone. It has been almost six months since I started seeing her, and I just haven’t really even done much of my homework so far. Forty-five minutes feels like nothing each week, but six months of them really adds up. No more excuses. So I signed up for a food writing class. When I told my therapist she didn’t even look that pleased, I think partly because it’s not really social and it’s a class, so that’s not technically out of my comfort zone. She suggested a social dancing class, ok? I thought this was compromise.

I collected story ideas for weeks. And as I tend to do with anticipation nerves, I took it way too seriously and proceeded to completely wring all the fun or joy out of the assignment so that by the time I arrived on the night of the first class, I was pickled in my own de-fun-ification and felt like I’d already taken the eight week course. The class is probably what everybody else in the class wants, and maybe what I should want from the experience. It’s geared toward teaching us how to sell stories and write for publications that might actually ever publish our stories. When I read out my ideas I was told that I was a pontificator, and that no one knew who I was so why would they want to read my rants on food…even if it they were entertaining? Ouch. I’m having to pump myself up to return.

Anyhoo, I’ve decided that I’ll just post the stuff I’d really like to write about here. And figure out how to write for the class later. I have to go off to babysit (also not following therapist’s advice on that one either), but I’m going to list out some of my ideas that were shot down so that you can have some teasers about what may be coming in the next week.

-a description of “zone eaters” and how it’s not actually just an ocd problem.
-how different people cook for one, and what this might say about how they feel about (often) being alone
-a rant on how cookbooks start with what you need to buy instead of anything on taste or…food
-tomato paste. yep tomato paste

Ok, see you soon.