Oct 31, 2020

Menu: Week of 11/01/20

Recently I have been struggling a bit where this blog is concerned.

It feels somewhat obscene to be writing about food and cooking so elaborately when so many are going hungry. My tiny efforts to alleviate this through donations to the Common Pantry and the odd hot soup and a sandwich to a homeless person whose path I cross are but a laughable drop in the bucket, especially since this bucket has a major leak and cannot seemingly be filled. Due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, more than fifty four million people in America may experience food insecurity before the end of 2020, including a potential eighteen million children. World-wide, Covid has exacerbated the severity of food insecurity for eight hundred and twenty-one million hungry people, whose expenditures on food – income percentage wise -- far exceed my $100 a week grocery budget.

The management company where I live has created a community pantry with free groceries for those residents who are in need, there are soup kitchens and food banks galore in Manhattan, but I find myself recalcitrant to volunteer due to Covid-19 phobia. Knowing that my principles do not stand up during a pandemic is also not helping how I feel about the dilettantism of transcribing recipes and attempting to take pretty pictures of my cooking when the world has gone mad Am I a culinary incarnation of Nero and his fiddle?!

On the other hand, a close friend pointed out that, while I seemed to be doing pretty well on the gratitude and counting my blessings front so important during dark times, I would do better to keep in mind that it is the small joys in life that get us through and that I should attempt to separate writing this blog and cooking for L. from the guilt induced by the woeful statistics above. On The Menu obviously brings me some modicum of happiness and menu planning, cooking, plating, writing, and taking photos are definitely creative outlets. Since there is not much else going on that gets me out of bed in the morning with a spring in my step, especially with the sword of Damocles of November 3 hanging over the world’s head, this does feel like a valid point (with a small side order of apples and oranges.)

I sometimes wonder if it will all come down to my making dinner one day, sitting down to eat it, and realizing that, like John de Mandeville’s legendary Dead Sea fruit, my carefully cooked and plated dish has turned to ash in my mouth because the symbiotic joys of culinary creativity and flavor, fat and spice on my tongue have been outweighed by the discomforts of true first world privilege. That would certainly put paid to this blog. And then again, I suppose (and this is certainly exceedingly important for me), as long as L.’s palate undergoes no such transformation, and he continues to enjoy my cooking, and through it make memories of how much he is loved for once he leaves home for college, then perhaps there is purpose and responsibility behind the culinary frippery that I share with you weekly. But really, I just don’t know.

Now that I have (with apologies) left a bit of a bad taste in your mouth to go with your Sunday morning bacon and eggs, and am obviously no clearer in my thought processes on the subject than I was a few paragraphs ago, what are your thoughts on this? I would love to know.

In the meantime, since the world continues to turn no matter what one’s thoughts and feelings, and since life loves a bit of irony, this week's CSA box was absolutely stellar, a cornucopia of a box. It contained:

Herbs: a large bunch each of Italian parsley and coriander, a tiny bunch each of Mexican marigold mint, mint, and lavender, and a couple of stalks of lemongrass

Greens: a bunch of frilly kale, a head of “artisan” lettuce, a bunch of spinach

Alliums: a handful of shallots, a head of garlic, a red onion

Vegetables: 3 carrots, 2 cucumbers, a pound of gorgeous cranberry beans to shell, a brown paper bag of earthy mixed mushrooms (3 each of trumpet and Matsutake), 3 kinds of beets (yellow, red and striped), a large head of red cabbage, 3 kinds of bell pepper (yellow, red, and purple), a punnet of Poblano peppers, 2 heads of broccoli, a punnet of Brussels sprouts, 2 Honeynut squash (basically small butternut squash), 6 little purple Heirloom tomatoes (probably the last week of the season since it is starting to really get cold), 2 gigantic red Bliss potatoes

Fruit: 4 tiny Golden Supreme apples

Remainders: an entire head of green cabbage (with this much cabbage in the house, perhaps it is time to make sauerkraut again)

So, with the addition of the above remainders and minus whatever we use for lunches, all this will be transformed into:

Sunday “Pantry Roulette”; fridge, freezer, and pantry item dinner]

Out

(Shocking, I know...)

Monday [Wildcard; a more complex or fiddly dish than usual to test my culinary skills]

Green Salad

Persian Chicken Meatball Stew

“Jeweled” Couscous

Spinach with Lime Pickle

Tuesday [Pasta and an election night dinner]