The fine art of living
can be plated,
the cold of the world
attenuated,
the chill of the news,
bewildering, gruesome,
stayed by affection
expertly toothsome.
With thanks to photographer S.W. Berg
and to popover artist Cassandra Berg.
Tag Archives: baking
November 3.20: Coping
Beset by inane logorrhea,
I turn to time-honored idea:
when the world goes askew,
make you some goo,
the original holistic panacea.
Here we are, dear reader, in this country, in desperate need of goo. “From sea to shining sea” used to refer to the beauty of the land; now it refers to angst, despair, fear, rage, frustration, isolation, loneliness, and profound exhaustion. And it is likely true that wherever you live it is the same. You might not have an election to deal with, but you likely have illness and death and uncertainty and loneliness stalking you. I offer you this goo by way of saying I wish I could make things better for all of us.
May 14.20: Coping
Thus far, dear reader, I have coped by writing and by baking, two time-tested strategies for me. They aren’t working any more. A few days ago, we were bloodied once again through the reports of a terror attack on new babies and new mothers. That was one too many for me, awash as we are in grief and fear.
I’ve been sick, as some of you know. Nothing serious, just enough to keep me from being complacent. I don’t know that I had COVID; we still don’t know if my “presumed positive” son had it. We still don’t know much about COVID. “Don’t know” is the only wisdom we have.
Having seen my family only from a distance, unable to touch them, for two months, I think I have a sliver of understanding of what it might mean to die among strangers in Intensive Care.
I am disgusted and exhausted by the flim-flam.
I’m going to step away from the blog for a few days. Each of us has to find ways to stay human in this very dehumanizing time. I am looking for my ways.
Thanks for being with me in my blog. I worry about all of you and hope you endure.
March 20.20
Happiness eludes
like so much airy dust,
but I can capture mine
contemplating proper crust.
With crackly definition
it tells you what’s inside;
before your tooth can crunch
your eye is satisfied.
Kudos to the bakers
who know how to finesse
the yeasty bubbling goo
into happiness.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg
for this tribute to happy things
and to la Madeleine, for baking them.
And thanks to blogger Susan Rushton
for yesterday’s heads-up about Happiness Day today.
This is not to make light of our worries,
dear reader,
but sometimes we need to add a little sugar
when the yeast won’t froth.
February 14.20
Cookie avalanche!
A sad miscalculation.
But building cookie mountains
is irresistible temptation.
Wishing you a sweet Valentine’s Day, dear reader!
April 28.19
The news makes me rabid. The endless rain makes me squishy in the head. Aging plagues me. And to make the world an even drearier place, our excellent local art supply store has been bought out and now closed by Michael’s. Another valued small business pulverized.
I dwell in the doldrums. My only hope is cookies. There is no other way to find good in the world.
In my childhood I learned about the good in cookies. Mom and Grandma O’Hern were cookie-bakers. Not that they didn’t bake other things, but they were believers in cookies, and thank goodness. A cookie fits in your hand so much more easily than a piece of pie or cake (though it’s quite possible to eat either from the hand if you aren’t too fussy).
Besides, there was “Raggedy Ann in Cookie Land,” one of my all-time favorite stories. Cookies that walked and talked and lived in a cookie house? You’d think such things would keep me from ever eating another cookie, but it didn’t work like that. It just added to the magic of cookies.
Maybe you also, dear reader, are driven to the doldrums by the news and by trying to deal with losses and worries in your own life. So I offer you my most favorite of favorite cookie recipes, my drug of choice, my portal to Nirvana. It is based on the old (not the current!) recipe for “Vanishing Oatmeal Cookies” on the Quaker Oats lid.
Better-Than-Phoebe’s Oatmeal Cookies
1 C. butter (no substitutes)
1 C. firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 C. granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 t. plus a tiny dribble Penzeys vanilla
1 1/2 C. all-purpose flour
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1 t. plus a pinch of Penzeys Korintje cinnamon
a few grinds of fresh nutmeg
3 C. Old-Fashioned Quaker Oatmeal (don’t be generous)
1 C. dark (not golden) Sun-Maid raisins
1/2-1 C. chopped dates (the best are the ones you chop yourself)
1/2 C. Heath toffee bits without chocolate (my grandchildren’s brilliant idea)
Whisk dry ingredients together. Beat butter and sugars, then add eggs and beat some more. Mix in vanilla. Add dry ingredients and mix well, then the oatmeal, raisins, dates and toffee bits. Dough will weigh a ton.
If possible, refrigerate dough at least overnight. Bake at 350 for about five minutes, then turn cookie sheet and bake another four minutes or so, depending on your oven. Cool on wire racks. Makes lots but never enough.
These are called “Better-Than-Phoebe’s” because of the episode of “Friends” wherein Phoebe says her oatmeal cookies are the best so she doesn’t bake them very often because it’s not fair to the other cookies.
I mention brand names so you will know exactly what I use.
If you want really chewy cookies, add coconut. Dark chocolate chips are another acceptable addition. However, such additions risk changing the nature of the oatmeal cookie, and that is unseemly to purists.
Wishing you homemade cookies, dear reader,
Maureen
Disconnections: December 23.18
Life has its moments
of bliss unalloyed,
of humor splenic
roundly devoid.
When eye and nose
and memory combine
to flour and fat and filling
enshrine.
In pie, in pie
the toothsome all:
in fragrance, form,
the anti-banal.
If ever our being
you seek to justify,
look but to crusted
invention of pie.
With many salivating thanks to photographer S. W. Berg.
And kudos to pastry artist Jennifer Berg.
Full disclosure: I couldn’t bake a pie even if you threatened me with Brussels sprouts.
But I can eat it.
Connections: May 8.18
I don’t know how to play it
wouldn’t know where to begin
and yet it beams out a gravity
much like a rolling pin
or terracotta flowerpot
pruners, or a hoe
piano or organ keyboard,
a scraper for bread dough,
a pad of lined blank paper
a pen, an artist brush
they make my fingers eager
they give me a head rush
with primal primitive instinct
my fingers stretch, reach out
but it’s really my very self
the pull is all about.
Certain things there are
that, silent, speak to me
make my fingers restless
to do, to make, to be.
More thanks to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.
Connections: December 12.17
My last two kitchens had islands
the ultimate luxury
the kitchen I live with now
is bestowed more modestly.
So I follow the ways of my grandmas
and my mother, apt and able,
enlisting our four-legged friend,
the enduring kitchen table.
But I have a homey bauble
with which they weren’t stuck
a low-hanging ceiling lamp
which I cannot remember to duck.
Hovering over the table
at just the exact right spot
it clunks against my head
and elicits descriptive bon mot.
Some day I’ll explain to my neighbors
the reverberant mystery
the gong heard ’round the ‘hood
it isn’t Big Ben — it’s me.
Yes, I know, dear reader. I took liberties with my French. It was too awful not to use.
Connections: February 6.17
We all have our ways of coping
when the world is too much to take
we jog or Om or tweet
but me, I have to bake.
The measure of my angst
cannot be quickly had
except in frozen heaps
of my sugared jeremiad.
