Making it up sometimes indulge a creative impulse BELLING THE CAT JAN 27

When I was growing up, if my mom needed (according to a recipe) a quarter teaspoon of mace or something else not in the cabinet, she would dash to the store and buy it in one of those small, relatively expensive spice bottles. I remember her dashing to the grocery in a panic on a holiday when we were expecting the whole extended family within hours. That niche ingredient for a recipe (perhaps never made again) lived with us thereafter, often unloved but never alone - and never discarded, just in case another random recipe might call for it, one day. I’m sure we had several hundred bottles, jars, and tins crowded onto those shelves - ultimately four cabinet sections (two far beyond reach) with every normal and many odd teaspoon/tablespoon ingredients. Finding any item not on the bottom front row, even a normal ingredient like cinnamon or garlic powder, would typically require excavation and a stepstool, sometimes a flashlight. We whittled down the wealth between 2008 and 2015, but I inherited more than a few ancient jars when clearing my parents’ house to the bare walls several years ago.¹ I am way too lazy to cook like that, and the last thing I need is self-inflicted stress in the kitchen. Admittedly I tend to go too far in the other direction, and have at times produced the inedible. But most of the time there’s not a lot that can go wrong using intuition and experience, baking aside. Even baking I tend to wing. (I resist by nature having to measure precisely.) My rule of thumb is that if I don’t have it, it will be left out, simulated, replaced, or more recipes consulted for alternative approaches. Pecan pie cheesecake, concocted from ideas across about a dozen recipes Lately I’ve been driven to new creativity in a specific direction: cornbread. I dropped grains more than a decade ago, but in our farm family I’m not sure we could get along, or through the winter especially, without cornbread. There are a few challenges. One is that I want to buy cornmeal in large quantities yet the good stuff comes in absurdly small bags. Another is that we don’t always have buttermilk in the house. Lacking a source for 25# bags of meal, I grit my teeth and spend like a drunken sailor on paltry bags to use as we need it. The silver lining is that the brands and grinds are each a bit different so every batch is a new experiment. Buttermilk does keep just about forever, but also we do go through long spells without being specifically in a cornbread mood. Buttermilk doesn’t really factor into anything else here. I regret to say that being out of buttermilk has led many times to not having cornbread when it would have been nice.² The last few batches, therefore, have been cornbread without buttermilk. Apostasy, yes, but stay with me here. The first effort was pretty good, if leaning a bit watery instead of rich, for me. For that one I doubled the eggs and added bone broth, leftover vegetables (sautéed onions and squash, perhaps³), and cheese, because cheese smooths over a lot of recipe flaws. The next time I added diced tomatoes and chilis, omitted cheese because we didn’t have any handy, and cut the eggs by one since shockingly I read and decided to follow the directions on the bag for when and how to add baking powder, soda, and salt.⁴ I don’t know which of those changes made it turn out so well, and will never know, but it was the best cornbread we’ve had in a long time.⁵ Anyway, this isn’t about a recipe, but the process. (If it were about a recipe I’d put it up top; is there anything more annoying than scrolling past screen after screen of self-consciously homely or chefly trivia, interspersed with glowing photos of ingredients & mixing bowls or pets & chirren, finally to reach a mediocre recipe at the bottom? The answer is yes, of course there are more annoying things, but it’s on the short list.⁶) Surely we can all benefit from a world with more folks spending at least some of their time indulging themselves, for fun, in real-world curious and creative things. Puttering, in a word. In the shop, kitchen, on paper, outdoors, making model planes, rebuilding an old Mustang, or a million things that don’t occur to me but will add pleasant discoveries and amusement in someone else’s life. Do a real thing that is not for work or a side gig or to sell or to take a picture for the interwebs. Play, at adult level, for no larger purpose. Have a hobby. You’ll be happier. It will be fun. Pledge your support 1 My partner’s mom — and dad! — also bequeathed us cabinets full of vintage herbs & spices. Since I’m now trying to grow as many of these things ourselves as will thrive here, we may never get out from under. 2 I like making our own butter and getting real buttermilk on the side, but the price of good cream has been eye-watering for a while now. My impression is that pseudo buttermilk, the ‘cultured’ commercial type, might be better for baking regardless. 3 It is tragic and liberating that my indiscipline when it comes to recipes and ingredients means it is excruciatingly difficult and rare to reproduce the same experimental results exactly. Using the leftovers lying around in the fridge, which I do constantly, makes its uniqueness a certainty. 4 Three different steps. I mean, really. I silently protested by measuring only approximately. 5 My test kitchen taster likes everything, or claims to, but will occasionally rave about some accidental creation. Only then am I sorry I’ve already forgotten how I made it. 6 And yes, I know the reason they do that, and I don’t care; in fact I actively reject that mentality. If you liked this post from Live & Learn, feel free to share it: © 2024 Belling the Cat