Author Archives: Theryn

3: Super Natural Cooking

Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson

I’ve been reading Heidi’s blog, 101 Cookbooks, for a few years now. I must be particular when it comes to food blogs, because I’ve got a pretty short list of ones that I love and that I’ve stuck with for any length of time (in addition to 101 Cookbooks, there’s Rasa Malaysia, Simply Recipes, Smitten Kitchen, and Steamy Kitchen).

101 Cookbooks appeals because of Heidi’s photography, the way she puts each recipe in context (what inspired it or how it came about or who it was made for), as well as her recipes, which are frequented by salads, soups, bowls of grains and veggies—and baked goods, esp. cookies! (sounds familiar…)

She’s more granola than I am (not really going for the whole canola oil = evil thing), but in general, I’m on board with the fresh/unprocessed/whole foods approach. And why not? I grew up eating fruit and vegetables grown in our yard (my parents always had a garden), so this is all SOP for me. It’s why I can’t help but be amused that growing one’s own food is now trendy. It’s green! It’s organic! It’s zen! Uh, okay. Y’all know people used to grow their own food because it was cheap, right? A few packets of seeds (+ a lot of labor) and your freezer and cold room were full for a year.

We’ve been watching Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution the past few weeks, and it’s got me thinking a lot about the current tendency to frame people who grow their own food (or buy from farmer’s markets, etc.) as yupsters while framing people who eat fast and/or processed food as poor/rural, when not so long ago, it was reversed: people with money got to indulge in modern convenience foods, while people without had to grow & cook their own food.

The “revolution” in Food Revolution is essentially the attempt to get people cooking from scratch instead of relying on packaged convenience foods for every. single. meal. Not exactly radical—and yet, many people are upset/offended by the program. It’s gobsmacking imo, the lengths people will go to defend egregious food choices. My “favorite” was the commenter who posited that maybe the woman featured in episode 1 was deep-frying donuts and dipping them in chocolate and serving them to her kids for breakfast because that was the most budget-friendly choice available to her. Are you kidding me, person-who-actually-said-this? Ever heard of oatmeal? Neither do I buy that the woman was making donuts because it was “convenient,” as she claimed on the show. Let’s be serious. No one is deep-frying breakfast because it’s more convenient than eating cereal or toast. They’re doing it because Yum! Donuts!

It doesn’t matter how obvious or simple the suggested change is, someone always has an excuse why the bad choice has to be chosen. A good example is plain milk vs. flavored milk in the Food Revolution schools. None of the standard defenses of unhealthy eating make sense. No one can argue that flavored milk is cheaper than plain. Or easier to access. Or more convenient. But wait! They have to serve flavored milk because (drum roll) kids will drink more sugary milk than plain! As Jamie said, duh. And also: not if you don’t give them the sugary option.

It’s a bit ironic, because I think the target audience for Super Natural Cooking would be people who are already cooking, but who want to incorporate a wider variety of ingredients into their repertoire. But maybe the lesson is that you need to learn the basics of healthy eating before you can go on adventures.

It seems appropriate, given that 101 Cookbooks is built on the idea of recipes inspired by other recipes, that rather than making one of Heidi’s recipes, I share an inspired-by-Super Natural Cooking recipe. First, my basic muffin recipe (from ye olde flour cookbook):

  • 2 cups flour
  • 1/4 – 1/2 cup sugar
  • 3 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1/4 cup oil
  • 1 egg

I always use this basic recipe, but every time I make it I add different stuff (spices, fruit, etc.), so it’s never the same muffin twice. With that in mind, I give you:

Blueberry Muffins inspired by Super Natural Cooking / 101 Cookbooks:
Blueberry Muffin

  • 2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
  • 6 tbsp dry demerara sugar
  • 3 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 1/2 cups blueberries (frozen, bought at farmer’s market last summer)
  • 1 cup skim milk
  • 1/4 cup walnut oil
  • 1 free-run egg
  • 1 tsp organic vanilla

To make: mix dry ingredients together. Add in berries. Mix wet ingredients together. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients. Stir just till everything is mixed. Spoon into muffin tin. Bake at 400°F for 18-20 min. Makes 6 big muffins.

Notes: The things that were different than usual were the types of flour, sugar, and oil used.  Our regular grocery store has started to carry more variety in such staples (nice side effect of the whole green/organic trend). I decided to try whole wheat pastry flour because Heidi said it was less-heavy than regular whole wheat (it was). The walnut oil I had, but I’d mostly been using it for salad dressing.

Typically I’d use: unbleached all-purpose flour, white sugar, and canola in muffins (I know, gasp, right? ;-)). Since I was trying out the new flour/sugar, I decided to use a different oil as well. The other ingredients are all what I normally  use.

The extra half-cup of berries I threw in because it didn’t seem worth it to stick them back in the freezer made them very-berry. I think next time I’ll try 1 c. whole wheat pastry + 1 c. unbleached all-purpose to experiment with texture.

Tip 1: Freezing berries is easy. (And also cheap, if you buy in season.) Wash berries. Place in single layer on cookie sheet. Freeze. Once berries are frozen, scoop them into a plastic container, and stick them back in the freezer. Done.

Tip 2: The Himalayan blackberry may be an invasive pest, but it’s also an excellent source of free fruit—as long as you’re willing to get a few scratches.

Great Silent Majority

I’ve been reading your blog since last fall. … It seems to me that it’s cathartic for you and maybe even necessary for you to process events in your life. (by the way: hi! hello! I’m Jennifer and I read you avidly but don’t comment much! I prefer the term ‘great silent majority’ to ‘lurker’ though because I don’t think of myself as creepy. You may disagree.) … I hate to see you take the trolls so seriously, especially the toxic ones.

—Jennifer
in comments to “Golden Rule Smashed“

Never Intended

I learned that the subject of one of my posts from last week wasn’t too happy I wrote about her.

I never intended for her to read it.  I neglect this blog so badly that my readership has slipped from 5000 thousand readers a day to maybe 1000.  In the grand scheme, 1000 is nothing.  But one of you 1000 knew who I was talking about felt compelled to send her a note to tell her about that entry, to stir the pot I’d put on the stove.

I took it down.  I probably shouldn’t have written it…

—Kristin Darguzas

Alter the Habits

Some online commentators raised the question of whether the library’s Twitter archive could threaten the privacy of users. [Matt] Raymond [the Library of Congress’s director of communications] said that the archive would be available only for scholarly and research purposes. Besides, he added, the vast majority of Twitter messages that would be archived are publicly published on the Web.

“It’s not as if we’re after anything that’s not out there already,” Mr. Raymond said. “People who sign up for Twitter agree to the terms of service.”

Knowing that the Library of Congress will be preserving Twitter messages for posterity could subtly alter the habits of some users, said Paul Saffo, a visiting scholar at Stanford who specializes in technology’s effect on society.

“After all,” Mr. Saffo said, “your indiscretions will be able to be seen by generations and generations of graduate students.”

—Steve Lohr

Aside: Doesn’t it seem kind of odd that the issue foremost in people’s minds would be privacy (on Twitter?!) rather than copyright? As in, does Twitter have the right to fork over your tweets en masse to the Library of Congress? Seems pretty clear from their TOS that they do (but do keep in mind that the copyright is still yours; what they have is a non-exclusive license to use your tweets); I’m just surprised that more people didn’t ask that question.

Follow-up

Further to my IWD post, I ran across this article at Salon last night (“What’s in a woman’s last name?“). Based on the article/abstract, the study seems kind of flawed (I’m with the commenter who asked “How [in a job interview] can people tell [what name you are using]?“), but some of the comments were really great:

It’s not your father’s name, it’s YOURS

Men see the name they’re born with as their own, something they’ll have for life. Women are encouraged to see the name acquire in exactly the same circumstances as belonging to someone else and “not important”.

If you choose your sexist choice, forgive me for not applauding

I’m still waiting for an argument for taking your husband’s name that actually makes one damned bit of sense.

@CitizenRob

I have been married over 25 years (so far) to my first/only husband & I kept my name. The principal at our high school is on her 3rd last name in the 5 years I have had a child in attendance. So I don’t see much empirical evidence that a willingness to change a name equals commitment.

If it were no big deal

Then men would be willing to take their wife’s last name. Were it nothing, it’d be easy – sometimes the wife would change, sometimes the husband would change, and sometimes they’d hyphen or keep their own. But nope – the wife almost always changes, the husband pretty well never does.

And this nice reminder that there are other naming conventions out there and somehow the world hasn’t come to an end yet:

Last Names Don’t Define A Family Unit…

My family of origin is Icelandic. So despite a happy marriage with no divorces, my father grew up with a different last name than his sisters who had different last names from their mother who had a different last name from their father who had a different last name than their grand father.

Searing, disquieting honesty

Given how sympathetic [Jean] Thompson’s characters are, and how tenderly she cares for them, I found it puzzling that after a while, I was anticipating the epiphanic, redemptive plot turns with something closer to apprehension than to the relief and satisfaction I assumed I was meant to feel. … I kept putting down the book to ponder how the greatest writers, the Chekhovs and the Alice Munros, can make the quotidian seem transcendent, while others (not that Thompson is necessarily among these) merely remind us of the claustrophobia-inducing banality of the everyday.

Part of the trouble with “Do Not Deny Me” may be that the structure of these stories can seem more formulaic than organic. … Too often, she seems more interested in finding something with which the reader can safely identify … than in risking the searing, disquieting honesty that makes us (as we do, reading Munro) see and admit something secret and previously hidden about ourselves, our behavior and the world in which we live. It’s the reader, not the character, whose epiphany can make a story memorable.

—Francine Prose

Toxic to Fiction

[Writer Cate Kennedy] considers the internet’s constant flow of unprocessed information and chatter ”toxic to fiction”, which requires quiet, slow reflection by writers and readers. ”We’re decontextualising, pasting bits of other people’s work on our blogs and creating unoriginal mash-ups,” she said.

Kennedy limits herself to checking emails twice a day and saves up her internet research as if for an occasional library excursion.

—Susan Wyndham

Writing about the things that really matter

One of the places you can really see the influence of “Operating Instructions” is in the proliferation of mommy blogs. I wonder if you read any — or if you think, if you were a young and single mom now, you would be blogging?

I don’t think I would have ever blogged. I am not even sure how you find someone’s blog. What I loved were all those years of doing shaped, crafted essays about my life and spiritual or political pursuits — but those 1,200 or whatever words took a full week to get just right. They were the length and the topics I love to read. I always used to tell my writing students to write what they’d love to come upon — and I love deeply honest, authentic writing about the things that really matter in our lives. I asked Sam the other day if people could make money on Twitter or blogging, and he said, not really. Plus, my friend Mary saw a T-shirt at the airport that said, “No one reads your blog.”

What I think is great is everyone writing their truth, keeping a written video of their lives, their families’ lives — growing up, and seeking connection with others in this very jarring and disconnected world. But I don’t think I’m a blogging type — I’m-too much of a perfectionist. I keep trying to capture moments and passages just right, so other people might find a little light to see by in my work. And that takes forever.

—Anne Lamott
in an interview with Sarah Hepola

Those who dwell in the land of ambivalence

Border crossings require resolve. Getting on a plane, getting married, moving, taking a job, writing the first words. Babies cry themselves to sleep resisting the transition from wakefulness to slumber. Throughout my life I’ve kept a classification of the two kinds of people in the world: those who dwell in the land of ambivalence and those who give it a glance and drive on. Those who know where they’re going, and the perpetual rubberneckers.

—Elizabeth Rubin

A certain kind of writing

I’ve actually been feeling kind of conflicted about the blog, because…I mean, I like it. I like having a place for readers to get together. I love the community that readers have formed there. But I am not making posts very frequently. I was when I first started. I might just have blog fatigue like everyone gets, but also I feel like it was kind of sapping my autobiographical juices, which I need to put in this other project. Blogging is wonderful, but it’s a certain kind of writing. It’s not seasoned. You haven’t sat with something and refined it over and over. It just comes out, and then it’s gone (laughs). So I’m not doing so much blogging lately, just kind of doing a minimal amount of posts to keep a connection going.

—Alison Bechdel