Category Archives: Sweet Domesticity

Lesson Number Two: Don’t Get High On Your Own Supply

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“The following receipts are not a mere marrowless collection of shreds and patches, and cuttings and pastings, but a bona fide register of practical facts,–accumulated by a perseverance not to be subdued or evaporated by the igniferous terrors of a roasting fire in the dog-days,–in defiance of the odoriferous and calefacient repellents of roasting, boiling, frying, and broiling;–moreover, the author has submitted to a labour no preceding cookery-book-maker, perhaps, ever attempted to encounter, having eaten each receipt before he set it down in his book.”
–William Kitchiner, Introduction to The Cook’s Oracle.

Hey guyz what’s going on in this thread? Thank you for your kind comments on my previous post. I will tell you that I often post in a time warp. I worry about discussing things that I am still het up or uncertain about. I think it’s one part typical internet caution, but I am a pretty cautious person anyway. Sometimes I have trouble saying what I am thinking right away because my gears are grinding. I can certainly make snap decisions if forced but I would much rather say that I will sleep on it. And a lot of the time I dream about outcomes. I like to do this work while I am asleep.

My point is, she died the day I posted it, Sunday. Usually I like to tell you what’s happening so you know, and I’ve already processed it, but it was really fresh. So, even more so than usual, I was appreciative of your comments.

Hey, speaking of crazy, disorganized babbling, my winter mania has kicked in. I don’t know if it will last, but I am going with it. I am the only person I know who loses weight in the winter, and gains weight in the summer (MMMM fruit and cheese and wine and pie). Is it okay to go with something like this if it results in a positive outcome? I hope so. The pattern’s held for at least ten years now, but skipped last year for some reason–I suspect that working downtown exposed me to too much light, ha ha. I just have to be careful to get enough sleep. The nice thing is I have the energy to get a fuckton done. Such as…

Cleaning up after the cocaine bear visits!! Just kidding. I am purging my house of fleas. The fellow at the pet supply told me there was something about this summer that made it the worst for fleas ever. I bought a giant bag of diatomaceous earth and have been treating my whole house for the last couple of days. I am hoping one big push will get the fleas out. I was using the really quality stuff that you put on your pet’s neck and near the end, it seemed not to be working.

So Monday and yesterday I pulled apart the girls’ rooms–cleaned all bedding and stuffed animals, dusted the rooms, and now I am moving on to main rooms. I have “dusted” myself into my bedroom currently and when I get hungry I will have to vacuum my way out.

I have 27 more “official” Victorian recipes to cook, as in, they are printed out on the December calendar on the fridge. But I find myself scribbling more things onto it daily, so I reckon I will end up with about 40 more recipes by December 25th. I am trying to make that my absolute cut off date, with the week between Xmas and New Year’s totally clear. HA HA. I can feel the lie as it issues out of my fingers. I’m sure I will be tweaking stuff that week, in addition to closing shop for new articles at The Queen’s Scullery. I put a new banner up there yesterday, and I am kind of in love with it, though I am a total Photoshop flâneuse.

I am diving into the research portion of things and it is all getting very tangled. I am attempting to give as many recipes as possible their due credit. I have turned again to Katheryn Hughes’s biography of Isabella Beeton as a jumping-off point for where Beeton gaffled her recipes from. Hughes is causing me actual physical pain by scoffing at my beloved William Kitchiner, saying that Beeton never even credited him, which is patently false, AHEM: “Indian Curry Powder, founded on Dr. Kitchiner’s recipe.” Hughes claims he was not ever a medical doctor at all (okay, yes, his educational background in Scotland is rather hazy). Apparently his writing style, all full of IMPERATIVE EXCLAMS!!, something that may be familiar to readers of this screed and a habit that further endears Kitchiner to me, is unacceptable to Hughes:

Given Kitchiner’s off-putting emphases (there are few sentences that are not spattered with italics or capitals), it is grimly pleasurable to learn that he died at the age of forty-nine, having failed in his boast to demonstrate that good diet prolonged life beyond its usual span.

Fiddle faddle to you, Ms. Hughes. I believe his biographers’ hunch that he was poisoned.

There are further problems. Another of Beeton’s major sources stole HIS work from a French chef. It feels a little bizarre to be testing and tweaking every recipe I am including in the book–kind of the antithesis of what the Victorians were up to with their borrowing, modifying, and editing. There is one thing Hughes and I agree on. Beeton was not a woman who saw the business end of a kitchen knife or tammy too often. I look at recipes now and am like NOPE. This is not going to work at all.


Chicken Croquettes in a nice Béchamel.

Frying in duck fat.

I went to school conferences yesterday and the word was about what I expected. Strudel participates in the school-wide writer’s workshop program. For most kindergartners this means drawing pictures, but she is writing and insisting on reading things like Lemony Snicket. We argue about the literary merits of The Magic Treehouse series (barf).

It turns out she wrote a story about cooking with me and eating. “I LOVE EATING MY MOMS VICKTORYAN FUD.” There is a drawing of us sitting at the table, with flowers and plates. I am the same size as Strudel but I have pink hair. I really hope the girls, when they consider their childhoods, can forgive the bad parts in favor of the parts where we cooked together, and there was good hot food on the table, and the feeling of snug domesticity and beautiful surroundings that I always wanted as a kid.

So now you know what’s banging around in my head. Don’t we all feel better now? WE WILL NOW OPEN THE FLOOR FOR QUESTIONS.

The life aquatic with Franny Zissou.

SnoMGBBQ Apocalypse ’10

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HOKAY so we went out of town with a voucher that I was kind of talked into and only marginally excited about, from the Place Where Sensible Thought Goes To Die, the school auction. Sure, I love swimming? And waterparks? And spending money to stay in resorts? Dear God. WHAT.

So we went for a midweek overnight to an indoor water park here. And you know, it felt great. The first night at least. It was nice to get out of town, and not to be trapped in the car with the girls for as long as it takes to go to Portland. However, what was ostensibly supposed to be a quick 90-minute jaunt somehow stretched to two-plus hours.

There was a little melodrama on the way down with Strudel (I have no idea where she gets THAT from) where she thought she was going to barf. I was worried because Frannie had the barfs earlier that week, like for real twelve times in one day barfing stomach virus keeping her out of school thingie, and I thought surely Strudel was next. We decided to press on instead of turning back. If it was a false alarm, why lose the trip? If it was not, then I figured I could sit in the hotel room with her and watch the Comedy Channel. It was a false alarm, hooray.

Day one was pretty splendid. It was WARM in the waterpark and getting colder outdoors all the time due to the impending arrival of snow.

And here it is, this morning.

Then I realized that everything I needed was right there in one ridiculously large building, and it was like what I hear about cruises–overpriced, meh food, trapped in one place. Then bedtime came. Foolishly, I decided to have some dessert fondue before bed and snapped awake at four, indigested and queasy. I snuck over to the living room area and quietly turned a light on to read my magazine for a bit and just generally be upright.

Strudel woke up shortly after me and though I got sleepy again, she could not go back to sleep. She was WIRED! She was EXCITED! She has a LOT OF TROUBLE USING AN INDOOR VOICE! Basically she could not accept that we needed about three more hours of sleep. At home if she cannot sleep, she jabbers away to herself in her room, but there was no escape in the hotel. Finally, after drifting in and out of sleep for hours, we dragged ourselves out of bed.

That morning, things started to get to me a little. I didn’t go to bed super late, but everything felt surreal, as it does when you are sleep-deprived. There was an animatronic “storytime” nightly in the lobby that Franny declared “creepy,” which is an example of a trait I love about her. It featured a byootyful Indian Princess named “Yellowfeather” and some talking trees. I seem to recall something similar happened to me once in high school, but it did not take place in a resort.

The show kicked on again in the morning as I was getting a latte and it was much worse, somehow, with no audience. Sometimes stuffed robotic raccoons (double ugh) would come to life in the corridors and begin to sing. Every surface, including the trash can rims (covered with molded-plastic cute woodland creatures), was perfectly in theme and embellished, reminding me of staying at a Disney resort years ago, where even the light switches had mouse heads on them.

I popped into a wizard-themed shop and spoke to a man with a goatee wearing a metallic-gold cape. “Is this where you can buy wolf ears?” I asked him. No, he replied, that was at a “kids camp” here.

“I used to wear them,” he offered. “But They made me stop. Sadface.”

The waterpark rules sign read, in bolded letters, “DO NOT POOP OR PEE IN THE POOL.” It was nice to be warm, and I finally got to wear my rowr rowr 60s style teal halter suit (+15 to vanity and moxie) but I was happy to get home.

IN OTHER NEWS

I am still cooking (shocker, I know). Now that my list of recipes are winding down, I have picked up more hours at work! Hooray! I am almost a useful and productive human being again.

Last night I made three ounces of candied peel from oranges, lemon, and a citron.

It’s going into this gorgeous mincemeat, which contains real meat.

We’ve been hanging out all week, since Strudel is off. SeaFed came at me with charts and graphs of why he should have Franny all week (congrats, you win the crazy-off THIS TIME, SeaFed) so she is gone and dour about it as usual.

I took Strudel to the library and when she came home she made a “book puzzle.”

I hope the snow melts a bit. There is a goose downtown with my name on it for tomorrow, and I don’t know if I can get down there!! Happy Fangsgiving, I’ll be back with pictures, triumphs, and FAILURE.

A.D.I.D.A.C.F.

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All I care about is chicken feet right now. I feel some BAD ART coming on me…the topic will be sin…

I can at least fashion a nice hat.

I have nothing to say except gravy made with all the extraneous parts of the chicken tastes very delicious and is quicker than gravy made with my five-hour stock. Also, looks like Squidward and I are going to launch a Tumblr next week and we will be taking submissions from the public, woo! Something else for you to bookmark and forget about, because, OMFGJMJ information overload, AMIRITE? Before you ask, no, it will not be porn, bucking the trend of 98% of all Tumblrs.

Suck It Clement Greenberg

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A bookshelf was left behind by the previous tenants, who were apparently some disreputable characters. There is evidence of either untended or very determined children all over this house in the forms of scribbles on many unpaintable surfaces, and last night as I was planting lavender bushes the neighbor was telling us about previous escapee dogs from our backyard, about drug deals, and about children appearing and being taken away again. Apparently the owner did not even want to rent to people with children again, which is a double-edged sword because if you refuse to rent a five-bedroom in an ungentrified neighborhood to a family, then you are going to get a batch of college students. He liked us on sight, though, which was nice.

Since the bookshelf was abandoned, I decided to take advantage of it, rather than letting it gather dust in the garage. I think it will hold all my cookbooks, plus my Hall & Oates records, WOO. It looked like it had been built-in somewhere previously, since the sides were unpainted and drippy and there were loose screws in its back. Where it had been built into was a mystery, since there is no place for a built-in shelf here.

P. came out to supervise.

“You should leave the edges blank so we can paint those the purple you got to break up all the gold,” he said.

“CHUH,” I replied. “I have TRAINING in COLOR THEORY OK. When I need some math done, I will call you, Mr. Math Degree, oh wait no I will not because I can do calculations in my head faster than you can.”

“Oh no you did not. I just think…”

“THIS IS ART, THIS IS INTERIOR DECORATING.”

“Spray painting everything you own gold is not ‘interior decorating.”

BLASPHEMY!

I live for these arguments.

Before!

Umm…During!

It’s kind of streaky. Two cans did not cover everything, I now see in the light of day. I was so high I missed a whole panel last night and did not even realize it. WOO FUMES. That was a fun five minutes, then the headache, oh god the headache.

I always spend all this time at the hardware store staring at all the metallic spray paint and I come home with the exact same shade of Rustoleum gold EVERY TIME. I think I have a soft spot for this color because A. it is awesome and B. it is the very first color I tagged with as a juvenile delinquent. I was eight years old and I had the nozzle turned backwards and it went RIGHT INTO MY RIGHT EYE. However, I did not cry because, don’t let the spike hair fool you, like, I’m not a bitch.

TODAY I HAVE GOLD BOOGERS. THE END.

WWIBD?

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Today is my last day of making this rich stock that my waking hours and dreams have been filled with. Fish slip through warm stock lakes, and mysteriously do not end up cooked, waterfalls gush with it; people at work open their mouth to speak and it all seems very normal except my desk is a giant badger and when they open their mouths to ask about the report, within which I have broken the pivot tables again, instead of a harangue, lovely golden stock issues from their mouths. In fact, the last batch comes off the hob in 6 minutes for straining. I didn’t realize that I only have two more recipes that call for it, and I will execute them this week. I will probably revisit this stock in the fall, when it is colder (assuming, of course, that it gets warm at all this summer). Getting to the end of the stock was a real surprise. My remaining soup recipes I have on the list to fool with either call for white stock or make their own through various means.

I wish you could see this stock like I do as it comes off the hob and goes first through the large strainer to get the bones and veg chunks out, and then though the fine strainer to get the gristle and herb bits. Golden layers of fat and loveliness swirl and fight for position as the cooling process already is beginning. There is something in stock that of course the Victorians had to quantify and label, and they called it “osmazome.”

100. OSMAZOME is soluble even when cold, and is that part of the meat which gives flavour and perfume to the stock. The flesh of old animals contains more osmazome than that of young ones. Brown meats contain more than white, and the former make the stock more fragrant. By roasting meat, the osmazome appears to acquire higher properties; so, by putting the remains of roast meats into your stock-pot, you obtain a better flavour.

I think I can actually see the golden, delicious monkeyscience. I am a little sad today, though, since it is goodbye for now. It takes almost no time at all for me to assemble it now in the morning, and let it bubble away for a while. What next?

This got me to thinking I should be more organized, more orderly, in the Victorian way. I should spread the recipes out better and plan better. What would Isabella Beeton do, I asked myself? I guess she would be repeatedly having miscarriages brought on by catching undiagnosed syphilis from her husband, in between skiving off to Scotland “on business” and stealing other people’s recipes. WAIT. If I was I.B. it would be four years on from my death.

I do seem to have some kind of bug this weekend that is making me sleep an ungodly amount and am hit with rolling waves of nausea. Gotta love the late spring thing. I guess being only half-well is rather Victorian. What I concluded, since I am horrible undead Isabella Beeton at this point in my career, is that I am making a calendar to keep track of shopping lists and ingredients, so I can keep things moving along, and not make anyone crazy burned out like in Beefuary.

So, spurred on by my progress through the world of soup, I am going to regroup and get more calendary.

Four Ways with Asapargus

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I am doing a lot of cooking lately. Like, a LOT of cooking. Like, sleep, fap, work, cook, seriously. As a result of this kind of microscopic level of examination of food, and specifically the Book of Household Management, I am starting to ask a lot of questions. Why is a recipe written a certain way? Does it matter? Would X technique work better?

Due to the season, we have been eating a lot of asparagus. Beeton calls for peeling asparagus, which always seemed an overly-fussy way to present it or deal with woody asparagus, which, YUK. Beeton takes it one step further and instructs the reader to boil the now-nakey stalks with their peels. I don’t think anyone advocates for that nowadays.

It got me to thinking. Would it affect the taste? It was time for some ASAPARGUS SCIENCE! (IENCE-IENCE-IENCE)

I started with your typical pound bunch from the supermarket, not too big and not too leetle. I split them into four piles and trimmed the tough bases evenly. Two piles were peeled, and two were not.

The peels went into one pot per Beeton, and both pots were salted (1 tablespoon per 2 liters). I boiled them for precisely two minutes.

The results were interesting. We all agreed that the peeled ones were sweeter than the ones with skins on. The texture was a little like stewed cucumbers, but you could cut them with a fork, whereas a lot of the time I end up employing a knife too.

What was dicier was discerning between the ones that were boiled with peels and the ones with were boiled without. I think that the peeled ones boiled with peels were the sweetest. I like this. I will probably peel from now on unless they are tiny little whips.

“SCIENCE!”

This Recipe May Be Much Improved with Some Chopped Shallots or a Tincture of Lead

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Last night I had all the ingredients to make two Victorian desserts, and I decided to charge forward despite the fact that I was pretty sure the houseguest I was cooking for this weekend was going to cancel. It’s been about a month since I made a feast or even a simple meal. I am mindful of the passage of time because the menus are starting to reflect local spring ingredients like asparagus.

Now that I am about a fourth of the way through my year of Victorian cooking, I am able to reflect on how it’s going and what I’m getting out of it. I feel lucky that I read Beeton’s newest and most comprehensive biography first. It gave me fair notice that she did not test even a fraction of the recipes before she slammed them out in serial form. This historical document I have been planning parties around was once just another sheisty Victorian moneymaking scheme.

So how’s that working out for me? What am I getting from this? A lot of stomachaches. Fun, in that new-recipe way. I am doing a lot of personal research around the recipes and ingredients, and that always gives me a boner.

One feeling I get very strongly is that it would be nice to have Beeton’s rewritten with care and edited judiciously by someone who actually gives a shit about cooking. The extant abridged version cuts pages and menus off willy-nilly, sometimes in mid-menu. The recipes that the menus suggest are not included in the abridged one, which is more poor editing and proof that it has just become a crusty historical document. Though, to be fair, sometimes my unabridged version cross-references recipes that do not actually exist (looking at you, Sorrel Sauce), and I think if I was creating a book in serial form with 1200+ recipes without the aid of a computer, I would be fucking shit up left, right, and center.

I find myself editing some of the recipes as I go, since generally it pains me to waste or ruin food. I followed her advice on baking apples (something I rarely do) last night and ended up with applesauce. Franny says it is delicious.

Some of the recipes I would cut all together, like the “French” forcemeat recipe that calls for calf udder. Many of the recipes are interesting from a historical perspective, but I wonder if some of them were passed over even when the book was new. Why make forcemeat that requires boiling calf udder for hours and then pushing it through a sieve when you could make the simple one that calls for yummy bacon?

Anyway, the short answer is that I have no regrets about starting this project. My regrets center more around the fact that work has become exponentially more stressful in the past month, something I did not see coming at all, and I am trying to do that work-life balance thing. The best part of my day yesterday was making accidental applesauce and a lemon custard that did not thicken and probably will never set, while Franny sat around and played string games and talked to me. I was grump all day and cheerful after that. Tonight I will do my best not to ruin dinner, and I suppose I will make a quick gluten-free cake for dessert instead.

I think I will change tack though. If something sounds wrong to me, I am going to have to modify it a little, while still keeping the spirit of things. I cannot pour out another unset dessert.

She Was Looking Like An Erotic Vulture

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Hello! Happy New Year’s Eve to you. Do you have the plans? Surprisingly, I am cooking. I am doing some kind of weird wine gelatin dessert with poached pears in and some business with white sauce and there will be oysters, oh yes. I am pulling most of it out of Mrs. Beeton’s cookbook in accordance with the New Blog. It even has a banner now. So in between cooking today I am working on that. In theory we are podcasting tonight, which I would enjoy very much. New Year’s brings out the introvert in me, and I am looking very forward to holing up.

Let’s talk about Tweedle Beetles.

2009 Resolutions: I made two.

1. Drink moar scotch. Yeah, I kind of failed this. I had a good start into February or so, and then I switched to wine, and it was fruity boozy summer, so what are you going to do? Turn DOWN fruity boozy? No. I am making a pretty good showing here at the end of the year, though.

2. Have moar sex. I don’t want to talk about this. I just don’t OK.

Okay, moving on.

For next year I am having a couple of thoughts. I am entertaining the notion of blogging every day, even if it is a snippet or a link, with long posts/essays at the usual frequency. Too much asshole? I don’t know. I am going to start exercising more, especially as my second job is ending soon. It is a mild winter and nice for running. I want to visit USistani friends like Shan and Kaijsa and not just off to Canada all the time, though I like that too. I would like to see Shauna again…it’s been since 2007, weh. Working on it. I would like to meet my wife, but I might have to start playing the lottery to do that. Oh, and I am about to start New Blog, so in theory next year will be more writerly/academicy, ha ha, we’ll see. There will be posts, but perhaps not the correct amount of citations.

Have fun. I will be on the roof. This is 100% improvement over last year when I was asleep at 10:30. Sláinte!

Meowy Xmas

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Hello! How’s your day going? I am cooking my face off here. I have decided to kick off my year of Victoriananana blog with a giant four-course Victorian Christmas meal, and then I will go to smaller, more informal weekly Victorian suppers. I am making recipes from Mrs. Beeton’s cookbook. I got my first edition facsimile in the mail the other day, reprinted in 1963 and now out-of-print unabridged, I believe. I think the biggest surprise so far was the béchamel I made. I think of béchamel as a bland white sauce made of butter and flour and milk. This recipe calls for heavy whipping cream and arrowroot (I used cornstarch) mixed with a reduction of stock that had fresh herbs steeped in it. I think I like béchamel now. Also, this is a béchamel that Franny can eat–no flour. The tragedy is that it is only being used as a little binding for some croquettes of fowl, so I think I will reheat the rest and serve it alongside the croquettes.

My only misfire here was not being able to secure raw oysters this morning. Every year I’ve lived in this house I’ve zipped into Whole Paycheck on xmas morning and gotten some for fresh shucking. This year I was going to serve oyster patties, but the grocery store was actually closed for once! Good for them.

My sister is coming later for supper and Franny is coming back tomorrow. I will make a brag and say I got a ten-cup food processor and some flannel sheets, and, possibly the best part, CHEESE in my stocking, stilton and taleggio WITH crackers. Xmas in progress here.