It feels like a cop-out to start probably the third blog post in a row with “it’s been a tumultuous month”…but it has been! I’m a couple days late on this because Pride was this past weekend (I have odes to write to the Dyke March, my very first, but those may come later) and I was on the go basically non-stop. Plus, I’ve been unemployed for about a week and a half (fear not — barring any sudden developments I will be re-employed as of next week, thankfully) and the stress of the lead-up to that was…a lot. I’m not going to opine on it, but job hunting is hard, and demoralizing.
But then there’s always strawberries.
Read MoreI was very excited to try rhubarb for the above reason. For so much of my life (26 years!) (technically more like 20, I guess) “rhubarb” was a mythical creation: my characters in “Oregon Trail” always bought a ton of it, because it was cheap and traveled well; and every spring, I saw food writers sing the praises of rhubarb [pie/jam/crumble/etc]. But until this month, I’d never gotten around to trying it.
Alas, it was not May 01 that I tried it, and that’s why once again it feels like I’ve made very little from this particular Short Stack. I hit the Union Square farmers’ market on May 1, ready to stock up, only to find that spring had not yet sprung quite enough for rhubarb to start being harvested and sold. It was closer to the middle of the month that I finally managed to get my hands on some, and that delay in tandem with my unusually busy social calendar (ha) meant that I didn’t come close to using as much rhubarb as my Oregon Trail pixel settlers did.
It can be hard for me to try new foods (thank god no one took me on the Oregon Trail, I guess); there’s a lot of sensory anxiety and social anxiety wrapped up in it. One of the things that I’ve loved about this Short Stack project (and that I love, in general, about home cooking) is that I can try things by myself, in the comfort of my own kitchen, where no one has any expectations of me. If I don’t like rhubarb after all, I can give the pie to a friend. If it turns out that I absolutely love whole-grain honey mustard, I can hoard it, buy it, or make it again myself. The stakes are low, and the anxiety is minimal. But I liked rhubarb a lot. I’ll be stocking up and freezing a ton before the season ends, so that I can drink rhubarb lemonade in November and think of spring.
Read MoreGod, I really thought I was going to get more of these recipes done this month! It certainly felt like I ate a lot of food from this cookbook, although in retrospect I think that may just be because I made two 4-serving chicken dishes that got spread out over multiple nights. No regrets with what I did make, only what I didn’t — I’m a little annoyed at myself for not making the most basic recipes, like Hummus or Tahini Sauce. Those are only two of the recipes I prepared for and didn’t get around to in April. I’m sure I’ll get to them in the future, because this book was fantastic, something I’ll be referring back to for a long time yet. I’m not surprised: I picked Tahini because it was written by Adeena Sussman, known for a great many cookbooks but, to me, primarily for Chrissy Teigen’s Cravings books. But amid the tumult of a job search and a trip to Nashville, things got…not lost, exactly, but set aside. Which is okay. (But I was really looking forward to the Sweet Potato-Tahini Dinner Rolls.)
Read MoreAnother month, another Short Stack! This month’s was Prosciutto di Parma, which was great because prosciutto is one of my favorite meat products and I really enjoyed learning new ways to cook with it that aren’t just “slap it in between a bagel with fresh mozzarella and call it a sandwich” (although that ‘recipe’ is really good, I promise).
I did better than I thought I would, given that prosciutto di Parma can be expensive and given the other things I had going on this month. I shot for CASE/BY/CASE NYC for the first time this year, a wonderful interview with the incredibly inspiring Ale Lariu, who spoke with us about the unique challenges that women (and mothers in particular) face in the workforce. I love shooting for C/B/C — I’ve learned so much and been privy to so many fascinating, educational conversations. I like to think of myself as someone who can get excited about anything so long as I’m interacting with someone who is knowledgeable and enthusiastic. There are very few subjects that outright bore me. I’m thinking here of another C/B/C interview, this one discussing data science, which I really know next to nothing about and yet found so interesting. (I won’t go on here, but you should read it.)
This is really my goal in doing this Short Stack project: I want to get enthusiastic about ingredients I don’t know anything about.
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