For some reason, I am back into baking. Nutella swirl pound cake, chocolate cookies with malted cream, and apple crisp have been my most recent exploits and recipes on repeat. Am into cooking, too, have made about five different kinds of soup ranging from onion to chicken to fish chowder to some sort of potato chicken chowder medley to curry. There is something with taking fresh, raw ingredients and creating something delicious out of them that connects with me. I follow recipes sometimes; othertimes, I don't and sort of ad lib and throw whatever I have in the fridge. The kitchen is my laboratory to experiment and explore food.
I guess i could blame the fact i am not drinking coffee anymore for this sudden resurgence of baking and cooking. Perhaps my taste buds are rebelling and demanding new spices and flavors since they can't have their precious coffee taste. Maybe coffee dulled my senses and appetite so I was content with less and now my senses and appetite want more and more "good" (read buttery) things to digest. Who knows.
The baking is also a response to seasonal activities- christmas brunches and parties and gifts; the cooking, a response to trying to save money and the fact what I make at home tastes almost as good as what you'd get out of a restaurant without paying an arm and a leg. Seriously, olive oil, salt and pepper and whathaveyou protein and/or vegetable are all you need to make delicious dinners. Thank you summer in Rome for teaching me that. Not much beats a roasted chicken and vegetables with a side salad for dinner, except maybe my curry or one of my soups.
I guess all these thoughts on food lead me back to this week's advent theme of joy and sorrow because I get such immense pleasure from cooking and food. When I look back at "fond memories" I think of moments where I felt at peace and with contentment and more often than not, that involves me being in a kitchen. Baking apple pie or crisp or bread after a day spent apple picking at carter's mountain. Kneading pastry dough. Icing a six layer cake. Making the filling for said six layer cake. Watching cream turn into whipped cream and putting the wrong kind of framboise in it. Making mistakes and still thinking whatever i made was still delicious. When i was pregnant, I'd make bread and croissants and crazy yummy hazelnut blueberry cheesecake bars- I didn't want to eat them, I just wanted to make'em. Even now the chore of making dinner every evening is a rhythm and routine that I welcome as a time to rest and be. I'm not sure why peace and serenity are synonymous to joy in my dictionary, but they are.
If I stop and think for awhile, I also know I have great joy in running, writing (fiction), dancing, teaching, working with kids, editing film, reading and talking about good stories, gardening, being outside (especially near mountains or in charlottesville, especially at night walking the downtown, inebriated or not ;)), buying and wearing amazing shoes, talking/writing about themes found in the bible, good conversations (esp. with sarah dupee and other dear friends), analyzing french literature/listening to french lit professors analyze french lit. And I am sure there are others. Marriage is a mixed bag since I sort of got hit by a bus metaphorically immediately after getting married and there were little to no joys in my life for awhile (besides my husband). Need a little more distance from my nightmare year until I can say marriage is a joy. Marriage so far has proved to be very restricting and humbling and devastating (in the sense everything i was before i was married has utterly been destroyed/is gone and I am rebuilding everything: identity, career, ambitions, community, etc). I am "type B" aka laid back so it is not like i held onto those things too closely anyway- but was and is still extremely hard to have had them taken away and start from scratch! (life lesson, don't put down roots really deep and then leave them suddenly without preparing yourself for heartache. here was an instance where I wish I wasn't so laissez faire and had been too afraid to leave... nothing's the same internally, since i left, i think i am still in mourning. my "highs" aren't as high as they once were. It is like I know what if feels like to be at full capacity and i don't ever get there anymore and the lack of fullness is very present in the highs and the lows and dulls them or makes me remember "what once had been". don't know if that makes any sense and I don't know if it is possible to be/feel more fully alive in one place than any other, but that's how i feel. Isn't that strange that i am so attached to a place? hopefully, jesus did not feel like coming to earth, regarding heaven, but maybe he did).
And there are some thoughts on sorrow. And i think the reflection on that one is that you are never prepared for sorrow to pierce you nor for how it will change you. When it pierces you, it is really painful and that pain begins to change you. It's like the sand that agitates and irritates an oyster's mouth. We mull over it over and over again and it shapes us, hopefully producing something as beautiful as a pearl. But I know too well that it can also breed bad habits that we humans aren't exactly equipped to handle. That is why it is soo important we get the gospel and understand that God has come to bear our burdens and take our sorrows up on Himself. Immanuel, God with Us, he knows our sorrows and is the one who can comfort us. That is why he was born, to be our Prince of Peace and Counselor. To remind us we will be more fully alive with Him! May we cast our cares on Him!
No comments:
Post a Comment