bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • Proper beef stew, finally.

    Last week, for the first time in my entire life, I made a beef stew correctly.

    I owe this, like so many of my recent culinary successes, to the people who produce Cook’s Illustrated, which has to be the best cooking magazine that has ever existed.  Most of the recipes are tested dozens of times with many different minor variations, all trying to come up with the perfect version — the tastiest, the easiest, the least error-prone — of some dish.  Many of them are new takeoffs on old classics, remade for the modern kitchen or using easier-to-find ingredients.  It’s also got equipment reviews and ingredient taste-test results and kitchen tips.   Oh, and it’s beautiful. 

    Mark got me a subscription for Christmas a couple of years ago, and I have already informed him that he must keep it coming every year, or I will go on strike.  At least in the kitchen.

    So what’s with the beef stew?  What have I been doing wrong all this time?  The short answer:  Not baking it in the oven.   Every beef stew I have ever made in my entire life, up till last week, was made either on the stove top or in the Crock-Pot brand slow-cooker.   I had no idea, none at all, that these are inferior stew-making techniques, at least if your stew is thickened with flour or some other kind of starch.

    According to Sarah Wilson, the author of  "Beef Stew, Provencal Style" (November and December 2005):

    Why do we prefer [cooking the stew in the oven] to a stovetop simmer?… At moderate temperatures, the flour in a braising liquid gradually absorbs water, thus thickening the sauce.  If the liquid gets too hot, however, the starch breaks down and loses its thickening properties, resulting in a thinner sauce.  Because stovetop cooking heats from the bottom only, the flour closest to the heat source loses its thickening ability.

    A Crock-Pot provides more even heating than the stove, but I think there must still be some hot spots in it, because the stew I produced from Wilson’s recipe was silky, thick, and luscious, better than any I’d ever made.   I am now determined to tinker with every standard American stew recipe I’ve ever made, trying out the new technique.  The key sequence appears to be (1) browning 2-inch cubes of meat, (2) browning the aromatic vegetables in the beef drippings, (3) stirring in flour and browning it slightly, (4) adding all the liquid and other seasonings and then baking, covered and undisturbed, at 325 F for 3 hours.

    The beef stew recipe, roughly:

    • 3/4 oz       dried porcini mushrooms (I used shiitake), rehydrated in hot tap water
    • 1                  boneless beef chuck eye roast (I used plain chuck), 3.5 lb, in 2-inch cubes
    • 1.5 tsp       salt
    • 1     tsp       ground black pepper
    • 4 Tbsp      olive oil
    • 5 oz            salt pork, rind removed
    • 4                  large carrots, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
    • 2 med        onions, sliced
    • 4                  garlic cloves (I used 6, of course)
    • 2 Tbsp      tomato paste
    • 1/3 c          all purpose flour
    • 1                  bottle bold red wine (I used a Cabernet/Shiraz blend)
    • 1 c              chicken broth (I used homemade stock from my freezer)
    • 1 c              water (I used more chicken broth instead)
    • 4                 3-inch strips zest from an orange, cut into thin strips
    • 1 c              pitted nicoise olives (I substituted half a jar of capers, well drained)
    • 3                 minced anchovy fillets
    • 5                 sprigs thyme (I substituted a teaspoon or so of dried thyme)
    • 2                 bay leaves
    • 1 14.5 oz can whole tomatoes, drained and diced
    • 2 Tbsp      minced fresh parsley

    Heat oven to 325 F.  Season beef with salt and pepper.  Brown in batches in olive oil and set beef aside.  Brown the salt pork, carrots, onions, garlic, and tomato paste in the pot, 2 minutes.  Add flour and stir 1 minute.  Deglaze pan with entire bottle of red wine.  Add broth and water and beef, and bring to a simmer.  Add mushrooms and the rehydrating water, orange zest, half the olives (capers in my case), anchovies, thyme, and bay.  Cover and place in oven for 2.5 to 3 hours.

    Discard salt pork, thyme [sprigs] and bay leaves.  Add tomatoes, the rest of the olives [or capers], and warm.  Cover pot and allow stew to settle, 5 min.  Skim excess fat off the top.  Stir in parsley and serve.

    A few comments:

    • I served the stew over wide "egg-noodle" type noodles, whole wheat ones.
    • The stew was great the first day, exceptionally great the second day as leftovers.  The sauce was perfect, just perfect, after a night in the fridge.
    • The meat cost $13.  That’s not so bad if you stretch it with noodles and salad, and plan to eat it two days.  Believe me, there is no trouble getting anyone to eat the leftovers.
    • I only substituted the capers because Mark detests olives.  But they were very nice.
    • If I make this again (if?!?!? Ha!) I will decrease the orange zest.  The citrus note in the stew was pleasing, but a little too strong — it needed balance.
    • They aren’t kidding when they tell you to skim off the fat.  This dish produces a thick film of oil on top.  Perhaps it should be made a day ahead, especially if you are planning to eat it all in one go — then you can remove hardened fat from the top (easier than skimming), and you get the "exceptionally great leftovers" effect.
    • Even if you don’t make it a day ahead, it’s really convenient, because once it’s in the oven you do not need to touch it — not even to stir — for three whole hours.

    Try it!

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  • SAHMs and the Church. Part 4.

    (Part 1.  Part 2.  Part 3.)

    It is hard to figure out what God wants from us mothers, these days, when it comes to career choices.

    I know from experience that there is a great temptation to say, "He wouldn’t have given me this interest if he didn’t want to call me to this career path," or "He wouldn’t have given me the opportunity to have such a great education if he didn’t want me to use it."  It is a compelling argument, or at least it seems to be.  And there is certainly some truth, because surely God sometimes calls us with an inspiration, a fascination.  Surely God sometimes knocks with an unbelievable opportunity. 

    But everything, for a Christian, has to be laid at the foot of the Cross.  Here is the life I thought I was going to have.  Take it, Lord, and give me the life You want me to have.

    We don’t know, until we lay it at His feet, what He wants us to do with that interest.  Make money?  Maybe.  Or maybe it is meant for us to be a pleasing avocation to distract our minds from what will be our daily work. 

    Maybe the expertise we have gained through our education will drive a brilliant career.  Or maybe it will enable us to serve others instead.  Maybe it will lie dormant for many years, to flower later in an unexpected way.

    We don’t know, until we lay it at his feet.

    I am afraid that a lot of us, especially women, who choose to lay down the life we planned, will pick up a life that is very different.  I certainly have.  Trained as an academic engineer, I am instead a homeschooling homemaker.  I have no idea whether my doctorate will ever gather anything but dust.  I don’t know if it was a mistake to finish it instead of dropping out and devoting myself sooner to caring for my kids, who were both born when I was in school.  Occasionally I lie awake at night and feel just a little touch of misery at my vanished credentials.

    But I do have  a certain peace about where I am now.  I know that I am giving more of myself to my vocation this way than I would be if I worked.  And — let’s be frank — what did I like most about my life as a student?  Eating lunch in restaurants, doing work in coffee shops, being around other people, concentrating hard on something.  I can still do all those things, maybe not as much as I once did, but often enough to feel refreshed.   (Oh, and the other people I’m around these days?  I enjoy their company, which I chose for myself, a lot more than the company of most folks I worked with.  Nothing wrong with them as people, of course, but… now I’m among friends.)

    For me, this choice was a no-brainer, as soon as I had the courage to face turning it over to Christ.  Oh, it was so hard, but from this side looking back, it seems as if it were easy.

    Let’s make a deal, Gentle Reader.  You try to imagine yourself turning your life over as if it were easy, and I’ll try to remember how hard it was before it was done.

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  • Helping the stranger.

    A few days ago, I was waiting for a gap in traffic to make a right turn when a woman I didn’t know walked up to my car, waving.  She looked distressed.

    I cracked my window open two inches, letting in a blast of icy air, and turned down the radio.  My car won’t start and I need to get to work, she began.  I almost immediately stopped listening to her story as I began thinking about whether I would give her any money when she inevitably asked for ten dollars for gas.

    She didn’t ask for money.  She asked for a ride to work at the Walgreens on Lake Street.  I know exactly where that is.  It’s about twelve blocks away, a walk of about two miles, which is not really all that far if it’s not freezing cold and you’re not late for work. 

    I had my two kids in the car.  I looked at her.  She was clearly distressed.  She had no hat, no gloves.  She was clutching a day planner.  She did not look dangerous in any way whatsoever.

    I said, I’m sorry.  I can’t take someone in my car when I have my kids in the car.

    She said, I know, I understand, I have a twelve-year-old son.  I have a picture — she started to open her planner — let me show you —

    I said, I can’t take anyone I don’t know in my car.  I’m sorry.  I wish I could help.  There’s a police car on the next block.  I saw it back there.

    She was near tears.  Do you know where I could find a phone to call a cab?

    I remembered I had a cell phone.  Can I call you a cab?

    Do you have a cell phone?   She told me a telephone number, not needing to pause to look it up. I dug my phone out of my pocket and called the number. 

    "Hello, Red Cab taxi service."  She knew the taxi phone number from memory?  I sure don’t know any taxi cab numbers from memory. I don’t have to.  I told the dispatcher that a woman was stranded at a particular street corner.  The dispatcher told me to tell her to walk a block south to a particular convenience store parking lot and the cab could pick her up there.   So I did, and she thanked me, and she started walking, and I closed my window and turned right and drove past her as she hurried down the sidewalk.

    Gentle Reader, you know what is bothering me:  shouldn’t I have given her the ride? 

    In retrospect, I’m nearly certain that she was not misrepresenting herself. 

    In retrospect, I could have asked to see her I.D. and used my cell phone to call my husband, or a friend, and report:  I am giving a woman a lift.  This is her name, this is her address.  I will call you back in ten minutes, after I have dropped her off at the Walgreens on Lake Street.

    As I recount this incident, I am struck especially by the I have a twelve-year-old son.   What I hear in that now is one mother, appealing to another for help, in the name of motherhood.  Gavin de Becker writes in his excellent book about personal safety, The Gift of Fear,

    I encourage women to ask other women for help when they need it, and it’s likewise safer to accept an offer from a woman than from a man.  (Unfortunately, women rarely make such offers to other women, and I wish more would.)

    Although I did assist her, I could have gone much farther, and I did not — not actually because I feared that if I took her into my car, she might harm meor my children, but rather because conventional rules of safety dictate that I do not pick up strangers. 

    Did I in that moment fail to serve Christ?

    Anyone?

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  • SAHMs and the Church, part 3.

    (Part 1.   Part 2.)

    Even though there is no mandate in the teaching of the Universal Church that mothers avoid work that separates them from their children, there are two strong forces in Church teaching that encourage what we in the U. S. would call "stay-at-home mothering."

    —-   The first is the nature of a vocation.  There are two broad categories of vocation:  vowed matrimony and vowed celibacy.   Vowed celibacy can be expressed in a variety of vocations:  to the priesthood (for men), to a contemplative order of nuns or monks, to an active order, in consecrated virginity (for women).   In all of these, we are called to make a free gift of our whole selves to the service of our vocation.  Why? All vocations are nuptial, like a marriage, because all of them point to the final union of the Church with Christ who is called the "Bridegroom."

    I have seen some claim that there is a "vocation to the single life," but this is an error; to my knowledge all vocations call you to a vowed life.  Making a free gift of your whole self to the service of your vocation requires a vow.  There is no vow involved in "the single life," ergo it cannot be called a "vocation."  Singleness is a period of discernment of vocation, not a vocation of itself. 

    (Is that fair?  After all, many people remain single and unvowed through no fault of their own.  True.  Some people are called to marriage yet find no suitable mate, and some are called to priesthood yet cannot qualify, and some are called to religious life yet aren’t accepted to any order.  I  suspect this is a sad effect of original sin.)

    Speaking specifically of the vocation to marriage:  Giving your whole self to that vocation means that different people give different gifts, but in each case it’s all that you are.   Once we are married, everything we do (after the things we do for God alone) is supposed to be, directly or indirectly, in service to the family.  If we work, we work in order to serve our family.   If we spend time relaxing, we do so in order to refresh ourselves to better serve our family. There is no room for mere self-fulfillment here.  Certainly, there’s space to enjoy your own pursuits, but it can never be done at the expense of the family.  Self-improvement must be done always with an eye to how it helps the family as a whole.   This isn’t a self-immolation, incidentally.    When you serve the family, that doesn’t mean "serve everyone’s interests except your own."  The self is part of the family, after all, and activities that benefit the self — in its proper order within the family — serve the vocation of marriage.

    This understanding of vocation prompts us to consider our balance of work in terms of what best serves the family.  The primary purpose of marriage — the begetting and education of children — prompts a certain prejudice in favor of what best ensures the proper raising of the children.   

    Without question, children are best raised by someone who loves them, who cares about their success, who wants them to grow up to be saints, who is committed to forming their moral character.  In most cases, that’s their family.   Mother, father, perhaps grandparents or other extended family members; maybe godparents, or exceptionally close friends who are "like family." 

    Economics matter, too.  Maybe, after crunching the numbers and carefully considering the day care options available to them, a parent or parents will regretfully decide that they have to resort to some kind of extrafamilial or institutional day care.   But if they are committed to their vocation, to giving their whole self to the vocation, they do it because they believe it is giving all of what they have at the time; they’ll compensate for what is lacking as best they can; and they’ll strive to escape to better circumstances. 

    — The second area of Church teaching that impacts stay-at-home mothering is the theology of the body.    You may have noticed that the above argument from vocations concludes that family should care for children.  It doesn’t conclude that women should care for their children; it suggests that the dad should stay home, or the mom should stay home, or the dad and mom should take turns, or the parents should choose a loving and moral caregiver of either gender from among their closest family and friends. 

    The theology of the body (which is much larger than just this issue) proclaims forcefully that the differences between men and women that are written in our biology, in our bodies, are important.  That men and women are not interchangeable.  That we have a certain "vocation" expressed in our bodies, a vocation to manhood or to womanhood.  Manhood intersects with marriage, and the intersection is different from the intersection of womanhood and marriage.  Manhood intersects with celibacy, too, differently from womanhood’s intersection. 

    Look at women’s bodies:  we are called by our design, if we have children, to nourish them when they are babies.  A more studied look at the biology of motherhood and babyhood reveals that we and our babies are so closely linked by design as to be one only "organism"  — not just during pregnancy, but for the first few years of life.  Sure, we can snip that thread anytime we choose by forcibly weaning and forcibly separating, but that’s not the way our bodies are designed to be, and it’s a lot nicer for both mother and baby to go with nature’s flow.

    (And recall always that work outside the home must still serve the vocation of marriage by supporting the family.  It should not be excessive, and should allow for adequate time with the family, because fatherhood is more than just cash production, too.)

    There is a presumption inherent in the vocations of womanhood and of marriage that the mother gives herself primarily to caring for her babies.    Again, that’s a presumption, not a hard line.   There surely are circumstances in which both parents giving their whole self to the vocation of marriage means that Dad is caring for babies and Mom is off doing something else, if not all of the time then some of the time.   But it has to be done in those cases in service to the family.  Dare I say, too, striving for better circumstances?  "Better" being circumstances in which Mom cares for the babies?  It’s kind of hard to write that!  But if vocation is to mean anything, and if the body is to express our vocation, then we have to strive always to live out our vocation more and more perfectly.

    That’s babies.  What about older children?  My children are still very young, so I don’t know from experience if the inherent mother-child biological connection remains in some form after children are grown past babyhood.   It’s possible that there’s no presumption that mothers should be the ones primarily charged with older kids.    I lean towards the idea that, past babyhood, children begin to be formed in their own vocations.  Fathers play an enormous role in forming kids for their vocations, because they make a bridge between the family and the outside world where the vocation is to be found.   This is a good reason to be terribly critical of an economic system that separates the family during the "workday."  (Another reason, of course, is that it leads to this situation where women agonize about whether to "stay home or to work!")

    UPDATE.  The conclusion is here, in Part 4.

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  • Unhappy side effect #7 of being a Catholic who went to engineering school.

    Every year, when it comes time to get out the Advent wreath, I waste precious brain cells trying to devise the least wasteful candle-burning algorithm.  Ideally one that makes all the candles appear to burn at the same rate.

    If only I had never bought the wreath that takes spherical candles.

    And every year, late in the evening on the last Saturday in Ordinary Time, I hope that I put new candles in the box before I put it away last year.  Every year I open the box and wonder why I left one candle in there melted down to a stub.  And every year I vow to burn the candles more evenly, so that all four of them will be re-useable the following year.   And yet I have never managed to do so.

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  • SAHMs and the Church, part 2. Why doesn’t the Church just tell us what to do?

    Yesterday I wrote that the Church hasn’t (to my knowledge) issued a universal teaching on the morality of women’s staying home with their kids.   I gave one reason why I think that’s so; today I’ll write another.

    No, the answer to who will care for the children? appears to have been left up to us — to the family.  In part this is, I believe, because of the high esteem the Church holds for the family.  It is not that the question of who will care for the children  may be made lightly, that one answer is as good as another.  It is certainly a moral question.    But it is a highly individualized question.   The "right" answer depends heavily on circumstance.  And no one knows a household’s circumstance more intimately than the family who lives there. 

    This isn’t relativism.  The moral principles involved do not vary from household to household.  But the balance of tensions between them can vary, and so the application can, too.  In her wisdom the Church has not dictated the application of the principles (to my knowledge), so that the individual family, the domestic Church, can weigh them and decide.  The Church has not set a strict duty on us; but she has not limited that duty either.  Some Catholics probably wish there was a clear teaching.  It would certainly make the decision easier. 

    There’s an analogy here to another area:  family size and spacing of children.  The Church tells us in Humanae Vitae that natural family planning may be used if there are "well-grounded" or "serious" reasons, including reasons that "aris[e] from the physical or psychological condition of husband or wife, or from external circumstances."  But the Church has never specified exactly what kinds of reasons are "well-grounded" and "serious."   

    This confuses some Catholics who sincerely wish to follow Church teaching.  I moderate an NFP e-mail list; every so often we get a question from someone who wants us to please tell him or her what is an acceptable reason to space children. We don’t have health insurance right now or my youngest is only three months old and my periods have already returned  or I just feel like I really need a break or We just got married and we aren’t adjusted to living together yet  or I’m taking antidepressants or….

    What they are looking for is a "yes" or a "no" — any answer will do, it seems, as long as it’s clear.  And that’s exactly the kind of answer the Church doesn’t give.  She cautions us that our reasons must be good, implying that some reasons are not.  She arms the family with calls to borth "prudence" and "generosity."   And then she allows the family to work out what that means in their own circumstance.

    I think the question of who will care for the children? is that kind of question.  It has great moral weight, and yet the individual family has the responsibility of weighing it in a correct understanding of their circumstance, according to a well-formed conscience, and in harmony with Christian principles.

    More in a subsequent post about those principles.

    UPDATE:  Here’s Part 3.

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  • SAHMs and the Church.

    Yesterday I was thinking about the Christian duty of a mother to care for her own children (if possible).   What is the force of that duty?  Is it objectively wrong to make other arrangements?  Is it a virtuous ideal that should be ever striven for, but is not actually a practical necessity?  Is it not really a duty at all? 

    We Catholics don’t have, as far as I know, any kind of mandate in Church teachings on the subject.  There is no Woman, thou shalt not work outside the home.  There is no condemnation of day care, nor admonition against a father’s caring for children while a mother earns money. 

    Part of this is because the question "Should a woman stay home with her children, or should she work?"  would be meaningless to a large number of Catholics.  First, we are a trans-cultural Church; what the universal Church teaches must apply to Catholics in Uganda, in Brazil, in the United States to the poor and the rich alike, in Syria, in Poland.  Second, we are an ancient Church; we pre-date the Industrial Revolution; and while practical applications have varied, the moral principles on which they’re based don’t.  In this "democracy of the dead" the Saints speak loudly.  And for most of Christian history, in most places where Christians live, woman’s work in or near her home, just like man’s work in or near his home, has been an obvious and indispensable economic contribution to the welfare of the family. 

    The mommy wars are so recent, and so confined to Certain Classes of People in Certain Countries, that the Universal Church has not bothered to speak about them in any detailed way that I am aware of (perhaps individual bishops’ conferences have; I don’t know).

    More on this later in a subsequent post.  I’m leaving for Adoration of the Blessed Thanksgiving… and if that’s Greek to you, I mean the Eucharist, of course.

    UPDATE.  Here’s Part 2.

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  • Amy starts a can’t-miss-it thread.

    Amy Welborn knows a good conversation starter:

    In honor of St. Cecilia… Post your most memorable spiritual/musical moments here. Not just your favorite hymns, but, if you can, a real moment in time in which music has revealed something to you about God, life and truth.

    Many, many comments.  Some are very moving.  Some make me want to rush out and buy chant CDs. 

    …maybe the time I sang Balshazzar’s Feast with my 4-month-pregnant wife in the audience, at the very back of the hall, (on the 4th floor, to boot)…and when we, the 200-voice chorus, did the shouted "SLAIN!!!!" our firstborn damn near jumped out of my wife’s uterus…

    The hearing of the "Salve Regina" (in Latin), after Compline, at "Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles" Trappist monastery, Azul, Argentina, some 9 or 10 years ago. It was my first retreat at a monastery.

    Once, when I was going through a pretty hard time, my little sister (who was middle school age at the time, I think) wrote out all of the words to "Be Not Afraid" and mailed it to me, along with some other words of encouragement. It meant so much to me then and now, when I hear that song I can’t help but think of the comfort it gave me when I read those words in my sister’s letter. I still have the letter.

    Each time I listen to Bach’s Mass in B Minor, I am reminded that God really does exist. It is the aural equivalent of walking along a long, deserted ocean beach in early autumn, after the crowds have gone but before it’s too cold to endure the wind coming off the water. I know this sounds melodramatic, but ’tis true. It may be sad to say so, but I do need this sort of reminder from time to time. Thank you, God, for the Atlantic Ocean and for J.S. Bach.

    …one morning our eclectic local station played a piece so beautiful I actually had to pull over because I was tearing up. I recognized the first verse of Psalm 51 in Latin, and the music matched the psalm so perfectly that it took my breath away. It made me want to rush over to the church and confess all my sins.

    My brothers and I singing a folksy arrangement of the Lord’s Prayer at my sister’s wedding. It wasn’t the harmonies or the arrangement that made it spiritual. It was four Catholic guys singing lovingly to their very pregnant sister in her groom’s Baptist church with just family and a few friends and God looking on. So many opportunities for that to have gone horribly, but grace saved the day, and the 16 years since.

    Many, many more at the link.  Enjoy.

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  • Hyphens are your friends.

    OK, this is funny.

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  • “Normal Life, with More Pancakes.”

    Amy Welborn points to this review of a collection of columns by WaPo columnist Marjorie Williams, who died at age 47 of cancer.  She left behind two young children.  I was struck by this bit:

    But the real anchor of the section, the stunning, unflinching "Hit by Lightning: A Cancer Memoir," leaves behind the world of other people’s ambition and focuses instead on her own, which was far more urgent: to cheat death, at least for a time.

    "Having found myself faced with that old bull-session question (What would you do if you found out you had a year to live?)," she wrote, "I learned that a woman with children has the privilege or duty of bypassing the existential. What you do, if you have little kids, is lead as normal a life as possible, only with more pancakes."

    Amy comments:

    Not much time, not much time. Yes, eternity awaits, but if the time we have on earth didn’t matter- we wouldn’t have been given it.

    Important thoughts.  Incidentally, I had a dream last night that I knew I had only a few days to live.  It was realistic enough that when I woke in the morning dark I believed, for a moment, that I was still in it.  Wish I remembered more details.

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  • “I can’t cook.” One reason why some may think so.

    I often wonder about people who say they "can’t cook."   My wondering usually goes like this:  Can’t pretty much anyone, if he is unhampered by serious learning disability, follow a recipe? 

    I mean, I understand that there’s a gift to recipe creation.  Let me give you an example:  Suppose a person opens the fridge and the cabinets and surveys the interior of each.  She thinks:  hmmm.  I have arugula.  And a pomegranate.  And some anchovies.  And some pecans.  And various bottles of oils and such.   And some Parmesan cheese.   Many perfectly intelligent people, confronted with this particular melange, would not have the slightest idea how to make dinner in this situation.  But another sort of person would immediately think, "Aha!  I can make a salad out of all this!"  This would not make the second person any better, just different, from the first person.  (A better person would know to leave out the Parmesan and anchovies.)

    Leaving that aside, though, why do so many people say they can’t cook?  How hard can it be to read a recipe, buy the ingredients, take them home, and… follow the directions?

    Mark has suggested that the problem is selecting the right recipes to cook — recipes that are consummate with the cook’s experience level, available time, and equipment.  That is part of it, I think.  But it occurred to me today as I prepared to cook dinner that maybe the problem isn’t following a recipe.  Perhaps the problem is following multiple recipes all at the same time. 

    I have been cooking for years.  Tonight I am making a new recipe for hunter-style chicken (chasseur, a French relative of cacciatore)  that appeared in the Nov/Dec 2005 issue of Cook’s Illustrated.  (Link does not go to recipe, sorry.)  I’m also serving noodles; roasted green beans; and salad.

    So anyway, when I started thinking about dinner this afternoon I picked up the chasseur recipe and thought something like this: 

    How long to cook the whole thing?  5 minutes sauteing the chicken breasts on one side, 5 minutes on the other, then the mushrooms and onions in the same pan for 8 minutes (let’s say 10).   Add wine and deglaze, that’s about 3 minutes (let’s say 5) and then the whole thing simmers for 25 minutes.  Chicken roasts at the same time for only 15 minutes.  So that takes 25+5+10+5+5 = 50 minutes.  About an hour.  So I want to get that chicken in the pan about 6:00 for a 7:00 dinner. 

    I can wash the greens and make some kind of  salad [n.b. No pomegranates in this one] while the sauce is simmering — no need to worry about that.  And the noodles just cook on the stove top.  That’s no problem, because the chicken will only take one burner.

    Now, what about the beans?  Can they roast in the oven alongside the chicken?  [Check recipe] The chicken goes in at 400 degrees [n.b. Fahrenheit], but the beans really need 450 degrees.  I could do the beans for longer, but would they brown enough?  Better do them first.  I can reheat them at dinner time.  They take 20 minutes.  The chicken needs 10 minutes in the pan, and I’ll need some time to prep too.  So I’ll heat the oven to 450 and roast the beans while I do the prep and start the chicken in the pan.  When the beans are done I’ll turn the oven down to 400 and start the chicken roasting.  

    Now, none of this is fundamentally difficult to understand.  I’d like to think that anyone could figure this out given detailed-enough recipes, plenty of pencils and paper, and a whole afternoon to plan it.  But who would want to?    I sure didn’t do it that way.  I have a lot of experience.  It took me less than five minutes to decide, just from looking at two recipes, exactly what steps to take and in what order.  And that doesn’t even include the many unconscious decisions that went into things like choosing the right side dishes; deciding that  400 degrees might not work for the beans; substitute sherry for the brandy I don’t keep around; not trying to flambe the sherry; testing the pasta for doneness… you name it.

    It’s so easy to forget, once we’ve gained a skill, how much learning lies behind it.

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  • Tracking down your deadbeat donor.

    Family Scholars Blog reports on an interesting development.  All by himself, a fifteen-year-old boy tracked down his own Very Special Man who fifteen years earlier had masturbated into a cup for money:

    By submitting a DNA sample to a commercial genetic database service designed to help people draw their family tree, the youth found a crucial clue that quickly enabled him to track down his long-sought parent.

    “I was stunned,” said Wendy Kramer, whose online registry for children trying to find anonymous donors of sperm or egg helped lead the teenager to his father. “This had never been done before. No one knew you could get a DNA test and find your donor.”

    The people who freeze and thaw ejaculate for money are, predictably, offended:

    “I think it’s unethical. It’s an invasion of the donor’s privacy and a breach of contract,” said Cappy M. Rothman of the California Cryobank of Los Angeles, another large sperm bank. “If we were to expose our donors to being known, we would have many fewer donors.”

    A breach of contract?!  Who breached the contract?  The child certainly didn’t sign one! 

    FSB’s take on that:  "How convenient that the ethical thing to do is also the thing that least interfers with your ability to make a profit!" 

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