The start is always so innocent...

The quieter, more rational parts of my brain were drowned out by the shouty, daft parts. I think the rational brain might have been saying something like “you know, we normally have muesli or toast — delicious, filling, proven results…maybe we should roll with that?” and then the shouty, daft part retorted “shut up, square!” and launched into a deafening chorus of “Mr Clicketty Cane”. I had the brown rice in the fridge already (from the experimenting the other day); I had some fresh vegetables; throw in a little omelette and nori and you’ve got yourself a wholesome breakfast, right? Not strictly sushi, but brown rice nori rolls takes too long to say.

Nothing ominous to see here.

The first sign that maybe I wasn’t firing on all cylinders — well, okay, not really the first sign, since I was making nori rolls for breakfast, but the first one that got my attention — was when I realised I had chucked my omelette into an ungreased pan. It wasn’t the end of the world and I was hungry, so I just did the best I could in scraping it out. But my visions of neat, concentric layers of nori, omelette and rice around the cluster of vegetables in the middle would never see achievement.

What could possibly go wrong?

I don’t have a sushi rolling mat, either, but this turns out to be less of an impediment than you’d think. I thought I’d really struggle, but the rolling-up bit was the easiest step of all.

Ah, the perfect roll!

Check it out! A snug little tube of rice, vegetables, omelette and nori. I paused for a moment to bask in my cleverness. I had discovered I could live without another so-called kitchen essential, and I had a tasty, nutritious breakfast lined up. Sure, the brown rice was a little drier than the sushi rice one normally uses for this kind of thing (in the same way that the the ocean is a little wetter than a bowl of peanuts) but it rolled up and that’s all that matters, right? Wait, don’t people normally put sushi vinegar or something in with the rice before they use it? Huh. Oh well, too late now.

Oh noes!

Uhoh. This wee knife wasn’t designed to deal with slightly-aged nori sheets that have been rolled over onto themselves. I must admit, when this happened, I forced myself to accept that maybe, maybe sushi wasn’t going to be on the cards for breakfast after all.

Recovered! Seems okay.

The other slices were, I admit, a little squished. A little flattened by my forceful hand, loose rolling and slightly under-sharp knife. But they held together! Their contents did not scatter in that merry way that so often happens with sushi rolls, and that was all the encouragement I needed in my squishy-brain state. At this point, the ditzy part of my brain that had been the vocal advocate of the whole affair had exhausted itself and dozed off — permitting the more rational part of my brain to be heard. It was saying: “you know, you really didn’t have to make life harder for yourself this morning”.

The final test!

I took a roll and hurried it into my mouth as its lack of structural integrity became apparent. And then its lack of taste became apparent. Huh. Who’d have thought that cold, unseasoned rice and vegetables wrapped in nori could be so bland? I had completely neglected to throw in even a dash of soy sauce along the rice before wrapping. Dumbass.

By this stage, the rational part of my brain was laughing openly at me. We tried a second bite and, well, that was enough. The rational brain kindly pointed out that there was still fresh toasted muesli in the pantry and homemade yoghurt in the fridge and then asked the compelling question: you only get one breakfast — do you want it to be something good?

Coffee and muesli. Can’t beat tested-and-true routine.

This lead to an interesting discussion regarding context and certification: perhaps the only reason people accept that what they buy in tubs as yoghurt in the first place is the certification that comes with a business slapping its logo on it. Given a tub of thick, tangy dairy product, would you be reluctant to try it? What if it had “Yoghurt” written on it? What if it was written in texta, and spelled wrong? And given to you by a homeless lady with one pocket full of peanut shells? On the other hand (if you’re not inclined to source your dairy products from the temporarily-between-housing sector of the community), you buy a sealed tub labelled “yoghurt” in the supermarket, already you’ve got certain (entirely reasonable) expectations regarding non-toxicity, nice flavour, etc., so the tub of thick, tangy dairy product has a different context altogether. But then, what about things like YoGo, Ski and YoPlait, which are marketed as “yoghurt” (or a close approximation) but most of whose products are so low in yoghurt cultures, they make me puke if I eat them because they’re essentially just flavoured milk thickened with gelatine? Are they yoghurt?

The homemade stuff presented a whole new set of parameters, or, really, an absence of them. Nobody else was around to point at it and say “That right there is Yoghurt, mate”, thereby encouraging me to dive in, spoon-first. There have been a few (okay, buckets and buckets) of previous attempts that, upon opening, turned out to be just that little bit too runny, and not quite tangy enough, to really make me want to risk eating them. M pointed out that if I ever wanted to be sure I was making yoghurt, I’d eventually have to plunge in. (Whoa, swimming in yoghurt…I bet that feels good…)

M volunteered to be the first guinea pig in my dairy experimentation, and ate about half a cup of what we were calling yoghurt. Didn’t kill him! Not even a bit! Recognising that non-fatal does not equal edible, it was my turn as the representative of the lactose-intolerant sector of the community to sample. I tried, I enjoyed, I puked not. The next morning was the big test: a yoghurt-based meal: fruit and yoghurt for breakfast! A substantial enough portion of yoghurt to trigger any effects if there were any to be triggered.

Lesson learned: macro shots aren't always sexier

I wasn’t sure if I should post this…it seemed like such a personal milestone that I wasn’t sure if it was something I can share. I’ve tried so many times and failed, but now…now I think I can say it. I did it! I made yoghurt! Fresh, thick, homemade yoghurt. Go me! Now let’s see if I can do it again. And again. AND AGAIN! MORE YOGHURT! STAND BACK WORLD!

These nourish jags come periodically: I think it’s they’re probably related to the the baking jags I go on from time to time.  When I have a baking jag, I make apple cakes, chocolate biscuits, lemon butter — and then promptly find people to give them away to, usually unsuspecting coworkers.  The baking jags are in no way related to wanting to eat, merely the impulse to cook. I think it stems from a need to be creative, but without having the mental energies to devote to being creative in a knitting/writing/musical way, but I could be overthinking the matter. I usually do.  A nourish jag is much more body-oriented: I seek ways to make myself feel nurtured and fed and nested, in a healthy and wholesome way.  (By curious coincidence, it tends to involve cooking things that are really hard to attractively photograph.)

Nourish Item One:

Yesterday I baked bran, carrot and sultana muffins, which are delicious, moist, chewy and not too sweet.  I like cakes that have a bit more oomphalo-boomph to them: nothing foamy and white-sugared for me, thankyou, I prefer nuts, fruit, vegetables and wholemeal flour.  (This makes me a delight at high tea, as you can imagine.)

Holy cow: my camera has a "food" setting!

This recipe rocks: you mix a cup of unprocessed bran, a cup of milk, a cup of brown sugar and a cup of your flavouring stuff (chopped dried fruit, chopped nuts, stewed fruit, mashed pumpkin, whatever) plus any spices you want and leave to sit for an hour or two to soften it all up.  Then stir in a cup of self-raising flour and you’re good to go: it makes a loaf or a dozen smallish muffins.  Bake at 180°C, an hour for a loaf or twenty minutes or so for muffins. Despite how easy this recipe is, circumstances demanded some alterations. I used only half a cup of sugar, and a cup of homemade yoghurt (about which more shortly) in place of milk, plus a little extra water: since I used sultanas, I knew they’d suck up a bit of the moisture that I wanted the bran to take on, so I compensated.  I also gave the mix a few hours more than it really needed, because we had to go out for a while, but I think that only makes it moister.  Mmmmm, muffins for breakfast.

Nourish Item Two:

The day before yesterday I rediscovered my yoghurt maker, with much greater success than previously, despite — or perhaps because of — losing the instructions and forgetting how to use it.  You’re supposed to scald the milk, then cool it and mix in some live-culture yoghurt and pop it in a jar and then pop the jar in the yoghurt maker to ferment.  Realising that (a) I had broken the jar; and (b) the yoghurt maker was the real hero here and the jar was just an extra, unnecessary layer; I filled the yoghurt maker with my proto-yoghurt and forgot about it for a day or so.  The result was quite thin and lacked the tang I like so much in yoghurt, but it was definitely a vast improvement over previous endeavours in this field which have yielded, uh, sour milk.  The yoghurt maker is basically a squat, glorified thermos flask, which maintains a nice warm, moist environment for the yoghurt culture to do its tangy thang.  The result was, as I say, not perfect, but it was ideal for the muffins I made and it encouraged me to keep trying.  The batch that is currently fermenting used some of the first batch for its starter culture: chain yoghurt making, yo!  That will be the real test: if this batch of yoghurt doesn’t ferment properly, it would suggest that the first batch didn’t really have enough live culture in it, which suggests I need to go back to yoghurt-making school (good grief).  I’m going to give it 24-hours no-touchy time before I check.  I am certainly not going to photograph it.  Imagine warm milk in a thermos and, well, there you go.  You could probably even have a look on Flickr and find something much better than I could come up with if I tried photographing what I’ve got happening.  Go on, I’ll wait.

Nourish Item Three:

Welcome back, Pongo. Pongo, my robust sourdough starter, is alive and well and has completely forgiven me for forgetting about him and leaving him to starve in the back of the fridge.  Even if your starter is in the fridge, sleepy and dormant, you’re still supposed to feed the poor blighter every so often, to keep it going. I’m not a good parent.  I got distracted by a soul-crushing quest to find the perfect pencil sharpener and forgot all about my funky little friend in the pickle jar at the back of the fridge.  I recalled him shortly before we moved house and, with a sense of foreboding, gave him a feed of flour and water and let him sit on the bench for a few hours.  Holy cow, that is one virile starter I’ve got in that pickle jar!  He began foaming up in an hour or two, clearly ready to go and ready to be breadmaking.  There’s a huge batch of 50/50 white/rye bread dough currently rising, fortified with Pongo, as I type.  Later today I’m going to try and transform this dough into some sandwich bread and lunch rolls.  Even though I’ve had a couple of dud batches come out (through no fault of Pongo’s, I emphasise, but my own), I love using sourdough starter.  I love the taste it imparts, but I am also not immune to the smugness that comes from making something completely from scratch.  It’s like magic!  Or maths, which is also magic.  [(flour + water = sourdough starter) + (flour + water + salt + yoghurt/milk/butter = dough)] + time + heat = bread! (Eventually.  This is slow magic.)

This is not an attractive photograph.

This is what my dough currently looks like.  Nourishing is not always a pretty process.

Artist's depiction

(The capsicum bushes were a big selling point. Drawn in gimp.)

M and I have been nestling into our new territory by cooking.  On our first weekend, M made a gloriously tasty batch of croissants. Ooooh, croissants: you taste even better when you are made in celebration of a new oven.   He has been keeping us well-supplied with hand-made pasta, pizza doughs and many many loaves of rye bread.  (I have been in charge of making ice cubes.)  Cooking is such a soothing process, for both of us, and exploring the potentials of a new kitchen and workspace has been a very important part of establishing ourselves in our new context. I find moving a really challenging process, and after all the dust has settled I feel kind of…filleted. So cooking gives me a way of finding my feet. And, in some weird way, it lets me re-establish my context: it’s as though there’s part of my brain that says “aha, this must be home, because she’s cooked muffins”.

One of the first things I made was some long-missed chai syrup.  I was out of some of the usual ingredients — cloves, ginger and cinnamon being the big absentees — so I altered it a little.  In addition to the standard black tea base, I used a generous measure of Earl Grey leaves; then added some mandarin zest and a squirt of mandarin juice.  These two modifications gave a fantastic citrus twist.  I used a lot of allspice, nutmeg, some bay leaves, and a little bit of garam masala to add the required spiciness, then simmered it all for a while until it was thick and syrupy.  While it cooled, I stirred in plenty of honey and vanilla extract and left it to cool.  It’s beautiful: I love that chai is one of those things that you can play around with according to whim and circumstance. There’s a lot of scope for experimentation.

The smell of spices while cooking both soothes and excites me.  It calms me and makes me feel creative and alert and I love it.  So it is unsurprising that the next thing I made was spicy roast vegetable and lentil soup.  Aw, baby, this was a good one, albeit tricky to photograph.

Spicy and steamy

Two small potatoes, some wedges of pumpkin, two carrots, a purple onion and a brown one, all rubbed with olive oil, salt and some chilli powder and roasted in the oven; right at the end, add a few cloves of garlic and roast only briefly.  Meanwhile, finely chop some celery, carrot and shallots and quickly fry in some butter and salt.  Have a litre or so of vegetable stock on standby, with some bay leaves in it. Roughly chop the roasted vegetables and toss them into the pot with the celery/carrot/shallots, then lightly fry the whole lot.  Add your spice mix: mine had (from memory) tumeric, cumin, coriander seed, garam masala, cardamom, nutmeg, cayenne pepper (and plenty of it), white pepper and mustard powder, and I needed a lot more than I originally thought I would. Throw it in and stir the vegetables around in it, until they get dry and spicy and very aromatic; the smell of the frying spices will fill your kitchen and sinuses.  Pour in your stock, make sure it covers the vegetables, and then throw in some generous handfuls of dried red, yellow and green lentils.  I soaked my lentils for a little while before chucking them in, but if you don’t, make sure you keep a close eye on how much water they suck outta the soup. They’re thirsty little blighters. Taste the soup regularly to make sure it’s flavoursome enough: you may need to top up the salt levels as you go, especially if the lentils go in dry. Let it simmer.  Eventually everything will have merged into a glorious, spicy, hot pulp of vegetables and you can mash it roughly or puree it with a blender.

This soup was fantastic.  I miss it still. And it was wonderful to have such a spicy, hot, flavoursome thing to serve with M’s homemade rye bread when our erstwhile housemates came over for dinner.

Building up speed!

I’m reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma at the moment and it’s got me thinking all about the transformative processes that take place in our food chain, permitting energy (calories) to be passed along to different participants in the chain.  At the most fundamental level, there’s the life cycle: decomposition breaks down into things like hummus; worms and fungi break down ended life — animal or vegetable — and all its stored energy into a form that permits it to be reused by vegetable matter. In the pastoral example in Pollan’s book, this becomes grass and other pastures, which becomes cow fodder. The cows turn some of it into cow meat, some of it into dairy, some of it into poop; flies come along and turn some of that poop into grubs, which chickens come along and turn into eggs and chicken meat; it’s all fairly miraculous, this waste-free process of use and re-use that transforms calories from one form into another. It got me thinking about what happens later: here’s me, a multi-celluar organism burning up calories to make fresh calories — in this case, I’m turning fruit, English muffins, cheese and tomato into bread:

Pound! Knead!

And then I leave the bread alone for a good long while, covered, in a big bowl.  You can rise dough at room temperature, unless things are abnormally cold, but I’ve discovered that sitting a bowl of dough on top of my fishtank hood is the best rising zone ever: it’s consistently warm, it’s broad, flat and stable, and I’m unlikely to accidentally knock anything into it, and I don’t have to operate a second, space-hogging appliance to get the dough warm and rising.  Breadmaker, you’re history.

It looks a bit like a giant potato.

I was inspired by this recipe for Apricot and Brie bread, which I came across via the most recent YeastSpotting from Wild Yeast. But! Big changes. You’ll notice, firstly, the absence of both apricots and Brie.  I wanted a much more savoury, herby bread to complement the French Onion Soup M was making for dinner: instead of apricot and Brie bread, I have rosemary and chive bread, with the Brie on the side (briefly — then sliced and spread over the hot-from-the-oven bread).  The thing that intrigued me most about the apricot and Brie bread I linked above was the beer in the mix: I happened to know that there was some leftover champagne in the fridge, so I made champagne, rosemary and chive bread! Sounded good, but champagne doesn’t seem to do much to the flavour of bread, not the way beer does.  I think next time I’ll probably just make a simple herb (and maybe onion or shallot) bread, and take care of the champagne myself.

I win at breads.

But I still think it was a pretty smashing triumph. Tasted good (albeit a little under-salted), and served warm with Brie and slowly-cooked French Onion Soup, it was heaven. This was my Saturday dinner. No, jealousy is normal: don’t feel bad.

Soft bread, soft cheese, warm heart

Ball o' dough!

I’ve mentioned in the past M’s skills on the pasta-making front.  Chap can make mighty fine, tender noodles at the drop of a hat. Which is good: we were hungry and the evening was waxing late.  He starts out small, starts out simple: some well-kneaded dough, with a teaspoonful of sun-dried tomato pesto.  The dough rests while the sauce ingredients come together.  The sauce was inspired by an Anthony Bourdain video we saw on YouTube: the video itself was interesting but not groundbreaking (it was one of those “things everyone should know how to do”, and I already knew most of them), until we got to this pasta recipe. It played in my memory for some time, and apparently also in M’s. First, infusing the olive oil: oil, freshly-torn basil, whole cloves of garlic and chilli flakes. Simmer it for ages, infusing the oil with those soft, fine flavours.  Even though it’s a simmering pot of oil, it’s natural to want to drink it. But that would be dangerous. Just try and resist the impulse as best you can.  This weekend was the Anzac Day long weekend in Australia, and in our neck of the woods, this is traditionally acknowledged as the day you can start lighting fires (in the fireplace, I mean) and switch on the heater without being called a spineless jellyfish wussbag. This means, of course, that fresh basil from your own yard is little more than a fragrant dream. Supermarket basil from here on in. This pasta sauce was a rich paean to all that summer pasta was and someday, will be again. I miss it already.

Basil! Garlic! Oil! Give me it!

Then there’s the tomato side of things: peel a whole swag of tomatoes, especially if you can get your hands on some scarlet, overripe ones. Crush the peeled tomatoes over a bowl and squeeze out the watery pulp, get as much water out as you possibly can, because it will help speed up the cooking time.  We were running a bit short of fresh tomatoes, so we ended up opening a couple of cans and pressing as much water out through a fine sieve as we could before adding.  End result: a big pot of thick, concentrated tomato richness and a big bowl of tomato juices that I went on to use in soup. Boil — not simmer, but boil; get it really hot — that concentrated tomato richness until it is really, really thick.

Someone get a proper photographer, for Heaven's sake.

Meanwhile, get some pasta happening.  This was a deciding factor in our pasta-making: one of our housemates obtained a pasta-roller!  It was kinda cool, and produced beautifully even, thin sheets — I have to be honest, I think we can do just fine with a rolling pin and a bit of determination, as we have in the past, but I must admit that the cutter made beautiful, fine streamers.

Slicing the pasta

The pasta rolling and slicing was the fun bit and I took lots and lots of photos, but as it was Sunday night, a soothing, chilly, comfortable kind of Sunday night, and what with all the red wine about the place, I was a few sheets to the wind already, so very few shots did the process justice (honestly, you’re lucky my thumb isn’t in most of these). While the pasta boils in the huge tub of water you’ve prepared, return to the sauce. Strain the oil and whisk it into the tomatoes and keep it hot.

Noodleoodleoodleoodleoo

When you’re ready to serve, heat up a big frying pan and quickly toss the cooked, strained pasta and the cooked, thick sauce together, getting it all thick and juicy and clingy. Serve, maybe garnished with a little torn basil if there’s any left. If not, c’est la vie. If you’re the blogger: put your goddamn camera away and follow that heavenly plate to the table. Hot, nourishing, pasta pomodoro à la M.

Put the camera down and eat, woman!

Inspired by a thread on the Ravelry Knit ‘N’ Bake Group (Two digressions, just in case you’re already bored–One: how fantastic IS Ravelry? Really fantastic, that’s how. Two: when will we finally achieve the oft-silently-grumbled goal of formally eliminating the dreadful “‘n’” from our culture? Probably never. That’s when. Let’s try and move on, with whatever tools and drugs are at our disposal.) This time, I also decided I’d try to learn something different: using oats in baking.  Already in love with oats and with baking, baking oatmeal-based bread things seemed like a no-brainer. And I like them!  Using the oats as a base tends to make a chewier, denser bread, but I think I like it anyway. I’ve made oatmeal-based English muffins in the past, and I really liked the chewiness in those.  In these rolls, it was really good, too, but there’s room for exploration.

The thread on Ravelry talked a lot about different recipes, and the one I ended up going with was an egg- and dairy-free adaptation. The recipe I followed was posted in a thread, so I think it would be a breach of that poster’s privacy for me to quote them directly here, but it’s very similar to this recipe.  Essentially, it boils down to the same process: you make some oatmeal and mix in a little salt, butter and brown sugar; you proof some yeast in some warm sugar-water, then mix the two.  Then knead in your flour and, if you’re using any, eggs; and then you let the lot rise somewhere warm. After the dough has risen for an hour or so, you flatten it out, spread it with filling, and then roll into scrolls and chop them into little rolls and start rising them again, ideally in their baking tin so that they squash up against each other.

My filling was a little bit more inventive than your standard cinnamon roll: I simmered chopped, overripe pear with some sultanas and candied peel, as well as some cinnamon and allspice and sugar, until it was all smooshy and aromatic.  Then I threw in some finely chopped glacé ginger.  Spicy! Delicious!  I learned things.  These are tasty, but too chewy on the outside, something that could be worked around with two extra steps: including some milk powder or milk into the dough, and by cooking them more squished up.

You can see in this pic that the outer layers browned up quickly, drying them out far too fast. They still tasted okay, but that outer layer of the scroll was definitely drier and chewier, and I think that was a wee bit detrimental.  You can also see the white patches on the side where the scrolls were touching a little, which stopped those bits drying out.

In the middle, though.  Oh, in the spiral’s heart: that blend of soft, cooked fruit and spices kept the dough moistly tender and was really flavoursome. I think they’d be even better with cooked apple, sultanas and spices, but I wanted to use up the last, lonely, unloved overripe pear in the bowl and that worked nicely.  Next time: a sprinkle of brown sugar on top and maybe a little eggwash or milkwash before cooking.

So, I learned things. I baked sweet and tasty rolls and found a new way of making bread: take some porridge and work in some proofed yeast, some flour (and maybe some milk and egg, if you like) and knead until you get a breaddough.  I love it when recipes speak to me, when I can see through all the measurements and think to myself “oh, they’re just doing [x]!” and then I can rocket off on my merry way and work my mojo.  That’s when you grok cooking.  That’s nourishing the brain, feeding it and opening it up in the scented steam of the oven. I like to think that this kind of breadmaking emerged as a way of making use of leftover porridge, but I completely made that up, so don’t be surprised if that statement fails your history-in-breadmaking essay.

I think I’d like to try making wholemeal, nut-and-spice rolls — or even bread loaves — using this technique, and I have a feeling that oatmeal-based bread doughs are a good idea for breakfast breads, being a little more protein-rich, weightier and stick-to-your-ribs-y. Further exploration is required in this matter, and this delights me and gives me something to look forward to.  A valuable state of mind to attain when you are three days into a non-specific and fatiguing virus, because it reminds you that there’s going to be a “later”, a time when your world isn’t confined to shuffling about with a headache (there is probably ample room for the comment to be made that I would move forward and into that time much sooner if I would stop baking things, but I think we can gloss past that, don’t you?).  I feel like my mind has been nourished: it has been entertained, stimulated and soothed, all at once.

My thoughts this week run along the theme of Nourish.  I’ve been unwell and it’s been getting me down, so in the interest of reminding myself of all the wonderful things there are to be had from life, I’m starting small and, in a typical First-World attitude, I’m looking in the kitchen.  I’m reminding myself of the things that make me feel sated, soothed and enriched.  There are just some foods whose consumption make you feel really good: you feel wholesome and kind to yourself just for having eaten them. Like porridge!

Fig 1: Sliced pear and glacé ginger

Fresh pear and glacé ginger — surprisingly zesty and fresh-tasting, refreshing and with some lingering reminders of summer.

I love porridge at lunchtime as well as at breakfast, but I feel self-conscious about having it at work.  Plus it’s a bit awkward when you’re standing in the work kitchen, grating apple and chopping dates, which is my default addition.

Fig 2: Apple and date

Grated apple and chopped, dried dates: ooooh, it’s so good.  The freshly-grated apple is all juicy and delicious, especially with cinnamon.  Fresh dates are even better, but more expensive.

Fig 3: Pineapple and pecan (not easy to photograph)

One day, while stumped, I decided to try tinned pineapple and some chopped pecans and it was absolutely delicious; if I’d been more well-organised, I would have toasted the pecans first, but hey.  I’ve heard rumours of savoury porridge, but honestly, this is one of the few delicious things that I don’t want to dicker about with. I come back to it when I’m tired, depressed, sleepy or sick.  I keep rummaging through my brains for memories of eating it as a kid and coming up with nothing: I don’t think I ate it that much growing up, and only developed this addiction in the past couple of years.  Still, if you’re going to have an addiction, might as well be to porridge and fruit, huh?  (Hm, beginning to get an idea why all those invites to the really swinging parties are drying up.) Porridge is one of those foods that really embodies the idea of nourish: it’s delicious, warm, soothing and healthy.

Nourishing the self is tricky business.  It’s riddled with issues of guilt, hunger, frustration and self-justification.  For ages I smugly thought that I wasn’t one for comfort eating, because I’ve never been inclined to eat chocolate, mashed potatoes, nachos, chips, or any of the other typical comfort foods when I’m feeling rough.  But a couple of years ago, I realised it’s more about what you’re trying to achieve through consumption, regardless of what you actually eat.  I noticed that my weakness was compulsivity: bowls of mixed nuts were nibbled through with alarming speed; crackers and cheese, in twos and threes; spoons of yoghurt from the tub, swiftly mounting up; slices of toast, over and over.  All little increments, and leaving me feeling full and crummy all day long because I wasn’t leaving enough time between nibbles to let my body be sated. And then, because I was feeling crummy…well, you can see how it happens.  That’s my comfort eating.  It’s not nourishing; all it does is give your teeth and salivary glands something to do while you wonder why you feel rotten. Even directing your attentions to healthier grazing doesn’t change the underlying problem: eating for pleasure rather than to nourish.  (Which has the extra minus of making it harder to nourish yourself, because you’re full from grazing.)

To nourish is a better goal.  To care for the body through food is tricky, and to soothe the mind with food even harder: it’s so easy to identify foods as naughty or indulgent, and either therefore avoid them completely or gorge yourself on them while chanting “I deserve this because I feel lousy”. Neither works, really. You need to listen to your body and support it; give it the nutrition it needs to keep your mind calm and strength up, but give it the pleasure it can so easily take from food and let that soothe you and keep your spirits high. Nourish the body and the mind will settle.  I’m more prone to baking rather than eating as a response to stress or unhappiness now, but this can be a pretty academic distinction: it’s easy to see how one could slip into the other. I find it a treat to wrap myself in a scented act of creation, but I try and choose carefully, selecting recipes that I can scale down and therefore scratch the itch without presenting the challenge of finding people to eat the eight loaves of sourdough I’ve ended up with.

I think that’s how it works — a lot of these ideas are still pretty embryonic for me, as I learn and try new stuff and change my mind about things.  If I read back over this blog post in a year’s time, will I find it pretentious and misguided, the ramblings of a malnourished mind, or will I think I was finally getting onto the right track? Does that even matter?

Homemade pasta.  We’ve tried making it before, and it came out tasty but doughy — but that was years ago. Years of experience have trickled past and M threw it together in a snap.  Kneaded some stiff egg-and-flour dough, rolled it out super thin, sliced it with the pizza cutter and hung it on racks to dry it a little, which stops it getting gluggy and sticking to any surface you rest it on.  I liked that bit and took photos.

Pasta from below!  While the pasta air-dried for a bit, fresh ingredients were chopped:

And grated:

And turned into a thick, simple, well-spiced sauce:

Which was the perfect complement to the rolling, boiling pasta (by the way, fresh pasta cooks in a *snap*. Like, turn around three times and it’s done to a turn; none of this half-hour of waiting while the sauce goes cold that I always get when cooking dried pasta):

Lovingly plated and served among the needy:

Frankly, it looks damned sexy and it tasted even better.  Kudos to M. Seriously mad kudos.

The theme for the blog this week is Nourish.  I’m pretty in love with the values that I associate with that term: I think of it as embodying the tenderness, support and love that can be manifested in transactions with the body.  (Only, you know, nice ones, not pooping or having blood tests done or anything of that nature.)  Nourishing other people implies a lot of sensory things, not just tying the nosebag to them. Touching and hugging people to show that you’re delighted they’re in your life; or rubbing their shoulders and brushing their hair to soothe them. Feeding them wonderful, exciting, uplifting things because you had a wonderful experience you want to share; or tenderly preparing something that will soothe their tummies and calm them.  Giving your time, your energy and your thoughts to them, presenting friends and loved ones with home-made bread, pies, dinner, snacks — anything they need or think they need.  Sharing food with people is immensely important in our culture; we have so many mores and small traditions that centre on breaking bread together.  Nourishing someone with food isn’t the same as feeding them until they’re ill: it’s something much more tender, kind and respectful — and therefore loving.

What? Doesn’t this fill your heart with joy and your mouth with eagerness? Really? Sheesh. Sweet bitty-lucking fries, these photos are driving me crazy with desire — and the real thing is only about two metres away from me.  I spent an hour or so after lunch yesterday with M and my Mumini following the creek that trickles through the bottom corner of Mumini’s property outside town. It’s the most wonderful spot in the world: there’s a pine gully full of rabbits, and once you get through that, you’re at the creek, a rambling, untouched affair lined with poplars, wild blackberries, wild quinces and…oh, baby…wild figs.  Dragonflies — red, mauve and electric blue — dart around; there’s no traffic noise or city sound; only hills and rabbits and the trickling creek.  We spent a fair bit of time filling our bags with figs, getting our fingers sticky and eating any that tore in the process of harvest. M carried the rake and knocked the out-of-reach figs down for us short folk (duck’s disease runs in Mumini’s line of the family).

When I am old and tired; when my memory leaks and floods my mind with images of fear and confusion; I hope the memory of eating warm wild figs in the late summer sun, joking with M and my Mumini sticks firm and reassuring in the chaos of my greying mind.

Anyway, if figs don’t simmer your spuds, here are some other things currently pleasing me.  Here is an awesome shot of a bearded dragon, an agile and wily creature, about 25cm long from snort to tail (but it’s a pretty damn long tail), who was cruising around the rose bed at Mumini and Dadini’s place yesterday:

Pretty cool, huh? Doesn’t he look all circumspect and cautious? He’s totally sizing me up.  He decided I was cool; I decided he was cool;we rolled on in our separate ways.

Here’s another picture of a lizard that I like:

That right there is a Wellington Green Gecko and he is adorable.

Here is a sign indicating where, in Hall, NSW, you may find somewhere to water your transport. Good to know.  This sign was across the road from where we had breakfast. While our horses died of thirst.  No, sorry: we drove in automobiles. No horses were dehydrated in the making of this blog.  Aw hell, have some more fig porn:

This is my breakfast tomorrow.  Probably my lunch, too.  I’m so happy right now.