Morsels

Actually, I’m not a lumberjack - not even close (well I do have a nice collection of flannels as well as heels so maybe I’m closer than I think). Point is, this is the song son C the younger was singing as HE put on his flannel and boots on his way over to our neighbor’s house to do some chores for him. We are in Finger Lakes and everyone is getting wood for the winter fires. I walked over to visit him at some point with IPod headphones and a coke and he was splitting and stacking wood. Hours later, he and Dennis returned feeling that sense of satisfaction only a nicely split and stacked log will give you. Turns out C is actually quite the log splitter, which only surprised me because of the activity itself. It’s been a bit of a challenge to get him interested in the sort of outdoors/wood work that this place affords. But he is perfectly happy working really hard at home on his skateboarding or playing basketball — he knows the enjoyment of physical exertion. And he knows that Metallica can help any strenuous activity (or so he claims, but it seems reasonable if you are a fifteen year old boy).

We had Chicken Marbella for dinner, that famous, easy and great recipe from The Silver Palate cookbook. It’s really the only recipe from that book that has survived for me — but it is a keeper.

Since it’s been so long since I have posted I have all these thoughts saved up. Trick is, to get them out faster and more frequently, I know. I actually changed laptops — gone back to a PC and have been experience FEAR OF THE NEW. I miss my MAC but it just wasn’t practical for my office environment. And I used PC’s for so long that once I got through the fact that my computer wasn’t as “cool” looking as my Mac, I find the navigation, etc to be second nature. BUT the point is that I have wanted to write about this conundrum that I have been rolling around for some weeks now.

The other day (ok week) I was having a business lunch with a group of wonderful women, one of whom is a new mother who also happens to work for me at cleveland.com.  We were discussing food and cooking and she allowed as how she fed her son chicken fingers (you see why I am keeping her anonymous?) There was much exclamation and concern and advice. One of the women goes to Costco every few months, buys chicken breasts, salmon, etc and packages them up into meal proportions, freezes them and pops them out for her weekly meals. They all plan and shop for the week on Sundays.

But it occurred to me that there are many women who don’t know how to plan and cook for the week and beyond that, if you add the desire to eat like a locavore, eat responsibly and healthily AND cheaply — it gets pretty daunting if you haven’t had a certain amount of background in that kind of cooking. It is actually not that hard to do but it is very hard to explain because there is so much that goes into it.  I read somewhere recently someone who suddenly realized that she could save a LOT of money not by shopping around a recipe but shopping for what is in season and on sale, THEN creating meals around that. Well, duh. But to actually learn that and then do it when someone tells you to plan your meals on Sunday and cook some of them or else you and your family are going to turn into chicken nuggets with legs? Another story.

I suppose the only thing I can do is try and impart what I know — and to be fair, it is all passed down from my mother who learned how to cook this way by being a poor wife of a poor graduate student in France in the 60’s (how romantic does THAT sound?) and then cooking for our family on a faculty salary in the middle of the natural food revolution and then on a farm.

By the way, I know there are plenty of people who know how to do this and are doing it — but it is that time-crazed, suburban, urban working mother who is most in need of this and the least likely to know how to tackle it.