“A pair of shoes can change your life. Just ask Cinderella.”

Bon Appetit and Gourmet and Cooking magazine- yea I read them  but I never pay attention to the quantity, just  the ingredients. Maybe when you know the theory of cooking you can stop bothering  with the basic and look for the little extra zips that change a thing and bring it back from the dead.  So recipes are not instructions for me, they are general guides and a starting off point. Laurie introduced me to the Cake Bible and the Pie Bible, Laurie being a flaming S, and so I wanted to be worthy of her  or see it her way and for over six months my pie crust was horrible. Without using the intuitive side of sensing and instead carefully measuring and weighing the magic was gone. I had to unlearn what Birnbaum was instructing me and go back to my way. Very much like I had to go back to my way after I was dropped.  Wow. I never saw the connection between losing my ability to make great pie crust and being reunited – albeit short lived yet forever- with a birth child.  How so much got redefined during that chaotic stormy time, motherless mother, childless child, my wife status even being challenged internally and certainly after the clouds cleared there were new ways I was demanding from those around me because by exposing the fact of having given birth to the world and  finding that I wasn’t shamed into hell as my mother had led me to believe I found that I actually had survived, and that the real survival could not be counted until I had decided to be open about it. And then there was no turning back. And even though it all went sour I was left with a sense of closure and relief that I had done the right thing and that things matter. But what does that have to do with cooking? Oh she likes so many of the same things I like, gardening and decorating and cooking, especially pies. But I don’t cook with recipes. I was thinking this as I made pancakes this afternoon on the perfectly seasoned griddle that needs no fat.

 

 

Of course the regular stuff goes in there. Flour and baking powder and salt sugar vanilla, and then one adds that dried berry medley from trader joe’s and pecan pieces and 2 eggs and some milk until it looks right and then you slop it on the griddle and let them rise and do what griddle cakes do, and you must use 100% maple syrup- and with global warming it could be a generation before the new England maple syrup industry is extinct so get MAPLE SYRUP now while you can.  And  then  let the cat investigate them before she climbs into a basket for more snoozing in preparation for the 9:30 pm madness that overtakes her where  she freaks herself out and chases shadows and tries to stalk the television image but never catches it. I really don’t mind using the spell checker but I don’t like proof reading my own stuff. Never did, never will. It’s all mental vomit anyway. And if you are reading this, Jim, tell nancy hello, if she would add me to her address list I could email her.