Category Archives: Cooking and Eating

The Chef’s Craft in Every Kitchen?

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I have mixed feelings about Michael Ruhlman’s The Elements of Cooking: Translating the Chef’s Craft for Every Kitchen.

The Elements of Cooking is one-part opinionated essays about cooking (pages 1-50) and one-part alphabetic encyclopedia of opinionated “essential” elements to cooking. There are things I liked about both parts and other things that bordered on ridiculous. (For example, Sharpie is included in the list of essential elements to cooking. Its definition: “This brand of permanent marker is excellent for dating and labeling food; keep one in your tool drawer along with painter’s tape.” p. 215)

I didn’t realize why I was annoyed by this book until I started reading Ruhlman’s previous best-seller, The Making of a Chef. I haven’t finished that book yet. It is the story of how one is trained at the Culinary Institute of America to become a chef. Only as I read this second book do I realize what the problem is with the first book: I don’t want to be a chef. Therefore, it’s not necessary to translate the chef’s craft for my kitchen.

According to The Elements of Cooking, a chef is a leader, as in the head of a restaurant kitchen, and is firstly a good cook. A cook is what I do aspire to be. I don’t want to be a chef: I don’t want a restaurant kitchen. I want good home cooking for my home kitchen.

Because I don’t want to be a chef, some items on the alphabetic list of essential elements seem a bit ridiculous. I don’t need to learn about aspic (gelled stock), offal (innards of animals), and foie gras (duck liver). I won’t be cooking them in my kitchen. I don’t need to learn the French terms for my macaroni’s cheese sauce. I don’t need to know decorative knife cuts for cutting vegetables. I don’t need to know kitchen terms (for example, commis is a prep cook in a professional kitchen).

However, on the other hand, as a cook, some of the terms, even the French terms, may come in handy if I happen upon a recipe that uses them.

Also, as a cook I found the opinionated essays about cooking incredibly interesting. Those essays are the reason I would recommend this book to the average cook. They make me think about cooking in a different way. I plan on rereading them regularly. Ruhlman included essays on stock, sauces, salt, the egg, heat, and tools of the kitchen. I think I’ll revisit them in subsequent posts — they are very informative and, I think, discussion worthy.

One book he recommended reading is On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, by Harold McGee. This is a scientific explanation of food, from eggs to meat and fish to plants and on. The author has degrees in science and literature so provides scientific descriptions the layman can understand. When I read it, I’ll let you know if that is true.

Ruhlman’s last essay is about finesse. This is where I feel I’ve departed from his main point of his book: I’m not a chef and so I’m not hoping for “refinement” in my cooking. As a cook, I hope to provide fundamental home cooking for my family. However, I suspect Ruhlman is correct to some extent, even for my home kitchen: “The concept [of finesse] rest[s] on a conviction that paying attention to a few small details in any given preparation has an enormous impact on the finished dish and is the final gratification for the cook in his or her pursuit of excellence” (p. 46).

While I’m not looking for approval of my food as a restaurant chef or even as an amateur chef in any sense of the term “chef” and I’m not vainly pursuing excellence (perfectionist though I am), I think a reward to my efforts at cooking will be a gratifying and edible supper every night with my family, recognizing that there is always room for improvement.

I recommend Ruhlman’s book to the family cook only half-heartedly. It’s great to get you thinking about food, but only with a few tablespoons of salt.

The Great Big Vegetable Challenge and What’s Your Vegetable?

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I have never liked vegetables. I don’t know why. Maybe I relied too much on bagged iceberg lettuce and ranch dressing in my college days and I got tired of it. I like fruit, however, and always enjoy fresh fruit. I have a sweet tooth, and the natural sweetness of fruit is my favorite.

My husband, on the other hand, prefers vegetables. If I set dinner on the table and I have forgotten the vegetable (which happens more often than I should admit), my husband will ask “Where are the vegetables?” and he’ll prepare something.

I could go a long time and not eat green.

But last night, the meal I was making just wouldn’t work. When my husband got home, the kitchen was still dinnerless. (He got home after eight so it’s kind of sad I hadn’t worked something out by then. I was starved.) He said, “Why don’t we just eat these greens?” I had a bag of rocket (known in the USA as arugula) in the fridge. Surprisingly, none of it was wilted (they usually don’t have very good greens here). I consented. But when my husband put the greens on our two plates, there were two huge piles. I tasted some. It wasn’t very good. (And then I had rocket breath — ha ha.)

“I can’t eat that much!” I protested. There’s nothing like a salad for someone who doesn’t like vegetables to begin with.

My husband wasn’t convinced. He pulled things out the fridge for our salads.

“Cut up the leftover steaks,” he began.

I cut up the steak and added it to the salad. Then, at his suggestion, I added olives, sun-dried tomatoes, and shaved Parmesan cheese.

In the meantime, he sliced some red onions, cooked them in balsamic vinegar, and piled them on our salads. He added mustard and olive oil to the remaining balsamic, whisked it into an emulsified sauce, and heated it with some black currant jam. (He’s so good!) He poured that over the salads.

He says that the dressing was too sweet, too much. I don’t know what to say, other than I ate every last piece of green on my plate: it was delicious!

I admit: I left some of the olives. I’ve never like olives. I ate most of them because I’ve been inspired by some food bloggers at The Great Big Vegetable Challenge in London. Here’s their story: Freddie, age seven, did not like vegetables. To cure him of his vegetable-phobia, his family is eating their way through an alphabet of vegetables, getting recipes from around the world and rating each vegetable recipe 1 to 10 (10 is best) on their blog. I think that if Freddie doesn’t like a vegetable in the end, he doesn’t have to eat it, but here’s the catch: he has to try it prepared in at least two different ways. Sometimes it’s the recipe that isn’t good. It seems to me that he’s always rating things from 6 to 10. That’s inspiring.

I can see how different preparations can make a difference: I don’t think I would have liked our rocket salad last night if I’d tried to eat it with Italian dressing and tomatoes, which is what I would have done. I would have eaten a few forkfuls before being disgusted and bored with the greens and going for desert. But the combination of the black currant balsamic dressing, the steak, and the other “goodies” made it very tasty. I was too full to eat ice cream.

I’m going to take the Great Big Vegetable Challenge in my approach to food: if I don’t like a food, that’s OK, but I have to try it a few different ways before I claim I don’t like it.

I’ve eaten mushrooms a number of ways (both raw and cooked), and I still don’t like them. Find me a “good” mushroom or a good mushroom recipe and I’ll try again.

So far, olives are OK, but not my favorite. My husband says we need to find “good” olives and then maybe I’ll like them more. I love a good olive oil — I’d even eat it by the spoonful — so if I could find an olive that tastes that fruity, maybe I could say I love them too.

On the average night, I simply prepare frozen vegetables for dinner. My default vegetable is broccoli: salt, pepper, butter, broccoli … mmm. My husband will always default to peas: “They are like little explosions of taste in your mouth!”

Note that I don’t consider potatoes a vegetable: I consider them a starch. (We have potatoes in some form every night.)

What’s your favorite vegetable?

One-Year Anniversary

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No, this is not my wedding anniversary: this is my blogging anniversary.

In the past year, a lot has happened. My husband and I moved to Australia. I had a baby. I went from working full-time to being a mom full-time. I learned to cook. I had abdominal surgery.

I guess that doesn’t sound like a lot, but I feel like I’ve learned a lot this year.

In the past year, I’ve written more than 80 posts. Here are some of the things I experienced and learned (and wrote about):

For good measure, here are my favorite recipe and my favorite photographs.

In looking back over these posts, I realize that not many of them have anything to do with being in Australia. I could have learned these lessons anywhere. I guess that’s the point of life: we learn what we need to learn, wherever we are.

As a stay-at-home mom, I know that I need an outlet where I can develop my creativity and my own thoughts. That’s why I like my page: it is mine.

Notice that I call it “Rebecca’s Webpage.” It is not our family page. (I don’t think my husband even reads it; if he does, it’s a month after the fact.) At the same time, I will write about my life, and of course my family is a huge part of that.

This page is my personal forum and journal, online. And I love having a place to write. When I think about this blog, I feel satisfied. And I think that’s the reason I write it.

Presto Pesto Pizza, Cookies Revisited, and Chicken Soup for the Cold

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We got back from our trip two weeks ago and I haven’t gotten into the swing of cooking new recipes each week. I’ve been relying on comfort food, like my Super-Easy Pork Chops and Macaroni and Cheese. Yesterday was a comfort food day. I spent all afternoon in the kitchen.

My husband has a sore throat and a cold, so I wanted to make some chicken soup for him. When I was looking at the supermarket for produce for the soup, I saw fresh basil, so I decided to make pesto.

Pesto is a great base for pizza, and since we can’t get decent pizza, I make it. I still miss deep-dish Chicago pizza, but this is a good second best. Making the pesto is the most time consuming part of making this pizza. Now I’ve made it, so pizza, here I come! To make a yummy pizza, I put the pesto on the store-bought pizza crust, put on some chopped sun-dried tomatoes and some fresh Roma tomatoes, put on some cheese (mozzarella, shredded Parmesan, and crumbled goat cheese, which adds a nice flavor), and maybe some other toppings (dried figs, soaked in water, taste really yummy!). Put it in the oven for the allotted time given on the store-bought pizza crust, and presto! We have pesto pizza. See below for the pesto recipe.

Then I needed to make a treat for mother’s group today, so I made the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies in the world again. They turned out better than ever! So good, in fact, that I’m going to buy cookies to take to mother’s group and keep the homemade ones for myself and for my sick husband who insists they help him feel better. (We may not stay at mother’s group anyway since my throat already has a tickle and Paul keeps sneezing and moaning.)

(By the way, I have changed the metric equivalence on the recipe: it should be 225 g of butter instead of 250 g of butter. They were much “fluffier” and not as greasy with a little bit less butter. I assume that is still equal to 1 cup of butter, but if it’s not or if your cookies seem greasy, put in less than 1 cup of butter.)

I made chicken soup, too. I didn’t put in enough chicken, but overall, the broth ended up quite yummy. The recipe I (sort of) followed said to put the following in a cheesecloth sachet: thyme, celery, parsley, black peppercorn, and bay leaf. I couldn’t find cheesecloth, so I put those things in the broth and simmered for a little while before beginning the rest of the soup. After simmering for a while, I strained out the solids and set aside the broth. I sauteed some onions, garlic, carrots, and celery, added the broth again, then threw in some potatoes and some chopped chicken. The recipe called for 6 ounces (170 g) of chicken for that much broth (about 5 litres), but it was not nearly enough chicken. Next time I’ll put in twice as much. Oh well. At least the broth was tasty! Hopefully the leftovers will help my sore throat when I come down with a cold, too. I already feel a sniffle coming on.

Here’s the pesto recipe if you want to try making pesto pizza:

Pesto Sauce

Yield:1 cup

Ingredients

2 cups fresh basil leaves, stems removed, about 2 ounces (60 g)
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons pine nuts or walnuts
1 tablespoon peeled and coarsely chopped garlic, about 3 large cloves
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon hot water

Directions

Rinse and pat dry the trimmed basil leaves.

Put the basil leaves in the container of a food processor or blender. Add the oil, pine nuts or walnuts, garlic, and salt and pepper. Blend to a fine texture but not a smooth puree, stopping the motor once to scrape down the sides of the blender container and to force the ingredients down to the blades.

Add the Parmesan cheese and water and blend just a few seconds more. Chill until served.

Serve with pasta, use as a pizza base, or spoon over broiled fish or chicken.

The Taste of Exotic Green

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As I circle around, peeling off the thin layer of brown carpet ugliness, the tangy green flesh shows through, taunting me with its juicy shimmer. I finish and put down the vegetable peeler: the kiwi fruit sits before me in its nakedness.I get out a knife and set the fruit on the cutting board. One quick cut reveals the juicy insides, the black seeds radiating out from the pure white center. “No early tastes!” I tell myself, as I hurry to slice the fruit. Soon semi-circles of green, with miniscule black spots, fill a small bowl. I sit down at the table. I place the first piece in my mouth.

I see a dark blue ocean before me: I sit on a tropical beach. Exotic greenness dances on my tongue as the flesh swims: cool, refreshing goodness.

I love an afternoon snack.

Super-Easy Pork Chops

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I had a Pork Chops with Mango Sauce recipe I was going to try the other day, until I realized that the limes I was going to use were completely moldy. Eww! I need to clean out the fridge more often (maybe before I go out of town). The mango sauce wouldn’t work so well without the lime juice and lime zest. (The only other ingredients in the sauce were chopped mint leaves, a cubbed mango, and half a red onion.)

I was feeling very uncreative in terms of what to do with the pork chops. We just wanted something quick to eat: that’s why I was going to fall back on the mango sauce. It looked so easy. I didn’t want to agonize over what to cook, but I find pork chops incredibly boring when they are just sauteed–they really need something on them. What could I do?

A quick internet search provided an easy recipe. I thought I’d share.

We had some blackberry jam in the fridge so I mixed two tablespoons of that with two tablespoons of Dijon mustard. After I browned both sides of the pork, I put a dollop of the mixture on the top of each piece of pork, covered the pan, and sauteed them until they were cooked through.

While the pork cooked, I heated some frozen vegetables and my husband made some potatoes. The whole meal was easy and super-tasty. I’ll add more mustard next time because it was incredibly subtle. But it was good as it was–you can barely taste it so if you don’t like mustard, it won’t overwhelm you.

  • Ingredients: 3 (pork, jam, mustard–plus butter for sauteeing and salt and pepper, but those don’t count)
  • Preparation: 1-2 minutes
  • Cooking time: 15-20 minutes

I cooked four of the seven chops that way. Yesterday, we cooked the other three chops. I bought limes and mixed together the mango sauce. (We omitted the red onion because apparently we didn’t have that.) My husband grilled the pork chops. Then we spooned the mango sauce over the pork.

Again, it was very tasty!

  • Ingredients: 4 (pork chops, mango, lime juice and zest, mint–plus vegetable oil for grilling and salt and pepper, but those don’t count)
  • Preparation: 10 minutes (it takes me a while to cut a mango; I’m sure my husband would have cut it faster)
  • Grilling time: 10 minutes, plus grill preparation

I love easy, tasty food!

Gingerbread

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Inspired by my cousin’s report of making gingerbread with her kids, I decided to have a go at the holiday treat too. Why not make Christmas cookies to get the Christmas spirit? Besides, I’ve been reading food blogs lately and the recipes and pictures looked so enticing.

The first challenge was the lack of molasses in this country. I’ve since been told that I can get molasses at a health food store (why a health food store?), but last week I didn’t know that. At every grocery store and specialty shop I asked, I was either asked what molasses is or directed to the pomegranate “molasses” (which is pretty much just pomegranate juice). Alas! How can you make gingerbread without molasses?!

I would have used corn syrup (known as golden syrup here) but I also couldn’t find it. I guess I didn’t want to go around to all the specialty shops again, so I just settled for maple syrup, which I had at home.

The maple syrup didn’t add particularly much. The final result was more gingersnap-like rather than gingerbread-like. That was a little disappointing, but they were still tasty. I had a fun time decorating some cookies for the ward Christmas party.

I made some missionary gingerbread men (notice the bow ties)….

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and I made some gingerbread ladies. (Notice her ruffles and the high heels.)

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OK, so I was a bit silly in my very amateur decoration. The piping tip was too large for such small cookies.

I enjoyed myself for a while, but then I looked down at all the gingerbread left to be decorated. It was already 9:30 on Thursday night and my husband had already returned home from his long meetings. I still had tons of icing left and more than 30 gingerbread men still unclothed!

I recalled how last year Mom, Dad, Frank, Elizabeth, and Daniel came and decorated graham cracker gingerbread houses. How I miss you all! Daniel, I think you’d have enjoyed decorating these little guys! I invited my husband to join in, but, you know, it really isn’t his thing.

(When I mourned the fact that I still had so many left to decorate, my husband gleefully said, “I have no sympathy!”After he ate some, however, he thanked me most sincerely for bringing the Christmas Spirit into our home. And then he cleaned up the icing-covered kitchen. What a wonderful husband I have!)

So what do you do with 32 unfrosted gingerbread men? I did what anybody in her right mind would do: I invited my Sunday school class (13-14 years old) over to decorate the rest. I froze the undecorated little guys, and they came today (Wednesday) and frosted the rest of the gingerbread men. Then they ate them and took them home with them! (I neglected to take pictures of their marvelous little creations….)

Next year, Paul will probably still be too little to even eat these guys. But in two years, I look forward to seeing his delight as he decorates his own Christmas cookies.

Comfort Food

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Last week I felt very efficient. I cleaned the whole apartment from top to bottom and cooked dinner every night. Saturday night I made a turkey dinner and we entertained. I felt very good.

This week has been kind of blah. Monday was raining. Tuesday I felt unwell. Wednesday Paul got his first immunizations so he was very unhappy and sore. Thursday I spent the day filling out insurance paperwork. I haven’t been very good at cleaning, and since I didn’t do a big shopping trip on Saturday, I can only cook what I can buy and carry in the stroller, so I’ve done some easy things.

Last night I made Macaroni and Cheese. I think of it as a comfort food because it is so easy to make. I make sure I have a block of cheddar cheese and macaroni in the house so I can make it when I’m in a pinch for a yummy dinner.

I thought I’d share the recipe. (And yes, it is so much better than Kraft.)

Easy Macaroni and Cheese

Ingredients

    500 g (1 lb) macaroni, cooked
    1 cup grated sharp Cheddar cheese
    1 cup bread crumbs
Cheese Sauce Ingredients
    4 Tbsp butter
    4 Tbsp flour
    2 1/2 cups milk, heated
    Salt
    Pepper
    Pinch of cayenne pepper
    1 cup grated sharp Cheddar cheese

Directions

    Prepare cheese sauce as follows: Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Stir in the flour and cook, stirring constantly, until the paste cooks and bubbles a bit, but don’t let it brown, about 2 minutes. Add the hot milk, continuing to stir as the sauce thickens. Bring it to a boil. Add salt and pepper to taste, lower the heat, and cook, stirring for 2 to 3 minutes more. Stir in 1 cup grated Cheddar cheese during the last 2 minutes of cooking, along with a pinch of cayenne pepper. Remove from heat.

Here’s what I’ve learned in making this dish. First, if I accidentally add too much flour, I’ll have to start over. I’ve made this dish a few times so I guess I was feeling confident at my estimating. But I accidentally put in way too much and I could tell right away it would never blend together. I dumped it out and started again.

Second, if I don’t cook the roux long enough, the sauce will not thicken. I missed that the first time or two. I just had a milky cheese sauce. How do you know when the roux is cooked long enough? I’m still trying to figure it out. My husband says it smells “nutty.” I guess so, but how do you really define that? Last night, I thought I didn’t cook it long enough because the sauce wasn’t thickening. I was going to give it five more minutes and then start over with a new roux. But then it thickened up, so I didn’t have to.

Third, I should have used whole milk! We had some in the fridge, but I didn’t think of it until after I’d added skim milk. Oh well.

Fourth, I should make sure I put in salt and pepper! The first time I omitted them. I think I used to be afraid of putting them in, for any dish. But the more the better — to a certain extent…

    Preheat the oven to 375°F (190 C). Butter a casserole dish. Put the cooked macaroni into the casserole dish, pour the cheese sauce over it, and mix gently with a fork.

Somehow, I didn’t quite have enough sauce last night. If I’d have had time, I’d have made another batch of sauce. It’s good to have very creamy mac and cheese. Instead, we just poured milk over the top of our bowls when we served it.

    Sprinkle the grated cheese evenly over the top and spread the crumbs over the cheese. Bake, uncovered, until the top is golden and the sauce is bubbling, about 30 minutes.

I didn’t measure the cheese or the breadcrumbs. I just put on as much as looked tasty.

And it was tasty! (Yes, even the leftovers are gone already!)

Some Turkey

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Everybody knows some turkey and some mistletoe/ Will help to make the season bright. –The Christmas Song

I was feeling a bit left out of the Turkey Day celebrations (since, of course, there was no holiday here). I decided that it was time to do my own Thanksgiving dinner. I invited my friend Michelle and her family for a Saturday, 1 December, Thanksgiving dinner. There were 7 people total. A small gathering, but the largest number I’ve entertained.

I went to order a turkey from the Christmas Made Easy counter on Monday so I can prepare a lovely Turkey Dinner. They won’t provide ordered turkeys until 21 December. They don’t carry turkeys other times of the year.

I finally found a 3.2 kg (7 lb) frozen turkey breast at a supermarket. They seem few and far between. You’d think they’d have big signs advertising them. Is that how it is in the States? Aren’t turkeys just flying off the shelves already?

For those of you preparing to do your own Turkey Dinner this holiday season, here is what an amateur learned her first time around.

  • A turkey breast is a lot smaller and looks a lot easier to manage than an entire turkey. (And, while I never have done an entire turkey, it really was easy to do the turkey breast!)
  • When defrosting turkey in the fridge, don’t put the turkey on the top shelf.
  • When defrosting turkey in the fridge, make sure you put a pan underneath it.
  • If you don’t do the two preceding things, you’ll have to scrub the entire fridge and throw out the fresh fruit that is sitting on the bottom shelf.
  • Brining the turkey breast really isn’t hard.
  • When cooking a turkey in a small oven, make sure the oven shelf is as low as possible. Otherwise, the turkey will be just millimetres from the top broiler and will get all crusty on top.
  • When purchased, the turkey is wrapped with a foam pad. Throw out the foam pad before putting the turkey in the oven. Otherwise, at the end you won’t be able to separate the foam from the turkey drippings and it will be kind of nasty.
  • Make your husband carve the turkey.
  • Don’t have too many dishes: turkey, cranberry sauce and gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and salad is plenty of food. There will be leftovers! (Hmmm, maybe it just wasn’t very good and that’s why it’s left over…)
  • When hurrying to put things away five minutes before company arrives, be careful not to bump the Pyrex liquid measuring cup from the top shelf of the cupboard. Otherwise, it will shatter and glass fragments will end up everywhere and you’ll be in even more of a panic. And you’ll get cuts on your hands.
  • If the pecan pie cooks too long, the crust will fly across the room when you try to cut into it.
  • If the pies don’t taste very good, just put more whipped cream on top. (Note to my family members who will be amazed at that comment: this is not Cool Whip or cream from the can, which I never have liked. This is real whipped cream, which is actually very tasty.)
  • If the pies don’t taste very good, everyone will still eat them because they have lots of sugar in them. Plus, there’s the whipped cream.

That’s what I learned. And, just to clarify, my husband (who is the true cook) had to work all day and didn’t get home until 5 p.m., when I was about to take the turkey out of the oven. (Company came at 6 p.m.) I did it all, except make the gravy and carve the turkey. Yes, I can cook a turkey dinner! Maybe I’m a cook too…

And now I feel like it’s the holidays! Happy Turkey Days to all of you!

Cleaning as Nurturing

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the talk by Sister Beck in conference about motherhood. Here’s the part I’ve been dwelling on the last few days:

Another word for nurturing is homemaking. Homemaking includes cooking, washing clothes and dishes, and keeping an orderly home. Home is where women have the most power and influence; therefore, Latter-day Saint women should be the best homemakers in the world. … Nurturing mothers are knowledgeable, but all the education women attain will avail them nothing if they do not have the skill to make a home that creates a climate for spiritual growth. Growth happens best in a “house of order,” and women should pattern their homes after the Lord’s house (see D&C 109). Nurturing requires organization, patience, love, and work.

To nurture, I need to cook, wash clothes and dishes, and keep an orderly home.

Firstly, cooking. As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve recently discovered I love to cook! Cooking no longer feels like a chore, but a delight. I can see how cooking a meal for my family is nurturing them.

Next, washing clothes and dishes. I don’t mind doing laundry and dishes. Once the clothes are clean, then the hampers are empty, and that feels satisfying. I get to do twice as much laundry now with an infant. I really don’t mind doing it. True, I dyed a few of Pauls’ white onesies pink the first week of his life, but since then, there have been no “disasters” and we’ve been clothed well.

As for dishes, one of my first jobs at BYU was a dishwasher in the CougarEat kitchens. It was relaxing. My husband does dishes each night after dinner now anyway because Paul is usually hungry at just the right moment…but really, I don’t mind dishes at all.

Finally, keeping an orderly home. I take this to mean cleaning and not just keeping things organized. I can put things away and avoid piles of “stuff” and wipe down kitchen counters. I can follow a grocery budget and keep my pantry stocked and in order. But my problem right now is cleaning. I find sweeping, mopping, cleaning toilets, scrubbing down showers, vacuuming, and dusting absolutely tedious. Mom suggested I like cooking because it’s a symbol of my love. For some reason, I just can’t think of cleaning in the same way. It just feels tedious.

My dislike of cleaning is not a new problem. As a kid, when Mom gave me my chores on Saturday mornings, I’d sing “It’s a Hard-Knock Life” and grumble about how unfair it was to have to clean. As an adult, my philosophy has always been: if I can see the dust, it’s too late. But after Paul was born, I went a month without touching a broom. As I mentioned before, that was much too long.

The problem is that we have a two-story, three-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath town home with hardwood floors the size of Kentucky. And as I got around to mopping the other day, I saw little ants and a spider’s cobweb.

As Sister Beck said, I need the “skill to make a home that creates a climate for spiritual growth.” Dust and ants hinder that spiritual growth. How can I delight in cleaning as nurturing rather than as a chore? How can I develop the same sense of satisfaction with cleaning that I recently have found with cooking?