Category Archives: Rebecca’s Hobbies

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.

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.

Reading as Home, Family, and/or Personal Enrichment

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I’ve been asked to give a presentation at Relief Society’s Home, Family, and Personal Enrichment night next week about how I love reading and literature. I plan on focusing on how reading enriches our families and our personal lives. I wanted to focus on how it enriches our home as well, but I don’t have any ideas. I’d love to hear your ideas about any part of this.

How does reading enrich your home, family, and/or personal life?

How’s Your Math?

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I’ve added the ability to comment without logging in. You must answer a simple math question. (The problem is if you answer the question wrong you lose your comment! I’m looking for a better spam guard, but in the mean time, here you go.)

You can always comment while logged in as well. I think I’ve fixed the email problems.

Site Update

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My sister gave her site a makeover, so I decided it was time to do the same, my way.

I have finally officially upgraded this site to WordPress 2.3.3. You probably don’t notice the change–it is an internal change that makes it easier for me to manage the blog. But in the process, I’ve added some new functions for you, too.
Here are the features:

  • Subscribe to comments

Check the box when you post a comment, and get the subsequent comments mailed to you. I previously had some email problems, but it should be working now. Note that you can also subscribe to the RSS feed for comments to all posts. (If you are currently subscribed to the feed, I apologize for all of the test comments I posted today. They were kind of annoying.)

  • Add formatting to comments

Click just like in Word to add bold, italics, underline, and links. Note that the icons look funny in Firefox, but they work fine.

  • Check spelling as you type a comment

If the word you type is not spelled correctly, hover over the word for suggestions.

I’ve confirmed that the email functions work now, so there shouldn’t be any error messages. But if you do get an error message and you feel like helping me out, send me a note at wordpress at my-last-name hyphen family dot org (or at any other email of mine that you have).

I’m looking for more plugins to make the site work more smoothly. If you have any requests, let me know and I’ll see what plugins are available.

The Millionaire Next Door

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At my mother’s suggestion, I listened to the abridged version (144 minutes) of this book rather than the 18-hour version. In some ways, it still was too long. You get the main idea from the beginning.

Since, like most people, I wouldn’t mind being a millionaire, I found it interesting that those with million-dollar salaries (sports figures, etc.) are rarely millionaires: although they live a “high life,” they have very little “wealth.” In other words, millionaires don’t live the lifestyles we might think we’d want to live if we earned a high income.

The premise of this book is that lifestyle that makes a difference to whether or not one becomes a millionaire (one with lots of wealth), and anyone making $60,000 a year can become a millionaire by adjusting lifestyle.

Here are the common factors that millionaires (those who “successfully build wealth”) share (I’ve merged those that I think relate):

1 and 3: They live well below their means and they believe financial independence is more important than displaying social status.

Obviously, living well below one’s means is easier to do with a high income. But even with a high income, most millionaires function on a well-thought-out budget. Most millionaires also live in a house in an average neighborhood, drive a four-year-old used car, shop at Sears and Penney’s (not Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom) and live unassuming lives. Most millionaires only wear suits they purchased at a discount and eat low-cost food (rather than expensive wine).

2: They allocate their time, energy, and money efficiently, in ways conducive to building wealth.

For example, they do not waste time “playing the stock market” but carefully figure out what they know about and invest in that. Here’s another example that they didn’t give but that I assume: they don’t waste their time and money with the lottery or gambling.

4: Their parents did not provide economic outpatient care (i.e., parents did not provide substantial cash gifts to their children).

Hmmm. No help from parents? Darn.

5: Their adult children are economically self-sufficient.

In other words, they know what they do to live frugally and were able to teach frugality; they’re kids don’t expect to live a high lifestyle, funded by their parents.

6 and 7: They are proficient in targeting market opportunities and they choose the right occupation.

I didn’t actually pay much attention to these sections — it was the end of two hours of listening. But obviously, some occupations have more promise than others (although I think it’s also important that one chooses an occupation that he or she enjoys).

In all, I enjoyed this reminder that a high income and winning the lottery are not guarantees to wealth: slow and steady wins the race. Maybe there is hope for the rest of us!

East of Eden: Good versus Evil

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John Steinbeck’s East of Eden has been banned before. I’m not surprised. It deals with attempted fratricide, prostitution, and murder. One character, Cathy, is described as a monster. But as I read it and recognized the obvious references and echoes of Genesis, I was overcome and enlightened. Combining the plot with the incredibly well written descriptions of the characters, the Salinas valley (California), and five decades, this is a novel I want to reread.

I am reminded of Mosiah 3:19.

For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.

When Adam and Eve left Eden, they, for the first time, had wickedness within them. They were able to give in to temptation. But they had the choice to choose the good. In Genesis, Cain chose evil and was sent “East of Eden” (see 4:1-16). Nevertheless, Cain had the choice to choose whether he would follow good or evil throughout his life: he was not condemned straight away.

In this novel, what makes Cathy and others evil is that they don’t “choose” the good. They don’t put off the “natural man.” And that makes all of the difference. On the other hand, other characters in the novel seem to completely miss the “natural man” and are thus overwhelmingly “good.” Ultimately, though, Steinbeck’s point is that we all must choose what we will do: the crux of agency is that we are free to choose. Everyone is!

I don’t know how many reading this review will want to read the novel. Some of the situations and characters are downright evil. But I think a key to reading literature is finding how it relates to your own life; part of what I gain by reading East of Eden is a better appreciation of what it means to have agency.

How Do You Read?

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In John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, Steinbeck contrasts two of his characters, and I love this imagery:

And the books that came into the house, some of them secretly–well, Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe. But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands.

Part 3, Chapter 23

I think I’ve always been like Samuel: riding along a book (especially novels) without really thinking about them. A few months ago, my husband called me a “page-turner”: as long as I’m turning pages I don’t care what I’m reading, and as a result, I can read two pages and not remember what I just read. The bottom line is, I read too fast.

When my husband pointed this out to me, I decided it was time to read more carefully. I’ve been trying to “crawl between covers” lately — that’s one reason I’ve been giving book reports on this blog.

How do you read a book: do you ride the rapids or tunnel like a mole? If neither, is there another image that you can apply to yourself?

Painting a Novel: East of Eden by John Steinbeck

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My writing teachers have always instructed to “show not tell.” I didn’t understand it, really, until I began to read John Steinbeck’s East of Eden last month.

I thought “showing” meant describing the character in a context: hair color, quirks, and personality traits, mentioned as the story unfolds. Here’s a silly example I just thought of: “She tossed her mousy brown hair over her shoulder, crossed her arms in front of her, and narrowed her dark brown eyes as the wicked man sauntered toward her.” With that type of description, I can picture what is happening: the movie is playing and I don’t need to guess what people look like or how they react to a situation.

Steinbeck does not do that. He steps aside from the plot development to show us who these characters are. This could be boring, but it is not when Steinbeck does it. Here are a few paragraphs describing Liza Hamilton.

Liza Hamilton was a very different kettle of Irish. Her head was small and round and it held small round convictions. She had a button nose and a hard little set-back chin, a gripping jaw set on its course even though the angels of God argued against it.

Liza was a good plain cook, and her house — it was always her house — was brushed and pummeled and washed.

She wore her hair always pulled tight back and bunned behind in a hard knot. And since I can’t remember how she dressed, it must have been that she wore clothes that matched herself exactly. She had no spark of humor and only occasionally a blade of cutting wit. She frightened her grandchildren because she had no weakness. She suffered bravely and uncomplainingly through life, convinced that that was the way her God wanted everyone to live. She felt that rewards came later.

(Part 1, Chapter 2)

Steinbeck’s approach gives us a description of this woman as if he were describing a photograph (her head, her nose, her chin, her hair) and we can picture Liza in our minds because the description gives us the information a photograph would. But Steinbeck is also able to give her a personality: Liza Hamilton becomes real to me. As a result, as the novel progresses, I am able to anticipate how she would react simply because her character is so full of life. That is hard to do.

And guess what? She was real: Steinbeck based Samuel and Liza Hamilton in the novel on his own maternal grandparents of the same name. That underscores what I’ve always known: write what you know about and it will come alive. By extension, if a writer doesn’t know a character (or a setting or time period) — her personality, physical description , and personal history, for example — he can’t truly describe her so the reader feels he knows her too.

Have you ever looked at an oil painting up close? Some strokes of color are thicker than others; each stroke of paint leaves a texture. The painting may not look like a photograph: the colors will be different and the artist’s interpretation of the person, place, or thing will be different from the “real thing.” But often there is a texture that makes an oil painting much more interesting than a photograph would be.

Steinbeck writes an oil painting. He paints the characters, the setting, and the decades. I recognize the textures as I read the novel. It feels rich and full of life, and I love to read it. Truly, this texture helps make it a classic.

I have much more to say about East of Eden. But, for now, tell me: can you recommend any other novels that you feel “paint” the characters, the setting, and the time period? I want to read more.

A poem for the IRS

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How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.
I hate thee for the withheld taxes I want to spend
And for the forms that never end,
And for all the complications — I am dazed.
I hate thee for the time you take. For days
I agonize as I calculate, and the numbers blend:
I hate thee from the first line until the end.
I hate thee presently, as I long for May.
I hate thee sluggishly, for the work is so slow.
Finding an error-filled column again, I groan.
I hate thee with my mind, heart, and soul.
With my hard-earned money, I hate thee with a moan,
Tears, agony, the same each year! — and, yet I know,
I shall but hate thee less a refund sent.

Note: Unless your tax situation deals with capital gains, itemization, two workers, multiple states, multiple countries, new children, and the previous five years, I don’t want to hear about it!

P.S. My husband wonders if I have anything better to do than write pretty bad amateur poetry. Silly question!