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In the post office lobby, down to the Gas-N-Go, at the monthly meeting of the fire department, everyone I meet is bemoaning the lack of snow. Nobody—not even the natives—likes the cold, but cold and white you can take. Snow obscures the grit and covers the trash. Snow pretties up the scene. Renders it bearable. Whereas cold and brown leads to drink and desolation. All around town the snowmobilers are moping, their sleds trailered up and waiting. They drive to the bar in their pickup trucks and pine for a blizzard so they might drive to the bar on their snowmobiles. Even at twenty below, snow brightens the bleak earth. It is a postcard effect, and won’t do you a lick of good if you slip and break your hip on the way to the mailbox, but it can be enough to keep you off the sauce. On a more fundamental level, it insulates the topsoil, limiting the depth of freeze. Exposed as they are, my raised beds are extra vulnerable. I neglected to mulch them with straw last fall, and now they are frozen through and through. The last couple of years I have been nursing a haphazard little collection of perennials. Summer savory, some sage, and a delicious cluster of lemon thyme. Now they are almost certainly dead forever.
I am an idiot for failing to mulch. It would have taken me all of fifteen minutes. I’m particularly chagrined about the lemon thyme. It was a gift from my friends John and Julie. Every year they oversee a magnificent garden. They sprouted a cutting, folded it into a moist paper towel, sealed the packet in a baggie, and sent it to me through the mail. I got it to take root and it thrived. By the end of summer I was using it to make pan-roasted breast of chicken. A little olive oil, a little brown chicken stock, some pepper, and the clean lemony notes of the thyme. Simple. Delicious. Now the green is gone, the bush a sparse tangle of stems.
As a longtime bachelor it is a matter of overblown personal pride that less than ten frozen pizzas have crossed my threshold since I bought this house. Sadly, there have been other lapses. A few years back, I had some blood work done. My “bad” cholesterol was mildly elevated. If it gets any higher, my general practice doc said, we should consider medication, but for now, give it a year. Watch your diet, see if you can bring it down. In the isolation of the doctor’s office I resolved to eat nothing but alfalfa sprouts and apple wedges. I braced for the pending austerity by grabbing a burger and curly fries for the drive home. For the next year and a half, I paid strict attention to my diet, consuming whole wheat, tofu, baked fish, lettuce, broccoli, all those do-gooder foods. The ones that leave you feeling dietetically righteous.
And hungry. Which is to say after all the conscientious nibbling, I would fling myself off the wagon. Follow the tofu nibbles with deep-fried cheese curds. Lay a foundation of fresh vegetable salad, then brick it over with half a tray of caramel bars. Skinless chicken followed by chocolate of any formation or quality. Carrots and half a bag of mini-doughnuts. And if the cupboard is bare, a mad four-block dash to TJ’s Food-N-Fun for a Tubby Burger. Nineteen months later, I had another blood draw and found my LDL up another ten points.
So my willpower rates a big fat zero. But what a repulsive thing to associate with food: willpower. As if one would parse out love or oxygen by the teaspoon. When I look at my picture of Irma Harding on the cover of Freezer Fancies, I think, sure, she’d make me eat my spinach, but then she would slip me a batch of butter-larded freezer cookies, a basket of shredded coconut balls, or a perfectly engineered chunk of chocolate whipped-cream cake. I would eat them right down, and she would grin at me, drawing one side of her mouth back from that beautiful, tad-crooked tooth, and she would ask, Baby? Are you still hungry? And I would say, Oh yes, Irma, Oh yes I am.
My four seminal culinary influences—listed in order of appearance—are:
Jacques, a highly skilled and half-crazed emergency medical technician. We pulled a lot of forty-eight-hour weekend shifts together around the end of the 1980s. Our headquarters were in a funeral home, and in between ambulance calls we prepared our meals in a little kitchen ten feet from the embalming room. Jacques taught me to rub venison with allspice. Sounds simple, but it was my first exposure to red meat jazzed up with something other than Lawry’s Seasoned Salt. Jacques’s derring-do struck me as très haute, and opened my mind to further possibilities. Allspice was my gateway drug.
Jim Harrison and every word he’s ever written about food, even though some bemoan all the garlic. More than the words, the way. Gusto meets reverence.
Jennifer Paterson and Clarissa Dickson Wright. The Two Fat Ladies. Brought to you by the BBC. I watch and rewatch their five-video box set. Jennifer and Clarissa empower me with broad license and anchovy paste. As an aside, Jim Harrison is on record poor-mouthing the use of butter in cooking, while the Two Fat Ladies lob it in at every turn. With the recent death of Jennifer, we have lost the chance to resolve the issue the way it should be resolved: in a three-way triple-threat steel-cage match featuring spatulas and olive oil.
Think Like a Chef, by Tom Colicchio, whose message I rightly or wrongly took to be, regarding recipes, improvisation trumps pedantry. Having said that and scorched the cutlets, it is doesn’t hurt to recall that Picasso drew a lot of orthodox ladies before cranking out Woman in a Hat.
Riffing off these four muses, I have concocted rosemary-rubbed venison roast served with a red wine and shallot reduction fit to make an atheist say grace, plated chilled leeks drizzled with a dill mustard vinaigrette that left me trilling aloud, and I once faked up a duck soup that I am certain was eligible for several international cooking awards. On the other hand, I have also created frankly repulsive stir-fry eggplant parmesan the consistency of oil-soaked felt, and marinara resembling bloody library paste.
When something is a success, I jot down the recipe and pin it to a three-by-four-foot bulletin board I fastened to the kitchen wall with drywall screws when I moved into the place. These recipes don’t qualify as recipes in the formal sense; they’re more a record of ingredients that went together well when I threw them together. Measurements, if they are cited at all, are generally denoted in increments of glug, slosh, or tad. Over the years I’ve lived in this house, the ingredient lists have accumulated like handbills, shingling over one another so that it often takes a minute or two of leafing and peeking before I locate the one-off venison and parsnips mélange that tasted so good last March. When one of these improvisations turns out, that’s when I notice my singlehood. That’s when I miss someone. You want to look up from your plate with a smile and just shake your head at the fundamental wonder of food and the civilized joy of convening to eat.
I had this moment where I thought I might try baking my way through Freezer Fancies, but then I checked my calendar and I will be on the road ten days this month and the dishes are stacking up as it is, so I have decided to choose one recipe and see how it turns out. This decision of course has nothing to do with my schedule and instead is predicated on my inability to stay on task, combined with a healthy respect for baking, which I distinguish from “cooking.” When I cook, I tend to wing it. Baking requires follow-through and exactitude, to which I respond, Hey! Wanna go ride bike? Despite fond memories of working with teaspoons and measuring cups and learning the difference between baking powder and baking soda while making chocolate chip cookies from scratch with Mom, I rarely do any baking.
It’s fun to review Freezer Fancies, with its vintage graphics and vernacular. I’m going to take a pass on the Pink Party Cake. Ditto the Ice Cream Bell, the Pink Tapioca Pudding, the Meringue Shells, and the variously complicated Nest o’Balls. Nor shall I make the Ice Cream Man, directions on page 12: “This gay little fellow will be the life of any party and the kiddies will love him!” Time has a way of modulating the lexicon. Ultimately, I chose to make the Frozen “Six-in-One” Cookies. “Your kitchen will develop into an after-school ‘hangout’ if you use this assortment of ‘melt-in-your-mouth’ cookies!” I swear I’ll call the cops.
The Six-in-One recipe was simple enough, but I modified it, going Four-In-One. I skipped the coconut and the raisin versions, and wound up with four wads of
dough: plain, chocolate, pecan, and a cinnamon-and-nutmeg combination. I rolled each dough ball into a cylinder one and three-quarter inches in diameter, sliced a few cookies off for immediate baking, wrapped the remaining cylinders in plastic, and placed them in my freezer. I put the cookies in the oven and brewed coffee.
Until I came across Freezer Fancies and set out to collect Irma’s entire oeuvre, I was in possession of exactly thirteen cookbooks. A comparatively modest collection, but I have my reasons, the main one being, nothing snarls me up like options. I blame this on my genes and my waste-not, want-not penny-pinching proto-Calvinist roots, which imbued me with the feeling that to be in possession of a useful thing and not use it is to allow the devil to wedge his big toe in the screen door of your soul. This line of thinking engenders teetering stacks of hand-washed yogurt cups, bales of folded grocery bags, impassable porches, and the hoarding of broken-handled snow shovels. It follows that the implied responsibility inherent in a collection of cookbooks is overwhelming.
Genetically, the problem is exacerbated by the fact that I am pathologically unable to maintain the process of linear thought. In conversation I rarely plow halfway through a sentence before my attention, best characterized as a dim-witted antelope, spots a flag waving from the topical periphery and skips off to investigate. My brain zigzags like an amped-up puppy bounding around the chicken yard, never able to pick just one bird and stick with it. It’s like Rain Man in here, minus the aptitude for math. I have a hard time starting things and I have a hard time finishing things. Once while speaking at a camp for troubled youths on the topic of how they might get their lives together, I looked down at my sandaled feet and noted I had trimmed nine out of ten toenails.
Combine guilt-ridden sense of duty with terminal indecision and you will understand why I resist bringing any more cookbooks into the house. I look at my stack of thirteen, and I hear an austere Depression-era voice in my head, saying, Hundreds of perfectly good recipes in there, and you haven’t even touched them. There is work to be done, and I am way behind. I’ve tallied the workload, and it freaks me out:
Betty Crocker’s Cooking for One. A gift from Mom when I got my first apartment. Reminds me of the love we never sufficiently return and thus the very sight of it renders me melancholy. Tears in the spaghetti sauce. Leafing through it now, I note that I have yet to compose Chicken Livers in Toast Cup. Number of recipes: 177.
Untitled. A pamphlet of recipes published by the China Village company and given away as a premium for the purchase of a wok. Got the pamphlet when Mom gave me the wok. Used the wok a lot, but not the recipes. I note my mother has inscribed “bland” beside Chicken with Mushrooms. This from a woman who wears her hair in a bun and once eased the family through a lean stretch by feeding us boiled wheat from a plastic trash can. Her idea of bland implies an absence of flavor so utter as to create a vacuum capable of bending light. Number of recipes: 11.
Kenmore Microwave Oven Use & Care Manual and Cookbook. Never used it. Number of recipes: 25.
Simple Cuisine, by Jean-Georges Vongerichten. I bought the book after reading a review extolling its combination of simplicity and sophistication, principles I trust guided Jean-Georges when he catered Donald Trump’s third wedding, where simplicity and sophistication convened for Foie Gras with Quince-Pineapple Compote, Lobster Daikon Rolls with Rosemary Ginger Sauce, and Caviar-Filled Beggars’ Purses Topped with Gold Leaf. I have memorized his edict that the essence of any vinaigrette is to use one part acid to two parts oil. Number of recipes: 205.
Balti Curry Cookbook, by Pat Chapman, founder of the Curry Club and self-described “curryholic.” Sometime in 1984 at roughly 1:15 A.M. Greenwich Mean Time my English friend Tim stumbled from a Cannock pub and led me to an Indian restaurant called the Padma, where I ate my first curry. I have craved coriander and poppadams ever since, but stop short of calling myself a “curryholic.” When Tim mailed the cookbook, he enclosed a few Curry Club packets with which I was able to concoct some passable dishes. As for the cookbook, I admit I have never used it, in spite of the titillation inherent in a subtitle that promises to reveal “The exciting new curry technique.” Number of recipes: 100.
Indian Meat and Fish Cookery, by Jack Santa Maria. Also from Tim. This one I used, if only to make my own Garam Masala, which sadly came down on the side of sawdust. Number of recipes: 239.
Beaver Tails & Dorsal Fins, by G. Lamont Burley. Subtitle: Wild Meat Recipes. My rifle-toting grandfather gifted my nonhunting mother with this little number during the deer hunting season of 1986, which by chance coincides with that period of time in which my younger brother John was working through his amateur taxidermist phase and had become prone to storing partially resurrected subjects in the freezer. You’d get a hankering for some maple nut ice cream and find your access blocked by pelts and frozen snoots. I retain the book for sentimental reasons, and for the possibility that I may one day be required to barbecue a skunk (page 16). G. Lamont Burley claims to be an all-around woodsman and ridge runner, and I believe him. Number of recipes: 42.
Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices, by George Leonard Herter and Berthe E. Herter. In the tradition of G. Lamont Burley, only edgier. Consider the introduction: “For your convenience I will start with meats, fish, eggs, soups and sauces, sandwiches, vegetables, the art of French frying, desserts, how to dress game, how to properly sharpen a knife, how to make wines and beer, how to make French soap, what to do in case of hydrogen or cobalt bomb attack. Keeping as much in alphabetical order as possible.” Included are instructions on how to buy wieners. Number of recipes: 94, not counting those for beer, wine, and French soap.
Rival Crock-Pot 3½ Quart Stoneware Slow Cooker. Recipe pamphlet for use with the Model 3100. The Beef Stew is not bad. I cannot vouch for the Magic Meat Loaf. Number of recipes: 25.
Betty Crocker’s Dinner for Two Cookbook. Mom again. “You can always freeze the other half,” she’d say, but the implication remained. This is the 1958 edition, and I cherish it for the funky artwork. When I was a child I leafed through it like a picture book. Number of recipes: 491.
Good Housekeeping’s Family Favourites. The Great Britain edition, as you might infer from the u. A gift to my mother from her English pen pal Pat in 1957. Twenty-seven years later I would slink into Pat’s house at 4 A.M. smelling of curry. Recipes include Jam Roly-Poly, Mutton Broth calling for scrag end of lamb, an imponderable Sheep’s Head Broth, and the legendary—you’re the naughty one here, not the British—Spotted Dick. Number of recipes: 500.
Let’s Start to Cook. Published by the Farm Journal. Time and time again, I turn to this one for the basics. Most remarkable for the cover art, produced in 1966 by the design firm Kramer, Miller, Lombden, Glassman and featuring stylized green beans, cupcakes iced with what appears to be Gillette Foamy, and an orange sherbert salad the size of your head—all on a hot pink background. Ten years later the same firm designed the cover art for the Messianic Records release Songs for the Flock, available at press time through the Jews for Jesus Web site. Songs for the Flock features a photograph of yearling lambs, thus making the album cover more appetizing than the cookbook cover. Number of recipes: 300. Think Like a Chef, by Tom Colicchio. This is where I learned to roast the tomatoes. It is also where I picked up the term pan-roasted, which sounds simple and classy, even if you’re just frying chicken. The photographs in this cookbook are pure glistening titillation. Number of recipes: 111.
Thirteen cookbooks, 2,320 recipes. And you wonder why I get short of breath? Not so bad if you cook three meals a day. But right off the bat, you figure breakfast is shot, recipe-wise. I make pancakes maybe twice a year, usually from the recipe on the mix box. Otherwise it’s coffee ’til noon and whatever carbohydrates I can scrounge, the primary danger being that I will run an errand taking me within six miles of a gas station with a doughnut rack. Lunch—even if you work at home, which I mostly do—is rarely the time to cook. Usually I eat out of a can or plastic container, or make
a sandwich. So let’s say I’m very rigorous and use three—no let’s not be silly, two—recipes to make supper. Subtract for the fact that I wind up eating outside the house two nights per week. Take off two more nights for all the times I wait until I’m too hungry to cook properly and instead binge on fig newtons, jerky sticks, or a 1992 Minnesota Twins plastic stadium cup full of Lucky Charms. Now we’re down to six recipes per week. I am blessed with charitable friends who invite me in (or are too polite to turn me away) for dinner roughly twice per month, and as long as I remain on speaking terms with the relatives, Christmas and Thanksgiving are off the table. Ten days a year I go deer hunting dawn to dusk and return home sapped of culinary initiative. Once a month I shop hungry and wolf down broasted chicken and jo-jos in the IGA parking lot. Finally, the average adult has two to four common colds a year, average duration one to two weeks, let’s split the difference and say three ten-day bouts. No one wants to cook food they can’t taste, so that’s another thirty days shot. At this optimistic pace it will take me fourteen years, ten months, and fifteen days to get through every recipe in the house.
And we haven’t even addressed the Internet, otherwise known as the Devil’s Mind-Fryer. I recently developed a jones for snickerdoodles, so I entered “snickerdoodle recipe” into a search engine, which in pointthree-eight seconds returned the usual thousand hits and assorted iniquities. The world is impossibly ornate. Feeling a twinge of panic at all the overload, I selected a single recipe site, the plan being to narrow things down. I typed “snickerdoodle” on the home page and it scrolled out twenty recipes. Twenty recipes… for a cookie containing a sum total of seven ingredients not counting the cinnamon. Operating in this range of abundance locks me up. How in the name of sifted sugar do you choose? What if the all-time world-record blue-ribbon who’s-your-grandma finest snickerdoodle recipe ever committed to a gingham-trimmed note card is sitting there like one of the nine original Beanie Babies at a yard sale and I skip it for a mistranscribed abridgement of Aunt Tooty’s Double-Doodle Snickerdoodles supplied by Sylvia G. in Omaha who frankly skimps on the butter? How will I know what might have been? The logistics and bulk staples required to cook one batch of all twenty recipes are prohibitive. Three minutes ago I wanted a cookie. Now I am leaning into my computer screen, hand on mouse, face frozen in a rictus of dither.