The PB Blues

Blue no longer. Peanut butter, bacon and white bread is the atheist's manna. Now the difficulty is resisting making it for breakfast every morning (luckily, we used up the rest of the bacon fixing our sandwiches). To stave off any errant PBB cravings I made a batch of oatmeal breakfast bars with dried cranberries, granola and bittersweet chocolate, and I have a pot of french onion soup burbling on the stove for dinner. I'm going to add some fresh focaccia and a salad and a large glass of red wine, settle on the couch, and write my new syllabus.

T starts rehearsals at one of Portland's premier theatres tonight, so the cat and I have the run of the house. It's so beautifully clean (downstairs, anyway)! T and I spent all day spring cleaning--stove, cabinets, bookshelves, linens--which was boring but entirely satisfying. I've promised to clean the bathroom, and I need to leave for the gym in 20 minutes, so I better stop blogging. I just wanted to recommend the Elvis-wich. EAT IT. It will curtail your woes and make a party in your mouth.

What Will I Eat To Cure These Sunday Blues?

It's been a difficult week, partly because of Monday's dental fiasco and partly for reasons I don't feel like enumerating. There have been highlights, like finding out that my health insurance covers my visits to Bernie the Naturopath Sensei and watching my younger brother get spectacularly drunk and begin shedding his secrets like an itchy second skin. I also have T, who is always a comfort, and a carton of chocolate sorbet and a disc of Freaks and Geeks episodes for when I really need to mope. We also spent a couple of evenings with Tom's childhood friend Carrie, who is gorgeous, charming and so totally full of shit that every moment with her is delightful and hilarious. So when I survey the week in its totality life is not so bad.

But that's no reason not to eat like it is. To cure the aches in my heart this week I think I'm going to cook something divine and scandalous, like Nigella's grilled Skippy peanut butter and bacon sandwich on white bread. I'll walk to the local Safeway feeling deliciously guilty and excited. I've been morbidly fascinated by the Elvis-wich ever since Martha Stewart Living did a spread on alternative club sandwiches several years ago. It looks so good! Golden bread laced with butter, smothered in rich, sweet peanut butter and graced with a few strips of crisp bacon drizzled with maple syrup. Each bite must be a combination of sweet, salty, creamy and crunchy Americana that even Ruth Reichl would approve of. (Ruth Reichl is, by the way, my culinary hero. She understands the sensuality of ingredients and dining, and is never afraid of food.) I'll eat my sandwich on the couch and watch the latest episode of Survivor, just to fully savor the trashiness of my weekend coping mechanism.

But before I descend into the subversive world of emotional eating and television I have to finish grading my students' finals and call my sweet friend Glenna. T and I also have to go watch the latest show at the theatre and have dinner at his parents' house, so I will have to grade with speed and determination in order to save ample time for Glenna and my sandwich and possibly a long hot shower to wash away the yuckiness of this week and make me feel new again.

Food.
Friends.
Hot Water.

What else could a girl ask for?

Dr. Doom and Hades' Porcelain Crown

It all started with an ill-fated trip to a dentist who specializes in cosmetics. I don't go in for unnecessary dental work, but Dr. Calcagano was recommended to me by a coworker and I needed a routine cleaning. This was several months ago. I went in for the cleaning and emerged with an appointment to have one of my metal fillings replaced with a 3/4 crown. According to Dr. Tooth Demon, this is because old fillings can crack and they contain mercury. I wasn't over-eager to spend the money on an uncracked filling, but the dentist's precaution seemed valid and I wanted to avoid the root canal that comes with a fractured tooth.

That was my first mistake. The crown was expensive and led to a lot of new sensitivity and discomfort. I decided after the procedure that I would resist all of Dr. Blond Evil's future efforts to replace my remaining fillings, but--on the plus side--I'd learned a lesson about the ideology of cosmetic dentistry (Why Leave Well Enough Alone When You Can Replace It With A Prettier, More Expensive Prosthetic) and moved on, albeit by favoring the left side of my mouth.

That was my second mistake. (Not that I had a choice by this point: it's useless to mourn over a tooth now calcifying in a bio waste facility.) Three months passed and I began experiencing a deepening discomfort in my crown. First an acute sensitivity to cold, then a deep ache that woke me up in the night and pursued my jawline in a near perfect semicircle of ow.

Back to the Dental Dominatrix for a new round of pleasure.
"I'm probably overreacting," I told the jovial dental assistant, "But it's really starting to hurt."
"No problem," she replied in the kindly, conspiratorial tone that all of Doctor Barbie's assistants employ. "We don't want you in pain!"
Not in pain, perhaps, but certainly in debt. For here is what happened next.

No sooner had the good doctor x-rayed and tapped my teeth when she cheerily announced that I had irreversible nerve damage and needed an emergency root canal. She got to work immediately, stuffing my mouth with a dental dam (the domestic equivalent of water boarding), numbing my face up to the eyeballs, and drilling away with a stunning array of equipment. I knew something was amiss when my otherwise petite and Prada-clad dentist started breathing heavily and sweating over the din of the drill.
"Well, I can only find one canal," she regretted to inform me. "And I can't even get down that one. We'll have to send you upstairs to Dr. Johnson."
Dr. Johnson is a root canal specialist. The perky assistant marched me upstairs mid-procedure, swollen, stuffed with cotton, and oozing little trickles of bloody spit, where I got to sit for 45 minutes and try not to cry with frustration. The icing on the cake was the unfeeling secretary, who informed me that I would just have to wait because they were very busy and I "didn't have an appointment." When I finally got into the new dentist's chair (shockingly Ken Doll-ish, if Ken was curt and a little chubby), I received another numbing shot, another joyous dental dam, a broken spit suction tool, an aggressive large male hand in my mouth, and HALF of a root canal.
"I'm sorry," Ken said sympathetically while I squirmed in pain and irritation, "But we're very busy today. I'll just medicate your tooth and see you next week to finish the job."
To be fair, I think he stopped in part because the numbing medicine that I had received 3 1/2 hours earlier was wearing off and I was clutching the arms of the chair like an action hero clutches the mountain cliff's edge. His sympathy didn't extend to the bill, however, which was enormous. Again, imagine me confronting the emotionless secretary, trying not to cry while I hand over my first born child. Still drooling blood, of course.

The day would have concluded relatively unhappily after this, but more adventure was in store for me. You see, Dr. Blond Evil's office validates parking, but Dr. Ken Doll's does not. So I got to walk several blocks downtown in the pouring rain, looking like Clint Eastwood after a stroke, grimacing in pain, to find an ATM machine to pay for parking. At this point I also realized that I hadn't eaten since 6:20am.

What eats at my heart and soul, and mouth, is that my tooth was 100% healthy before the Blond Death took over. And now I have paid for a crown, a root canal, and innumerable x-rays in two dental offices. The injustice of it all! The naivete of Little Chef! And deep in my lidocained, bitter heart is the (basically irrational) fear that they've tapped the wrong tooth.

I have half a mind to write my dentist a letter, but I hate to be "that patient." My mouth feels like Dante's 7th circle and my cheek looks like Cerberus' ugliest head. My wallet is empty and my faith in dentistry is shattered. Thank goodness for T, who is bringing me hot and sour soup. Life is full of the biggest blessings.

Cohabitation, Family-Style

My dad made an interesting suggestion the other night, one which my parents have coyly talked around for years and are only now making explicit. I have a feeling that this change in rhetorical method has to do with the fact that T and I are planning on buying a house some time this year and that the houses we can afford are, in real estate jingo, "cozy," "full of character," and very "vintage." They also all happen to be in "good neighborhoods for first-time home buyers," which is a transparent euphemism for, "We've just evicted the meth addicts and people of color! Come, o ye educated young white folk, and gentrify the Hood!"

But this is besides the point. What my father is suggesting--with my mother hovering earnestly nearby--is that T and I consider moving into a large house with them.

Consider the benefits:
1. Built in babysitting when the time arrives.
2. Shared household expenses.
3. Shared organic garden.
4. A return to the centrality of family intimacy and support in American life that began to die out with the baby boomers.
5. Partially exempt ourselves from the failing American system of individual acquisition--reducing our geographical and, to a lesser extent, carbon footprints.
6. Provide our filmmaker friend with the basis for an excellent, European cinema-esque family dramedy.

It might be nice to live with my parents, provided that we had (as my father insists we would) a private apartment and the same financial and social independence we have now (more so, in fact, as we get older and more successful). I like the idea of collective dinners and proximity to the people we love. I also like the idea of living in a classy house in a beautiful neighborhood, rather than a 900 sqft bungalow in Felony Flats.

But, I have considerable concerns:
1. Is it possible to have real independence from your parents' concerns and hopes for you if you live one ceiling away from them? My father already shoots rays of anxiety and advice from across the river. Won't the temptation to intercede just grow stronger as the distance between us recedes? Also, how can T and I grow as independent adults if we remain somewhat dependent on my parents' resources?
2. There's something to be said for privacy. I like making my own financial decisions. I like raising the heat if it's really freezing out. I like coming home and feeling unobserved. Kicking my shoes off, changing into pajama bottoms and getting dinner rolling. Taking a hot bath if I feel like it, having sex on our orange velvet couch if I feel like it, conducting ridiculous and embarrassing conversations with the cat if I feel like it. Not waking up to the morning habits of other people. You might say that most of this is possible even living with my parents (the couch would obviously be in our section of the house), but a lot of my daily activities remain exciting and fun because they're things I started doing when I first moved out on my own. It just feels good--physically and psychologically--to stretch my legs in my own space.
3. I love my baby brother, but I don't want to become the in-house babysitter. This might change as T and I have children--why not have another youngster running around--but right now it's lovely to shirk the daily responsibilities of parenthood.
4. Our design input--house and garden--will be severely limited if we share space with my parents. It's important not to feel like a guest in your own house.

In the end, I doubt we'll move in together, at least right now; I'm sure we'll end up caring for either my parents or T's parents down the line. But I do think a seismic shift needs to occur in the American lifestyle so that we all live more sustainably and more connectedly with one another. Owning one's own piece of the pie may be intrinsic to capitalism, but it's hurting our resources and landscape. Maybe the independence and privacy T and I crave are the negative results of a social system that privileges consumer acquisition--that illogically equates success with buying your own stuff and spatially separating yourself from your family and friends. Our children would love living with grandma and grandpa and Uncle Luke. It would be nice after a long day to run down the stairs and suggest a communal dinner. To all be in one place and around to help one another.

I don't know. Part of me is seduced by the idea, and the other parts repulsed. We can always buy a house now and consider a collective move later, after watching the evolution of the American financial market and social welfare system (health care, education, employment) for a while. All I know is that I do want to make a greater effort to live well in this world, making healthy decisions for our environment and city. And it's a start, but not enough, to buy organic and local food and to use organic skin care products. It's going to require reappraising what it means to live successfully and self-satisfyingly in a space that needs to be shared and preserved.

Baketastic

Maybe it's escapism from the dour economy, or a sign of a lagging social life, but I can't get myself out of the kitchen. Pork cutlets with thyme, apples and cream, roasted carrots with olive oil, thyme, and celtic sea salt, chicken stew with tomatoes, white beans and gremolata, whole wheat bread, squash with coconut and ginger...I just want to sink my hands into soft piles of flour and dazzle my tongue with spices.

Tonight after dinner I found myself back in the kitchen baking coconut macaroons with bittersweet chocolate and vegan oatmeal breakfast bars with dried cranberries and raw sunflower seeds. Everything is vegan these days, because my naturopath diagnosed my mystery finger as rheumatic and took me off dairy. I don't think the diet is permanent, but it hasn't been nearly as difficult as I thought it might be. I just use soy and almond milks for baking and cooking (soy cream worked wonders in the pork dish, above) and search around for vegan recipes on the internet. I try not to long for cheese, though it seems like every delicious recipe in the March Gourmet uses Parmesan or Gruyere--two of my absolute favorite tastes in the world. Somehow, despite vegan websites' arguments to the contrary, I just don't believe that nutritional yeast is a satisfying substitute for aged Italian Parmesan, with all of its rich, salty crumbles and crags. But despite the occasional pang of cheese envy, I'm a pretty happy omnivorous "vegan." It's a healthy way to eat, and it encourages experimentation. For instance, tonight's oatmeal bars have raw crunchy almond butter instead of butter or oil.

One troubling thing I have noticed, however, while perusing vegan cookbooks and websites, is the amount of additives and weird food science that real vegans consume on a daily basis. Plant-based milks, margarines, fake meats, egg substitute--all of these "food" products are made up of huge lists of ingredients with scientific prefixes and suffixes. I understand the moral--and certainly the dietary--arguments for veganism, but it seems a little odd to be replacing whole, natural foods with items that have to be made in a factory laboratory. I've decided that while organic almond or soy milk is a quasi necessity in the kitchen--to enrich homemade bread, dilute the morning coffee, make a creamy dish--margarine definitely is not. Neither is egg substitute (I use real eggs, but one could just as easily use ground flax seeds) or vegan cheese (it looks and tastes like a Kraft single; first, I will have to get desperate for a grilled cheese sandwich). There's just no need to be putting that crap into my body--I have a rheumatic finger because there are already toxins in my joints. Why add more?

But I didn't mean to lampoon vegan ingredients. I meant to express my surprise pleasure in exploring a whole new food world. I'm having especial fun with vegan-izing baked goods, as I was getting bored with my scrambled eggs or apple and almond butter breakfasts. And while I look forward to renewing my relationship with ricotta and sharp cheddar, I know I'm going to eat well dairy-free for the foreseeable future. I just hope the naturopath doesn't cut out wheat next. Then I might cry.

(Hopefully) Delicious Vegan Oatmeal Breakfast Bars

3 C raw oats
1/2 C whole wheat flour
1/4 C ground flaxseed OR ground almonds
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
a couple pinches of ground ginger
1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
6 Tb brown sugar (or honey, if you like)
1 C apple juice
1/2 C raw almond butter (or mashed avocados, bananas, apple sauce, peanut butter, etc.)
additions: dried cranberries and raw sunflower seeds (or chocolate chunks, other dried fruit, nuts, coconut)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a square pan. Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Add wet ingredients, stir well. (It will be pretty sticky.) Press into pan and bake for 30 minutes. Transfer pan to rack and cool completely before slicing.

On the Pleasures of Chocolate

Hot, melty dark chocolate stuffed into the center of hot, doughy bread, straight from the oven. Culinary heaven; so good I can't write a complete sentence about it. You must try this.

Sometimes I bake bread with a bar of dark chocolate tucked inside the raw dough, waiting to melt, stain and enrich the loaf. Other times--like today at lunch--I nestle two squares of chocolate into a steaming slice of fresh bread for dessert. Once in a while I make a chocolate panino, lightly broiling the chocolate sandwich for five minutes a side, until the toast is golden and the chocolate rich and runny.

Because I bake whole wheat bread and use dark chocolate, the effects are tremendously earthy, a bit bitter and sweet. The paninos are best with airy white ciabatta, though I still prefer the dark chocolate filling. And if you're feeling especially decadent, I'm sure brioche and challah are glorious companions to chocolate.

There are endless, more interesting variations on the chocolate sandwich. Try a thin layer of berry jam or marmalade. Drizzle the bread with almond or hazelnut oil; blend or trade milk, white, and dark chocolates. Dip the sandwich in egg and fry it in butter, dusting the end product with confectioners sugar. I haven't done any of these things (yet), but I encourage experimentation.

Just be sure to eat some vegetables first.