November 6, 2024
I pull nearly everything from the crisper out onto the counter, the staples you can munch mindlessly, raw, that I keep on hand for my best kid-hack, the ‘rainbow platter.’ The wilting scallions. The zucchini starting to go off. To this I add the pittance of vegetables I have grown and harvested myself, the last of the sweet peppers, the last of the onions planted 18 months ago and pulled from the ground last spring, two lonely eggplant, the most colorful of the final tomatoes ripening on the counter. I pull a bag of frozen vegetables tops and tails from the freezer for stock. In a stroke of preparatory genius, I’d already recalled chicken tenders and puff pastry to defrost, purposeless, in the fridge.
There’s something elemental about covering my countertop with all this food, getting a good look at it, formulating a plan, and methodically working my way through, bringing order and meaning to the scattered parts. What pulls me in, what I hope for all this food, isn’t so different from humans desire writ large—to belong, to find our place, to be part of something, to unite with others in creating beauty, bringing joy. Even if we are wilting and starting to go off. I imagine my motley assortment of produce feeling relief, plucked from the lonely fridge and chosen: At last! Not quite dust to dust for me! Of course the plant cells don’t really care if they’re digested or decomposed in my compost bin, but I’m cheered by the fantasy of an anthropomorphized pair of zucchini doing a snappy jig in celebration of finding their way to becoming cake before the mold takes over. There’s a song we find ourselves singing now and again when the bananas turn black, a little bunch pleading with its humans not to be discarded: “Banana bread, banana bread, we can be banana bread! We’re not pretty but we’re not dead! We can be banana bread.” Who doesn’t know that feeling?
It is the day after the election. I feel terrible, and I’m spending it alone, kids finally back at school after a four-day weekend and my husband traveling. I don’t know what I’ll do with all of this, don’t know what’s coming, but I know where I want to be right now. The kitchen draws me in with its certainty and warmth, its playfulness and generosity. Whatever happens over the next four years, we will still need to eat. We will need company, we will need nourishment. May as well get started.
Carrots, onions, celery become the base of a thick soup I’ll cover with puff pastry for pot pie—what is more comforting? The stock bag goes into a stock pot with water, chicken tenders in a blanching basket, a wire rimmed container suspended by a long straight handle, typically for dousing noodles for a quick cook. They’ll poach nicely here, lending flavor to the stock. When they’re done, they come out to be shredded and into the blanching basket I toss a handful of dried chanterelles from the back of the pantry, a small luxury for a sad day. They’ll join the pot pie.
As I’m dicing, as it is all simmering, the broiler is on, garden eggplant burnishing to a puffy black char to be pureed into a spread for a future easy meal. A second pot, my big Le Creuset, receives the sliced peppers, sauteed down until silky, joined by tomatoes, garlic and all the scallions into the versatile stew / spread / side dish called peperonata. Some lazy day in the next two weeks I can pull a cup of polenta from the pantry, simmer in water, finish with whatever cheese I have on hand, then top it with these flavorful semi-preserved vegetables and call it a family meal.
The zucchini take some work, having acquired dodgy bits during their long wait for the limelight. They’re not dead, but they’re definitely not pretty. Pared down, the food processor shreds them in no time, and they’re added to a rich chocolate batter—all whole wheat flour, because it adds to the flavor, because dense fudgy texture is an asset in this kind of cake, because you can then call it a breakfast food with a straight face. In that is stirred a healthy handful of chocolate chips salvaged from the highest shelf, in the pot with the heavy lid, so sugar-hungry kids can’t sneak them all. Then, batter poured into a parchment paper-lined pan, the easier to clean it later.
When my kids get home from school I pull out the jar of glowing orange frosting I bought in a spate of silliness a month before Halloween, excited to give my kids the kind of commercial holiday-specific product I despise and they in turn crave, usually to no avail. I quickly returned to my natural grinch-like state and forgot, until today’s fortunate discovery. My girls are too young to understand the politics, but they can see something isn’t right with adults they love. They can see the big man who says mean things and throws tantrums beat the woman. They love people whose jobs will change. They are scared. The night before, one fell asleep in my arms sobbing, afraid her best friend would move if her dad’s job was a post-election casualty. I can’t change any of this. But they’re also the age where slathering a mommy cake with orange frosting mends an abundance of ails, especially when you get to toss handfuls of bat shaped sprinkles over the finished top. It may not be Halloween anymore, but people are spooked, and we have just the cake for that.
Strain the stock, pull the pot pie from the oven, box up the cooked vegetables, and the wild jumble of mismatched ingredients without a plan has become a ship-shape series of containers filled with food—food for tonight, food for when the moment requires it.
Food to feed the crowd that comes over that night for company, laughter, a Taylor Swift dance party, and silent prayer.
Food to delight my daughters, who smeared Halloween frosting from Lidl on the chocolate cake disguising green veggies.
Food to put up in the freezer, so the next time someone needs to sit down to a table without notice, there’s something waiting, easy to grab from the freezer, turn into nourishment.
Making and serving people food isn’t my professional work. The cash I take in from selling bread—a loaf here or there, an occasional cake—barely covers the flour, let alone my time. In no universe would this be viable income-generating work unless I scaled, baking at a pace that would likely rob me of the joy it currently brings. But unpaid work, hard but joyful, can still be a significant vocational calling. Gathering people around a crowded table, nourishing people in body and soul, is part of mine.
When I have the luxury of fully inhabiting this vocation, as I did today, it is indeed a joyful offering. Cooking all day like a church lady, apron on, converting the countertop’s potpourri of orphaned produce into a tidy stack of packed dishes is restorative in the moment, and offers the promise of restoration to the humans who will feast in the future. It’s not all that needs to be done, but it was my calling this day.
