Coming up roses

Last week I was treated to two very special gifts from a dear friend, both extremely personal, thoughtful and appreciated. I was first surprised with an invitation to go up to his family’s country house in the Catskill Mountains along with a wonderful group of friends (more on this and a recipe later). After of course accepting the invitation I went over to give my thanks in person and was offered another gift; a jar of homemade sweet rose paste made with rose petals picked in his father’s flower garden and made using a recipe and technique learned from his grandmother.

Handmade gifts are absolutely the best – the consideration and care that go into these simple gestures are always cherished - it is the intimate act of personal care that always resonates the strongest. This little jar of (delicious!) rose paste is especially dear as it contains the intimacy of three generations worth of family history and tradition. I asked him if he would give me the recipe or at least a pointer or two and was plainly told “that’s a secret”. Well, okay. Fine. And actually I sort of like that the secret is so guarded, it does after all ensure that this rose paste is like no other; that this is the recipe of the family, and that secrecy is a fraction of a great and fascinating history. I did manage to wrangle a few tidbits of knowledge out of my friend, but I will keep them to myself. Somehow I feel like that’s the appreciative and respectful thing to do.

After a little internet digging I found a recipe for rose jam, though no paste, as well as some other great rose creations that were taken from an issue of “The American Housewife” from 1878. Even better. If you have never tried a sweet rose concoction I highly recommend seeking one out. I fell in love with rose paste after discovering it in Polish baked goods, often used as a filling in cookies or donut-like buns (although this rose paste is Ukrainian). If there is an eastern European neighborhood near you start there. Take the plunge and walk into that hole-in-wall bakery with a window full of bubbling over babkas, sparkling strudels, fruit cakes and cheese breads made using real ingredients you have never heard of. It’s always good to expand your taste horizons, and you might just get an idea for a new taste combination to try yourself.

I started the next morning with my tummy looking forward to a rosey breakfast. I decided on a laid back morning of continuing this train of delight and went about creating my meal. Something fresh baked was needed for sure, yet I didn’t want something so heavy that it would distract from the rose at all. I have always favored popovers for pairing with sweet pungent spreads so I turned to the fabulous “Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook” and went to work. Popovers can be tricky since they really don’t last well. They just get hard and chewy, so unless you’re baking for a group of people it’s really not worth it to bake a full batch. I went ahead and just made 1/6 of the recipe and I think they came out pretty okay. I used mini muffin pans again, although I don’t recommend doing it that way. Some bakers will tell you that you can never divide a recipe although I’ve never had a problem with it; just be sure to fill all the empty muffin pockets with water so the heat distributes evenly and you don’t burn your pan.

Here’s Martha’s Popover recipe:

Butter for pan
1 1/2 Cups milk
6 large eggs
1 1/2 Cups flour (M. calls for using only all-purpose or white, I cheated and used 1/2 whole wheat and 1/2 white)
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 TBS confectioners’ sugar

Preheat oven to 425 degrees, with rack in the lower third of the oven. Butter a popover (or muffin) tin. In a medium bowl, whisk together the milk and eggs. Add the flour, salt, and sugar and whisk until just mixed (should have the consistency of heavy cream). Fill each cup with 5 TBS of batter. Bake until puffed up lovely and high – a little browning on the top is okay – for about 30 mins. Remove from pan asap!
For optimal deliciousness eat asap!



To top off this breakfast, I decided on an appropriate pot of tea. I have a little ceramic pot that holds three cups worth. I infused 1 TBS lady grey (maybe a little less), 1 tsp dried lavender flowers (one of my favorite for tea blends), and a few fresh mint leaves I muddled in the pot (when making a tea infusion keep your fresh leaves separate from the dried – herbs can linger, black and green tea needs to be removed from the water or your tea will get bitter). Perfecto.

Food and thought (a little background)

I grew up a picky, uninterested eater, and never cared to spend more than 5 minutes preparing a meal. I think at one point I even called pouring out a bowl of cereal and adding milk “cooking”. I became vegetarian (with a mostly vegan diet) when I was 18, a decision largely spurred by sudden lack of my parents’ refrigerator. I knew how chop veggies, make sandwiches, cook some pasta if I felt fancy, but that was about it. With that attitude towards food preparation in place, the addition of a seriously vegetarian boyfriend and domestic partner sealed my dietary fate and I shied away from culinary exploration for a long time. My interest in food didn’t really begin until a few years later when I realized I was unhappy, always in pain for seemingly inexplicable reasons, and was generally very unhealthy. None of this was exclusively due being vegetarian or vegan, but to my lack of critical thought regarding the food going in to my body and my complete ignorance of how it was making me feel.

I never lived on vegan junk food – one can only eat so many Quorn “chicken” nuggets anyway – and I always kept rice and beans and dark leafy vegetables as staples. I became excited to learn about seemingly wonder-foods that were new to me like seitan, quinoa, and kale. But every day would end with me feeling groggy and in great pain from headaches, bloating, cramps, heartburn or all of the above. At one point I was taking a prescription heartburn medicine in conjunction with the strongest over the counter drugs every day and still found no relief. There were many nights when the pain in my stomach and chest was severe enough that I had to sleep sitting up so that my heartburn would be somewhat tolerable. These symptoms became so bad that my left arm would go numb and I would be convinced that I was having a heart attack, ulcers, or a myriad of much worse things. I began to get extreme mood swings and panic attacks on top of all of this, none of which was helped by having a naturally wired and anxious temperament anyway.

It was my panic attacks more than anything else that inspired me to wake up and try to figure out just what was bringing all of this on and what I, independently, could do about it. Like so many people I first consulted online medical sites, which of course convinced me that I was about to die from at least six fatal and extremely rare conditions. Thank goodness I continued searching, and came across a wealth of knowledge in personal blogs and public forums where I found stories from innumerable people who had apparently been through exactly the same things I was feeling. I was also blessed to find a great doctor who was very thorough and careful to make sure that I had no severe conditions. He told me that I my throat lining was scratched – partially eroded actually - from the acid reflux. He also found that I have a mild case of MVP, Mitral Valve Prolapse, a type of heart murmur that is linked to anxiety, exceptionally high production of adrenaline and chronic low blood pressure, and, of course, digestive problems (it’s actually fairly common, found in about 10% of all women and 5% of men – google it!). He suggested that I try an allergy elimination diet; six weeks of very careful eating, watching, and waiting. I’m human, I didn’t do it perfectly, but I did follow the most major points, and for the first time really paid attention what I ate. Most importantly, the weight of all of these experiences happening at once taught me to take a step back, breathe, and learn how to read my body.

As I learned about specific enzyme and vitamin deficiencies that are linked to the physical and emotional problems I was experiencing I began increasing those into my diet. I began to watch my cravings and tried to link them to whatever it was about that specific food that my body was calling for at the time. I give my unconscious brain and the body’s memory a whole lot of credit, and I definitely trust it to know what I may need before being able to translate it to tangible thought. Instinct does precede language after all, and I wonder if such umbrella terms as the “unconscious” simply point to our body’s chemistry…

Stress management and general brain fuzziness sure seem to be related to B vitamin and protein deficiency, something I’m sure I wasn’t giving my body getting enough of. I get major cravings for magnesium and iron heavy foods too. These are small examples, but being able to do something as simple as eating what my body should be eating has made a world of difference.

Our baking, ourselves

I like knowing what’s going into my food and going into my body and for the things I eat to be useful for it. I don’t think baked goods have to be an exception. Of course I can never pass on a yummy looking cake, especially really absurd birthday cakes with giant frosting flowers (I was recently introduced to Mexican tres leches cake, now officially my favorite), and one day I will learn how to make a proper shortening rich pie crust. Those delights are definitely not for every day, not for me at least. But hey, your tummy is yours and no one else's, you know?

I’ve adapted a baking habit that nicely joins my preference for experimenting with non-traditional ingredients and using whatever I’ve got lying around. I like to bake by the hip and try new things (I also have the attention span of a five-year-old and am incapable of following a recipe, really). I am totally messy and I love getting my fingers all batter-sticky, licking off the spatula when I’m done, and thinking of all the different goodies to throw in as I go. I like giving my baked goods to my friends and neighbors, especially since the favor is almost always returned!

Regarding those aforementioned non-traditional ingredients, I like to mix flours as much as possible and am always on the prowl for new combos. I rarely use wheat alone, and I've found that most things are so much better that way. Below is a recipe I made up recently, following my usual highly refined what-the-hell technique. This is my first time using irish oats, and I am forever sold. These have the great soft chewiness you could expect from regular oats, but are much lighter and have more of a wheat-bread texture. The fruit juice gives these just the right amount of sweet. I used two different egg substitutes here, the silken tofu and the flax. You could use real eggs too of course, but I suggest halving the baking powder and omitting the soda if you do, unless of course you’d like to experiment with making fig popovers! Doesn’t sound too bad actually…

Oatmeal fig muffins

1/2 Cup whole wheat flour
1/2 Cup ground irish oats (or other oat flour)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 TBS ground flax seeds
1/4 Cup silken tofu (soft or firm)
3/4 Cup fruit juice (your choice, I used some apple grape pineapple punch thing)
1/2 Cup chopped dried figs
1/2 cup chopped hazelnuts, walnuts, almonds or cashews


Preheat oven to 375. Lightly oil mini muffin tin or regular muffin tin. In a large bowl, mix the flours, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon. In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the flax seeds, fruit juice, and tofu. This should be fairly watery, like melted ice cream (although some tofu chunks are okay, your call), add water a teaspoon at a time if necessary. Pour liquid into the dry mix and add the chopped figs and nuts if you like. Fold batter until “just mixed” – for real, otherwise they’ll be totally dense and gnarly. Also, ladies and vegans take note, figs are a great source of iron, and adding a couple TBS of unsulphured molasses would really give these an iron kick.
Bake at 375 for 15-18 mins
Makes 8 mini muffins or 6 regular muffins (I made mine mini)

Learn to feed yourself.

It is incredibly empowering to realize that we - little old ourselves - have the ability to control our own wellbeing, and all it takes is paying a little more attention, and remembering to take care. This is idea simple, perhaps obvious, though all too often overlooked.

While I’d like to avoid giving Michael Pollan any more airtime, I have to admit that his concise rules for eating “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” is pretty spot on. I would add one more line to these rules, “Learn how to feed yourself.”
Food is our fuel. That’s all we’ve got, so we better know what to do with it.

I went through a long period of being pretty unhealthy and unhappy. I’ll expand on this later, but it was a great realization to have when I figured out that a poor, or rather unexamined diet was a huge contributing factor to feeling just plain awful all the time. I began to keep track of how I felt after eating what foods and when, and I quickly made some solid cause and effect observations. By many standards I had a great diet; vegetarian and mostly vegan with lots of fruits and veggies, usually bread or rice for grains, and beans, tofu or seitan for protein. The way I was balancing these foods and this overall diet just wasn’t working for me though, and as soon as I began to watch their effects I understood why.

I know that my body just doesn’t like beans very much, they make me fell sluggish and don't seem to leave my system for days. Too much dairy makes me want to hurl. Greasy food gives me a headache. If I eat anything with a high wheat gluten content, seitan especially, it feels like an iron ball in my stomach, same goes for white bread. Yoghurt is the greatest thing on the planet, and everything fermented rules (yes, I include good beer and wine). Spicy stuff is amazing. Tea, herbals, blacks and green, rules. There are many, many delicious grains out there, and I like to use them all. I eat plants in all colors. For now, a 100% non-meat diet just isn’t for me. I drink a lot of water.
I totally still drink way too much coffee, and I like really, really like good beer.
That’s cool. Vices are very important.

Edging away from my eating habits was hard, especially since one of the biggest culprits seemed to be wheat, which is very difficult to escape in the western diet. Celiac disease, which is essentially an auto-immune deficiency triggered by an intolerance to gluten, is terribly under diagnosed and it is estimated that 1 out of every 150 Americans has this potentially life-threatening condition. According to the Mayo Clinic wheat is one of the eight most allergy-causing foods, and symptoms can range from indegestion to asthma and skin reactions (www.foodallergyinitiative.org). The inclusion of wheat in so much of our food makes it an element we rarely think twice about. It is so common that the thought of a wheat allergy doesn't even seem possible.
Well, it is. Take that into consideration if that delicious bagel you had for breakfast has thrown off your system for the rest of the day, and probably the next day too.

As a vegetarian I quickly adopted preparing most of my own meals, but I didn't become very creative with my cooking until these other dietary factors became apparent. I loved baking, and had always been intrigued by vegan baking especially. Vegan baking is a total puzzle, you must avoid butter, eggs and dairy milk, all so key to such a big world of delicious baked good things. Tweaking a recipe to veganize it takes serious critical thought; the work of figuring out what substitutions will work with others and predicting how a taste or texture will be affected is actually pretty fun, really! I have always been incapable of following a recipe anyway, so any excuse to veer off course and experiment a bit is alright with me. Once I figured out that wheat should no longer take center stage, my whole thinking really had to change.

Any grain can be ground and made into flour. The gluten in wheat flour is what produces that great thick melt in your mouth chewiness, and unfortunately you just can't get that texture with anything else. But who says that's got to be the goal? White bread gets boring. Every grain offers different tastes and textures, so why not take the leap and try em all. I like to use a few different flours in combination, and I do usually include a wheat flour as a small portion of that. I use eggs freely now, although that is certainly not my default. If I think a flax seed egg substitute (1 TBS ground flax seed + 3 TBS water) would be more yummy I'll go ahead and use that without question.

I like to bake on a whim, which often leaves me limited to whatever is in the house at the time. I'll take an existing recipe for it's basic proportions of wet to dry to rising agent and go from there. Most of the time I have pretty good results, sometimes it's inedible. It happens. I learn, and try to do it a little better next time.

I'll be posting these little oven fresh inventions as I concoct them. Try em for yourself, or better yet take these for inspiration and create something on your own!

Domesticity. Making a place for yourself, sharing your home and your knowledge with others, and caring for one another in turn.

Domestic knowledge is sadly absent in many “home” settings today. Millennia-old traditions concerning food, craft, and personal and interpersonal care are simply no longer taught or shared, and we are enough generations into this phenomena that in many instances this knowledge seems lost beyond recovery. We are approaching a sad and dangerous level of ignorance regarding the most basic crafts of care: food for nourishment, clothing and shelter for warmth, and the knowledge to produce these things so vital to nurturing life and continued survival. People grow up not knowing how to cook, and worse not having a clue about what’s in their food and what they are putting into their bodies. We think remedies are only found in plastic bottles. We have no idea where our winter coats come from, how they were made, what they are made of, or whose hands labored over their construction.

There was a time when all food was to be prepared by hand, often communally, along with recipes, traditions and knowledge about plant and animal use that were passed down through generations. Clothing and shelter were constructed with those same fingers, and the knowledge about what tools and materials to was also crucial learning, shared among families and communities as these life-sustaining items were carefully crafted. These practices are truly timeless, and kept their status as vital lessons in some way through much of the industrial age, yet in recent generations have all but disappeared.

Domestic knowledge implies a great level of mutual care, and places the individual in a critical role of personal responsibility and powerful agency. One should know how to care for themselves and others in the event of an emergency, but this notion of “care” should not be limited to extreme situations. Knowing how to do things for our selves allows us to tap into the potential of our own ability effect the world around us; it is this vital sense of agency that is lost when we no longer have any knowledge of the most basic means of survival.

Our loss of this self-knowledge is the true tragedy of contemporary out-of-the-box living. When an individual has not learned the skill or the knowledge to care for them selves – or is even aware that they could posses such skill – then they have been truly robbed of their agency as a human being. If you can’t use your hands to operate the tools in front of you, what was the use in evolving those awesome opposable thumbs any way? If we do not know how to take care of ourselves, if we do not know how to take care of our families and loved ones, how can we possibly take responsibility for anything around us? If it does not occur to us that we may have the ability to affect our own wellbeing, how will we ever feel that we possess the power to affect anything else?

I’m definitely not a master of household construction of all sorts, and I totally have no clue what I’m doing half the time I try to take on such tasks. Though I would love for some day to own a loom and to have a full vegetable garden, it’s not going to happen right now. And that’s fine. I am certainly not a back to the land extremist or way-anarcho-anti-capitalist, and I even like some corporations (thank you Google for your server space). I definitely love to shop and eat out and would take Pfizer’s advice if I were truly very sick. I am actually pretty optimistic about the future, and am eager for the environmental and lifestyle changes we will all need to make in the coming years. Those changes, however, will require all of us to wake up a bit and rethink how we are acting in and upon the world, and should call us to question the ways others are going about business as well.

We all have a place to start, and it is crucial that we explore these issues with each other. While the tested and true ancient system of gaining knowledge from our families at home is clearly no longer active, we still have our communities and friends as resources. Personal knowledge IS domestic knowledge. The ability to share skills and ideas IS a wonderful human power and should be used. Make something. Use your hands. Take a risk. Ask for advice. Ask someone to teach you something they know how to do. Learn something new together.