Is this kitchen a place for caring or an escape?

 

Jean cutting the matzo crack

In my mind, major religious holidays and food are always connected. It has something to do with feeding the body while feeding the soul, with nurturing as a way to express caring and love and, yes, faith. I’m not sure I can put it into the right words, but cooking becomes an altruistic gesture. At the same time, it is, for me, a self-pleasing activity. At least that’s my story this weekend, and I’m sticking to it.

I have been cooking for two days, dishes for Easter and supper dishes for tonight. Sure, I could have ordered much of it online, but that would rob it of its significance. So yesterday, I made black bean soup and salmon rillettes (a spread that mixes fresh and smoked salmon, though I subbed the good canned I get from Alaska for the fresh). I hard boiled eggs to be deviled tomorrow and made crab bites for company last night. Yeah, I was tired, but I was also exhilarated. Cooking somehow frees my mind.

Matzo crack
So rich, so good

Tonight Jean came for supper—the bean soup and salmon rillettes had her name on them, and she seemed to enjoy them thoroughly. When she came in, I asked her if she knew about those parties where you go expecting a nice evening of conversation, but the hostess greets you with “Hi, we’re going to play charades” … or Monopoly or Canasta or whatever and you wish you had called in sick. Jean looked alarmed and said yes, she knew. Well, I said, I have a joint cooking project for us but only if you want to. And that’s how we came to make matzo crack tonight.

Matzo crack, for those who didn’t read last week’s Gourmet on a Hot Plate blog, ends up like good English toffee with chocolate—only with a matzo base. It’s a seasonal thing, because you don’t find much matzo in stores except at Passover. The reason I didn’t make this dessert myself is that it involves the toffee mix of boiling sugar and butter—and my balance is not good enough that I am comfortable going from oven to work surface with that scary a hot mixture. So Jean did the hard parts, while I did the prep and supervised, calling out instructions. It was actually a lot more fun to make it with someone. We refrigerated the finished product for 30 minutes, per the recipe, but the chocolate was still soft and runny, the toffee part congealed nicely. I refrigerated it more after Jean cut it, and now the chocolate has hardened. We’ll offer some with brunch tomorrow.

We’ll go to virtual early church in the cottage—the Easter crowds at our church are difficult for the able-bodied to manage and intimidating if you have a walker or wheelchair as I do. So we’ll stay home.

At noon, friends who usher at the church will join us for brunch—Christian will scramble eggs, and I have made a ranchero sauce. If they’re good, we’ll give our guests some matzo crack. In the evening, Jordan and Christian and Jacob will go to meet Christian’s father at a P. F. Chang’s restaurant somewhere between here and there, and I will go to friends for—wait for it!—grilled salmon. I’ll take a creamed spinach casserole and devilled eggs—finishing those eggs is the only cooking chore I have left for tomorrow. I’m really anticipating a lovely day.

Today in my small writer’s group, one sister was bemoaning that anxiety-laden period between projects when you seem suspended in time, not sure where to settle next. She said she envies me the escape to the kitchen, but I told her not to let me fool her. The kitchen is just a place to hide for a bit, to forestall the inevitable. I know that Monday morning, the real world will pick up again, and I’ll be at my desk, facing my computer, challenged to decide which of the many loose threads I will pick up. These two days of cooking have been a nice interlude, not a long-lasting fix. Still, I’m lucky that the cooking gives me so much pleasure, and that I can escape to it however briefly.

May you each find blessings in whatever faith you celebrate on this historic weekend when the spring renewal festivals of three of the world’s major religions coincide. The stars, you might say, are aligned.

The very fragile Easter egg Jean brought me.
Yes, it's a real eggshell.

Why do I write mysteries

This is a question that bugs me off and on--why do I write mysteries? At 76, I've lived a full life, learned a lot, and look back on my 30s and 40s and wonder how naïve I was in those days. I can almost measure the wisdom (well, I think that's what it is) that I've gathered and learned over the last thirty years, and I truly feel I'm a better, more caring, more thoughtful--yeah, even wiser--person than I was. So why don't I write memoir or philosophical treatises to impart that wisdom to my fellow sisters who are following in my footsteps. I truly believe the tenet that is one of the justifications of an academic press: to contribute to the existing body of knowledge. Surely, in my own way, I could do that. Instead, I write mysteries.
I've often pondered the question of what mysteries contribute to the general body of existing knowledge--or whether or not they need to make that contribution. Maybe they are written for diversion, entertainment, an escape for the reader from the daily grind. Is that a good enough reason or should they still be contributing to that amorphous existing body of knowledge?
I find that my main characters are usually in their thirties, an age when I was particularly blind to the world and wrapped up in my own marriage and young children. So do I impart wisdom to my characters that I didn't have at that time? I hope so, but I can't be sure. Sometimes, almost against my wishes, they do the most foolish things. It's an old saw among authors--your characters tell the story, you don't. And sometimes mine, like those of a lot of other authors, get out of hand.
So how am I helping the world? I don't know, besides perhaps providing a bit of distraction and enjoyment. And maybe that's all they're meant to do. Maybe I don't have to worry so much about making the world a better place with every mystery I write. Did Nancy Drew improve the world or did she just enjoy grand adventures? Maybe helping readers--I'm sure most of mine are women--escape their daily lives for a few minutes is my contribution.
I have a lot of things on my mind and on my plate this week, so I treasure those few minutes late at night when I read the novel I'm on now. So perhaps that's what I do for others. And maybe it isn't all bad.