Please. Think of the chicken.

I've had a few roommates, most of them in domestic situations. Several of my roommates couldn't cook very well, or didn't know how to clean very well (one was extremely tidy, but hadn't any idea of how to actually clean--I am not very tidy, but I can clean like nobody's business. Like Captain Planet, we got on well).

One roommate, however, gets talked about a lot. She tried very hard towards not much result, and couldn't figure out why this was happening. This particular roommate knew how to bake (and did it often, for fundraising bake sales) but could not cook. At first she lived off of boxed frozen food until it clicked in her brain that, even at the dollar store, this was much more expensive. Then she moved on to raw ingredients, and I proceeded to be abjectly horrified.

She microwaved chicken.

Not “defrosted in the microwave.” Microwaved “until it was no longer raw” and, coincidentally, “until it bounced.”

Raw. Chicken. In the microwave.

Microwaved chicken.

The horror has yet to fade, actually. Perhaps you can tell.

I discovered this atrocity at dinner time. I cook in batches now—I cooked in srs batches then, and lived off the leftovers in busier times. This was one of those times, and my roommate, sweet, considerate thing that she was, took her dinner-in-progress out of the microwave so that I could reheat mine, because mine was faster.

“Oh no,” I said, “It's okay. I can wait.”

“Nah,” she said, grimacing. “This is taking forever. You go.”

And I looked at the plate. The plate of half-cooked chicken. I blinked, poker faced because I am my mother's daughter, and I said, suggestively, calmly, and above all, hopefully “You could cook that in a pan on the stove. A little bit of oil and a little salt. It'd cook much faster.” And taste much better, I did not say.

My roommate shook her head. “Meh,” she said, face and voice dismissive of her ability to handle a pan on the stove. This is the same young woman who had made rice-krispies treats with M&Ms in them the week before. I took my dinner, she returned her chicken to the microwave, and I retreated to my bedroom and my happy place. I heard her, later, complaining (to her cat, she talked to her cat a lot) that “yuck. How can anybody eat this? It's so... bland and rubbery.”

Yes, sweetheart, yes it is. Because meat was never meant for the microwave.

I tried over the next couple of weeks, gently, to suggest that a pan on the stove, or a cookie sheet in the oven, would be both faster, easier, and taste better. I mentioned oven bags, because while my mother and I like our poultry like we like our wine, dry enough to alarm ecologists, I know that most people do not.

Alas, alas, all was in vain.

“Seasoning,” this is what her mind retained. The next thing I saw was pathetic strips of raw chicken, so covered in Italian seasoning mix they looked like pallid slugs completely coated in leaves and grass clippings upon the plate, looking sadly at me, hoping for mercy but expecting none.

In the microwave.

I gave up. I ceased suggesting, held my peace, ignored her mutterings, and pretended we didn't have a kitchen whenever I heard her run the microwave. (Later, I will tell you why that was not the best idea.) Sometimes the best way to survive atrocity is with a little selective denial.

To this day, however, I have a crusade. It is a small movement, centered mainly in my own kitchen and those of my friends. It is called “No Meat In The Microwave.” I remember the looks of the chicken I could not save, so pitiful and so resigned. I remember it's ultimate fate. I remember the smell. I don't care how late dinner is, I don't care how hungry you are. This is why God invented the broiler. No meat in the microwave.

A preface to recipes

To understand my recipes you don't need very much. To appropriately appreciate them (and, perhaps, to find them entertaining) you need to understand a bit about where they're coming from, and, in the process, understand me—or at least, understand how I cook.

I'm extremely intelligent and very right-brained. What this means is that I'm highly creative, think in sensations (images, impressions, scents, sounds, and emotions), and am more concerned with “now” than with either the past or the present. I think and reason abstractly instead of concretely and in parallel instead of linearly. Yes, this does make it more difficult to make a coherent and effective narrative, since my first instinct is to tell the reader absolutely everything at once. Yes, it also looks a hell of a lot like ADD without actually being ADD.

But what it also does is lend itself marvelously well towards art and cooking. I am an artist, raised by an artist, and am naturally inclined to be an artist. This is much less a thing of production of art (which requires discipline and planning and focus and more discipline) as it is of the artistic process. When I say “I am an artist” I mean I apply the artistic process to pretty much everything.

This looks an awful lot like being a nut. It is an awful lot like being a nut, or perhaps a flake, or just living inside a bowl of granola.

Which brings us back to cooking.

I cook by the senses. How things look, how they feel, how they smell, how they taste. I time the adding of ingredients by these things and, because we're being honest, by making a lot of mistakes and, from time to time, remembering not to repeat them. (For example, eventually I learned not to cook zuchinni and meat at the same time. You may, if you wish, but be prepared for your vegetable to turn into a gelatinous slurry and for nobody with any self-respect to eat it.)

I have been cooking for a very long time. Since before I could reach the counter, in fact, and given how tall I am that was a long time ago. Some things become part of muscle memory after a while. Like cutting off the tip of one's finger because the TV was on, again.

I am horrifically guilty of using that ancient and traditional mystery of ingredient measure, the legendary “some.” I use it in everything. Lucky for you all I'm connected enough to reality not to expect you to be able to follow the “some,” and so, despite rarely using measurements in the things I make most often, I've made the effort for you all. I hope you appreciate it, because I am here to tell you that translating “some” into cups and teaspoons and pounds is a pain in the ass even to the person doing the cooking.

Recipes are like language—they change over time, and change on the situation. Who's eating, the tastes of the cook and the diners, availability of ingredients, amount of time to spend cooking, the current societal fashion. If you think home cooking doesn't follow fashion you have never seen a recipe book from the seventies. (If you'd like to be horrified and fascinated all at once, go for it. Anything between 1950 and 1980 is fair game. Anything older and you'll either be already familiar with such things, if you hunt or fish, or be too confused by cooking processes no longer in use to be properly appalled at what they found suitable for cooking.)

Finally, I am in love with leftovers. I like instant gratification, love appropriate shortcuts, and have better things to spend my money on. Use leftovers whenever appropriate, and hunting for where on earth you put the mayonnaise is an excellent excuse to throw away everything fuzzy, slimy, forgotten, unidentifiable, or capable of self-government. Cleaning out the refrigerator is less onerous when done often.

Ingredients I would rather not do without (in no particular order)
bay leaves
salt
black pepper
red pepper (ground)
turmeric (ground)
cumin (ground)
Little Green Flakes (basil, oregano, parsley, marjoram, herbes de Provence, and/or Italian seasoning mix)
cinnamon
vanilla
nutmeg (ground, but it's simple to grate it)
eggs
onion
garlic
olive oil
sesame oil
vinegar (rice, balsamic, and apple cider)
rice

Things I would rather not do without (in no particular order)
A cutting board
A good large knife
A good small knife
food processor (with cheese grater attachment)
frying pan
stock pot
soup pan
roasting pan (it's like a cookie sheet with a lip)
good large spoon
spatula

Things that are really nice (again in no particular order)
beer
wine
oven bags
someone else to do the dishes

Not exactly how I pictured my day off, but then, my pictures of my day off are always unrealistic.

Today I got up at the crack of one (in the afternoon), which is usually when I'm scheduled to work. It gets slightly less disgusting when you consider that I went to sleep at two-thirty in the morning, but only slightly. This is good: if it wasn't decadent I wouldn't have enjoyed doing it so much.

Today Daddy and I went grocery shopping after I put my shoes on. You probably didn't know that "putting your shoes on" involves an hour of chatting with a friend on the internet. This is why my parents sent me to college. Before I even got dressed, though, let alone put my shoes on, we checked the ads. Kiki (Suzy's mom) had given us just about every grocery store circular in town. We wound up getting the turkey from pretty much the only place whose ads we didn't have, but this is fine. It let us comparison-price-shop without actually having to go to these various stores, which is nice.

I do not believe in driving all the firetruck over town to save 10 cents on toilet paper. And as long as we're talking about toilet paper, I don't even believe in buying it more than once or twice a year: either someone else buys it or I go to Costco and get two 52-roll packs of it. (As, really: I don't like buying toilet paper, but I like running out of it even less. Having to build a fort out of toilet paper in the closet is worth it to me not to buy it more than once a year.)

So I have my shoes on, and we're in the car, and my father turns it on and starts to drive. He turns on the radio.

...I had never imagined before that my father would groove out to the Black Eyed Peas' "My Hump" before. It was... surreal.

We went to the cheap market, and it was good. Except for the part where I had pretzels for breakfast (allergic to gluten, remember?) and no lunch. And the part where today is payday for most of town. And the part where I'm not too clear on locations in this store and my father, who thinks linearly in every other aspect of his life, navigates a grocery store like Billy in a Family Circus cartoon. Or a three-legged squirrel with attention deficit disorder. An ADD squirrel where all three legs are on the same side. That the other shoppers felt the need to stop in random places (always blocking access or egress from an aisle) and contemplate the state of their souls merely made the expedition more charming.

We spent over an hour in the market. Then we had to go to the other market. And I am tired and haven't eaten. My friend Shonelle got a call from me, which cheered us both up, and I called Ericka twice: once to chat, the second time because I forgot which kind of white wine is the driest and guess who's trained as a sommalier? Hint: it isn't me. Hint: it definitely isn't my father. He was trying to get Riesling. And then he was looking for a sauvingion blanc in the merlot section.

Protip: Riesling does not go well with a family where nobody likes sweet wine.
By the way: upon putting away the four bottles of wine? Holy crap we have a lot of booze. We don't even drink more than once a month or two. Which, now that I think about it, is probably why we have so much booze. "Vintage" booze, even. I think the bottle of Kahlua may be older than I am. S'good, though. Or maybe it's really not and I've just developed a taste for 15-20 year old Kahlua.

Came home, unpacked the provisions, and then cleaned out the refrigerator. I am a jewel among women: not only did the corpse of Birdzilla (Daddy wanted the 26-pound turkey... granted we are feeding 7 people and he and my grandparents want leftovers, but... Jesus Christ.) fit, along with everything else, there is room left over.

And I didn't snap at anyone today, and managed to smile at the grocery clerks. I am a jewel among women.

This jewel is going to figure out who's making what when, because we all work... probably I will make pie tomorrow (I work Sunday through Wednesday), bake the sweet potatoes for sweet potato fries tomorrow, my brother can make the mashed potatoes (the day of or ahead of time, I don't care), Mom can do the Jello salad and whatever pies I don't get to on Wednesday, and Turkey Day itself we just steam the asparagus and roast Birdzilla. And I like cooking everything myself (control issues, what?), but I like sanity even more.

So. Now we just have to clean out the freezer and I have to wash my sheets. My trusty sidekick (the cat) has been industriously shedding in my bed for the last several days. Good to know that whenever I want to be in my bed she's already there, sleeping in my spot for me.

...bitch.