Rub it in, why don't you?

Overheard in Madison cafe: "I LOVE culinary school." Oh, hush your face.

Good Idea/Bad Idea

Good Idea: Making grilled cheese

Bad Idea: Weighing down the grilled cheese with a wine bottle.

Look What I Made!!!

Though I’ve been hovering in kitchens since my tiny little baby fist could first hold a potato peeler (child labor laws much DAD?), until today, I’ve never actually made a banana bread. In fact, though I cook fairly regularly, I’ve never actually baked anything on my own that didn’t come from a Sara Lee box or Tollhouse tube; I’ve only ever been my mother’s batter-whisker and spoon-licker. She, in fact, makes banana bread with frightening regularity, and, since I first left for college eight years ago, she’s gifted me one nearly every time she’s seen me. I’m not sure what it is with mothers and banana breads; I have an ex-boyfriend who gets one mailed to him monthly. I think they worry that we're eating nothing but instant ramen and hope that homemade banana bread will keep us from making breakfasts of our own fingernails. My mom's baked two recently. One went into tin foil and sat shotgun as I undertook an 18-hour solo road trip from Boston to Madison, WI, to live away from home – really away, out of New England – for the very first time. The last, wrapped tightly in Saran Wrap, got stashed in her carry-on when she and my father came to visit me in September. I know she’s concerned about how I’m adjusting to mid-west life; she texted me recently to say that she was going to church to “pray for [my] tormented soul.” I suspect that she’s actually baking for my tormented soul instead.

So now that I’m over 1,000 miles from home, out of the nest, making some sort of (meager, pitiful) salary of my own, and now that I’ve made banana bread for myself, does that mean I’m officially an adult?

God I hope not.

But still, there’s something very rite-of-passage about having finally pulled the baking trigger. And so it’s inspired me to pull another trigger that I’ve had my finger on for some time – the blogging one. I’ve been interested in food journalism since the first year after I graduated from college, when my former roommate, Leah, and I would sit ourselves in front of the Food Network for hours every night. And I’ve been, err, devouring food writing, especially food memoirs, since reading the first few lines of Jeffrey Steingarten’s The Man Who Ate Everything. I actually did start a blog a few years ago but didn’t maintain it. I hope this time that it’ll stick. Three things have changed since then: 1) I got an iPhone, which makes it remarkably easy for even a tech-phobe like me to put things on teh Internets. 2) I moved to Madison, which is one of the best foodie cities in the nation, with a vast weekly farmer’s market and several excellent grocery co-ops. Madison has organic farmers like New York has homeless people. 3) I started a PhD program in English lit. Even though this suggests that I intend to become a professional critic, I’ve always fancied myself a writer. In fact, I almost skipped out on grad school altogether to try my hand at free-lancing (*cue parental panic attack*). Though, having completed a master’s degree, I’ve been in grad school before and know how difficult it is to devote energy to anything other than reading/panicking, it’s become increasingly important to me to explore this other aspect of my abilities. Being in a place where no one knows me and in a program where my identity is often reduced to “Medievalist,” it’s suddenly become critical that I cultivate an identity that has nothing to do with being a grad student.

Et voilà. Un blog.

So where does the blog name come from? I claimed to have spent a lot of time in kitchens, and that’s true. What’s not true is that I consider myself to be any sort of expert. I like to cook, but I don’t mean to suggest that I’m any good at it. But I’m learning. I’m told by some very sagacious people that the only way in which humans learn is through making mistakes. If that’s true, then watch out, Socrates, because I fuck up a whole lot. And I plan to document that fucking-up right here, for sake of your entertainment and gustatory delight. The idea is that if I keep a record for ways in which recipes (or rather, my makings of them) fail, then the next time I (Or you! Yes you!...Sorry for breaking the fourth wall) attempt to make that same recipe, it should turn out better. I plan to import a couple of posts from the old blog, but also hope to generate new content frequently. Because if there’s anything I’m good at, it’s making a mess.

Banana Bread

Makes one loaf

Ingredients

• 3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed. I used 3, and “ripe” is perhaps too flattering a word.
• 1/3 cup melted butter (5 1/3 Tbsp.)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• Pinch of salt
• 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour

Method

No need for a mixer for this recipe. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). With a wooden spoon or rubber spatula (I hardly know ‘er), mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last. Mix. Pour mixture into a buttered 4x8 inch loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour. Cool on a rack. Remove from pan and slice to serve.

This came out OK. I used less than a cup of sugar, because that’s all I had, and it’s not quite sweet enough. I’d also give it a bit longer than an hour in the oven ; it came out a bit soft. Maybe that’s because the bananas were SO ripe, or maybe it’s because I couldn’t find my dry measures and totally guessed about the amount of flour. Whoops.

Oh, I also threw in a handful of chopped walnuts at the end of the mixing. Because I could.

To clarify, this isn’t my mom’s recipe. It came from Simply Recipes. Mom’s recipe is better.