Happy end of February….
I have just discovered a wonderful cookbook, newly out in
paperback, so not all that new to the rest of the world, the brilliant and
funny: Make the Bread, Buy The Butter,
by Jennifer Reese. She prices out the cost of convenience foods vs. homemade,
but here’s the genius part: she also factors in the hassle, the quality and the
fun.
In other words, for once it’s not just about the dollars and
cents.
Haven’t we all had that stubborn economizing voice
whispering to us in the grocery aisle when faced with an absurdly expensive
convenience food? “Are you kidding
me? I could make it just as easily, and it would be better! Moreover I would be
thrifty and uphold the lofty and creative tradition of home cooks who will not
be dictated to by the ad department of some giant corporation!”
Here’s what else: the recipes really work.
I have made: the Fig Newtons, which are far superior to
Nabisco’s, the Margaritas, which were the best I’ve ever had, the chicken soup
with rice, lemony Greek style, which for some reason, I’ve always shied away
from, and the croissants. A day into that last project I was convinced I’d
killed off the yeast with too-hot milk. But no, it worked. I served a couple
mini-croissants to my husband with tea and gloated over their success.
Aside from the croissants, this doesn’t seem like a very
ambitious list. Yet I am a good cook: I’ve made individual beef wellingtons, my
own puff pastry from scratch and swooningly good ice cream. I also make a mean martini.
But this book is growing my confidence. I have now made the
bagels am curing my own pancetta and will try making the Camembert. I am, in
fact, thrilled as I make out my
shopping lists.
The reason has to do with something Reese says in her
afterword: “Big food companies flatter us by telling us how busy we are and
they simultaneously convince us that we are helpless. I am moderately busy, but
not all that helpless. Neither are you.”
That something so basic to our comfort and happiness should
be surreptitiously swiped and then sold back to us in vastly inferior forms is criminal.
Perhaps it’s not a felony, but it’s a sneaky and undermining misdemeanor.
Make the Bread has
about it a certain trial and error toughness that allows for the occasional,
educational failure that is momentarily mourned and then fed to the dog.
Consider Reese’s experiment with goats, which she decided to
buy because she had become an enthusiastic cheese maker.
Goats are an exceedingly tricky wicket. Cooperation never, ever makes an appearance on any caprine
To-Do list, so you can imagine what happened. Reese spent upwards of a thousand
dollars on feed, housing, vet bills and stock—and never got a drop of milk. But
Reese is a good enough sport to love her goats despite it all.
The great thing about her Trial and Error approach is that
she admits that a certain percentage of her projects flopped, and were not
worth repeating. But they didn’t stop her from trying something else.
Psychologist Carol Dweck of Stanford University says that
most people have either a performance orientation or a learning orientation. In
the former, it’s more important to do well, to get things right, than it is to
learn. So if a performer flubs a new challenge, she will likely give up and go
back to something that she can do well. Someone with a learning orientation
will see a mistake as a temporary thing, requiring another try, a different
way.
The performance orientation can kill creativity faster than
almost anything. If all your attempts must be successful in order for you to
maintain your self-esteem, you will live in a very careful, rather dull little
box.
This is not to say that performance doesn’t count. There are
times when you need to learn your lines perfectly, when you really need the
soufflé to rise, and when you must turn in clean, error-free copy.
But that’s not all the time. You’ve got to have some room for
experiment. Give yourself a grade-free zone in which you can dare to make some
mistakes. Your creativity—to say nothing of your dog‑‑will thank you for it.
The illustration is of my homemade pancetta hanging (unfortunately, sideways)—and we
hope, drying, as opposed to lurking—in our cellar. Mice or raccoons have yet to
discover it.
