About this Blog

...moving to a new location...

Thu, 9 Jun 2011 07:04:11 -0700

future updates will posted here http://taschilb.wordpress.com/

...reality...

Thu, 5 May 2011 21:16:33 -0700

I know I’m one of the reasons that blunt ended scissors exist. Not that I’ve ever tried to stab myself, or anyone, but given any implement with a sharp point at a young age, who knows what might’ve happened.

I’m realizing so many little things as I’m working on my cookbook project; so much falls into place and makes sense to me. I’ve always been curious about everything, always. I’ve simply wanted to not only know, but to walk any given path and experience it first hand, live it as much as I possibly can. Maybe it is the same affliction that Raskolinikov suffered from in Crime and Punishment, wanting to experience every emotion and sensation that a human being can or might, in order to feel ‘complete’.

I’m not compelled to ever attempt murder, outside of wanting to participate someday in a hunt or a slaughter. I don’t actually want to do either of those things, but as a person who consumes meat, orders the OK for someone else to do exactly that, it’s the least I can do. It’s an obligation of sorts, at least for my own conscience and curiosity. I want to understand the hunter and the killer as much as the hunted and the killed.

This isn’t about meat or murder, or any of the moral implications of said activity. Mostly, it’s just about discovering a little bit more. Each time I do something ‘here’ (cooking, making food), and not ‘there’(architecture), I find something more. Something that makes me feel as if I’m in a better spot, if not the right place.

They say ‘the meek shall inherit the earth’. Now that I’m well into my forties, I believe it. That is if the meek are stupid, ignorant, insanely easy to placate with evermore disappointing and meaningless shit. Through the course of my life I’ve found the natural evolution of almost everything, be it a profession, scientific integrity, even the art of conversation or writing, is to wither away into the least sum game where no one gets hurt, no one has to invest anything of themselves, and no one really wins at the end. Culture becomes some neon and balloon clad playground of plastic stage props, dripping with all the proper sanitization.

Eventually, it seems like everyone is clamoring for more helmets and padding...

a world of contrast

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:03:27 -0700

Today has been the perfect exercise in contrasts; like having each foot on a separate sheet of ice, straddling some chasmic cold liquor, looking from eyes centered above at how far they’ve spread apart. On the one side is the world of cooking, making food, and art. On the other, is the only life I’ve ever really known, at least in terms of a viable income, and it’s moving away from me quickly. I know which way I’m jumping; there’s no real choice about it...

I’m slogging through the last ever permit application I’m ever going to do; it’s more difficult each time. Years ago, I had the thought -- I really had no idea what it meant at the time -- I can do architecture, but I can’t do architecture. I understand it a little bit better now. I can design things, I can prepare drawings, do construction administration, charm clients. But for some reason, it just isn’t something that I can do naturally, calmly, with a full heart, feeling as if it’s making the world a better place. In fact... I think and know, too much of it is just absolute bullshit. There’s the often shallow gamut of what and why people build, but that’s not it so much. In fact, there’s been more than a few sincerely gratifying moments, including the other weekend, seeing the transformation of the dated and awful into something thoughtful and amazing. It’s more the endlessly growing pile of forms and documentation to prove that you’re behaving ‘greener’. Every application means yet a few more reams of paper to prove I’m not harming any significant trees. More and more paper to prove I’m reducing my carbon footprint, behaving sensibly and carefully respecting the environment. I’m proving that I’m somehow a bit more ‘innocent’ spending more and more time on the computer, lights on, burning electricity, weeping ink cartridges dry. I do it so that I can show that I’m following the paradigm of standards that have been set long ago, by bureaucrats, with safety factors that multiply every year, resulting in things needing to be slightly, and a bit more grotesquely, over designed each and every year.

It’s the reason, I think, that the economy is in such a constipated state. The clenched sphincter that paralyzes all, it’s the land and season of idiocy gone wild to the point that no one acts freely, intuitively, or without approval. People can’t move, innovate, create, or simply be. They wait, hands folded, for the next bit of intervention to come along, for the appropriate manner in which they’ll have to disclose and document all required information. They wait to be told what’s acceptable from people who accept no responsibility for any of it, a culture handed down from elitists, rather than one that comes from the ground up...

roasting a pig, ver 2.0

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 22:55:06 -0700

Writers block? I’m not sure if that describes why I’ve had such a hard time getting to this, or being able complete it. I don’t know that it fully describes what I’m thinking or is going on in my mind. I tell myself it’s not; rather, I simply love to savor things. It’s precisely the reason why, at the pinnacle of the party, I like to wander away, smoke a cigarette, and be completely alone. When everyone else has been served, I listen to the sounds of people laughing, idle and muffled conversations, and the beat of a distant and indistinguishable music. I watch stars, watch the smoke curl, become totally detached from anything specific. It places it all into a different realm for me; a Door County fish boil at the Viking Restaurant, smoked whitefish, Birch wood fires in a cheap and drafty cedar cabin, the smell of my Grandfather, ‘Papa’ after he’d spent the day fishing on Lake Michigan and had trout blood, gills, and scales on his fingers and fresh Wisconsin air in his shirt. Mettwurst. This is my childhood. All of the flavors, the sensations of what it means to experience something so stunning for the first time that you can only pause, gape at it wide eyed and with an open mouth, and let it forever etch into your memory.

It reminds me all over again of why I really like to cook, and why I love doing this sort of thing.

Everything is different the second time around. The first time I roasted a whole pig, it was for entirely different reasons, maybe simply thinking I needed to do something spectacular. I know now, I don’t cook for the spectacle of it; I simply enjoy knowing that food can be spectacular. I love knowing that I can do something that touches some realm that transcends the ordinary, but I also love knowing that the food is the star, and I’m irrelevant to it all. Anybody could do this. Most people don’t. But someone should, and so I do, because these are the sorts of things that need to be cemented into the memories of many. People need to gather, have fun, enjoy life, cherish each other, love a life which is astounding, sensual, and amazing.

That food and cooking can be a medium to convey things in my imagination, is gratifying. It’s as if I’ve found a language I can finally speak, where other people can see me for who I am, the lengths I’ll go through to give back to the world something as kaleidoscopic and enticing as it all looks and feels to me.

Along the way, the second time, you gain insights into motivations, parts of your psyche, see deeper into your soul, and see all of the simple themes you’ve always lived for. I realize all over again the relevance of my Architecture thesis, a public bath, knowing it was only about trying to come upon some common thread that went beyond any culture or linguistics, discovering, suddenly, the allure of water. A fundamental need of every human, yet intimate and unique in all of it’s iterations and meanings. No words need explain it. It’s similar, I know, with food. It is just as a public bath; the rituals may be different, but the need, and the notion, that eventually it all comes back to a local and vernacular art form appeals to me like no other. You learn a pantheon by watching how people treat or relate to water, just as you can by how they treat and revere what they eat.

I realize how much I need things such as this, because they are all the glistening truth one needs to know. I realize, somewhere at the core of my being, how deeply spiritual I am. I’m not the showboat, smart-ass, class clown that people remember me for. I am a serious and curious person, and I want and need to have things I revere, even if I’m playful in my approach. I love having things that are sacred, that I respect so utterly, so completely, that I’d go to any length to not defile it, to honor it, to do it justice.

Handling the whole pig and preparing it is different the second time; you learn that it’s worth it to invest in a large restaurant utility cart, and not wrestle things around. You know which knives to use for a particular task. You know where to cut things. You know the top rib (Collar bone?), when removed, exposes the artery in the forelegs and allows you to push out the remaining blood. You also, sadly, become sort of complacent about it all. You don’t feel the same pang of sadness or trepidation you did the first time. Experience numbs you to the sensation of life, though you never want it to be that way. It’s why I’m always pushing towards something new, always making it a prerogative to add more and more to my list. I don’t want life to feel numb. I just don’t. Ever. I don’t want to live in a world where people accept that being numb to life or the sensations of the world is ever OK.

This time, along with ordering the pig, I request the heart, the liver and the kidneys, making it a point to include them as part of the menu. The butcher gives these to me for free. I’ve never eaten pork heart, or pork liver, though amazingly, I have eaten kidney. Blindfolded, you’d never know the difference between a Portobello Mushroom and Pork kidney. Same texture, same meaty flavor. I order them, and yet have no idea of what to do with them. I only know that adding them in, dealing with them on top of the ducks, the leg of lamb, and 79 pounds of whole butchered pig, somehow makes it all complete to me. They’re part of the death I ordered, part of the life that was, and they deserve to have a place at the table. Certainly, at least acknowledged, looked at, and dealt with by me.

I don’t like cutting up organ meat. It’s fragile and turns to a pulpy slurry when it’s a liver. The kidneys are always slit, for USDA inspection of ringworm or other parasite. Deep inside is a cartilaginous network of lobes and ducts which disappear into a firm and meaty flesh and needs to be trimmed out. And then, finally, there is the heart. The one thing that absolutely tests my limits. I can cut myself severely, perform minor surgery on myself, even scrub in and assist with the amputation of a dog’s leg riddled with bone cancer, but cutting up a heart makes me feel flaccid and drained. Looking at the aorta, the network of veins coming in and out and around, the thought of cutting this perfect vessel of life into shards makes me feel stupidly alone. I’m guessing there may be someone else cutting up a pig heart at that very moment somewhere else on the planet, too, but I’m not sure. I realize all over how grotesque death can be, and how much it means simply ‘life’ for another day for someone or something else. As much as I love food and eating things like pork, I realize how little I like how it got here. This is my moment of prayer with the pig, the moment I look at the the things that frighten me, make me realize how real it was and is, knowing that I’m still too cowardly to kill it myself. Cutting up the heart, I suppose is my way of cementing the deal the best way I know how.

It’s a fascinating bit of meat though. Long strands of muscle, like a brisket of beef. It’s beautiful and somehow not so strange looking once split and rinsed. More like a flap of skirt steak than anything else. Yet still, I don’t like this. Knowing that a week ago this wonderful little pump was pushing blood around to all the nooks and crannies of this lovely little pig makes me feel sort of hollow. I need this reality check. It grounds me and makes me feel humble.

...Just Do Your Sh!t...

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 00:42:45 -0700

The other day, I started to imagine the odd parallel between life and how it all seems as some sort of gymnastic routine. Most everyone I know, seemingly, has gone through the elaborate, sometimes elegant, sometimes clumsy, tumbling routine of life, growing up, living. They go through all of the somersaults, the cartwheels, the backflips, then miraculously they ‘stick’ that perfect landing on the edge of their mat, resembling almost perfectly, a hood ornament from a Rolls Royce. Which is where they land and stick, and stay forever with a grin stretched on their face, breast thrust forward, arms high in the air in an exalted state. From a video to a still shot, their lives become a simple and singular definition of who they are, where they are, and what they will be.

They are happy there, and that is their home, their place, everything they are. And they all seem at ease about it. Actually, amazingly, it’s what they’ve somehow aspired to. As if there was some plan laid out years before that told them when, where and how it was going to hopefully play out.

I realized that most of my life, I’ve been locked into doing ever more backflips, contortions, cogitations, flailing around because I’ve never wanted to decide what corner of that mat I’m going to land on, never content to stick my feet, splay my arms and freeze anywhere, always fearing that someplace, some thing is going to be the definition of me.

It’s the fallacious reasoning of the immature, the asinine. To think that you have to be in constant motion lest you might cease to exist or be. Worse, worrying or thinking that somewhere out there is the ‘special purpose’ that was crafted for you, and you simply can’t be saddled to shit or mundane tasks. It’s arrogant and stupid.

I’ve long since grasped, our greatest virtues are often our greatest flaws. Somehow, for reasons unknown, many things in life come easy to me, and with most anything I do, after a very short while, I find I can show up and put forth minimal effort to get by, even do better than the others around me. That’s an asset and a flaw. I’ve lacked the internal discipline to ever sit down and just do my own shit, my own way in almost every arena I’ve wandered into, or let other people come into it too much, tell me what they were thinking, and let it poison the spring of inspiration.

Life has always devolved into not doing any particular task; merely strategizing the ways to complete it.

Amazingly, I’m not doing that lately. I’m sitting down. I’m doing my own ‘shit’. I don’t care about whether it’s right or wrong, who gets it or who doesn’t. I have no illusions that it might be grand, or meaningful, or change the world in any significant way. And I’m actually proud of it. I’m enjoying it.

It’s a fascinating journey and I don’t know where it goes. It’s fascinating because in the subtle and soft corners of it all, it’s revealing all the little things about cooking I truly love. All of the things that aren’t romantic, or lusty, or gregarious, or challenging sensually. There’s a simple and unexciting element about cooking that I think I’ve come to love most, the same sort of thing I’m beginning to apply in other areas. Ideas about organization. Using, and applying my ability to strategize. Realizing that virtually anything is possible when you can dissect it, and break it down into smaller and smaller tasks. Finding that all of these things still presuppose a point, an outcome, a purpose. It’s not flailing or flagellating, certainly not stagnation,but the story they tell. And of that story, that point, you eventually ask, is it a good one? Can you say it’s worth trying to express?

It’s the best lesson of all, to simply empty out the pantry of your soul sometimes, to stop asking why, what for, or for whom, and just start doing whatever you do, however you might. Letting life simply become by staking a claim wherever you are.

potage garbure

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 22:58:55 -0700

I may very well be completely wrong about this, although the idea behind it is something I love. The very thing I like to imagine and hope to be entirely truthful. If it isn’t, at least the fantastic notion still appeals.

What I don’t know, but have been told, is whether ‘Garbure’ actually is a French term to describe something which is, essentially garbage, though not entirely garbage. It’s what Americans may consider garbage, perhaps, in the land of plenty and the pleasantly obese. The French, however, and probably every other culture, regard scraps, leftovers, things in a semi-rotting state as something other than garbage, because truly, the only use for garbage is the scrap bin. Garbure, is the edible garbage. Things that still have use, can still be digested, still have something to give to some dish.

There are actual and real recipes for ‘Garbure’ out there, but this is more in the spirit of what I interpret it to be; a simple soup of leftovers. It’s the sort of thing I’m putting in my cookbook, not as a recipe so much, but a strategy; a way of looking at and using things in the refrigerator.

I make it a point to always have a few things on hand which allow this sort of thing to come about; namely the elements of a mirepoix, the basis for almost every soup, stew, stock, and many sauces in French cooking.

...expanding horizons...

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 00:39:53 -0800

I’m playing lately with some different media I’ve never tried. I’ve come to a few conclusions about certain aspects of this little cookbook project, and that is I want - need - the process of it to be similar to how I cook. I almost never know what I’m really doing. Usually, and at best, it seems I’m only trying to figure out how to make something I’m imagining come to be. It’s a bit like finger painting or learning to handle a pencil and form letters for the first time. Often, it’s only frustrating as hell, and my imagination almost always exceeds the abilities I have. It’s exactly the reason I love and enjoy it so much. It constantly challenges me.

I’m experimenting with colors, media, and techniques I’ve never used before. It’s a vow I’ve made - to learn new skills here, too. I’ve cut myself too many times in the kitchen with a knife, wound up with wounds and scars that have taught me more than any person or classroom could ever claim to. I want to do the same thing here.

I could resort to a computer and put in colors and get effects from some program, but I’ve been developing a certain aversion to them over the years. It’s not that they aren’t useful or great at making things. They are, maybe too much so. Or at least at providing the illusion they are. Which is the reason all together I’m going to avoid relying on them any more than possible. The world of food is stunning up and down the spectrum, to me. It’s a dance of death of one thing to sustain life of another. Colors. Aromas. Processes. Sensations. I never miss the opportunity to be awed by something in the kitchen; seeing wild yeast bubbling, the sheen of a red pepper, the smell of certain spice, or a fresh tomato. I want to capture and express that as best I can in my little cookbook.

Computers are strange. As useful and ‘rational’ as they are, they’ve contributed mostly to making the world a more mystifying place, abstracting and detaching us a bit more every day from real experiences, replacing them with some newer and flashier display or interface. To wit; likely you work on one all day, probably have for years. But now, it’s your playground, the principle means of socializing with others, too. A keyboard, a mouse or a trackpad, or maybe even just a touch screen compiles spreadsheets, draws buildings, edits photographs. It’s the same way you talk to friends, meet strangers, play games. The same interface for anything and everything. I’m seeing this - I’ve always seen it to some degree - the reason for the long walks, the reason why more and more, I like to feel that waft of steam from an oven full of baking bread burn my eyelids, why I don’t mind occasionally cutting a fingertip off. I see why I love these things; they’re real events. They happen up close and in person. They are mine.

Sometimes, they’re only mine. A tapestry of singular events that no one ever shares with me, and that I share with no one. Secrets I hold and keep only with myself, my immediate surroundings, small epiphanies and revelations about the forces of nature, commanding them, playing with them, being beaten and humbled repeatedly by them.

While they’re mine and literally not always shared, the lessons are. They parallel other things in other places. There are allusory companions and situations everywhere.

Wallowing and wandering in this realm long enough, you learn skills. You challenge yourself to do something different. Maybe it’s because you look long enough, make mistakes, stare at things that conduct themselves with a graceful ease and are a part of a flow, a greater vibration of life, and it touches you. At least it’s an inspiration for the way you want it to be. At some point you want to be as graceful and natural as the duck you marvel at in flight. You never know what your gift or ability is when you sit at a keyboard, shackled to the small paradigm some programmer has given you.

You find the parallels that certain skills provide. They way handling a pencil gives you a certain acuity to handle a knife, and probably vice versa. You understand the difference between a delicate and subtle touch, versus brute force. Life has texture, degrees of magnitude, a spectrum of sensations. Sharp and dull aren’t simply words, they’re meaningful states of an object. As are small things like body language. Vocal inflections. Quirky grins and small wrinkles. Hair that is thick or thin. Callouses on feet and hands.

The more one turns to a computer to do a particular thing, the more they atrophy in what it means to be human. Not only in the form of losing something in particular, such as penmanship, but in the meaning of living altogether. Computers compress time, give the false ability to ‘do more’ in less time than ever before. Mistakes can be thrown out, undone, or versions copied and re-edited a myriad of ways. They’re discarded and forgotten, never leaving a scar or a permanent signature that they affected you.

Then, there’s the fallacious notion we must always be on call, always available to answer anyone at any given moment, immediately, never with proper deliberation or consideration. Always, must we be ready, willing and able to produce a bit more a bit faster. The world is in shambles. People work longer and harder for less and less these days.

There’s something even more for me I guess, the real thing that underpins almost everything I make, prepare and cook, and the reason for playing now with artwork and media. I want to regress. Or at least understand enough to. A number of years ago a gust of wind came through our little sliver of the universe and knocked out the electricity for an extended period. Four days it was, with temperatures in the 20’s the entire time. We had firewood, a barbecue, a freezer full of meat, and running water, but in short time it became a sort of living hell. I wondered how mankind survived and flourished all these millennia. Not only how they survived, but how and why they made art, saw beauty in things. Revered animals and painted them on the walls of caves. Invented poetry. Made music. Fermented things into wine and beer. Developed senses of humor.

I like the notion of seeing beauty in it’s simplest form, as naked as it can be. Being adept enough at handling the basics so that anything can have some aesthetic quality, some aspect that I can appreciate and revere. And that’s the real conundrum of the world of technology and computers; We’ve become like a legion of world class gymnasts who haven’t the foggiest idea of how to crawl any longer...

...catenary curves and funicularity...

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 21:25:12 -0800

Any thing pinned or anchored between two points always assumes a natural curve - a catenary curve - a funicular form given the circumstances. Funicular, maybe describes a different but similar dimension of fate. Think of it as the shape that water takes in a given container, or the way a river or creek winds up taking the path that’s naturally the least resistant.

It’s a concept that first came to my vocabulary while studying structural engineering in the course of becoming an Architect. In those circumstances it describes the propensity of a beam to bend between supports; deflection. The trick there, of course, is to design one that’s stiff enough to resist deflecting to the degree that it’s not noticeable or an impact to the final design remaining plumb and stable.

I always took it a different way, thought about the manner in which it alludes to life in general. I remember the first project I worked on after getting into Architecture school. We were left alone to create something that was a sort of monument to ourselves. No preconceptions, no requirements about site, size, bathrooms or budget. The professors left us alone to cogitate and create. It was one of the first times I ever felt anything sort of funicular, as if I was draped between a few points, and everything joining them was a natural path. I like remembering that state, because suddenly, I’m back there again.

I’m actually working on my little illustrated cookbook, though I’ve thrown out the idea of it being a cookbook really at all. It’s just the natural book I’d write at this point in my life, the tale of the points that pin me up and tether me in the world. The things that tickle me, the reasons why, expressed the only way it seems fitting to do so; drawings, artwork, stories, and some recipes and strategies.

I wonder why I never did this earlier, maybe simply wish I could have, though I don’t know it would have been possible. Sometimes the things that elevate you and tether you just haven’t grown high enough to lift you off the ground and let you assume the form you’re supposed to be. Maybe you realize you’ve spent your whole life pruning back those things from time to time, keeping them from lifting you up.

You flail and flagellate, feel distended and misshapen by all the irrelevant forces in the world that seem to want to turn you into something else. Like a hammock hung too low, such that even though it’s tied off, it lays on a bed a of lumpy rocks and stumps taking on a form that it wouldn’t under any other circumstance. You cling to those rocks and stumps thinking that, even if it’s not the natural form you’d have, it’s a form you know. And sometimes having a natural form is as scary and synonymous with simply becoming formless altogether.

Fate, though, I think never lets you down.

...a tale of two sugars...

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 22:30:55 -0800

I’m finally at a spot that feels really good to me - sweet, even. I’ve got my studio reworked in a manner that’s conducive to something better than what I’ve been floundering around in lo these many years. I’m working at something which has been percolating in the recesses of my mind for, seemingly, years. Maybe my entire life.

I’ve always thought I’d just like to get back to where and who I was in second grade. Life was perfect back then. Uncomplicated. I never had questions about who I was, what I was, what I was ever doing. I feel like I’m closer to my goal than I’ve ever been.

I’m working on some new things - mostly an extension of this blog - writing, making up an illustrated cookbook, drawing. I use the term cookbook loosely, because it’s not going to be anything remotely close to Julia Child’s carefully done volumes about Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I have no illusions that I’m any incarnation of Escoffier, and I don’t ever want to be Rachel Ray. It’s going to be eclectic and probably not as much about any useful cooking that any audience would expect to see. But that’s OK - if it’s my cookbook - it’s going to be my cookbook. It’s going to be heartfelt and sincere.

Amidst the flensing of the old, huffing large amounts of freakish and nasty bits of ancient carpet dust, I’ve been pondering things - basic elements - simple thoughts that titillate and excite me about cooking, little nuggets that just sit in plain view that no one seems to notice. The story of my life. It’s sugar, lately. One of the most basic elements in any and every cookery known to every culture. Table sugar, Sucrose as it’s known in the food sciences, is actually a combination of two different sugar molecules; Fructose and Glucose.

I’ve never been interested in Chemistry at all, and I still don’t get any of it really, but things like this give me a means to understand the interest of it. Sugar is a simple Carbohydrate. Even the word reveals so much, but we gloss over it - truncate it into the slang, ‘carbs’ and throw it out at socials and barbecues as something we’re avoiding (or supposed to). Chemically, sugar is C6H12O6 -- meaning 6 Carbon atoms, 12 Hydrogen atoms, and 6 Oxygen atoms. Interesting - Strip away the Carbon atoms for a moment, and one winds up with 2 parts Hydrogen, to every one part of Oxygen; H2O. Water. Carbon, Hydrated. Carbo-Hydrate. Nomen est Omen, literally. Lovely. You’ve likely said the word a thousand and one times and never stopped to think of what it meant.

There’s something else fairly intriguing about Glucose and Fructose. They’re identical, at least in terms of components. The same number of Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen atoms. One, Glucose, is arranged in a hexagonal manner, a hexose. Oxygen and Hydrogen with little bits of Carbon dispersed between them. It’s only 70% as sweet as table sugar on it’s own.

Fructose, on the other hand, is arranged as a pentagon, a pentose. Same number of bits, composed and ordered only slightly differently, it yields a totally different result altogether. It becomes almost twice as sweet on the tongue as Glucose, and is 20% sweeter than Sucrose. Fascinating.

I love this. I love the way the world works - that some combination of parts can be simply rearranged ever so slightly - wind up completely different, so much sweeter.

Settling into a new, but old space that feels much sweeter and homier, I think it’s the perfect metaphor for life.

...Edie’s Tuna Casserole...

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 22:14:30 -0800

This is not the sort of thing that I would usually cook for myself - simply because it comes from a different place, time and circumstance than the one I’m living in. That said - it’s a noble thing - and something that I’m proud to be a part of making a bit more of a reality.

It’s a fictional recipe which, thanks to my mother, I had a reason and opportunity to try and create. My mother is an author - a rather famous author - with soon to be 45 books to her credit, landing multiple times on the New York Times best sellers list. Neat. One of her book series takes place in Sedona, Arizona and one of the things the lead character refers to is her mother’s tuna casserole. It’s her idea of comfort food. Her fans ask about these things - different recipes - whether they’re real or not - and of course they are; real fiction. They don’t exist, but thankfully, I get a chance, occasionally, to shepherd them into the realm of something that people could recreate in their own kitchen.

I love doing this - more than almost anything - because it touches every nerve and every little aspect of life in me. Lately, I just ponder the idea of creating a whole new genre of cookbook; fictional cookbooks. Imagine if Shakespeare had written one. Or Beethoven, or Mozart, or Richard Feynman. And would anybody want to eat Hitler’s favorite (vegetarian - UGH!) recipes?

It all started with an email exchange, one from a fan to my mother, forwarded to me. I replied, “sign me up!”. She emailed me back the short parameters of what she had in mind while writing about it; her mother’s tuna casserole recipe, followed with the basic ingredients it had to have. Tuna fish (canned) of course, rice, cream of mushroom soup, peas (her mother used canned, though those ‘wouldn’t do - so use frozen!’). No idea of the proportions. And Parmesan cheese on top.

I like this - LOVE this - because I want to know Edie. I want to know who she is - what clothes she wears, what she drives. I want to know what makes Edie tick - but also - I want to know what makes her casserole so good that the lead character loves it so much. If it’s something bland and boring, you can easily incite some sense of disappointment - that someone so complex and compelling in every other aspect - the centerpiece of a series of books - likes what? That’s her favorite food?

Edie is, for the most part, based on Evelyn - my grandmother. After the odd grilling about Edie, it all clicked. I could see her now - I’d met her and knew her - what a pill she was. She never cooked for me, but it painted the picture I needed. Evelyn was a joy to know - frightening in some respects because something about her was simply a force of nature you never wanted to meet on a bad day, or heaven forbid, cross her and make her day a bad one. She had a shock of bright white hair, and fair skin with rosy cheeks and eyelids. She reminded me a little bit of an easter egg for reasons I don’t know why. She loved to, along with Norman, her husband and my Grandfather, play practical jokes and tease endlessly about anything, even themselves. A diamond clip given on an anniversary was actually a ‘dime and clip’; a ring box with a dime sandwiched in a paper clip. She loved to give me a hug, simultaneously putting her hearing aid up against my cheek, letting it suddenly buzz in a strange way - it made her chuckle. Me too. Later she had a mummified bit of pinky toe she had removed in another ring box, which she happily introduced at another family party. She was silly and lovely, yet dour and unabashedly opinionated all at the same moment.

I started with the basics; the ingredients outlined in the initial email - it was a test run. I’d done a bit of (fruitless) research. Funny; Larousse Gastronomique doesn’t say anything about casseroles. Nor does the Culinary Institute of America text. Nor does even the Betty Crocker cookbook I have. Not the sort of thing I really want or need to know, anyway - such as what the ideal proportion of rice to liquid to condensed soup might be - the backbone of the whole thing. No one says. So I start out guessing and making a sacrificial lamb out of it.