The Pilgrim's Pots and Pans

I’ve been remiss with posting (what’s new?) and even with correspondence. When life interferes, I am hardly online. Before more of the same posts, here’s a meme courtesy of cabalen Ces. The instructions are to write ten things not commonly known about me. For this blog, I’ll keep them food-related. I’ll also try to answer some of the questions I get from friends and readers.

1. In this day and age, I prefer cooking the traditional way, on a wood-fired clay stove. I feel that I can control the temperature better. Unless I have an industrial standard gas range, the settings on mine are just too limited. In contrast, with a wood-fired stove, I can start with flames that engulf the pot. As soon as the liquid boils, I can adjust it with flames to the minimum yet intense (do they call it a slow burn?) with the embers, no need for a flameguard. For slow cooking, I can just feed it with charcoal. Another reason why I prefer a clay stove over a gas range is because an extra large clay pot would fit into it, size- and shape-wise.
2. My friends laugh at me when I bring bags of food on short field trips. I have to have at least two sandwiches, a fruit, some biscuits and the most important thing, water. What’s so funny about that? I have to have some table napkins and condiments too. Yes, I bring enough to feed a battalion.
3. Coffee, that’s another issue. I’m allergic to it – headaches, LBM, etc., etc. The mere aroma makes my stomach churn. It’s strange though because it started when I was in high school. Prior to that I’d pick the fruits from our coffee tree, help my grandmother roast them then winnow and crush them myself. That coffee was wonderful.
4. Though I am a notorious carbo-loader, I can survive without rice for months on end. Some people I know have headaches if they don’t have at least a cup of rice in a day. Me? I can live on a bit of bread, a serving of pasta or even a potato.
5. I have constant kitchen battles with my mother. Hmmm… not battles actually, they’re not even skirmishes. She cooks well but is more of the no-rules-anything-goes school of cooking. If she likes a certain ingredient, say carrots for example, it will be carrots from here to eternity. She also tends to use far more modern conveniences than I think necessary even when cooking traditional dishes. Of course everyone who regularly reads this blog knows I was trained by a kitchen vigilante, the keeper of the rules, hehehe! Fortunately, my mother is far from insecure and does not have a competitive personality. She lets me have my way and even happily accedes to what I want – as long as I do it myself.
6. I am thinking about putting up a place that offers traditional cooking lessons. There’s a place I can use that I was planning to work on as a tiny ecological conservation laboratory. I don’t see why I can’t merge ecology with traditional cooking. I’ll stop here. More thought still has to be put into that. No proper plans yet.
7. I can be a maverick cook. If I’m cooking from a recipe the first time, I usually take pains to follow it to the letter just so I can come as close as possible to what the author intended. However, I’ve found myself changing course right in the middle even if I have all the ingredients at hand.
8. On pastries. I’ve baked cakes, pies, biscuits and what-have-you. But would you believe that I’ve never baked any brownies? This is supposed to be the recipe for beginners yet the insides of my oven have never seen any. It must be related to my not being a chocoholic.
9. This is one of my pipe dreams. I would really, really love to work for National Geographic, not on camera but as a researcher. You know, you’re not a public persona therefore more dangerous (ergo, exciting) tasks are assigned to you. I used to dream of joining their archaeology and/or ecology teams but because of this food blog and all the nerdy food literature I’ve been reading, I would be perfectly at home fusing archaeology, ecology and food.
10. I can turn out some pretty decent embroidery and lace tatting. I’ve been meaning to make some good table linen for a long time now. A good amount of cloth and a few balls of thread are waiting for my hands to work on them. Soon my lovelies, soon… hopefully in this lifetime.

Since I’m posting this after almost a year (post-dated to reflect the time it was on draft), I think this meme has gone around, I’m not sure who else has not had it. If you wish to be tagged, let me know and your wish is my command.