a fortuitous find

As often happens in the wilderness of the Internet, I was traipsing about on some cooking forums last week and began to follow, off the beaten path, one interesting link after another. It grew dark and I began to feel I was losing my way. I had forgotten to bring something crumbly, for marking the path behind me. Somehow I found myself at this NY Times article from last December, and I rested there for the night. When I woke up in the morning I found my way back home, much wiser for the bewildering experience.

The article is called “So Your Kitchen is Tiny. So What?” Who wouldn’t be drawn to that? I almost titled this post “in which a pagan eclipses me in contentment,” but a) I don’t know that the author is a pagan (to whom, in case he reads this, I mean no offense; in my vocabulary “pagan” is a rather specific term for a non-Christian, not a demeaning moral judgment) and b) he does confess to complaining every now and then at his lot, which is a kitchen looking like . What you should know is that this man is the author of a cookbook entitled How To Cook Everything, and from the looks of the thing it doesn’t lie. The contents are critically acclaimed. And he says he does most of the testing for his books in this glamorous space.

I am humbled. I mean, I am almost-perfectly happy with my kitchen. It suits our basic needs and we have a dishwasher to relieve me of backbreaking labor (smirk). I know it would be ridiculous for me to have a showroom kitchen before I really know how to cook. I am the type of person who leans on the ceramic stovetop two minutes post-use; I don’t deserve, or need to be in charge of, any remotely complicated appliances. But I am humbled because I am covetously inclined like everyone else, and longing for a better kitchen, or house for that matter, is not even something that I could be tempted to justify. Coveting the clothes on someone else’s back when you have *none* involves some mitigating factors that simply are not there when it comes to completely optional upgrades on concepts that already work pretty darn well, such as the standard refrigerator or the microwave.

I was kind of hoping that that article would provide some practical, TIPical Mary Ellen-esque space-saving hints. It doesn’t, but it *does* motivate you to apply your own mind to how you can reorganize/declutter/otherwise improve the efficiency of your kitchen, to the end that you are less inclined to grumble about its idiotic layout or utilitarian aesthetic and more inclined to make do and make good food. As one celebrity chef said in the article: “Only bad cooks blame the equipment. I can make almost every dish in my restaurants on four crummy electric burners with a regular oven — as can just about anyone else who cares to.”

it helps to turn the teapot on

Just thought I would post that Helpful Tip for those who are boiling tea.  I found it of great service to me this afternoon, after wondering vaguely for a little while about what went wrong.

Canning gifts

 

 

My husband has the gift of canning. His gift flows from physical strength and family tradition. My gifts tend more toward looking out the window and sitting, occasionally, at poolsides with a book. The latter gift goes largely unutilized.

 

Our extravagantly beautiful summer bowed and bolted; fall arrived, and the first phase of our grapes, more than 20 pounds, ripened overnight. Rain split our thin-skinned varieties; especially hard-hit was the Sweet seduction, and mold set in quickly throughout much of the vine. The Interlaken held up well, and my husband picked 23 pounds from our vines. The Canadice, the sweetest and best of all, also held up well, and remains firm enough to go another week before picking. The Campbell’s Early, a Concord type, has never been true to its name, and probably has another week or two before it ripens. With plums and apples also in sight of ripening, canning will likely continue for the next three weekends. It makes for a homey time.

 

My husband canned about 17 pounds of Interlakens, juiced another couple of pounds, and refrigerated enough for us to enjoy fresh for the week. He does the canning outdoors on the deck on a propane stove. He has the method simplified to stemming the grapes, placing them in jars, adding water but no sugar, and placing them in the pressure canner for about ten minutes. The green grapes lose their vibrant color, and look rather like large canned peas, but they are very good, and we enjoy them through the winter.

 

I know that some women appreciate the sight of a linen closet stocked with neatly folded towels and sheets. I appreciate a well-stocked pantry with rows of mason jars containing the fruits of our own backyard. There is something inherently wonderful about growing and canning things, not from necessity, but from a love for the ability of the land to yield and the ability of the hand to work. Of course we can buy grapes the year round, but we would rather do it ourselves. Or at least, I would rather watch my husband do it.

Quest for low-carb bread

 

I was diagnosed last year with reactive hypoglycemia, and I have to be attentive to the glycemic index of everything I eat. Unchecked, reactive hypoglycemia can lead to diabetes.

 

 For a while, I thought the problem had resolved when my endocrinologist lowered my dose of hydrocortisone, and I was seeing consistently normal glucose values for the first time in a Siberian winter. But as time passes, even on the reduced dose of hydrocortisone, bread is once again causing my blood sugar to spike. I saw 197 on the glucometer after eating two slices of toast with two eggs and a slice of cheese, and freaked out.

 

It’s all fairly complicated, but it’s carbs that cause my blood sugar to spike. Grains of any type — and the wholeness of the grains makes no difference, nor does brown rice, or any other color or texture — have more carbohydrates and a higher glycemic index per serving than, for instance, dark chocolate or carefully selected ice cream without corn syrup. In other words, what it seems I cannot eat if I wish to maintain safely sub-diabetic glucose levels, are grains: bread, rice, pasta, or any other type of grain; whether wheat or quinoa, it makes no difference. It’s the number of grams of carbohydrate per serving that counts.

 

I’ll mention here that this is about a quest for bread available in a store. I no longer make my own bread because my hands hurt all the time.

 

My husband and I have done a lot of research on carbohydrates and hypoglycemia, and did more again after the recent scary spike incident. The fact remains that I must eat like a diabetic or become one. Most competent diabetics count carbohydrates, and they don’t worry as much about the sugar they put in their coffee as they would about a serving of corn. My husband found a reference to low-carbohydrate bread that helped other people with reactive hypoglycemia to stay level without giving up bread entirely. One brand, proprietary to Trader Joe’s, was made without flour, and used pecan meal instead. Unfortunately, this variety is not available at my particular local Trader Joe’s. There was another reference to a bread at Whole Foods Market. There is no Whole Foods Market where we live, but my husband works a few blocks away from one. I called our local health food store, Marlene’s, and they were very interested in such a thing but did not presently have any sort of low-carbohydrate bread.

 

After finding no low-carbohydrate bread on the shelves of Whole Foods Market, my husband asked the bakery manager about it. She found a bread that has no sugar or gluten or any fillers or starches of any kind except pure grains and seeds. She sliced it thinner than most bread comes sliced. I found a thin slice to be more filling than thicker slices of less substantial bread. We weighed a slice of this new bread and divided by the carbohydrates per ounce on the label, and came up with 6 g of carbohydrate per slice, compared to 18 g per slice of the 12-grain Orowheat bread that caused my spike.

 

 People who have to manage carbohydrates and glucose get used to doing the math for everything they eat. It’s worth it: I had a slice of the new bread from Whole Foods Market with my normal low-carb chicken and vegetable stirfry dinner. My postprandial blood glucose was 106. The specters of insulin, blindness, amputations, dialysis, and life being a hassle melted away. I retested in the morning after a slice of toast and was 107, still perfect. I’ll keep testing, but if I can continue to eat a slice of this particular bread safely, my husband is to return to Whole Foods Market with the empty bread wrapper, find that bakery manager, thank her, and elicit a promise that she will never, ever run out of this worldly bread of life.