I think it’s a requirement for all Seattle Public Schools to go on a field trip to the Pike Place Market in 4th grade. I went with my 4th grade class twenty years ago, and a few weeks ago my friend accompanied her 4th grader to the market. The girls all got those spiral beaded thingies you twist around your hair so it looks like some fancy braid you got on the beach in Mexico. I’m pretty sure I had one twenty years ago, too.

All this talk about Jamie Oliver and his food revolution in schools has made me think about my own school lunches. Chicken fingers. Tater tots. Salisbury steak. I loved Salisbury steak. It came with mashed potatoes. I’m Chinese. We never ate things like that. I was in my teens before it occurred to me what made a grilled cheese sandwich extra tasty was frying it up in some butter instead of just sticking two pieces of bread and a slice of cheese in the toaster oven, and that white bread - which I never bought - was more delicious than wheat. And I always looked forward to chimichanga day. I kind of even liked the pizza.

School food has been terrible since there have been school cafeterias, with the exception of certain countries that prize food above economy (France comes to mind). I do remember an essay in Gourmet magazine called "In Praise of Boarding-School Fare" or something, but it was about life at Miss Porter's School in the 1950's and the standards that apply to an expensive girls' finishing/boarding school don't align with the public school system's. But somewhere along the way we lost the ability to feed ourselves.

It is easy to point fingers at the school system. But they are only part of a larger problem. When you come from an upper-middle-class household (as I did), the crap you eat in the school cafeteria (which was very foreign and exciting to someone who ate Chinese food 24/7; I was 24 before I owned a potato masher) is balanced out by the food you eat at home. I had parents who cared about food, and could afford to do so. What do you do if the best meal you have all day is the one you get at school? If your parents don’t care, or can’t afford, or don’t have time to cook at home? Teaching children is one thing - they are a captive audience, and you hope that at least something you throw at them will stick. But how do you educate people on how to feed their own kids? How do you teach them to care?

(Photo above taken at the Pike Place Market, Seattle, February 20, 2010).

Eating is a small, good, thing.

Friday morning I was grumbling about having to make two kinds of cupcakes for a work lunch on Monday. Then I found out that a friend's father-in-law had passed away, after a brief, brutal struggle with cancer. She and her partner went down to be with family as soon as they heard, and L. suggested that we leave food at their home - M. had a key and would be housesitting - for when they returned. Then I remembered what cooking is all about, ultimately - it is about love. Then I would bake for my coworkers and friends, and I would do it happily, with love.

Eating is a small, good thing at a time like this, wrote Raymond Carver in one of his short stories. People who write about food always bring up this line when they talk about grief, followed by a recipe for something soothing and comforting, a soup, perhaps, or some sort of cookie with a childhood story behind them. The instinct, when it comes to baking, is to make something sweet. I would be doing all that, because I had to make cupcakes anyway, but I wanted something savory. I had bacon in the fridge (home-cured and smoked by my friend L.), a wedge of cheese. Savory biscuits, then, with bits of bacon and shredded cheese. But how was I going to do this all in one day?

I started by measuring out dry ingredients for everything on Saturday night. I scooped out flours, leavenings, salt, cocoa powder, sugar, sifted them into plastic boxes. I made the filling for the black-bottom cupcakes, whipping together cream cheese, sugar, egg, a handful of chopped bittersweet chocolate. I counted eggs and diced sticks of butter, stacked boxes of dry ingredients and washed up dirty dishes. I would be organized, which does not come easily to me. I stopped short of pouring out buttermilk and oil and measuring out teaspoonfuls of vanilla and vinegar (which I should have done - I forgot the vinegar in the red velvet cupcakes).

In the morning I blended butter and lard into the biscuit "mix" with my hands, until flakes of dough appeared. In went buttermilk, crumbled bacon, grated cheese. Too much cheese. Oops. I scooped out the dough with the ice cream scoop that turned out to be too big. Oops. I grabbed the smaller scoop and redid the biscuits, making nine instead of six. Into the oven, and I ran off to get dressed before work. The biscuits emerged, twenty minutes later, golden brown and speckled with bits of smoky bacon, gooey with cheese. I set aside the four prettiest ones for my friends and ate two, quickly, before heading out to work.

Much later I boxed up my cupcakes and biscuits and put them in a bag. Eating is a small, good thing, I thought. I hoped my offerings would give a small measure of comfort.

Baking.

A few days ago, I was musing aloud about what to make for our Chinese New Year/Valentine's Day lunch on Monday. G. voted for her favorite black-bottom cupcakes. C. felt that a cupcake without frosting was not a cupcake, and voted for red velvet. G. shuddered at the thought of red food coloring. I began slamming my head against the wall. Actually, I yelled "FINE!" and decided to make both. I had to work on Sunday and go to dinner at a friend's house to celebrate the Chinese New Year, and somehow bake two kinds of cupcakes. This would require advance planning, which I always fail at, and I grumbled under my breath about ungrateful, picky eaters. On the other hand, it's a win-win situation for me, because I love both kinds.

I started Saturday night, measuring out flours and sugars and leavenings, making the cream-cheese filling for the black-bottom cupcakes. After work I come home and hit the ground baking. I've been thinking about this in my head all day - get the red velvet cakes in, and while they're baking mix together the black-bottom ones. I hit a stumbling block when I notice that the red velvet recipe makes 24 cupcakes. I thought it only made 12. Whoops. That's ok, moving on. I can clean up the kitchen while they bake. First tray goes in, comes out, second one goes in, I start making black-bottom cupcakes. The last bit of cream-cheese filling goes in just as the timer dings for the second tray of red velvet. I've found the groove, that moment when everything is coming together smoothly. I taste one of the first cupcakes, and it is soft and tender and moist, dusty rose-red (I used gel food coloring instead of liquid, and it hasn't quite turned out how I expected).

The black-bottom cupcakes look wonderful, deep-chocolate-y brown around a pale gold, chocolate-flecked cream cheese middle. I'm running short on time now, beating together cream cheese frosting for the red-velvet cupcakes, packing up some biscuits I'd made in the morning for friends, and spreading the frosting and putting everything together. It's time to go.

Toothless in Seattle.

Friday, after years of putting it off, I had all four wisdom teeth removed, a process involving many, many drugs. I went home with a bottle of some Ensure-like product (theoretically vanilla-flavored) and instructions to eat soft foods, avoid carbonation, drinking through a straw, and smoking. That would be easy. The fridge was stocked with vanilla ice cream and sweet-potato congee. These, along with a bottle of strawberry milk, got me through the first evening, a haze of sweet milky drinks and blood-soaked gauze. My mother laughs at me, because I have no memory of paying for the surgery, or making the follow-up appointment.

Saturday passes in a stream of vanilla milkshakes. I get bored with plain vanilla, and, noticing the instructions to eat "healthy" foods chop up a banana and throw it into the blender. Better. I have a bowl of congee, thick with the starchy sweetness of sweet potatoes, and a bowl of soup made with pork broth and half-moon slices of Daikon radishes. By now I am desperately craving crisp-skinned fried chicken, potato chips, bacon cheeseburgers, all things crunchy and salty. It has only been a day and I am already longing for my sore mouth to heal, even as I remind myself that I am lucky that all I have is a slight soreness, not even worth taking a painkiller.

Sunday, I make myself a banana-chocolate-malt milkshake (delicious) and another bowl of congee. Even though it is all tasty, it begins to pall. I want to chew again. I want to wallow in self-pity. I feel ashamed of my boredom, more so when friends arrive, bearing gifts of soft, tender food. L. brings sopa de malanga, a creamy soup of taro root, its thick sweetness tempered with the bite of garlic. She brings a giant hunk of chocolate cake leftover from her birthday party the day before, so tender, moist, and light it barely qualifies as solid food. While I am spooning down the wonderful soup, the other L. arrives, with homemade butterscotch pudding. It is not too sweet, with the soft smokiness of real Scotch whiskey underscoring the lovely dark taste of brown sugar, and I can't stop eating it, either.

It is such a comforting feeling, warm and somehow humbling, to have people care for you, cook for you, make sure that you have tasty treats that can be eaten without chewing. I feel so grateful for my friends, and my mother, who made me change the date of my surgery so she could be here while I was recovering. I have been so accustomed to being alone and taking care of myself, that to have others stepping in feels like the lifting of a burden I didn't realize existed, and I am so thankful.

Baking bread. focaccia.

I'm not sure when it started, a year ago, perhaps, but I began baking bread like someone possessed after reading about the phenomenon of no-knead bread. You mixed together flour, water, salt, and a tiny bit of yeast, left it to rise slowly, overnight, then baked it in a preheated cast-iron pot (or any covered casserole - Pyrex worked exceptionally well). It looked more or less like one of those crusty artisanal loaves that came in brown paper bags and tasted like heaven, especially when eaten warm, spread with sweet butter, perhaps a little jam. I tried variations, adding whole-wheat flour, which gave the bread a somewhat loofah-like texture, and walnuts, which stained my irregularly rounded loaf with purple streaks. Eventually, I got bored, and returned to buying my bread at the market.

A longing for fresh bread brought me back to the table, so to speak, and with it a couple of new books on bread baking. A chance mention of a quest for the focaccia on Twitter the other day gave me a new mission. It took no time at all to measure out ingredients, dump them all in the stand mixer, then walk away. From the next room I could hear a steady thwack-thwack-thwack; when the dough began to come together smoothly the sound became a rhythmic thunk-thunk-thunk. I tried kneading it with hands slick with olive oil; the dough still stuck wherever I touched it. I washed my hands, leaving them dripping with water, and tried again; this time the dough behaved as I lifted and folded it over again. Eventually I had a large ball of smooth, almost silky, soft dough. It was springy and cool beneath my fingers, and I put it away in the fridge with some regret. Morning would come soon enough.

In the morning I divided the dough into thirds, or rather, I took off a third of the dough and spread it in a Pyrex pie plate. The recipe suggests that you could use about 8 oz of dough in an 8-inch pan or 12 oz of dough in a 9-inch pan; what I had was a 9.5-inch pie plate. Good enough. I stretched the dough out with my fingertips, and left it to rise while I went out for a movie. By the time I got back, three hours later, the dough had become puffier, filling the pan, smoothing out the dimples my fingertips had left in the soft, white dough. I added more olive oil, sprinkled on sea salts flavored with Niçoise olives and rosemary and lavender. Slid it all into the screaming-hot (500˚) oven, resisted the urge to cross myself and pray.

As so often happens (my oven runs a little hot), the bread was done before the timer buzzed. Oh well. It was a bit too salty; I had been overly generous with the seasoning salt. Oh well. Here was good, fresh, hot bread - soft and fluffy, with an airy, light crumb, just enough chew to the crust, slicked with olive oil and fragrant with the herb salts. I ate one wedge, then another, then another; before I knew it, the entire loaf was gone. (In my defense, I hadn't eaten breakfast yet, nor lunch). I sat with my empty plate next to me, and reflected that homemade bread is always better than anything you can find in the store, or at least as good as anything you can buy, by virtue of its freshness, its warmth, the knowledge that you made it yourself.

Pork and cabbage.

I was thinking aloud in the car, driving home from a party the other night, wondering what to do with extra ingredients rattling around in the fridge. I should have known that M. would know what to do with a pound of ground pork and a head of Napa cabbage. I had been thinking meatballs, ants-on-a-log, or noodles stir-fried with the pork and cabbage and perhaps some scallions, the day before when I wandered through the aisles of the supermarket. M. had another idea, a layered concoction of cabbage and sausage, baked in a covered dish, something from the Irish food writer Tamasin Day-Lewis. He sent me a link to the recipe, found on another blog. Called "Stuffed Cabbage in the Troo Style," it seemed promising, and I filed it away in my mind.

A few days passed. I ate leftovers as the Napa cabbage reproached me from the refrigerator shelves, like the skull of Hamlet's father. The pound of ground pork gleamed beneath tightly-stretched plastic wrap. I went back to the recipe, noted that there were two versions: the original, and the modified version. The recipe called for sausage; I had none, only plain ground pork. Modified, it called for fresh herbs; it was cold and gray out and I was too lazy to go to the tiny herb garden in my building's courtyard. (Efforts to grow herbs on my windowsill have all failed). I would turn to my Chinese upbringing, using the seasonings of my childhood and treating the dish like a giant dumpling filling.

The ground pork (Kurobota, from Uwajimaya) went into a bowl with a bunch of scallions (chopped finely), a couple glugs of soy sauce, grated ginger, some rice wine, freshly ground black pepper, 5-spice powder, and a dash of sesame oil. The cabbage was sliced up and tossed with Kosher salt, then left to drain in a colander, to draw out some of the moisture before cooking. (The original recipe calls for blanching the cabbage first, but it seemed unnecessary to me, and the blog writer agreed). I layered it in a small 1 3/4 quart Le Creuset pot, pressing firmly down on the layers of cabbage and seasoned pork (actually, it was kind of fun) to fit it all in. The tight-fitting, heavy lid made baking (parchment, I assume) paper superfluous, and the rich Kurobota pork eliminated the need for any extra butter.

After an hour in the oven, I could smell the seasoned pork and cabbage cooking slowly away. The shredded cabbage had melted into the pork, the entire thing shrinking slightly away from the edges of the pot. It looked like a huge meatball oozing with its own juices. I sliced off a big wedge and eased it onto a bed of rice, adding some of the sauce; it was soft and lush, comforting, savory, like a plate of dumpling filling without any dough wrappers getting in the way. I finished my serving, then another; wished I had someone to share it with. I'll make it again.

The Chocolate Chip Cookie Conundrum.

I have been baking chocolate chip cookies since I was old enough to read the back of the Nestlé Chocolate Chip package, or at least old enough to don a pair of oven mitts and gingerly pull a hot tray of cookies out of the oven. As time passed I got better at measuring ingredients, beating butter with sugar until light and fluffy, forming neat balls of dough (ok, they were irregular blobs) with two spoons. Much later I switched to dark chocolate chips; later still, I started using bars of bittersweet chocolate, hacked into little chunks by hand. I learned that this was most easily accomplished with a serrated bread knife; I learned that you wanted the butter to be warmer than fridge-cold but not room-temperature-soft, that I liked a higher proportion of brown sugar to white.

My favorite chocolate chip cookie is the one I make all the time, now, from Jeffrey Steingarten's recipe. I make it with bittersweet chocolate chunks and measure the dough with an ice-cream scoop, and they come out (if I've scooped correctly and left enough space between the mounds of dough) nearly perfectly round. They are thin and chewy, caramelized around the edges, still soft in the very center. I bake them often, or sometimes just make a batch of dough to divide up and freeze, so I can have a few warm, freshly baked cookies whenever I want. They don't often last long. I am always seeing new recipes to try, recipes that call for browned butter or disks of chocolate or chilling the dough for 24 hours in the fridge, recipes that promise the perfect ratio of crisp-chewy-soft. Somehow I always come back to the same one, though, my thin, chewy golden cookie.

Then I have friends who spend days, weeks, perfecting their own recipes. They play with the balance of sugars, of leavenings, of flours. Baking times and mixing methods. They take time to note every subtle change, every difference, marked in terms of two tablespoons more or less of one thing or another. L. brings us two examples, one that resembles the kind I make myself, all crisp-chewiness and caramelized sugar, and one that is more perfect-looking, thicker and more evenly baked, round and smooth, the magazine-cover cookie. I prefer the other one. "But it's ugly!" my friend wails. "I don't care!" I yelp back. Ah, this is the crux of the matter. Ugly is good. Ugly says handmade, with love. It is childhood, small hands scooping dough with a pair of teaspoons, dropping bits on the floor and on the counter.