All I can think about is boys and eggnog.

And maybe cinnamon rolls, too.  Those have been poking me in the brain lately.  Can you blame me, though?  Well, boys, that’s a given – always thinking about those cuties – but eggnog?  Cinnamon rolls? Salted caramel? Gingerbread? Bûches de Noel? Peppermint patties? Sugar cookies? FUDGE? I mean, I’ve never had a sugarplum (what even IS that?) but I can attest that these here visions are pervasive and real.  Thinking about, salivating over, lusting after, dreaming of food is something I find myself doing alllllll the tizzime these days.  

Food [specifically dessert foodstuffs] is typically at the forefront of my mind when I don’t need to be thinking about anything else.  Or maybe especially when I need to be thinking about something else (i.e. during Sunday School…).  Eating it, of course (DUH), but also making it, experiencing it.  I’ll find myself reading recipe books like novels.  Most of my time on the internet is spent poring over food blogs and searching for cakes on Pinterest and getting emotional about food styling.  Just last week, my Secret Santa left me a textbook-sized recipe book devoted wholly to cakes.  PURRRRFECTION!  It was only after reading about Genoise sponges and meringues for nearly a half hour straight standing up because I was too excited to sit down that I remembered, oh yeah, I have an actual job.  And unfortunately, that job is not learning more about the tenderizing qualities of egg proteins.

If thinking and reading and daydreaming about food dessert isn’t enough, listening to other people talk about food is almost equally as fulfilling.  Hello, Food Network, yes, I’m looking at you.  At the beginning of a show when the hostess introduces what she’s about to make for me, I usually think, “If it’s not dessert, I’m not interested.”  But of course by the end of the half hour segment, I’ve been indoctrinated, mesmerized, hypnotized, and even though I’ve never made risotto, I need to now!  This very instant!! I can’t think of a time I’ve ever had a need for appetizers in my quotidian life (why expend so much effort on preparation and presentation for only one bite? Just to amuse your bouche?  Not even my bouche?  Meh), but turn on a cooking channel show about party planning, and all of a sudden, I must make baby bruschettas, caprese skewers, and mini quiches!!  I MUST!  

Chopping rhythmically, searing meat, spritzing lemon juice, cracking eggs, mincing garlic.   

Don’t even get me started on baking bread.    

On my flight back to Phoenix from Pennsylvania a couple weeks ago, the plane’s seatbacks came equipped with mini TV monitors and a very selective sliver of shows available to passengers for free.  I felt like I’d struck gold, however, when I found Nigella Lawson’s Christmas Special from 2012.   It was the tail end of November and we’d all finally been given the universal green light to commence with Christmas preparations, which Nigella did by inviting me into her home as she prepared for a holiday party.  She was so clean and elegant and feminine, and I was enthralled by her low husky voice and the way her accent reminded me of Kate Winslet.  We made tiramisu and puff pastry bites and fileted a duck together, and it was all ridiculously warm and inviting.  Most of the show was shot with a short focal length, so all of the Christmas tree lights in the background were blurred and bokeh, and the entire ambiance of the show, of the experience, was one of comfort.  I can’t think of any better way to describe the kitchen, the lights, the food, and the coziness other than romantic.

 

One particular morning in pastry school, barely awake in the wee 6 am hours, doing my best not to doze off and face-plant into the stainless steel tables or accidentally fall sideways off my stool, our chef was talking to us about the different methods of incorporating fat with flour in order to make biscuits.  The particular method she was demonstrating involved using your hands to break the cold, cubed butter into smaller crumb-sized pieces.  As she gently sifted through the biscuit mix, almost absent-mindedly scooping up handfuls of flour and letting it softly drift between her fingers, she told us stories about cooking with her grandmother when she was a young girl and about some of her formative experiences working with food.  The whole thing – the story, the flour, her voice – was positively entrancing but also relaxing, especially so early in the morning, a soft experience in a cold, steel, angular kitchen.  

Towards the end of my school year, my class had the same chef for at least two courses – a tall, physically imposing, militaristic man with a startlingly sweet southern drawl.  His wit, vocabulary, and easygoing nature made him my favorite chef from the whole program.  He was our chef during our cake course, and I remember watching him crumb-coat and then frost his cakes with such precision and finesse, his measured and consistent undulations of his spatula as equally enrapturing to me.   SeRiOuSlY, is there anything more comforting than fresh creamery butter watching someone frost a cake? To see the cake go from naked and crummy to smooth and uniform and beautiful?  Actually, hold up.  You know what’s equally as satisfying? Pouring warm chocolaty ganache over a cake, letting the glaze flood to fill the top and then drip luxuriously over the sides until the whole cake is glossy and perfect.  I meannnnnn.  

Just the other day, I found myself with a little extra time on my hands before a social engagement, and so I popped into Barnes and Noble and was immediately drawn (where else?) to the table of recently released cookbooks.  To my delight, they had Dominique Ansel’s new book on display.  Handling it with the same reverence I would any one of Thomas Keller’s publications, I opened the book at random to an artfully photographed page about madeleines.  Dominique was talking about the lifespan of food and how, really, it’s all alive – it grows and ages and matures and decays – and how, much like a soufflé, madeleines have only a short window right out of the oven when complete perfection is possible.  I was so moved by what he was saying about these delicate buttery cookies that I started crying, like a sillyhead, right there in the middle of the bookstore, blubbering over baked goods.  And embarrassingly enough, that wasn’t the first time that’s happened.  

Soooo, to sum up: in case it wasn’t apparent, I have lots of feelings about food.  Thx 4 reading about them.