Taryn Phaneuf

Taking a chance that could have ruined breakfast

1/30/2017

Breakfast during the week is an affair. The food isn’t fancy unless it was made in bulk ahead of time, but we eat together in low light. We read the paper. And then when we’ve had our fill of the absurd, we watch funny videos or move on to what’s happening this week, this month, this year. Sometimes we linger. We use too many plates but I drink from the same water glass over and over until I use it to drink wine – then it goes into the dishwasher.

I bought the ingredients for cinnamon rolls 10 days ago, planning to try something new for the weekend, which is when making breakfast, rather than just eating it, is the affair. We needed more cinnamon, since we’re almost always running low because of Ben’s love affair with French toast. Also: butter and sugar, which I didn’t actually need, I realized later.

Ben’s grandmother makes cinnamon rolls that we rave about enough that she sends a whole other batch with us when we leave. It’s been years since I’ve had them. I grew up eating caramel rolls that my mom made for special occasions – the most delicious rolls I’ve ever had. With so much to live up to, we usually buy Pillsbury when we want rolls now. That’s what we went with when we wanted something special over Christmas this year because we were here, in Washington – the first holiday we didn’t go home. I wasn’t satisfied. So the next time I craved it, which was 10 days ago, I looked for a recipe. Overnight dough seemed the most attractive, since that’s what my mom does with her rolls. But I don’t know...I don’t know the finer points of making dough of any kind. I know to follow the steps but the process and why it works that way is a mystery. Magic, really. But I like to start here, trying recipes for things we used to eat off the store shelves.

I didn’t make the cinnamon rolls till seven days had passed. Even though I wanted them, we spent the evening baking cookies and it seemed excessive to also make rolls for breakfast. Instead, we ate cookies and cookie dough for breakfast. And then, in the quiet hours between Friday and Saturday, the dough rose in the pan in the fridge – soft dough expanding spirals of cinnamon sugar. I put them in to bake when Ben finally stirred. Forty-three minutes later, I added the topping. I underestimated the topping. The first day, I could tell it wasn’t enough. It was spread too thin and it looked too clear – not the thick white frosting that the recipe picture led us to believe. But we were wrong. Day 2 and day 3, the frosting seeped into the rolls, giving them that gooey center you only dream about. Subtler than creamy white frosting that sits on top, whipped and proud.

The first morning, they were the centerpiece. Not just the centerpiece – the opener, the closer, the all-arounder. And I ate three. But day 2 & 3 were paired with eggs and bacon and fruit – salty, runny, bite-sized accessories that couldn’t upstage the pastry that will easily enter special-occasions-or-whenever-we-feel-like-it status in our house.

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How cooking became more than a dreaded ritual

1/19/2017

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Do you know what I like most about cooking? It’s forgiving. It’s a useful hobby. And it lends itself to the principle of quantity before quality.

Through cooking, I realized I’m a slow learner. Maybe I shouldn’t admit something like that on a work-related blog. But I finally acknowledged this truth about myself and entered a new phase of adulthood: Embracing the qualities that probably won’t change. It isn’t true for everything. I can make snap judgments or muddle through in a crisis. The end product is sometimes unaffected. And that’s how my cooking has looked for years, relying on simple recipes and the same flavors unless I’m feeling unexpectedly adventurous, using my husband’s picky eating to stick close to the same few dinner choices. But learning enough to have an opinion and divert from well-worn paths takes time, trial and error. Mosty error.

I don’t have much of a choice here. We don’t waste money eating out a lot, so we cook. We both cook, though dinner is usually my thing. Without paying attention, cooking became a hobby instead of just another task – a hobby I turn to after a long, unproductive day at work, talk about with family and friends, and read about when I’m bored.
Upon examination, I see a few notable events that got me here:

1. The first time I made my family’s favorite cheesy potato recipe, I didn’t realize how different chopped potatoes are from frozen hashbrowns. I know. It took an embarrassingly long time to cook. It really can’t be ruined, though, because the other ingredients – cream and cheese, basically – make everything taste good. I don’t think cheese and cream are bad and I won’t ever give up these things entirely, but making it myself forced me to consider whether my regular eating – and, therefore, cooking – habits would consist of recipes like this one. For lots of personal reasons, and many broad nutritional ones, as well, I opted against it. Which means I had to find new ideas. We made black bean burgers and sweet potato fries from a recipe I found by Mark Bittman. It hasn’t made an appearance on my at-home menu since but it started to open my perspective about what I could make (and enjoy) at home.

2. We moved to Kentucky in 2013, where I developed a close friendship with a woman who really knows food. Good food. Whether going out to eat or cooking at home, she’s creative, intuitive, and all about flavor. She showed me handy tricks and pro-level techniques, taught me how to plan and prepare holiday feasts, and gave me more opportunities than ever before to contribute to the menu at dinner parties and movie nights. Her perspective on how to cook and what to cook came with thoughtfulness toward hospitality...she made me think about why I cook. And she taught me that I should cook for myself as often as possible just because it makes me happy.

3. I started reading about sustainable farming and eating at the end of college when I realized I felt really bad – stressed, anxious, tired, hungry, etc. Cooking even just one day a week helped, if only because I had to make the choice to spend time doing it, which meant I was deciding for myself that work could wait. That’s an empowering thing. When I graduated, I took a job cleaning houses for a small company in south Minneapolis, which branded itself as a sustainable alternative. It put me around all kinds of people opposed to certain chemicals who had other related home habits. I learned about CSAs for the first time. It was appealing, though expensive. They all subscribed to a higher standard of living and most of their choices were out of reach for me.

Then, almost two years later in Kentucky, I started working on a story about local food producers who were targeting the community’s abysmal health statistics by promoting the farmers market. I learned about a woman who grew up eating junk food for dinner, bought at the convenience store, who now owns a farm and leads the farmers market that accepts food stamps. I learned about the local food pantry that has a large garden to provide fresh produce to clients.

Fast-forward to our move to Washington, when I knew I needed to find some sort of niche if I were going to make a real attempt at freelancing full-time. My first offer came from a website dedicated to the type of lifestyle experienced by the families whose houses I cleaned. They offered me a chance to write about the food system. After a few stories about chefs who preach sustainability, policies that act as barriers for small-scale farmers, and how climate change will alter farming practices, I was hooked. And all of that context started to creep into my kitchen. I’m still not in the same league as those families, but that just forced me to make my own way.

So now, here we are. In 2016, I subscribed to my first CSA last summer and learned a ton about cooking with fresh vegetables. For Christmas, I bought myself a few new kitchen tools. For New Years, I set a goal to explore this hobby a more intentionally, including trying one new recipe every week and taking a stab at writing about it all. Not because the world needs any more cooking blogs but because...well, I’m a writer. I’m allowed.

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