New Years Rouxvolution

As the New Year 2014 fast approaches, I find myself more and more anxious to see what the future holds. Ordinarily, you'd find me to be a put-together woman with solid ideas for my career and life, however, by the day those visions become less and less clear. Lately, my thoughts have been catching flight in the cold winds of worry and perplexity that often accompany young-20-somethings whose trajectory get lost in the many arcs of the real-world, the whole world, and the world wide web. I certainly fall into the category of pesky "millenials" that the media likes to pick on.

The upside to this metaphorical sky-dive, I suppose, is that what matters, the people and places, activities and hobbies I love become anchors to the present. Family and friends for love, reading and writing for the mind, yoga for fitness, and food for any problem life chucks at me.

Ever since high school I've sought comfort in food. Not so much the eating, though that is divine, but in the preparation. Every single step in the process of cooking is spectacular to me. Cooking is the most transcendental of the arts for its sheer sensory performance. Sights, smells, textures, and obviously, taste.

Vignettes:

It's mid-October, and fall has graced Tennessee. The leaves have changed into bright patches of orange, yellow, and red, subdued by constant evergreens. The only thing to do on such a perfect day is to whip up a batch of chewy molasses ginger snaps. Like the newly dressed trees, the dry ingredients become a canvas themselves: together, the various hues of brown in the ground cloves, ginger, and cinnamon become apparent; they complement each other in flavor and color. As these beauties bake, my kitchen is left smelling like fall for days.

Molasses Ginger Snaps

On the Mountain (what we all lovingly call Sewanee) you can tell winter is coming when there's a warm spell. This year the weather reached the 70's in November. Girls walked around campus in charming spring skirts and the men removed their coats between classes. Those of us working in the student union braced ourselves for the coming of winter and, sure enough, it came bearing sleet and fog. Enough fog to inundate the campus for two whole weeks. Indeed, the fog was so thick I was unable to find my way to the grocery store one night. Scary! Returning to my kitchen, I pulled out the necessary ingredients for chicken noodle soup. The perfect meal for the beginning of a long mountain winter, with the simplest ingredients anyone could ask for. Not to mention the ease of cooking if you have a crockpot!

It's almost unbearable to think about a summer vignette when the December gray skies of Tennessee match the rooftops of the houses, but here goes. In the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia, where I'm from, we keep it simple in the summer. The humid heat is so taxing that too much "fluff" in food becomes a little overwhelming. Hence, the perfection of a Lowcountry boil. If you hear a sound more pleasant than a boiling stock pot, let me know, and I might believe you, but probably not. Whoever invented the Lowcountry boil probably just threw whatever they had in the fridge/pantry into a stockpot and was shocked by the final result. The combination of shrimp, corn, and sausage can't be matched. But wait; two words: Old Bay. Gotta have it. The blissful blend of savory spices is ubiquitous along the coast and meets its love in seafood. My family eats a Lowcountry boil at least once a week during the summer. We slap some newspapers and a roll of paper towels down on the table and everyone peels their own shrimp. The meal is delicious, and the easy clean-up even better :)

The coast comes to the mountains. A summertime Lowcountry boil in western North Carolina.

I like to consider writing as an artful exercise, much like cooking. Both activities nourish the doer and the recipient in a multitude of ways. Funny how the simplest things are the most wholesome. A propos the name of this blog "roux!" A roux (roo) is a paste of flour and fat that is the base of all the incredible sauces of French cuisine. It also is the first step to all my very favorite southern meals like gumbo and étouffée. Shall we continue the metaphor game? Fat for all the flavor and richness of life and flour for living it to the fullest. "Roo" has also been my nickname for always.

I've had a poor track record in the past for keeping up with blogs, but by golly, this is a New Years resolution. No, revolution. Nay, rouxvolution! (see what I did there...?)