Commentary by Chris Smith, editor-in-chief of Clarksville Now.
I was a bit worn down the other night. My brain was scrambled from a full day of meetings and writing and editing and emailing and planning.
There’s a great cure for that.
I put on a record (original vinyl of ELO “Out of the Blue”), cracked open a beer and began peeling and dicing parsnips, carrots and beets for roasting. I paired that with some white balsamic vinegar-braised chicken, plus sauteed beet stems and leaves. Eventually, The Wife came in and sat at the kitchen counter to argue with me about whether the advent of grunge curtailed the potential spinoff influence of Jane’s Addiction on both rock and alternative music.
This is exactly what I needed.
Cooking for 5, then 2
For years, The Wife cooked our family meals, working hard to please five conflicting palettes. And as the kids got older, those tastes grew further apart. The Boy didn’t like casseroles or tomato sauce. The Girl loved pasta but not potatoes. The Kid became vegetarian, but I require meat and don’t like sour cream or mayonnaise. The Wife won’t eat cilantro. That leaves about three dishes that everyone can agree on.
Plus, there’s another problem. (Well, I’m told it’s a problem.) I’m an analytical eater. I like to discuss what worked and what didn’t work about a particular dish – how it might be improved upon in this or that way. Incredibly, it turns out that not everyone appreciates my insightful feedback on a meal they struggled to put together amid screaming toddlers, then whining teenagers.
So, when The Wife went back to work, I offered to help with the cooking, and was surprised to find two things: The Wife was really, really done with cooking, and I really, really enjoyed cooking. After spending so much of my week sitting behind a computer, it’s nice to do something real with my hands, away from the screens and the words. Plus, there’s music. And beer.
I had some learning to do. We tried Blue Apron for about a year, and that caught me up on some key concepts that I’d never learned, like starting a pan with garlic and onion, like adding salt and pepper all along, like searing meat before cooking it through.
Of course, a lot of that is out the window now. Just when my iron skillet was seasoned for a picky family of five, three of them left the table, year by year. Now it’s just me and The Wife. That means I can make spaghetti! I can make potatoes! And I can cook it all in huge, sweating mounds of bacon fat! (I mean, if I wanted to.)
Only now, every meal I make yields twice what I need. For several months, we had a refrigerator so full of leftovers that the leftovers begat leftovers. From the fridge I could hear the plaintive cries of withering scallions. I could smell new forms of life that last month’s stir-fried chicken was trying desperately to create.
I’m better now. I’ve learned to cut my recipes in half and buy less at the store. Of course, buying less at the store is easy when eggs are so expensive they should carry a Faberge label.
Ultimate Christmas challenge
My biggest challenge was yet to come. The children would be home for Christmas, with all that that entails and more: The Kid is still a vegetarian, The Boy trumped that with a vegan fiancée, and The Girl brought home her boyfriend, who’s Jewish – no shellfish, no pork.
Challenge accepted!
For the first time, I tackled a Christmas beef brisket and latkes. They were absolutely top-notch and disappeared quickly. For a vegan green bean casserole, I skipped the Campbell’s soup cans and made it from scratch, with an oat-milk variation that was surprisingly creamy and tasty.
The true victory, though, was my Christmas Eve gumbo.
For years, I’ve used our well-worn 1987 Southern Living Cookbook recipe with shrimp, sausage, chicken and crab. This year, it hit me: Could that go vegan and kosher? Yes! It turns out if you sub olive oil for the small amount of bacon grease, soy sauce for Worcestershire (which contains anchovies), and vegetable for chicken broth, my gumbo recipe can be what I call “accidentally vegan” right up to the stage where you add meat. At that point, I set aside a third of the cook and tossed in green beans and carrots. For the rest, I used turkey sausage and shredded chicken. Voila! Vegan on one side and kosher on both! And truth to tell, it was one of the best gumbos I’ve ever made.
The best part was having all five of us plus two excellent additions sharing a meal, in all it’s complicated beauty. I know this won’t be every Christmas, and I know it won’t last forever, but it sure is easy to count your blessings when they’re sitting around your table.
And with fascinating observations for improvement! The green beans were undercooked – I should definitely parboil them next time. And the sweet potatoes needed slicing on the vertical axis. Ah, the sweet flavor of thorough analysis. Bon appetit!
Daddy Overboard is a limited series on life as empty-nesters.
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