Category: cooking

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It’s all about the food

Painting is great, but sometimes I’m really focused on where my next meal is coming from.

It has to be fresh and healthy and delicious, or I won’t waste my calories on it.

My husband revealed a secret stash of Italian pastries the other day. I’m a healthy eater, but I’m not one to look a gift Torta Novecento in the mouth.

My mother worked hard to avoid raising picky eaters, but I’m afraid she failed with me. There’s no point in using up calories if they’re not buying food made with the freshest, purest ingredients. I’d rather not eat than eat badly, which is why I pack my own lunches when flying (as I’m doing today).

Fresh bread aboard schooner American Eagle, all done by hand. 

But what constitutes good food? Our taste is both a product of our biology and learned behavior. That’s why my Chinese goddaughter loves pickled ginger and I prefer gingersnaps. What we like to eat is the result of all our senses interacting together, not just the sense of taste. That’s then overlaid with memory and emotion. That’s why our food taste is so unique and unpredictable, and why we have such strong feelings on the subject.

How food tastes is based on much more than our tastebuds.

Last week I picnicked on a bridge abutment while painting with Ken DeWaard and Björn Runquist. We had the simplest hastily-assembled sandwiches. We all remarked that they were unusually delicious. The combination of crisp air, warm sunlight, ice and snow, and cheerful banter made our sandwiches so much better than they would have been if eaten in our cars or our kitchens.

That’s also what happens in my painting workshops aboard the schooner American Eagle. Usually, we dine al fresco on deck. The salt air, dazzling light, and company combine to sharpen the palette.

The gam at sunset.

Captain John Foss told me in passing that Matthew Weeks signed on for another season as cook on American Eagle. I personally think Matthew is a genius; he cooks everything exactly the way I like it. Would messmate Sarah Collins also be back, I asked. Not for the whole season, John thought, but possibly for the gam. That’s a raft-up of all the windjammers in the fleet, and it happens in June. It’s an amazing sight.

The gam is also a party.

It’s also our first watercolor workshop trip of the year, so I think I’d better lay off the tortas and save room for Sarah’s baking. It’s incredible.

Schooner cooks add an extra level of difficulty to cooking for crowds: they’re working on a woodstove in a hot galley, below decks in the heart of a pitching, rolling ship. When the mate loudly calls out a change in tack, she’s not doing it for our amusement; it’s so Matthew and Sarah can stop dessert from flying.

And they do without electricity. That means meringues are beaten by hand, and bread is kneaded by hand.

We have access to fresh seafood around Maine.

Their stove is an early 20th century Atlantic Fisherman Although it’s the proper vintage, it’s not original to the boat. “The stove that was in the galley completely disintegrated when we tried to move it, so the Atlantic Fisherman stove came from Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Along with the steering wheel, bell, steering gear, all the rigging blocks, and a bunch of other gear,” Captain John told me. I believe that makes Eagle a dual citizen.

It would grace any historic kitchen with elegance, but it’s a hard worker. In addition to providing coffee and meals, it heats all the hot water for our ablutions. If you’re an extremely early riser, you can hear Matthew softly padding down to the galley in the wee hours. He’s firing up the woodstove. That requires a lot of firewood. It’s stacked and stored between trips and then fed into that stove, piece by piece, throughout the sail. I’m a hard worker, and I couldn’t do what those sailors do every summer.

Sadly, we had to cancel both watercolor workshops in 2020. Most of my students rebooked for 2021, but there are a few openings for both the June and September trips. However, they’re always subject to the boat’s other bookings, so if you’re interested you should contact Shary to reserve a berth. I hope you’ll join us. The painting is great; have I mentioned the food?

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Chores are good for kids

You can't do this if you have no experience doing the routine stuff.

You can’t do this if you have no experience with routine repairs.
I’m always getting paint on my laptop screen trying to adjust the angle. To solve this, I have a new monitor and rolling stand for my studio. I hope to get it assembled before it’s obsolete.
To that end, my youngest kid helped me for a while yesterday. He was attaching the confabulator to the thingamajig when I stopped him. “Just hand-tighten that until you have all the screws on that joint in place,” I told him. “Then you can drive them home.”
“How do you know that?” he asked.
Assembling my monitor stand.

My son assembling my monitor stand.
Until the modern era, kids had to hold things for their fathers while they worked. (Kids are not cheaper than clamps, but they’re far more likely to be underfoot.) Today, you could look some of this stuff up on the internet, but that’s an imperfect education.
Don’t believe for a minute that fathers are expendable. Nobody is going to teach you the art of swearing like they can.
I had three tasks on my schedule yesterday. One of them—the easy one, where I filled out some papers and signed my name—is done. The other two never got finished. We had visitors all day. The stopping-by never stopped and although I am feeling very pressured, I was also very glad to see them.
This is how I ended up cooking dinner for 15 people. It was a real loaves-and-fishes kind of affair, cobbled together from leftovers, things from the freezer, and things my daughter picked up at Hannaford on her way home.
Kid, sewing.

Kid, sewing.
I often tell people I can’t cook, and in the usual way, I can’t. However, this was a combination of dishes I have been making since childhood (risotto, fried fish, and fried chicken) and the recipe for scallops that my friends Berna and Harry shared with me last year.
I was on familiar turf. As a kid, I was my mother’s sous chef for many such impromptu dinners. Size up the crowd and assess the refrigerator, the pantry, and the freezer. Quietly send a kid to the store for the missing pieces. Accept any help that’s offered, gratefully.
One of the nicest things parents can do for their children is conscript them to do unpaid, hard labor. That’s how I learned to use a chainsaw, drive a truck, clean windows and even cook for a crowd. Like most of us, I wanted my kids to work less hard than I did, but I’m cheap. No cleaning or lawn services for us. Saturday mornings were a forced march through our house.
The forced march, in 2010.

The forced march, in 2010.
When I collected my son from college in May, his suite was a disaster. His roommates clearly had no idea how to do simple household chores. Given a little guidance, however, they did a great job, and we parted as friends.
Civilization is only in part about great literature, art and architecture. It’s also about things like fixing dripping faucets. I’ve known a lot of kids who could do calculus but not wash pots and pans. If you teach the former and neglect the latter, you’re doing your kids a great disservice. They’ll end up being the ones who have to look up how to clean a toilet on YouTube.