Into the Void
Posted By Jenny Wilde on June 30, 2010
Now what…(?)
I mean, ok, I’m done with school. This is a very good thing; I know it and feel it deeply, profoundly. My desire to go on to grad school has abated for the moment, but I do still want the MFA.
Why?
Because.
I really can’t give a better reason, I just want it because I’ve always wanted it. Because.
So, that’s all fine and everything.
I’m feeling remarkably tired these days even though I have far less to do. I think it’s a factor of my slowing down: now I’m actually noticing how tired I am because I’m stopping to smell the roses (or coffee), and stuff. No more onward and upward for me. Time for a nap. Or many.
I’m trying to get back to cooking. It’s something I’ve always enjoyed and I still do (once I manage to overcome my inclination to do absolutely nothing for several months). I also enjoy eating food cooked from scratch; I used to be quite a purist about that sort of thing before frozen organic vegetables packaged in plastic bags became a staple in my household. (sigh)
To that end, tonight I decided to be resourceful and make some rice pudding from leftover cooked brown rice. Yes, brown rice (!). Already a red warning light is going off in your head, I can tell. No one makes rice pudding with brown rice! It won’t be, well, mushy enough! It was slightly overcooked actually and I decided to go for it. I also just hate to waste and since the microwave died it’s not very convenient to reheat anything (that’s a whole other ongoing misadventure in my kitchen life).
Anyway, rice pudding it was going to be. Only one recipe in Joy of Cooking but it seemed alright; the Joy of Cooking is always a good place to start. The recipe seemed to be more of a baked custard recipe than a pudding recipe but that’s ok with me, I like custard too. I substituted freshly squeezed grapefruit juice and grapefruit zest for the lemon juice and zest and skipped lining the pan with cake crumbs, both because I didn’t have any and because I’d never heard of such a thing when it comes to rice pudding. Oh, and I cooked it in a water bath because that’s what you do with baked custards. Other than the aforementioned minor alterations, I followed the recipe exactly. All the proportions were just as specified.
Looks yummy, no?
It is yummy, though a bit more ricey than puddingy. The kids were suspicious.
Not a light dessert.
Actually, eating it reminds me of the raisins and rice my mom used to make for breakfast sometimes: leftover rice heated in a pan with milk, butter, raisins, and maybe honey. Good solid comfort food, and not too bad for you as long as you kept the butter to a relative minimum (hard for me, I love butter).
Tomorrow: banana bread and, here’s hoping, plum jam. Got to get that started before all those luscious plums go bad.
What does cooking have to do with art, you might reasonably ask, now that I’ve racked up so much debt getting my fancy art degree? A fine question.
One could argue that everything is art, but I won’t get into that.
Chop wood carry water, you know…
i absolutely agree, there is some correlation between cooking and art… i also have no idea what it might be. but i did a heck of a lot of cooking in this past year between getting the amazingly expensive BFA and…. well, leaving for grad school, I guess!
and you know what, I ask myself every day why the heck i’m bothering to spend another three years in a country renowned for its unforgivingly snowy winters pursuing another arts degree, and i don’t really come up with anything better than “because” either.
anyway glad to see you’re writing here…. i’ll send the link to my almost non-existent blog once it’s more, um, existent. (is that a word?) at least I get to see you in cyberspace.