food is love

        

really i do believe that food is love.  food is wrapped up in grandmas and grandpas and moms and dads. first dates and holidays.  family. comfort. adventure, too.

some of my happiest memories revolve around saturday mornings at the outlook road house.  one or two girlfriends would have slept over friday night.  we'd wake up late and find that my dad had hit every junk food hot spot in town.  donuts from the place on fairmont avenue.  what was that place called?  pepperoni rolls from country club bakery.  yann's hot dogs.  coca cola in tiny glass bottles.  chocolate milk.  all of that, that was pure love.  a love i hope to recreate for my family.  those sounds and smells and tastes.  the conversations generated around the dining room table.  easy-going saturdays that seemed so mundane at the time, mean the world to me now.  

food for me, in the form of cooking and baking especially, is experimentation.  i've never been afraid in the kitchen.  i have good instincts in the kitchen.  i feel free to be creative.  i have the guts to be ambitious.  granted, there have been some failures.  but truly, not many.  unlike, say grad school projects, half-finished knit sweaters, and a thousand failed attempts at the perfect short story. 

tonight i made apple dumplings and a plum crisp.  the apple dumpling recipe was something random i found online.  really thought i was going to hate the dough, but i see now that it needed to be that mild to stand up to all the spices.  should have left it in longer b/c the apples are a little bit too raw.  tasty though.  haven't tried the plum crisp yet, but it is another of gale gand's recipes.  simple enough; it should be good. the plums came from luellen's tree.  pics are posted above.