The Cleaner Plate Club

Guess where I’ve been for the last few days? Okay, I’ll give you a few hints.

There are red phone booths:

But no, I’m not writing from a ‘phone box ‘ (or a lorry or a lift or a flat or a petrol station, for that matter) in England, Mate!

There are cute Bavarian-style buildings:

But, nah, I’m not in Deutschland, either, Fruend!

There are haciendas with clay tile roofs:

But I haven’t ventured down the Mexico way, either. Here’s a better hint:

There are crowds. Lots of crowds:

And many very tired-looking people pushing strollers:

Guessed it?

That’s right, Disney. The vacation that children love, and that is just darned exhausting and bankrupting for parents. It’s the kind of thing I would ordinarily avoid, but Merrie’s been begging, and we were down South visiting my mother-in-law, and so Blair and I thought that the Easter Bunny could bring a little something special this year. No, I don’t just mean Peeps, although somehow they found their way into the Easter basket as well:

I mean a note:

It was very exciting to read:

So there it was. We packed ourselves into our rented mini-van, and joined the other 250,000 folks visiting the park this week. Exhausting, yes. Commercialized? You betcha’. Oh, yes. Brilliantly so. As Blair put it, Disney has an absolute genius for separating people from their money.

And the food?

Well, let’s just say that it’s not my kind of food. It’s a quantity-over-quality type thing. Not so good, but it gets served by the bucket. Like, I ordered a mandarin chicken salad one day at lunch, and my plate was larger than my rump:

(my hand is in there for scale, and this is after I’d already eaten a bunch).

Oh, and you-know-who is here. But you-know-who is everywhere:

(can you see that? It’s our friend, the McDonald French Fry, Frontierland-style).

So, yeah. The food. Pretty bad. And it stresses you out some. But then, you see your toddler on her very first carousel ride:

Or your 6-year old on her first roller coaster ride:

And you kind of realize that for this week, you can let it go. That something other than food can be the point. For a few days, at least.

Anyone? Can anyone tell me what is it about Peeps that has encouraged people to make table sculptures out of them? Like, say, the likeness of Anna Nicole Smith?

Or to create magnificent dioramas out of them?

Or to recreate great moments in Rock and Roll history from them?

Or to act out (a slightly foul-mouthed) Romeo and Juliet with them?

Or simulate alien invasions with them?

You all know that I’m ordinarily a great fan of the haiku form. But about Peeps? Really?

It all confuses me. As much, honestly, as it amuses me. Perhaps my friend Vikki can explain.

Christ has risen. Sweet Jesus. Happy Easter nonetheless to those of you who celebrate the holiday. And Happy Peep Day to all. Especially, perhaps, Will Ferrell.

So this is the post where I lose the True Foodies. Just watch. (True Foodies? You might just want to click away now).

So one of my favorite party snacks is spinach artichoke dip (see? about half of them just clicked away. That’s all it took). You know the kind, right? The kind that’s made with mayonnaise, and cream cheese, and a bunch of shredded cheese, and then it’s all melted together with spinach and artichoke hearts? And it’s filled with nasty fats, but you ignore that fact, and just say, “but there’s spinach!” and so you eat the whole bowl with a spoon when no one’s looking? Yeah, that stuff. Love it.

Anyhow, I was getting my hair cut last week, and I picked up a copy of Rachael Ray’s Everyday magazine (and see? there went the other half of the True Foodies. You Foodies sure you don’t want to hang around? Really, you’re sure? Okay, well, bye, guys! Come back again sometime, ‘kay? Umm…okay, well. Then…bye…I guess…).

Anyhow, in the magazine was a 30-minute recipe for Potato, Spinach, and Artichoke Soup. And it looked good. Really tasty. Just like the hot dip. It looked all…hmmm, how would Rachael put it?…delish. And she also swore that I could make it in 30 minutes or less. My favorite dip! In soup form! In 30 minutes! I had to give it a whirl.

Now, Rachael’s recipe called for two different pots to be used — one to boil potatoes, and one for everything else. I’m always lookin’ for the shortcut, so I opted not to boil the potatoes separately. It might have added a couple more minutes, but I figured I saved on cleaning time, so it’s a wash.

Rachael’s ingredients:

5 large potatoes (I used more, but they weren’t all large)
Salt
1 frozen 9-oz box of artichoke hearts, thawed (I used two cans, but the canned-in-water kind, not marinated in oil)
2 frozen boxes of spinach, defrosted and drained of water
2 Tablespoons butter
2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 cup milk
4 sprigs thyme (I didn’t have fresh sprigs, so I just shook a bunch of dried in)
Pepper
1 32-oz box of chicken broth
1 cup grated parmesiano-reggiano cheese
Crusty bread for dipping.

Directions: Take this many (old and starting to wither) potatoes:

Remove the eyes from the withering potatoes. Potato eyes are toxic. Wash and chop potatoes into smallish pieces. Heat the butter and olive oil (EVOO! Gotta’ call it EVOO when you’re channeling Rachael!) in a pot. Sautee the garlic and onions in the butter/EVOO mixture, then add the chopped potatoes and thyme:

Add the broth, and leave it on medium heat to simmer until the potatoes are soft:

Drain the (defrosted) spinach boxes and artichoke hearts:

Meanwhile, notice that your toddler has dragged a chair over to the silverware drawer, and has begun rearranging things. Ignore this, except to observe that when she says “Fork, fork…spoon, spoon,” it sounds remarkably like “Fuk, fuk…poo, poo.” Be glad it’s just the two of you in the room.

She’s got a pretty interesting method of organizing things, actually:

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By this point, you can add the milk, and start mashing the potatoes, right there in the pot:

Then add spinach and artichoke hearts, and heat through. And add salt, pepper, grated parmesan to the whole thing.

It sure looks like spinach and artichoke heart dip, doesn’t it? I mean, there’s spinach. And artichoke hearts. And the background is kind of white. I mean, what could taste different?

Actually, it tasted quite different. Turns out, the mayonnaise and cream cheese and all-the-other-cheeses are a big part of that hot dip. So, my initial reaction was disappointment that it wasn’t the hot dip that that I’d expected, and was, in fact, a soup made with potatoes as the base. But that lasted only a couple of bites. Then, I suddenly noticed that, “hey, this is pretty tasty.” And, “hey, once I stop expecting my Superbowl party favorite, it’s actually pretty good.” And, “Oh my gravy! My kids are eating it!”

So, the long and the short of it: it’s a poor substitution for that mayonnaise-laden hot dip. But if you can get that notion out of your head — just get rid of it! It’s not hot dip, okay? — it’s actually pretty good. It wasn’t exactly 30 minutes, but it was close; even with my 1-pot method, and managing the baby, and taking not one but two phone calls, I got it done, start to finish, in 38 minutes.

(did I warn you that it doesn’t taste like hot dip, though? I did? Okay, good. Because it doesn’t).

See this kitchen? It’s nice, isn’t it? Really nice.

This is not my kitchen. It will never, ever be my kitchen.

It’s this kitchen, though — and others like it — that I keep thinking about when I consider whether our Poet Laureate is correct in saying that learning to cook is a good start to finding happiness. But not for the reason you’d think — not because I think that a fancy $200,000 kitchen brings happiness. I don’t.

Don’t get me wrong. I would like a $200,000 kitchen. I would like it very much. But then I see a kitchen like this, and I think: nobody’s actually USING that room. Seriously. Take a good look. They have oriental freakin’ carpets on the floor. Nobody makes tomato sauce over oriental freakin’ carpets (do they?). So then I get started thinking about all those other gorgeous kitchens I’ve seen in my lifetime. You know, those stunning, clasp-your-heart kitchens that make you say Wow… And What would it be like? And What if… And Maybe someday…

Yet the kitchen, with all its Viking appliances and custom cabinetry and granite counters, is just sitting there. Just sitting there, dormant. It’s not getting used. Maybe there’s a cinnamon-scented candle on the counter to add a little aroma. But the only thing that gets made in it is a microwaved TV dinner. Maybe a carton of yogurt gets opened occasionally. Or a canned Slim Fast Optima Shape. Or a whole bunch of plastic take-out containers.

(perhaps your $200,000 kitchen is being used. Kudos to you. This is not an indictment of $200,000 kitchens. Like I say, I would very much enjoy one, even if I wouldn’t put an oriental carpet on the floor).

When I think about Simic’s comment about how to find happiness — for starters, learn how to cook — I think about those gorgeous, unused kitchens. Because gorgeous, unused kitchens do not seem happy. They seem the opposite of happy. But why? I’ve been mulling that since I read Simic’s interview. And I think it comes down to a couple of things, many of them already well-articulated by you smart, insightful folks:

1. Cooking can make you feel like you’re hanging out with Bobby McGee. You know, like you’ve got nothing left to lose.

Part of it comes down to rejecting the spotless kitchen as shown above. Cooking, real cooking, requires liberating yourself from any notion of “spotless.” Away, immaculate! Away impeccable! Away gleaming and sparkling and showpiece-quality! Away, charade of being a capable housekeeper! Be gone all charades, all facades! Hello, to chaos, my new best friend! What’s all this pressure for spotless, anyway? There is such pressure. Have you noticed that? Somewhere along the lines, what our kitchens looked like became far more important than what we did in them. And although I can’t say I don’t feel that pressure sometimes — of course I do — the truth is I don’t understand it. What do we care if people show up in our home and realize, hey, people actually live here?

Cooking forces you to let go of that pressure, to really make a mess and to figure out how to be comfortable with it. And to do that messing up, you’ve got to say okay, world, I’m going to let go, just a little bit, of my worry about what others might think. And in that moment, I suspect, is the beginning of something that looks like happiness.

2. Cooking smells good. Almost like good lovin’. Let’s chat about the sensuousness of cooking. Let’s talk specifically about the aromas, actually. All kinds of researchers who study hubba-hubba are recognizing the role of pheromones — scents — in putting us in the hubba-hubba mood. But why would it aroma affect only our naughty moods? Why wouldn’t all kinds of scents stimulate all kinds of moods?

I think they do. Think about how fresh-mowed grass can lift your spirits. Or the scent of jasmine wafting across a backyard. Or the smell of the ocean. Nobody disputes that these things can be mood-boosters on some profound biochemical level (would they?). And I have a hunch — it’s just a hunch, based on my own experience — that a bubbling pot of homemade soup, or some garlic simmering in olive oil, or (heaven! heaven!) from-scratch brownies baking away in the oven —can do the same.

3. Cooking can turn you into Frida Kahlo. Or maybe Harry Potter. Cooking is creative. You’re taking all these different ingredients, and blending them together in new ways — creating something entirely different from what you had before. I mean think about it. Think about what a group of ingredients looks like before you make something, and then after. Take those from-scratch brownies: on the one side, you’ve got eggs, and chocolate, and vanilla, and a hunk of yellow butter, and a bunch of powders. Then, on the other side, you’ve got brownies. Something happens in there. Some kind of alchemy. Or heck, let’s just call it what it seems to be sometimes: magic. It’s so rare in this life that we get to make magic.

4. Cooking can keep you from becoming the next unibomber. Cooking is an inherently social act — it’s something we do with others, for others. Knowing how to cook encourages us to bring other people into our lives. It gives us an excuse to connect with other people. We can invite people into our (messy!) homes (but we’re okay with that now!) and give them something wonderful. Even if you’re not a great cook, let’s face it — any meal that someone else prepares for us is wonderful. Not to mention, it gives us a reason to be with people during all of their highs and lows. We can bake something rich and chocolaty for someone who is feeling sad. We can stir up heaps of pasta with bubbling sauce for raucous children and their adults. We can make a pot of soup to celebrate a new baby, or baked chicken for a family in mourning.

I don’t know. I just can’t get past the thought that connecting with people like that — even just a handful of close friends, from time to time — is the key to something. Something that looks, if not exactly like happiness, then at least like something worthwhile.

5. Cooking can remind us that sunshine on our shoulders makes us happy. I hadn’t thought of this before now, but it seems so obvious. Cooking doesn’t just connect us with each other; it connects us to the natural world. Many cooks become inspired to garden. Others visit farms, or stroll happily through farmers’ markets. Even the produce aisle of a big-box grocery store can be pretty darn beautiful when you see all of those colors, all that bounty. So there’s another thing that cooking does: it puts you in touch with seasons, and with dirt, and with the sun, and with the miracle that you witness when a seed grows up into something nourishing.

All of that said, I’ll admit that cooking can be a darn thankless task.

Small children, for example? They don’t tend to thank you when you spend time cooking something wonderful for them. In fact, the Law of Inverse Culinary Gratitude states pretty clearly that the less effort you spend on your kids’ meals, the more likely they are to say thanks. McDonald’s and Lunchables get a huge thank you. Lovingly homemade mac and cheese? Not so much.

But that might just be the parenting experience in general. (Sorry to ruin the idyll, Future Parents of the World. But it’s kind of true. Not always, but often).

Which is why cooking should remain pleasurable, and not too pressured. Can’t cook up a fabulous meal every night? Of course you can’t. No one can. Even great chefs serve their children Annie’s mac and cheese sometimes.

So while cooking CAN make bring you pleasure, the pressure of it definitely will NOT make you happy. Nothing that makes you feel guilty will ever make you happy. Block Mr. Guilt at the door. Don’t let him in. He’s got no role in your happy-seeking.

So, here’s what I think is the formula behind Simic’s advice:

• Cook
• Cook with and for others
• Never cook to show off, and don’t worry what your kitchen looks like
• Breathe deeply when that garlic is simmering
• Remind yourself where your food comes from
• Don’t fear Annie’s mac and cheese

You guys? You’re a bunch of Smart Cookies; you touched on all of these, and then some. And that makes me happy.

Okay, more simple recipes — let’s keep pursuing this happiness thing, shall we? — to follow.

The secret to happiness? Oh that. I’ll get back there. But I’ve got a few deadlines to meet first. Pesky deadlines.

In the meantime, there’s some news from the Vatican about new mortal sins — genetic engineering, pollution, tolerating poverty, and being obscenely rich among them. With that in mind, I’ve written a couple of haiku for my friends in and around agribusiness.

For Monsanto
Your stock grows…in Hell.
GMOs: they’re a sin now!
Sez who? The pope, dude.

For Smithfield Farms:
Polluter? Why, yes!
Your pig poop: like toxic waste
Say ‘hey’ to Hades!

For Paula Deen:
Smithfield’s drawling shill,
Guilt by association;
Whoops! you’re Hell-bound, too!

For Warren Buffet:
Kraft, Coca Cola
Have made you obscenely rich:
Another sin. Rough.

Back to work. I’ll check in soon.

About a month ago, the New York Times Magazine did a quick Q&A with the U.S. Poet Laureate.

(Pop quiz! What’s his name? Anyone? Anyone besides my word-yearnin’ hubby, that is?)

The article, the cheekily named In-Verse Thinking, poses a number of questions to Charles Simic (that’s it! You knew that, right? It’s okay, I didn’t either. But I also recently had trouble coming up with the name of the leader of China — China, for Pete’s sake! — and though I knew that the German Chancellor was a woman, I couldn’t remember her name, either. FYI, it’s Hu Jintao and Angela Merkel respectively). In his answers, Simic touches on a number of subjects, including a thirty-year search for a lost pearl, the butchery of the innocent, hiding skeletons of past lovers, John Edwards, vandalism, Robert Frost, and greed. It’s a lot of ground to cover in 650 words, but poets can do that.

The part of the interview that really caught my eye, however, were the last two questions and answers:

Have you noticed all these new nonfiction books on “happiness”?

It’s an industry. It’s really frightening. People need to read a book on how to be happy? It’s completely an American thing. Can you imagine people in Naples sitting on a bus or in a trattoria reading a book about happiness?

What advice would you give to people who are looking to be happy?

For starters, learn how to cook.

That’s it. That’s his answer. That’s how the whole interview ends. With cooking.

It’s as if he’s written his own six-word masterpiece. For starters, learn how to cook. Huh.

I’ve spent the better part of recent years learning out how to cook. And I’m sure doing better than I once was (I will remind you that it was not too long ago I dumped chicken nuggets in front of my daughter and called it dinner, night after night). So I feel like I’m in a good position to reflect on the subject: is Simic right? Am I happier than I was before I learned to cook?

If Simic read the Cleaner Plate Club — to my knowledge, he does not, though if he did, he would find some extraordinarily good painful poetry here —he would know that when I cook, my children are often crying. Or climbing something. Or scattering toys about the house. Or swinging from light fixtures. Dogs are often howling, or swallowing socks, or chewing the toys scattered by the children, or worse (just yesterday, as I stood in the kitchen, one of the dogs entered the room in the kind of rear-side crouch that should never, ever be seen indoors, prompting me to shout “Noooooooooooo…!!!!!” and go into a kind of slow-motion dive for the paper towels). Since I’ve been cooking, the house has been messier, the children a little wilder, the dishes more voluminous.

But I keep thinking about Simic’s comment. Cooking as the secret to happiness. I’m not certain he’s 100% right, but I do think he’s on to something. I actually have my thoughts all typed up, but am going to hold off putting them down here just yet. The secret to happiness is some heady stuff and I don’t want to give away MY thoughts about the subject before you’ve had a chance to think about yours. After all, your happiness probably looks a little different from mine.

In the meantime, I’m curious. Do you think that that the U.S. Poet Laureate is right, that learning to cook could be the secret to happiness? If not, what do you think IS? Big ol’ topic for a Monday morning, I know. Never know what you’re going to find here, apparently.

So, I’m thinking that this is actually some of the very worst poetry I’ve written, ever, with the possible exception of that period during eighth grade, when the boy I loved started holding hands with Jeanne Limoges. That was some extraordinarily bad poetry. I remember one poem was constructed entirely from words I hadn’t known the meaning of, but which I’d found in the thesaurus. The phrase “witless mirth” featured prominently in that one. Witless mirth. Stupid merriment. You can borrow that for your next bad poem, if you’d like. You’re welcome. In the meantime, some limericks about quiche:

There once was a reader named Laurel
Who sent a tip for chard quiche without quarrel.
Chard thong? Doesn’t wear it.
But her quiche? Oh, prepare it!
Chard’s divine! (once again, that’s my moral)

There once was a quiche made from chard
Whose directions were really not hard:
Veggies, eggs, milk, and cheese,
Mixed with herbs, baked with ease…
You can even add weeds from your yard!*

Really. I’m not being funny:
This quiche was really quite yummy
With no childrens’ teeth gritting,
We gobbled it all in one sitting.
And who was most happy? My tummy!

Many, many thanks to Laurel, whose instructions are below.

Ingredients:
1/2 medium onion
2 cups swiss chard
1/2 yellow squash
1/2 zucchini (sez Laurel: add as much or as little of these veggies as you choose… Sez I: I actually didn’t use squash or zucchini; used broccoli instead, since I had it in the fridge, and the kids eat it happily)
3 eggs
1 1/4 cup milk
1 1/2 cup sharp cheese
1 can diced chilis (oops, didn’t use those either. next time.)
lots of fresh (dried is fine too) dill
fresh thyme if you have it (I didn’t, but I used dried there, too)
salt, pepper

Directions: Steam veggies together (note: Instead of steaming, I sauteed the veggies in a little olive oil until they were ever-so-slightly soft). Mix together eggs, milk, and cheese. Add chilies if you’re using them, plus herbs, salt, and pepper. Add veg to egg mixture, put in pie shell and bake about an hour, in preheated oven, 375 degrees.

Laurel sez: it’s a Lovely and favorite quiche…. You can always add lambsquarter and dandelion as they pop out in your yard to add a wonderful spring flair! * See? It’s true about the weeds. And you thought I was making that up.

Got a recipe based on a favorite veggie? I’m always happy to try something new.

Okay, here’s what I want. It’s not everything, I want, mind you (okay, maybe I want an Oreo, too, though that’s not MOSTLY what I want). But this morning at least, these are some things that occupy a good percentage of my hankerin’:

I want more vegetables at more affordable prices. I want less processed junk. I want a bag of something-that’s-good-for-me to cost less than a box of something-that-kills-me. Mostly, I’d just really, really like to go to my grocery store and have less than 77% of the items there contain no nutritional value whatsoever (seventy-seven percent. No nutritional value. I mean that’s funny, right? We could bring it down to 74% and we’d all be giving each other high-fives for how healthy we’re getting).

Plain and simple, I want the system, the system of what we grow, and what we eat, to be a little less off its flippin’ rocker. Because it is crazy. Nuts. It is jumping-the-couch cracked. It is Britney-shaves-her-head just-plain Looney Tunes loco.

I mean, look at this comparison between what the government pays farmers to grow (this from the clever folks at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group we should probably all be paying more attention to):

Note the total lack of green on the subsidy side.

And, if you haven’t seen it already, the New York Times published an op-ed, My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables), by a farmer, Jack Hedin, who wanted to grow vegetables that could be sold at local farmers’ market. A good thing, right? More vegetables in circulation! More locally-grown produce! Watermelon and tomatoes! A new community-supported agriculture program! A market that actually wants these to consume the good stuff! Improved health! New connections between farmers and eaters! Yeah!

It would have all been so lovely, except that our dumbass troubled agricultural policy penalized the guy, since he wasn’t growing ever-more corn for the commodity program. Obviously, he gives up the subsidy (since there are subsidies for the crap corn that becomes high fructose corn syrup and snack foods but not for the foods that actually make us healthy), but he was also penalized the market value of the “illicit” crop (watermelon as an illicit crop: it’s really quite amusing). AND he runs the risk that those acres will be permanently ineligible for any subsidies in the future.

Because it definitely makes sense to pay people to grow the food that we don’t want them to eat.

Says Hedin:

Ultimately of course, it is the consumer who will pay the greatest price for this — whether it is in the form of higher prices I will have to charge to absorb the government’s fines, or in the form of less access to the kind of fresh, local produce that the country is crying out for.

At this point, allow me to point out that a nutritious diet — one with lots of fruits and vegetables, mind you — lowers your chances of kicking the proverbial bucket from all causes by 30% (oh, sure, you’ll still kick it eventually, but you could probably wait a while longer). And that obesity-related disease costs the U.S. $122 billion a year.

The op-ed is heavily blogged; Michael Ruhlman called the situation “continued victories for farmers who grow food you can’t eat,” noting that it’s appalling, and everyone who cares about good food and the farmers who want to grow it ought to know the ways our Department of Agriculture penalizes the small farmer, reducing the amount good stuff grown and elevating the price of what’s available.

Crunchy Chicken says that the whole thing is really grinding her crackers. But she goes one step further, providing a template letter where you can contact your representative. But wait! She goes EVEN FURTHER — oh yes, she does. She has started a campaign to fix the farm bill by creating a Fix the Farm Bill banner that you can embed in your own blog. That Crunchy Chicken. I’ve never seen her before, but she impresses me. She’s a doer. She’s got opinions. And she uses phrases like “grinds my crackers.” That, my friends, is my kind of mama.

On related note, I don’t often have the desire to go to work for big company — let alone a big tech company. But I’m starting to wonder if maybe we shouldn’t all just go work for Google.