Cooking With Boundaries

On Saturday night I tried to get an idea of some staples to keep around the house in order to attempt the Ration Experiment with a minimum of fuss.  Some suggestions were rejected outright by Collin (Marmite), some with grudging acceptance (only 12 ounces of sweets allowed!), and some with enthusiasm (ingredients for homemade bread).  We're both wondering how much "cheating" should be allowed - if I make hummus to have with the veggies, is that fair?  It certainly wasn't a known food outside of the Middle East in the 1940s...but it is made of chickpeas...

I made some, anyway.  It is delicious.  I have no regrets!

I also ended up making a very tasty pumpkin soup. I think if we're going to be cooking a lot of squash or gourds, I'm going to need a machete for the kitchen - taking those darn things apart was by far the hardest part of the whole process.  Plus I would like to machete things.

Watch John Belushi - Samurai Delicatessen

Apart from anachronisms sneaking into our veggie-heavy new diet, I'm concerned about what this will do to my social standing.  No, really - when we're invited to dinner, I always bring desert.  On Game Day, I generally also bring some kind of baked good.  We go through an absurd amount of butter and sugar.  With both severely limited (and eggs as well!) I may have to experiment with making things sweetened with fruit and bound with applesauce or vinegar. I foresee many doorstop-like fruitcakes in my future.  Merry Christmas, everyone!

In other news, Collin and I had a good time wandering around Inglewood on Saturday, through the 3º F weather.  The train doesn't go far enough east, so we took it to city hall and then had a nice stroll through some construction sites.  Everything looks prettier covered in snow!  Standing on a bridge over the Elbow River, we watched burgeoning ice floes drift by geese along the bank.  Beyond the geese, where the Elbow meets the Bow River, lacy tendrils of mist hovered over the warmer water flowing south.

Scenic or not, it was still bloody cold, so we hustled into Inglewood proper to find somewhere to defrost.  Cafe Nine didn't turn us away (Calgary cafe and restaurants often have inscrutable hours).  We each had a soul-reviving coffee, and decided to browse through their stock of Geek Chic gift items.  We had to leave after only a cursory glance, though, because they had piped-in music* and Collin was afraid his incipient head-banging was going to break something.

*Collin only dances to piped-in music.  This means he only dances in supermarkets, cafes, and elevators.

After wandering the snow-packed streets for a little while longer, we stopped and had lunch/dinner at Inglewood's Fire Station No. 3 - now The House and Hound Pub.  It's a sports bar.  As I  sat there all warm and comfy with a pint of local brew, watching the University of Calgary v. University of Regina game on the screen, I felt an entirely foreign emotion.  Was this what...interest in football felt like?  Maybe living for so long in a place where support of the home team feels more like an obligation because you live there (kind of like I'm obligated to get an emissions test for my car because I have one) is detrimental towards fostering athletic enthusiasm.  But the Dinos WON!  The people in the pub watched with detachment, as if it wasn't a big deal.  Whereas I was nearly compelled to go out and drape myself in Calgary crimson to show solidarity.  

Thank god we left before I could get any worse.  

Experiments

It's a cold night in Calgary.  I expect I'll be writing that a lot.

One of my favorite things to do when it's cold and snowy is to bundle myself up and go for a walk - particularly at night.  There's a park across from our apartment that has huge cottonwoods and different kinds of pines, along with wide grassy areas.  There's even a couple of cricket pitches!  A paved path follows the perimeter of most of the park, and lovely, old-fashioned street lights illuminate the way.

When it's wintery like this, the park is abandoned.  I'm free to trudge my way through the unblemished snow until frostbite begins to set in.  Tonight the snowfall was a fine, dusty type of snow and it looked gorgeous and glittery under the diffused lights of the city.

I may have to figure out some better winter gear, though.  Or  get an extreme haircut.  I have a lot of hair, and right now I can fit either my face or my ponytail under my hood, but not both.  Thanks this and a ridiculous retrousse nose, I ended up snorting enough snow during my walk to have powered Corporate America, circa 1983.  Maybe I should start wearing a balaclava.

In between walks in the park and through various snow banks, and trying to keep on schedule with my writing (I'm not...), Collin and I were pondering a couple of experiments today.  Food experiments.  My favorite kind.

Collin has a book called Cooking For Geeks that we were looking through, after I asked why it was that toast is so much tastier than regular bread (I can now tell you the answer if you're interested).  At the back of the book were a bunch of experiments that can be done to change the state of familiar food.  Foamed fruit juice sounds unnatural and shrimp roll-ups sound unholy, but the idea of gelatinous milk balls is intriguing.  Don't get me wrong, I think it sounds disgusting, too.  But I remembered my mom bringing milk to work for her tea, and doing all kinds of tricks to keep people from drinking it.  What would happen if they poured some stolen milk into their coffee and little blobs slurped out, instead?  They'd never steal your milk again!

Well, they'd probably think it had gone bad, and would throw it away.  I haven't gotten all the kinks worked out of this Very Fiendish and Gelatinous Plan yet.

My other experiment is more of a social studies experiment.  I was doing a bit of research about Albuquerque in the late '40s and early '50s for a story idea I had.  One thing that would pop up regularly were mentions of food and materials rationing.  This got me thinking.  What was it that made the war effort of WWII so different from the wars that were to follow?  Society and technology were changing, surely, but it seems like people on the homefront genuinely felt that they made a difference to soldiers overseas.  They were recycling, rationing, and repurposing objects with individuals in mind.  If we were to experience that kind of rationing and scarcity during our wars abroad today, would society's view of war and it's consequences change?  Would it even be possible to go to war?

I'm wondering what a diet that followed rationing guidelines from the 40's would look like with the products available today.  I came a across The 1940's Experiment, which has a writer who is using a rations-based diet to lose weight.  I can't deny that would be a nice side-effect, but I like the idea of rationing food/materials to benefit something else, just as rationing was seen to help the war effort in the 1940s.  I've been keeping careful track of our grocery expenditures since I came to Calgary.  Perhaps donating the money we save on groceries each month to the local food bank?

Collin thinks he could only last about a week, but I've got my eye on The Victory Cookbook that might help me make food more interesting than he fears (as if we need another one - I think he and I are both rather compulsive cookbook buyers).