Getting one's gastronomical bearings

Having recently moved to a new neighborhood in Manhattan, I find that part of the fun of moving is discovering all of the places where I will buy groceries, kitchen supplies, specialty foods, wine, hardware, and the like. Our old neighborhood, the Dominican outpost of Washington Heights, left something to be desired in the way of grocery shopping, though we undoubtedly spent less when we didn't have an enormous supermarket, a la Fairway, within walking distance.

And now we do. Now we live within walking distance of the Fairway at 125th St. Oh, how we have come up in the world! Yesterday we paid a visit to said store, got lost in their cold room, bought way more than we had anticipated (sound familiar?), and left weighted down with bags and bags of foodstuffs and goodness. Oh, how I love going to supermarkets of that caliber! -- racks of anchovies and dried figs and gluten-free pasta galore; cheeses from France and Wisconsin, real roast beef, and cheesecloth.

Dinner last night was excellent, too, our first blow-out meal in our new kitchen: coq au vin, plus my version of grilled Argentina polenta with grilled zucchini and eggplant, and a simple salad of greens, all accompanied by a stellar wine that had been left by some considerate friend on the occasion of a past dinner party (alas, we can't remember whose gift it was).

As a passing note, I should mention that, while in Italy, I discovered the secret of polenta while reading Wilma Pezzini's 1982 treasure, The Tuscan Cookbook, which happened to be lying around the house where we were staying. I love grilled polenta, especially when it's cooked in a little butter and the edges become crispy, but after returning to the U.S. from Argentina I had no luck making it. Every time I cooked up a batch of polenta, I ended up with a watery pudding that more resembled grits or congee than the firm batter I was looking to fry up. I racked my brains but all that I could conclude was that I was using too much water, and I resigned myself to polenta stew, with plenty of cheese for good measure -- that is, until I read Pezzini's chapter on the subject, an experience that I like to refer to as my polenta enlightenment.

What's the secret to great polenta? Whether you like it stewed or grilled, you have to pay attention to the grind. The larger the grind, the sloppier the mix. For polenta that you can spread with a paddle, let cool, and chop up into wedges to grill, you need the finely ground grain, almost powdery in its consistency. Fairway happens to carry just such a grain, by an Argentina producer, de la Estancia. My nostalgia for Argentina led me to purchase that variety instead of any of the five or so Italian offerings that the supermarket had on hand.

My recipe for grilled polenta:

Ingredients:

3 cups water

1 t. salt

1 cup finely ground polenta

2 T. butter

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 c. freshly grated hard cheese, like parmeggiano, grana padano or piave

Supplies: clean flat surface, like a wooden cutting board

1. Bring 3 cups of water to a boil. When the water is near boiling, add a teaspoon of salt and stir to thoroughly dissolve.

2. While stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, add the polenta to the water in a slow stream. Continue to stir while cooking, on medium-high heat, for another 2-20 minutes (at this point you have to use your intuition or consult the back of the box to figure out how long your grain should cook), until the batter thickens considerably and it is somewhat of an effort to move the spoon.

3. Next, quickly, before the polenta cools and hardens, pour it out onto the cutting board, and spread it out to a 1/2 inch thickness, smoothing the surface so that it is consistent throughout. Let the polenta on the board cool, either at room temperature or by popping the board into the freezer for a few minutes.

4. Once cool, cut the polenta into wedges, or any other desired shape (squares, circles, Santa Claus shapes, etc.).

5. Heat butter on medium-high heat in a skillet until melted. Grill the polenta, a few pieces at a time, turning frequently to brown both sides.

6. Arrange polenta wedges on a serving plate, and before they cool, sprinkle them with grated cheese, salt, and pepper.  Serve with grilled vegetables for a hearty side, or use to mop up meat juices (as we did with the coq au vin).

Delicioso.

The gendered aspects of bike maintenance

"I think [the bicycle] has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives a woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. The moment she takes her seat she knows she can't get into harm unless she gets off her bicycle, and away she goes, the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood."

--Susan B. Anthony, 1896

Last night, in one last effort to unpack our belongings before we fell into bed in a mangled heap, Chuan and I put together our bikes. Or, rather, he put the bikes together and I watched, to learn how it is done, so that I can stop relying on him, in typical gendered fashion, to keep our bikes in repair and the toolbox in order.

I have always enjoyed taking things apart and putting them back together again, for those simple acts of destruction and creation teach us so much about the origin of common things. This must be part of what motivates my cooking and knitting: a desire to understand how things are made, their forms and purposes. Yet lately I am conscious that these activities, in our small household, are occurring in stereotypical fashion: while I engross myself in cookbooks and knitting magazines, my husband researches the latest model computer and plans new ways to put our bookshelves together. Before we were married, before I left home, and with no brothers in the way, I also did these things. But marriage has brought with it the convenience of specialization, and despite our best efforts at equal partnership, we too often follow the patterns set out for us: I nurture, he solves; I create, he fixes.

I know what is going on here. There are simply too many external and internal motivators (social learning theory, anyone?) that push me to be domestic and him to be analytic, so that to deviate from those roles requires a bit of effort on both of our parts, such as last night, when I found myself staring through my bike's carbon fork and trying to determine whether or not the front wheel was on straight. Was this really me? This woman who is learning to not only ride, but repair and maintain, her bike?

Yes, this is me, and I find that, once I get started, there is no limit to the things that I can take pleasure in, whether they fall under a masculine or feminine rubric. I want to ride because I want to go fast, breathe hard, get dirty and get lost. I want to ride because my body feels good when I'm above the wheels, going hard, going fast, and because riding reminds me of a time when athletics were about keeping up with the boys and not looking good for the boys. I want to get out on the loop around Central Park and surprise a few of those old men in tights, show them that I can keep up with the best of them, even if only for half a lap. I want to ride today in this body, feminine and soft and speedy all at once, and just be me.

But first, I have to build my bike.

(Re)union

What about this move, and starting school, and returning to New York, has me yearning to do yoga again? I thought that I would be on my bike again as soon as I got back to the City, but somehow I can't stop thinking of my mat.

Yoga once occupied a similar space in my life as knitting and biking do now -- the sort of grounding, yet energizing activities that someone as riddled with anxiety as I am needs to stay sane -- but yoga has definitely fallen by the wayside in the past year or two. The spark went out sometime around the day when touching my toes was no longer an effort, when my scoliosis no longer plagued my lower back, and my shoulders, at last, shrugged their way out of their usual kurtosis. Yoga turned my tight, hard hamstrings -- knotted up from years of pounding the pavement day after day -- into painless, graceful limbs. Yoga forced me to sit still long enough for me to pay attention to the rumble underneath the surface, to hear my own body for the first time, and to emerge from an eating disorder.

But yoga now? Yoga this year? Staid. Uninspiring. Perhaps a tad repetitive, too, all of those Downward Dogs and Trikonasanas and Oms. After taking a course to be a yoga teacher a few years ago, I am spoiled when it comes to yoga classes: most instructors I can't stand, with their bottomless, blithe words of encouragement and their talk of bodily purity and otherworldly sanctity. I'd much rather be here, right now, in this damned body and this broken soul, thank you very much, than in the ones you think that I'm aspiring to. After my teacher training, the money that I have saved by not going to yoga classes and instead practicing on my own, may well exceed the cost of the course, which is a small satisfaction when I look back on it and wonder at my folly at spending so much to certify myself in a field where I'm no longer interested in being an expert.

Revisiting yoga has been, until now, a bit like staring at the books on the shelves in my childhood bedroom and remembering how important those volumes once were to me. Yoga had its place, to be sure, but like those things it has been supplanted in recent years by other interests. A little yoga in the morning, before work, to keep my body limber before going in to yet another day staring at the gray computer screen -- that has been enough for me this year. For spiritual insights, I find Zen more compelling; when it comes to physical activity, nothing, nothing, nothing does it like riding my bike. And still and yet and somehow, this week says yoga.

Om.

Waste not, want not

I have never been a follower of those self-help gurus who specialize in de-cluttering, the kind who try to convince you to throw away most of your frivolous belongings by reminding you that people in Bali use only one knife to do all of their cooking, butchering, and yardwork, and if you happen to think that your set of Wusthofs is absolutely necessary, well then, you'll have another think coming before long.

No, that kind of mentality, which smacks of deprivation and Noble Savagery at once, doesn't appeal to me. There are small luxuries that I take such pleasure in that they are worth the extra money and the extra bit of clutter around the house, such as my knitting supplies and, occasionally, a shelf of books. Objects well-worn and well-loved take on particular meanings, and it is difficult to let them go.

Despite all of this, during our move on Sunday it became clear to me that WE HAVE TOO MUCH STUFF. Or, at least too much stuff for a one-bedroom, New York City apartment -- and we're not even in the expensive neighborhoods that force people to live in closets! No, we're rather on the outskirts when it comes to Manhattan neighborhoods, and yet we still have too many belongings and too little space.

So, while my husband and I spent several hours this afternoon caught up in despair -- would everything ever fit here? -- we soon rallied around and prepared ourselves for the tough decisions. You know, the moment when you have to actually throw something away. For ever. Yes.

Deciding what stays and what goes becomes a lesson in values, a sign of what is really important. Two sets of small plates, or only one? One yoga mat, or two? How many notebooks and spatulas and printers do I really need for this next stage of life? The answer, this time, is only as many as will fit into these 600-some square feet, only as many as will support me in the days and years to come. Our sixth apartment together, I hope that this will be my husband's and my last landing pad for quite a while.

This move reminds me of every time I have packed my bags and left the U.S. for an extended visit, trying to fit my entire life into a pair of suitcases and failing miserably when it came to putting that same life back into the same suitcases when the time came around to leave again. In the interim, I had changed and my lifestuff overflowed its carrying case.

Now is another time to scale down, pare back, live with what is essential. Who would have guessed that we would have acquired so many things in the last two years? Or, alternatively, that New York would have been so generous to us, both then and now? -- For it is by some generous act that we are staying here in this small apartment for another five years, each of us poised to begin doctoral programs, eager and waiting and resigned and trembling, shedding off the old to let in the new.

Moving has its charms

We are moving from one tiny Manhattan apartment to another, tinier apartment a few dozen blocks away.

As much as I am trying to find the charm in packing my belongings into cardboard boxes and throwing out the less-treasured possessions, this effort feels a bit forced. After traveling all summer, there's nowhere I'd rather be than in my own place, and even that seems like an impossibly large project to undertake the week before classes start.

At least there's some fun in spackling the walls, right?