BipolarLawyerCook

I’ve been cook­ing in one form or another since I was six years old. My par­ents were both start­ing out on their own when Julia Child was first appear­ing on tele­vi­sion, so “The French Chef” was their guid­ing star through­out the 60s and 70s. I imag­ine that one of the more fought-over items in their divorce was who got Vol. 1 and who got Vol. 2 of their signed copies of the first edi­tion of “Mas­ter­ing the Art of French Cook­ing,” because each had one of the two vol­umes.  The true sign that my then-friend hus­band was seri­ous about me?  He bought me Vols. 1 & 2 for Christ­mas before we even started dating.

Both par­ents grew up mid­dle class, she in the Mid­west, he in an Irish Catholic house­hold in Boston. What this meant is that nei­ther of them ate any­thing but meat and pota­toes, with the occa­sional chicken and rice, while grow­ing up. Julia was it. We ate Boeuf Bourgnignon, Saute de Boeuf a la Parisi­enne, and Coquilles Ste. Jacques for fancy meals grow­ing up. My mother made me Lob­ster Ther­mi­dor for my 16th birth­day.  I can still taste it– that sub­lime com­bi­na­tion of cream, but­ter, ver­mouth and essence of lob­ster.  I’m afraid to make it again because it may never taste as good as that first experience.

Along the way, I helped pre­pare din­ner, chop­ping veg­eta­bles, set­ting out the but­ter and cream for sauces, and grad­u­ally worked my way up to sous chef, cook­ing the veg­eta­bles and starches while they han­dled the meat. I quickly became the gravy and sauce sea­soner at my dad’s house, being a dab­ber hand at the salt and pepper.

All along, I was an enthu­si­as­tic eater of good food. A lit­tle too enthu­si­as­tic, some­times– I was a pretty fat kid. A brief flir­ta­tion with bulimia was cut short by actual ill­ness, sus­pected to have been Lyme Dis­ease. By the time it was over, I’d lost my baby fat.

Col­lege isn’t good for anyone’s cook­ing skills, but in law school I learned my way around my own kitchen, and found myself being fol­lowed home by var­i­ous class­mates for lunch. Even when it was just tomato soup and grilled cheese, they wanted to come. I actu­ally earned a boyfriend when he called to com­plain about his then-girlfriend, and I said “I’m just tak­ing some gin­ger­bread out of the oven. Come over for tea.” And my Sun­day brunches were the sub­ject of some seri­ous angling for invites.

After I got mar­ried, the Bet­ter Half and I moved to a more rural part of the state, and bought a share in a Com­mu­nity Sup­ported Agri­cul­ture farm. All those veg­eta­bles! Some of them we’d never eaten before– kohlrabi? kale? beets! And some of them we’d never liked before– until we learned what fresh car­rots, fresh peas, and fresh egg­plant really tasted like. I think this was when I really learned to cook– I had to, in order to deal with all those vegetables.

Dur­ing this time, we’d been eat­ing mostly veg­e­tar­ian, until I became ill and was told by my doc­tor that among other things, I needed to eat a low carb diet. I started Atkins, and lost 60 of 80 pounds in six months– and felt like a mil­lion bucks. I also real­ized dur­ing the low carb­ing process that I was intol­er­ant of gluten– wheat, farro, bar­ley, and to a lesser extent oats gave me seri­ous GI dis­tress. Now, I will occa­sion­ally have bread or pasta, but mostly, I try to avoid gluten. I do occa­sion­ally eat rice, corn­meal and other grains, and I do bake and cook with gluten-free flours.  For fam­ily birth­day cakes I still use reg­u­lar flour. You’ll see that “gluten free” appears in my tag cloud. I have also tagged rel­e­vant food pic­tures at Flickr with “gluten free,” if you’re look­ing for photos.

I tend to cook fairly sim­ply. I do have famous chefs’ cook­books, but in the end, I tend to pre­fer homey meals, the kind you might have in a bistro or a trat­to­ria. I love all kinds of food when eat­ing out, espe­cially Indian, Thai, and Viet­namese, but I tend to stick with French, Italian/Mediterranean when cook­ing most nights. I’m try­ing to add more Mid­dle East­ern and Asian cook­ing into the mix.

I didn’t like to bake for the longest time, and I still find it fussy, but some­one gave me a Dorie Greenspan cook­book, and all her recipes work, all the time. I am still an afi­cionada of the one bowl, one pan recipe, but I have got­ten over my bak­ing phobia.

I will buy and read any cook­book by these authors: Clau­dia Roden, David Lebovitz, Susan Her­mann Loomis, Eliz­a­beth David, Jack Bishop and Molly Stevens.  I sub­scribe to Fine Cook­ing, Saveur and Food and Wine.  I’m think­ing about get­ting Bon Appetit just because Orangette writes for them.

I read Orangette, Smit­ten Kitchen, Dorie Greenspan, David Lebovitz and 101 Cook­books online.

And if you haven’t fig­ured it out by now, I also like to eat.