thoughts • comments • considerations on cooking, food, eating, and anything else I can think of…..

Paradigm Shift – March 3 2012

This is going to be stream of consciousness style, because I have to work this out for myself.

I am in a funk. About what? Life, art…..no living to be more exact. I think that my creativity….my art is my life, yet I consistently compartmentalize my creative pursuits. This site, for instance, is my creative kitchen studio site. My visual art is housed under StudioCartouche.com. My funk has come about much to the fact that I am teaching a class at university with the title of Art and Human Values where we explore what is meaningful and why. There are universal meaningful pursuits that humans engage in and we are looking at those: Art and Food, Art and Healing, Art and Meaningful Contemplation, Art and Relationship, Art and Spirituality. As I am building this course, I realize that my life is my art. Not that this is new news to me, but the real news is that I have not been able to find a succinct way to pull all of my creative pursuits together…and have one way of being in the world. My jobs have been one type of “artistic pursuit” or another, but never seen as one whole endeavor. This is changing now that I am looking at this course. I hope in the coming months to incorporate Still Life with Pear as my main creative interests site. Still Life with Pear is me….I am the notion that a still life is a reflective life and the sweetness is my creative capacities that I engage in. Still life is more than food because I am more than just a foodie. It’s the creative process that interests me. The cooking, eating, gardening, harvesting, drawing, constructing, bookmaking, teaching….those are creative processes….not the art, the food, the vegetables, the farms,the recipes, the images, the products….it’s not about objects categorized and commodified. It’s in the making of…the process of creativity. In fact, I don’t think that the label that I use to describe myself in society even fits with me anymore (not that I was entirely comfortable with the calling myself an Artist ever.) I think of myself as a Creative. There that feels better on many levels to me already. To create and be in a creative process is my most passionate endeavor. I can resonate with this label (since we deal with labels in our society. As though one word can ultimately some up the complexity of any human being. Alas, the proverbial question at any party is….So, what do you do?). It’s not that I make art. No. I am simply a Creative, someone with the capacity and will to engage in creative pursuits.

You know what this means, don’t you?  To be a Creative is to engage in all pursuits that are creative. The process of living is a creative pursuit. Creativity is what I am interested in. Art as an object or commodity is another thing…a byproduct of a Creative’s process. I am a Creative in my teaching, painting, drawing, cooking, gardening, parenting, eating…the list goes on. This embraces all of me. I will not need to compartmentalize my gardening from my teaching and so on.

Not sure that this is entirely worked out, but it’s a start. Still Life with Pear is shifting to a new paradigm.

Restaurants- October 24 2011

It’s been just over a year since I meandered on about something. I was talking with a friend yesterday about good restaurants in Eugene Oregon. It’s hard to find little places tucked away that stay open here. Is it the cost to keep a brick and mortar open that makes many restaurants close around here. There are some decidedly interesting factors that play into Eugene’s minimalist restaurant offerings. This is a university town  and students come and go. The restaurants that weather the annual collegial migration tend to be focused on the set of families and middle to upper income folks who live here. With all of that said, I updated my Restaurants section today and added some favorites where I like to dine. Some here in Eugene as well as other locales. Check it out.

Gluten Free or Alternative Flours- October 10 2010

It seems that Gluten Free gets a lot of people in the mindset that eating this way denotes one who must be allergic or otherwise compromised by “gluten”. Although this is true for many gluten free eaters (including myself). I have found another passion for cooking and baking this way. It’s a new frontier with few pioneers taking on the unchartered territories of alternative flours.

I propose that we start thinking of this like we do wines. As a new find….a rare new territory of undiscovered tastes. I like this notion of cooking and baking with alternative flours. There are so many combinations and new textures and tastes to discover. I for one am excited by the possible mixtures of teff and mesquite flours. Or the amazing tenderness that sorghum flour lends to cakes and muffins.

So cheers to new beginnings….and blazing the trail to new heights in cooking and baking!

Stuffed Naturally

As I leaf through cookbooks tonight, something I do after a busy day to decompress, I thought of stuffed leaves. There are many countries who harvest leaves and stuff them with savory to spicy cooked meats,vegetables and more. Like the betel leaf from …….gosh darn I forget!

How about these: dolmas (stuffed grape leaves), tamales with masa etc, pork pibil in a banana leaf (recipe on my menu page), imperial rice (wrapped in a bamboo leaf). The ideas are endless

Stuffed leaves would make a great party theme. I might do this the next time I am hosting a party and tell each person to bring a stuffed leaf dish. We need to get back to using what nature gave us. Funny how that is so ingenious to Americans. Half the world never forgot.

If you have a great recipe for stuffed leaves. I will post it.