October, 2006

I’ve been writing a lot here about housekeeping, lately, and I imagine I will be writing about it a lot more, because I still have things to say about it.

What I have to say about it today is that there is something I never knew about housekeeping until I experienced it and it dawned on me what was happening, and that is that if your house is well-kept when you are healthy and well, it will keep you for quite some time when you are ill.

I’m thinking about this right now because I have been having a rough go of it lately, and some superficial physical unwellness I was dealing with has been revealed as merely the  crust over a veritable caldera of larger and smaller and more systemic unpleasantness. (The details are tedious and would make boring reading.  Suffice to say that several years running of continuous significant life stress from multiple quarters is enough to wear out a girl’s batteries, and then you fall over, and then you have to figure out how to refill your reserves so that you can soldier on.  Which I am doing.)  But yea, though I slump through the valley of the shadow of the kinds of things that used to send Victorians to spas for “rest cures,” I shall fear no grotty towels or depressing heaps of insalubrious clutter and filth in my home, for lo, my house has been kept reasonably well.

Houses that are kept reasonably well will coast on their own well-kept inertia for some time.  They won’t do so indefinitely, obviously.  Entropy creeps in around the edges no matter what you do, and even if it didn’t you’d eventually run out of chicken soup and toilet paper.

But it is nice to know that you can be out of it for a while, not keeping up with much or anything, and not have the place plummet immediately into a horrifying squalor that only makes you feel sicker and more despondent than you already do.  And it is nicer still, when you feel awful and fragile and exhausted, to know that there is soup in the freezer or the cupboard, and that the bathtub is clean if you want to take a long hot soak, and that the sheets were changed recently so the bed still feels nice and cool and fresh against your feverish skin, and so on.  One is reassured to know that the bathroom cabinet contains the means for taking one’s temperature, or treating incipient bronchitis, and there is at least one backup box of tissues before you’re reduced to blowing your nose into a wad of Charmin, or worse, paper towels.

When you can rest your unhappy head on a couch that is clean and comfortable and does not smell of dog, when you can stagger into the kitchen for a glass of juice and know that there will be clean glasses to use even if you haven’t been up to doing the dishes for a day or three, when you can pad about the house barefoot in your bathrobe and never feel the worse for having trodden on something nasty: that’s when the house is keeping you.

It helps you feel a bit better, reminds you that you can be prudent and competent and effective, even though you are not well and probably feeling rather demoralized.  It’s not a huge thing.  Probably it matters only to you.  But sometimes it counts for an awful lot nonetheless.

Someone emailed me and asked if I would explain how to wash the dishes properly. It seems that this person and hir housemate have been having some differences of opinion about how this task should be done. Me, I don’t pretend to have the One True Method for washing dishes properly. I feel that any old way you do it is fine as long as they get genuinely clean. But if you want your dishes to get genuinely clean when you wash them, I suppose you could do worse than to do it the way I generally do it, which I shall now outline for the sake of the general amusement and possible edification of the reader.

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The comments I’ve been getting in relation to the housekeeping posts have been very interesting. Both in e-mail and in the blog, people have run a wide gamut on their opinions.

Some people are reading what I’ve got to say about housekeeping and then defensively insisting that this is all very interesting but they still can’t deal with housekeeping and that, by implication, I have the obligation to understand that they can’t deal with it and cut them some slack. (As if I were judging you in the first place? I’m not, this is my blog, and as such is essentially a narcissistic exercise. Maybe you need to cut yourself some slack, because clearly your guilty conscience is getting to you.  But looking to me for housekeeping absolution isn’t going to get you anywhere, I’m just going to look at you and say “Well, if it bothers you so damn much, why don’t you do something about it?”)

Some people are asking me for my “secrets,” as if I had any such thing. My house is not self-cleaning, my meals are not self-cooking, and my kitty litter box is not self-emptying. There are no secrets. It isn’t magic. It’s just work done with a greater or lesser degree of skill, craft, and efficiency. (You know, like any other art form. By which I mean “human endeavor.” But you know that.)

Some people are just glad I’m talking about housekeeping because it’s so often devalued and treated like some filthy little secret or revolting necessity.  And a lot of women, specifically, seem to be glad to see me talk about housekeeping because they end up doing the lion’s share of it and no one ever seems to acknowledge how much they do, and reading what I say about it feels validating because I’m acknowledging publicly that it often is a lot of work and that doing it is valuable.

Me, I’m going to keep talking about housekeeping until I become bored of the topic, because I can and I want to.  And because I think it’s important to do so, both personally and politically.

Today I am going to talk a little bit about what I am for the sake of convenience calling the Ten Easy Pieces of my housekeeping life. They’re just routines, little ones, that I do often. Every day or every week. Sometimes several times a day. No less often than twice a month. Stuff I do often enough that it quickly becomes rote when I decide to add some housekeeping fillip to it.

They are not etched in stone or even scratched into no-wax flooring. I added them to my regular schedule bit by bit as they occurred to me. Some of them I am still working on refining; I find that I often end up adding little things to my most regular housekeeping routines until they do exactly what I need them to do, whatever that is.

Still and all. Doing these things transformed my experience of dealing with housekeeping. They made it possible for me to see housekeeping as a regular cycle of little things, not difficult, not torturous, not punitive, not nasty, just little bits of effort here and there that taken all together made life a whole lot easier because taking care of things was just so much simpler when it didn’t mean having to deal with some gigantic shitpile every time.
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Let’s face facts: brownies are not health food, neither are they glamorous chi-chi food suitable for rendering in some overly fussy verticalized presentation. They are dessert, and moreover, they are comfort-food dessert. Therefore there is no point in trying to make them any other way than intense, chocolatey, and profoundly satisfying.

This is my recipe for brownies. If you don’t like the fact that they are full of chocolate and butter, go away. Do not ask me about possible substitutions. Do not ask me if they would be okay if you made them with margarine instead of butter or if you added miniature marshmallows or if you put water chestnuts in them or whatever other crack-addled idea you are thinking about.

Really, seriously, don’t ask. This is how I make them. You want to make them some other way, go ahead. But they will not be my brownies if you make them some other way. If you make them some other way and they taste like crap, it is completely your fault, because these ones, made my way, are very very good indeed.

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees F. Butter and flour two 9×9x2 baking pans.

(Yes, the recipe makes 2 pans. Take one pan to work, or give some to neighbors or friends. Wrap them well and put them in a box and send them to a distant friend, who will appreciate them and you. Or freeze one panful after baking them, they freeze just fine. But don’t ask me to halve the recipe because I won’t because I don’t.)

In a double boiler, melt 1 pound unsalted butter and one 9.7 ounce bar of Scharffen Berger 99% cocoa solids unsweetened chocolate.  Stir occasionally while melting.

In a large mixing bowl, combine 2 1/3 cups granulated sugar, a scant teaspoon of kosher salt, and 3 teaspoons vanilla extract.  A whisk is useful for this, to disperse the vanilla evenly throughout the sugar.

When the chocolate is completely melted, pour the chocolate/butter into the sugar mixture and combine, mixing well.  Let cool for 20 minutes.

After the chocolate mixture has cooled, beat in five large eggs that have been standing out at room temperature for about as long as the chocolate mixture has been cooling.

Adding it by quarter cupfuls and mixing in briskly and thoroughly (do not overbeat, you do not want to encourage the formation of gluten), add two and one half cups of unbleached allpurpose flour.

Finally, fold in two cups of coarsely chopped pecans (optional but advised).

Divide batter between pans, smoothing the top of the batter with a spatula.

Bake at 325 degrees F for approximately 1 hour 15 minutes; if the brownies still look wet on top when you check on them, bake 10 minutes more.

Remove from oven and let stand until completely cool.  Do not rush this step or you will have nothing but a pile of gloppy crumbly brown crap that would have been brownies had you only managed to be patient.  Cut  into small squares — 1 inch on a side is about right, 2 inches on a side is decadent, 3 would be too much by a wide margin — with a sharp thin knife.

Serve by themselves, or alongside some gorgeous tart crisp sliced apples, or with a big cup of black coffee, or with a glass of Castello Banfi Rosa Regale Brachetto d’Acqui. (Yes, it is a sparkling red, and yes, I mean it, so either try it and you’ll find out why or else just make up your mind to keep your uninformed wine snobbery to yourself, thank you.)
If you must be completely decadent in a way that will ensure that your dinner date will be completely unable to put out after the meal due to food coma, whip some cream and whip a few tablespoons of good bourbon and a tiny splash of vanilla extract into it, open a jar of Greek sour cherry preserves (whether made by someone else or your own vissino gliko is up to you), and plate the dessert thus: two one-inch brownies placed next to one another diamond-wise, with a smallish spoon of sour cherry preserves on top of each one and trickling down onto the plate, and a generous dollop of bourbon whipped cream just next to it (not on top!) so that the eater can combine brownie, cherry, and cream in his or her ideal proportions.  Perhaps it is better served mid-afternoon, if you’re going to do it this way, with a cup of strong coffee or tea.

If you are Ukrainian, or in fact pretty much any flavor of Slav, you already know that this means “stuffed cabbage rolls.”  This is an excellent way to make a small amount of meat go a long way (you can halve the amount of meat I call for and it still tastes great, or leave it out entirely and still be fine). Holubtsi are profoundly comforting fall/winter food and you should make some.

This recipe makes lots, but this is never a problem.  Like many of the dishes I favor, holubtsi only get better and better as they age in the fridge as leftovers.  (If it weren’t for the problem of always wanting to eat some as soon as they are ready, I would probably make them two days ahead of when I wanted to eat them.)

1 large green cabbage (I prefer Savoy cabbages for this but the regular green kind are fine too)
2 cups uncooked long grain rice
2 cups water
1 pound ground meat (beef or turkey or whatever, your choice), cooked and drained; alternately, 1 pound firm tofu, well-drained for several hours with a weighted plate on top of it to press out extra water, then crumbled
2 large yellow or white onions, diced
5 tablespoons fat (some people swear by schmaltz; goyim often favor bacon fat; vegetable oil is absolutely fine)
2 tablespoons sweet paprika (powdered)
2 16-ounce cans crushed tomatoes
2 cups water
additional water for boiling cabbage
chicken broth or water
salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Heat 2 cups water in a covered saucepan until it is boiling.  Add the
rice and return to a boil, then cover and remove from heat until the rice has absorbed all the water.  (The rice will not be fully cooked at this point, it will cook the rest of the way later.)

Fill a large stockpot about halfway with water and put it on to bring it to a boil.

While the water is heating, take a largish frying pan and heat the oil.  Saute the onion in the oil until it is golden.  Sprinkle the paprika over the onions and mix in, then add the cooked meat (or tofu), mixing thoroughly.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.  Do not skip the black pepper, it makes a world of difference.
In a large bowl, mix the onion/meat mixture with the rice.

When the water in the stockpot is boiling, cut the core out of the cabbage and place the cabbage in the boiling water, core side down.  Cover and turn off heat.  Wait about 20 minutes, then remove the cabbage and place in a large shallow bowl.  It should be sufficiently cooked so that you can remove individual leaves one at a time from the cabbage.  You need remove only a few at a time, as you stuff and roll them, so be careful and try not to tear any of the leaves.

Place a cabbage leaf in front of you on your work surface, concave side up.  Spoon a tablespoon or two of the filling into the cabbage leaf about an inch from the stem end.  Fold the sides of the cabbage leaf in, then roll up the cabbage leaf around the filling, proceeding from the stem end to the tip. Congratulations, you have just made a holobets!

Place the holobets seam-side down in a baking dish and do the same with the next cabbage leaf.  Pack the holubtsi in together nice and tight.  Make as many holubtsi as you have cabbage leaves that will hold filling and filling to put in the cabbage leaves.

When you are done rolling holubtsi, open your cans of crushed tomatoes and pour them over the pan(s) of holubtsi.  Rinse the cans out with chicken broth or water and pour that into the pan(s) as well.  The liquid should come up about 2/3 of the way on the holubtsi.

Bake uncovered at 350 F for 1 hour 30 minutes.  Serve with sour cream if you like, or a creamy mushroom gravy is very nice with this too.

Note: If you run out of filling, you can slice the rest of the cabbage thinly and saute it in butter with some caraway seeds, it is delicious.  If you run out of usable leaves before you run out of filling, slice the rest of the cabbage thinly anyhow, combine it with the filling, add  some of the tomato and broth/water, and simmer it in a pan until it’s done, then eat!