Yep, 100 and Under
Cooking as Life
Issues in the kitchen are like issues everywhere else . . . funny how that works.
I’m just starting to write on Medium, and I have to admit — it is, in a word, daunting. What should I write about? How do I get followers? When should I clap?
I was thinking about this as I went into my kitchen this morning to start making ice cream. Today is my birthday (yes, really), and I want cake & ice cream, but I want it exactly the way I want it.
That means I’m going to make it. That means this cake and this ice cream.
Timing is Everything
Homemade ice cream is amazing, but it’s not exactly instant gratification food. After you make the base, you have to chill it. After you chill it, you churn it, then put it back into the freezer for a few hours, to fully freeze. But I procrastinated, as I often do in other parts of my life.
For Salted Caramel Ice Cream, you first make the caramel. I’d never made caramel before, though I knew the general process: melt sugar until it turns golden brown, then add cream and stir like crazy. I also knew that it could be challenging, either burning or crystalizing seemingly instantly.
I hesitated before putting the sugar in the pan. This is also a microcosm of my life — when I find something intimidating, I tend to freeze and do nothing. But I’ve had cooking failures before, multiple times. If the caramel failed, I’d make whipped cream instead, and still have the cake. Back up plans often assuage my anxiety.
I dumped in the sugar and waited. And waited. It took longer than I expected to melt, and once it did, it didn’t melt evenly. This was unexpected. I knew to swirl the pan instead of stir so that it would be less likely to crystallize, but the unevenness was not encouraging.
But I kept swirling, eventually got to a point of deep golden brown, added the cream, stirred like crazy, and checked the results. Voila! Well, kind of. I realized after I’d poured it out of the pan that a big hunk of sugar was stuck to the side of the pan.
You can also see how uneven the color is. That semi-clean spot on the left, the one that looks suspiciously like someone swiped a finger through it once it was cool enough? Uh, coincidence, totally.
Oh, Yeah
At any rate, it turned out delicious, and when I tasted the ice cream itself, I felt like that baby that tastes ice cream for the first time. See those eyes? Yeah, totally me.
Put together with the cake, it was amazing, though between the two, I really needed a strong cup of black coffee to go with it.
In the end, as so often happens, my fears were really groundless. I had let something small hold me back, at least for a time. One of the most overused clichés of our time is “Just do it,” but maybe the reason for that is because we should. Write what’s in your heart, or on your mind, or in your life. As for getting followers, you’re not writing to get followers. You’re writing because you’re a writer, so don’t worry about the rest. And clap for everything that you like, everywhere.
In cooking, and in all the other parts of life, take the plunge.
