living ad hoc

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ad hock coffee, the homey comfortable kind of waking up in the mornings.

Yesterday and Today Himself: Humming over his work this morning. “Cool!” He says. Herself: They liked the much revised “Cobb Salad” piece. The teacher took me aside and said that my writing had improved greatly. Slept eight and a half hours. Books today; meeting tonight. Projects: Blue Quilt, Mexico Album, two tails for two wooden cats ongoing.

Sucked in by its beauty, last week I brought home “ad hoc at home.” It’s Chef Thomas Keller’s latest tome. Princeton’s dictionary tells us that “ad hoc” is: often improvised or impromptu; "an ad hoc committee meeting,” but there’s nothing ad hoc about this large, coffee table cookbook.

Propping it up on several lap pillows, I eagerly began reading….and it is an eminently readable volume. How the restaurant began, what were the goals and what they are now. “Be kind to your parents,” Chef Keller reminds us next to a picture of his father and himself together. Great stuff. And the book looks good too….a little designery, but a glossy kind of good.

Then came the roast chicken. Chef Keller is right. A good roast chicken is a work of art and provides chicken for hundreds of other recipes. Brine the chicken, he tells us. Brine? Isn’t that salt? Rub with goose fat/ Fat? I was set back, put off, and not at all charmed. I came to a halt, actually. This is not being kind to your parents.

Over the years I’ve gotten better at tap dancing on the head of a pin, but not with the addition of salt and fat, darn it. I closed the book, and made dinner from a three item cookbook that really worked out well. Tamale pie….popular in the 1920’s, the book told me. Delicious stuff, actually, with no additional salt, fat, or fuss…..

…though I had to make a second trip to the store for corn muffin mix because I bought the wrong muffin mix ad hoc.