Off to Bake and Pray

Today I depart the gulf coast for Covington, Louisiana for Saint Joseph Abbey, a Benedictine Roman Catholic community. One of their main ministries is their Pennies for Bread bakery, where each Thursday and Monday they bake over 2,000 loaves of bread to be distributed in the New Orleans area. Check out their link at

http://saintjosephabbey.com/guests-nota.html

I am scheduled to help out in the bakery tomorrow and Monday. Let's hope that goes well.

New Orleans

I arrived in New Orleans last night to spend the next two weeks in Louisiana and the Gulf Coast. Leslie flew down and met me and will be here until Monday morning. We are guests of the Dean of New Orleans, David Duplantier. It was New Orleans in April, 2008 where I first got the inspiration for this sabbatical: finding the connection between food, cooking and recipes with community: how food continues to bind us together and in times of crisis help us to heal and rebuild. Part of my time here will be spent at St. Joseph's Abbey, working in their bread baking kitchens: more about that later. Anyway, with only four weeks left in my time away, I am trying to get the most out of this wonderful time.

It is risen: the bread

The bread baking has begun in earnest. Last week I began small, with a simple white bread. Then onto rye. This week I bought some whole wheat flower and starting mixing it with bread flour. One of the recipes from Peter Reinhart's Brother Juniper book had me mixing in butter milk and honey. Yesterday I tried struan, a Scottish harvest bread with cooked brown rice, polenta, wheat bran and honey. The result was pretty good, but the rice turned out a little crunchy. I am also experimenting with how long I can leave the dough for its first rise. All in all, I'm enjoying the experience. Today, after my son Will's badgering, I cooked a loaf of banana bread. Again a first. It's cooling in the kitchen.

The challenge of course is not to eat all of the bread that I am so happily making.

The Urgency of Me Learning to Cook

The kids have gone back to school. Leslie is back at her work at the diocese. Our summer of travel is over. Labor Day is approaching. The house is empty and nearly seven more weeks of sabbatical time looms before me. What in the world am I going to do with these days? I have a pile of books that I have chosen to read, and I am dutifully making my way through the list. But, how about cooking? Didn’t I announce that I wanted to learn how to cook?

One of the foundational purposes of my grant application to the Lilly Endowment was for me to “cross the kitchen” and try my hand at cooking. Food and feeding and hospitality are at the center of what we are called to do as Christians. And, having married a former editor at Gourmet magazine and cookbook author, I have sat at the table and admired and tasted my way through 19 years of married life. How would I fare as a cook?

First, I began this week by baking bread. I had never baked bread before. But with the help of the classic “Joy of Cooking” cookbook and others and incredibly helpful “how to” videos on YouTube, I have baked bread the last two days. I have to say: I like it. I have learned to knead the bread and also how to proof yeast and find a warm place in the house for the rising of the bread. A new world has been opened to me. My first two loafs were ordinary white, and I pushed myself and made rye bread yesterday. The kids have gobbled it up and I have to say it’s pretty good. Not bakery quality, but actually pretty good. Clearly this could be a phase that I tire of quickly, but maybe, just maybe, I might continue…

Perhaps inspired by our recent trip to England and their abundance of Indian restaurants, I announced to Leslie that I want to learn how to cook Indian food. I tackled my first dish last night, the recipe for which I found on the web. I attach the link here: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Indian-Chicken-Curry-II/Detail.aspx

The chicken curry dish came out really well -- I have to say (and the family agreed) I made some basmati rice to accompany it and also cut up some fresh cilantro to put on top. I doubled the recipe and cut way back on the cayenne powder, as I did not want to overpower the dish for the kids. I also did not use a whole lemon. It is a creamy comfort food type of dish that may just become one of my standards. Next up is lamb rogan josh, a classic recipe from the Kahmir section of India. I always find that I order this dish in restaurants and want to learn how to make it myself. I will also try my hand and baking naan, the Indian bread that is so addictive.

But as I prepared the meal last night, with the house empty and NPR playing on the radio, I actually tried to think about the relaxing quality of cooking. Yes, I had to remind myself to relax and enjoy the cooking experience -- as opposed to just rushing through it and putting something on the table. Clearly, I may not always have a free afternoon to leisurely cut sauté onions and slice chicken into bit size pieces, but on this one day, I did enjoy it. And lo and behold, I learned that I could cook a reasonably complex dish with more than two ingredients and not out of a box.

Today, I baked blueberry muffins from scratch. They’re cooling right now.