Doomscrolling to foodscrolling

My birthday came and went. In my continuing efforts to stay sane during these unprecedented times, I’ve successfully transitioned from doomscrolling horrible news to foodscrolling delicious recipes.

The cake was/is absolutely incredible. My husband started calling me Cake Boss.

Dale and I each had a piece, and I froze the rest, but I’ve already pulled one out to thaw. As they say when you go winetasting, I’d like to revisit that one, please.

The cake was a wee bit dense. Next time, I would be sure to beat the batter a little longer at a higher speed. Oh, about the buttercream roses. I couldn’t quite pull it off. They look more like tiny piles of fettuccine, which is fine with me. It’s a new thing. Fettuccini flowers. They are delicious.

I have a thing for coconut in all its forms, especially spicy food made with unsweetened coconut milk. Dale likes them well enough, but I’ve improvised a couple of dishes that turned out great, and I believe he is converted.

Yesterday, I started with this basic recipe for Coconut Shrimp Curry with Mushrooms. I got the recipe from the NY Times cooking section, which is behind a firewall. But the link above is the same recipe at a site that didn’t have restrictions.  

As I browsed the recipe, it seemed to me I could make it more Thai or more Indian, depending on seasonings and vegetables. I went with Thai and added chopped spinach, fish sauce and lime. Served it in a bowl with white rice and cilantro and toasted peanuts on top.

The broth was thick but reminiscent of Tom Kha Gai. You could add more coconut milk and/or stock to achieve a more soup-like consistency.

If I had gone Indian, I would have added garam masala and maybe some cauliflower.

My passion for cooking surprises me. Sometimes I wish I had gone to culinary school, but I grew up thinking cooking was a girly thing, and I wanted to break free from stereotypes. I suppose that’s why I joined the Army. Then 50 years later, you don’t care if it’s girly or manly or gender-neutral. You know what you like, and if you’re lucky, you get to do it.

While I might take a class here and there, my achy breaky parts are not likely to withstand the demands of culinary school. So, I’ll continue to poke around in the kitchen in my primitive fashion.

I’ve mentioned before we have years and years of Gourmet magazines. Some time ago, we ordered special binders to keep the years together with an annual index. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but the heavy bulky binders are unwieldly, and the individual issues don’t exactly stay put.

I didn’t mind all that until my back started bothering me. Sitting for long periods is about the only thing that makes my pain worse, so much of my foodscrolling has gone low-tech. I still spend plenty of time at the computer, but I try to take little breaks throughout the day and lay flat for at least 15 minutes or so.

What a perfect opportunity to browse real cookbooks or actual Gourmet magazines! I remember back in the day when we subscribed, way before computers, I’d save the new issue to read in the bathtub. That, and National Lampoon. I miss that one.

The thing about Gourmet is that I’m eager to try some ambitious cooking projects, and it seems like a good place to start. But you can’t really rest comfortably with a 5-inch binder full of magazines.

We finally decided the binders were worthless at this point, possibly from having been moved across the country multiple times. On a bad air quality day with nothing better to do, I pulled all the magazines out of the binders and tossed the binders.

Then I lined up the issues on a bookshelf from oldest to newest, left to right. I had annual indexes for some but not all. If there was no annual index, I photocopied the index page of each magazine. Then I put all the indexes together in a magazine holder like you see at the library.

The idea is you grab the pile of indexes and browse those until something piques your interest. Then you go pull an individual magazine, lying upon the 43-year-old corduroy comfy couch to squander the afternoon daydreaming about food and what you’ll try next.

Just another way to scoll …