MWD12 - On Doing Things By Hand
Yesterday around 11 am, I prepped a few things to toss in the slow cooker, and hours later, we had a meal that was good, perfectly acceptable. Nothing jaw-dropping, but certainly decent and healthy and made of real food items - nothing prepackaged. And yet.
There are times when the “fix it and forget it” concept is exactly what our family needs; and then there are times when you want Marcella Hazan’s Bolognese Sauce, but even though someone was literally at the grocery store thirty minutes ago, you somehow don’t have white wine, and the celery you salvaged last night from the wilted mess in the back of the fridge is . . . well, less salvaged today, and these are the last two carrots? How did that happen? But you soldier on, and your upstairs neighbor has almost a cup of sauv. blanc left in the bottom of a bottle, and what’s left of the celery is enough, and you do have whole nutmeg to grate fresh into the milk, and as you stand over the dutch oven, stirring and watching and listening as the heat transforms what’s there, changing it moment by moment, you realize that you are ever-so-glad that dinner won’t make itself. Because sometimes you don’t want to fix it and forget it. Sometimes you want to make things by hand, taking the longest way to the end, celebrating each slow, inconstant burble and each whiff of those flavors marrying and marrying and marrying each other, like children in the yard, performing their marriage ceremonies endlessly, each time a little different, each time beautiful.
Thoughts are like that, too, sometimes. They are not always ready at hand, not always in the condition you left them, finding their way back in long after you thought you had shown them the door. And in the end, you feast. So let’s dig around in here and see what’s edible, shall we?
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My mother and grandmother before me should have been enough to make me into Someone Who Sews. Their collective expertise is vast, and over the years, they have involved me in many projects, teaching and guiding and inspiring along the way. My mother made her own wedding dress, an absolutely stunning a-line satin mini with exquisitely detailed bell sleeves. She made the bridesmaids’ dresses for my wedding and for my sister’s. She makes baby loveys and bibs, aprons and hand towels. She hems pants! By the time I was around, my grandmother was making a small living working the weekend craft show circuit, displaying her quilts, her cross-stitched bookmarks, her crocheted items, and – my favorite – the wardrobe full of made-by-her Barbie clothes. Some of these garments were simple (Barbie needs home clothes, too!), but some were intricate and brilliant and, I might remind you, on a significantly smaller than human scale. My favorite was a white wedding dress with layers of tulle and row after row of tiny ribboned details at the hem. I don’t recall ever having my Barbie get married in that dress, but I did love to try it on her.
—Sidebar—
I have only at this very moment realized that my own wedding dress was a near facsimile of that dress. Layers of tulle. Ribbon details. Huh.
The point is that I have spent my life watching these women at their sewing machines. Or with this or that handwork in their laps. Or standing at a small distance as they eye their efforts on my frame, deciding if the length is good or if it needs to be taken up just a little bit more.
Along the way, I have done my fair share of sewing, but it’s almost all been by hand. I’ve had a sewing machine (two actually), but time and again I’ve felt like the work it would take to get the machine out and set up (and then remember how to use it!) is not worth the time it would save in the sewing. So I just sew by hand. I like the quiet of it, the pace, and when it’s working, there are moments when it feels almost automatic, when the needle just goes exactly where it should even without me fully intending it.
But most of the time, I’m slow and my work is not professional looking and my mother and grandmother would probably cringe at the results. I’m okay with that. I like to work by hand.
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Speaking of doing things by hand, here’s a piece by Samin Nosrat about making big lasagna. Something you’ll notice when you watch professional cooks in the kitchen is that they use their hands a lot - more perhaps than you would normally. They just get right in there with their hands, and the more I cook, the more I realize that besides salt and tasting things along the way, not being afraid to get your hands dirty is a pretty big piece of making food. Read the piece because Samin writes in a lovely, evocative way, but don’t skip the video. She is a delight.
Samin Nosrat Wants Us to Make Lasagna Together - The New York Times
The “Salt Fat Acid Heat” author has long gathered people around a table. But what will happen when the festivities move to that sometimes-terrible place, the internet?
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Nothing much to do with hands, but certainly a delight is this old Helen Rosner piece on the perfection of chicken tenders.
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Doing things by hand requires that we accept a different pace. It requires that we reconsider what is meant by progress or productivity. Maybe this season of staying at home has forced something similar in you. Undoubtedly, as we continue walking through the world and grappling with what is true and what could be true, we will reconsider some pretty important things. I hope speed and productivity is on the list. And I agree completely with Dylan Matthews that Covid-19 will force us to think again about big issues such as mass incarceration, the care and protection of the aging, and our relationship with industrial agriculture and meat processing. This article does a great job of pulling these pieces together (and don’t miss the old Kwame Anthony Appiah article linked to in the opening. It is fascinating).
Covid-19 in prisons and meatpacking plants sheds a light on America’s moral failures - Vox
It’s no accident that prisons and meatpacking plants are hotbeds of Covid-19.
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Unexpected Joy Department:
You might think you know what to expect from a video about hamsters running on a wheel. You should think again.
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And Now for Some Truly Shameless Self-Promotion
(or what I’ve posted lately)
Last week was the Everywhere BookFest and this week is Children’s Book Week, so it has been and will be kids stuff for a bit. New reviews up, both graphic novels:
Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang
When Stars are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed.
The first purports to be about basketball, and it is, but Yang’s books are never just one thing, and they always leave you thinking about big picture questions like truth. The second is actually Omar Mohamed’s true story of growing up in a Kenyan refugee camp after fleeing Somalia and is a surprisingly apt read for this time.