The Glass Pantry

Packing, moving, and unpacking have been time-consuming and stress-inducing. But there is an upside: Long-lost treasures have re-emerged.

I had been looking for Georgeanne Brennan’s The Glass Pantry in my bookcases for a while, but I hadn’t found it. I worried that I had gotten rid of it.

But the other day, as I cleared off the magazines on our bedroom’s bookcase, I found the book buried in a stack of Wine Spectators. As soon as Melissa got home, I gleefully showed it to her.

The book was much as I remembered it: pretty preserves held in glass jars, mapped to seasons. Relishes and mustards. Vinegars and oils. Jams and jellies. These aren’t large batches but small lots.

As I look through it now, I realize that I have a sense for how to make many of the treats; indeed, I have ideas for how I might improve some. But each page provides new inspiration as I imagine a productive garden in the backyard (instead of the bamboo infestation we have right now). I want this life of glittering glass goodies tucked away in my chilly basement and summoned later to liven a dish.

My interest in preserving has flared up of late. I think our first house has brought out the nesting urge in both of us, but I think its physical layout — a big kitchen and storage space — moves me to freeze flavor in time the way Brennan suggests. Even before the garden takes off, I plan to use her book as a launching point for experiments. After all, our most common farmers’ market, Berkeley’s Saturday market, is mere minutes away. Perhaps the next time we go there, I’ll buy an excess of shallots and preserve them in brine, as she suggests. Rediscovering this lost book has awakened my slumbering still room chef.

A curious side note: When I looked at her recipe for Nectarine Mustard, I was surprised to see her reference Curt Clingman, “longtime chef at Oliveto.” I didn’t know him when I last looked through the book, but Curt has become a friend of ours, though we think of him as the co-owner of Jojo, our favorite Oakland restaurant.

"Power Boil" Burners

We bought a nice, one-year-old stove off of Craigslist, and this weekend we hooked it up in the new house. This stove, like other modern stoves, has a “power boil” burner with more flame and a “precise simmer” burner with less. This drives me bonkers. Why not just make all the burners go from the lowest temperature of precise simmer to the highest temperature of power boil? Why force me to put stocks on my back right burner and stir-fries in the front?

It reminds me of the famous dialog between Nigel Tufnel and Marty DiBergi in This Is Spinal Tap:

Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.

My friend meriko mentioned that they probably just have different sizes of pipes running into the burners, which prompts the question: Can I hack those pipes to install new, bigger ones to all the burners? I’m already planning to make a pizza oven by removing the lock that kicks in for the self-cleaning mode. Maybe I could swap in new pipes as well. Anyone know how to do that without blowing up the house?

Not About Food: Rent To Own

Melissa and I have bought our first house.

It’s a simple sentence — compound subject, transitive verb and direct object — but I still have a hard time writing it. I'm not sure I fully believe it. Those of you who have heard the saga of this Berkeley house know how stressful it’s been. For the rest of you, I’ll just say that they accepted our offer three and a half months ago, we closed escrow today, and you don’t want to hear the rest.

Despite the public nature of this site, our private lives stay off of it. But a first house, particularly one in the Bay Area, requires some statement, some demarcation between there and here, then and now.

For one thing, the new house comes with a new budget that will force some changes: Forget restaurant reviews and foie gras for a while. On the other hand, I will focus on my beloved “thrift cooking,” the kind of cuisine that peasants have practiced for millennia: stretching ingredients and preserving food. I’m trying to view our new financial situation as a challenge, not a limit.

Oh, and did I mention gardening? Our house — what an odd phrase — has a yard. Throughout most of this adventure, whenever Melissa or I felt overwhelmed by the tidal wave coming at us, the other would paint a picture of our future garden. Window boxes and pots filled with herbs. Tomato plants. Legumes swirling and twirling around poles and nets. Squashes and corn. If you recommend any organic food gardening books, by the way, please let us know in the comments.

The kitchen — I’m sure you all want to know — is functional but run-down. We’re hoping to renovate in a couple of years, once our budget has returned to normal and other, graver problems have been fixed. I have been saving clippings of kitchen articles for years in anticipation of that day.

We’ll be sharing the food parts of this process with you, of course, and we welcome any advice from other housedwellers about gardening, budget eating, and kitchen thoughts. Because we can do anything we want to the house. It’s ours.