thecounterintuitivekitchen

and also rice pudding

We have a gas oven that, when you turn it off, exhales loudly and constantly until the oven’s interior has cooled. There is not an option to turn off whatever fan makes this happen. It sounds like an exasperated dragon, or a general malfunction. It is a noise that suffuses the whole kitchen with threat, and it goes on for a long, long time. To speed up the cooling process, I often leave the oven door propped open, especially in winter, when the heat from the turned-off oven helps warm the kitchen. When do I do this? Again, when the oven is off. 

Once, while we had overnight guests and I had just cooked dinner, I turned off the oven and cracked the oven door to let the heat escape. One of our guests, a supremely capable and nurturing person who anticipates other people’s needs and sometimes apologizes/takes responsibility for things that are beyond anyone’s control, like weather conditions, other people’s pooping habits, or what time it is, was doing a surveillance round in the kitchen and quietly closed the oven door. Because of course it seemed like I’d forgotten to close it and was about to gas us all to death.

Ten years ago, or possibly even two, I would have made a whole thing out of explaining the situation and making sure everyone knew I was not homicidal or an idiot. On this occasion, however, I just kept reopening the oven door, which was essentially opening a portal to (literally) existential anxiety for our guest. I didn’t want to bait anyone. I just knew what the conditions were and did not feel like sharing them. AND although I am used to our heavy-breathing oven, I know the situation is alarming for others, because once when a family member was taking care of our kids for a night and had baked something, she called us in a panic to ask why the oven was making crazy noises after it had been turned off and whether she should vacate the house or call the fire department. But on this evening with the houseguests I just kept re-propping the door, and for roughly 20 minutes I watched a person weigh politeness against the biological imperative to survive an overnight stay. The guest would quietly bump the door closed. I would wander back into the kitchen and prop it open. It was insane. But I just declined to explain myself. 

More recently, I was at a barbecue where I was hanging out with my friend’s toddler. The toddler is very mobile, and at one point wanted to explore the bag of charcoal. I recognized the hazards there but also thought that it would be a cool sensory thing and I would intervene if the charcoal got beyond the bag. I had wet paper towels in my pocket so I could wipe off her little hands, and was squatting next to the toddler and taking the briquettes out of her hand as soon as they got anywhere near her face, clothes or mouth, and I also had talked at the toddler about how, soon, we were going to go wash our hands! Go wash our hands! Our hands, our hands we WERE going to WASH our HANDS! But when the toddler’s parent came over and saw the tiny hands full of charcoal briquettes and admonished me about how toddlers put everything in their mouths (I know, because I once made up a song for my kids about how you’ll get soupy poop if you put that gross thing in your mouth), I just whispered “you can’t trust me” and didn’t share any of my plans for interventions or cleanliness. Like a psychopath. Like a psychopath who wanted my friend to suddenly feel like being near me was like being near a great sinkhole in Florida, one full of discarded pet pythons. Again, as I allowed the oven situation to menace houseguests, I knew the deal but did not bring myself to share it.

What the fuck? You might say. I agree. 

I used to watch soap operas after elementary school and I would get SO WORKED UP about the lack of open communication among the cast. If only they would talk to each other, and not eavesdrop or gossip in the high-end cosmetics firm or well-appointed living room that always had the entrance door stage right, then no evil twin would steal that goddamned baby! No second wife would get tied up and stowed under the fucking gazebo! Talk it out! Take a moment! Don’t wait until your loved one is in a coma to say how you feel! Also, stop skulking in the private office and prying at the desk drawers with a letter opener with your back to the door! A sexy detective or slimy executive is going to catch you! And watching Three’s Company was agony. Agony! Being as old as several hills means I watched Three’s Company. Now, I think if I had the stomach to watch any reality show on Bravo, I would probably hate how much people discuss things, because if the practice is always escalatory and the confessionals never include the challenge of a give and take, you are basically living inside Mr. Roper’s head without a chance for a denouement. Which I realize is the point but still I consider that hell.

And yet I keep perpetrating or perpetuating misunderstandings just because… because of the “Time insights” on my gmail, the blue bar that quantifies the number of hours I’ve spent in online meetings. Just three or so days into a new month, I saw that I had spent thirteenish hours in online meetings, meetings whose only effect was to cause information to disintegrate, and to drain the virtual assembly of any will they ever had to take an action of any kind. Sometimes the meetings are used as a platform for experimental storytelling, stories which feature total strangers, strangers whose purpose, station and relevance go unexplained, and whose characters only have first names. In days of yore, I would try to interject or populate the chat with questions, like, “Who is Anthony?” and “How does Anthony relate to what we are gathered to discuss?” Now, I just let it wash over me, like hot air coming loudly out of a turned-off gas oven. It can’t actually kill me, but it kills me. Usually, after 90 minutes of meeting in which there is some cursing, some ad hominem attacks on people not present, some offenses taken when efforts are made to refer to the agenda as a guide, and several screens going black for a while, presumably for invisible screaming fits, the meeting winds down and all the mute people wave limply and then go try, privately, to regain a sense of purpose. 

The time insight bar could be any shape, but it is the shape of the sweeper arm on Wipeout, which moves in a clockwise direction around 12 stations.

Time insights is not subtle. Time insights is a gussied-up reaper. I do hope that a tart British person is not somehow offering running commentary on how badly things are going. 

Another Google calendar feature, Time breakdown, is possibly worse, because it gives advice. The advice is: put on headphones and try to focus. But the name says it all. Your time is broken, and your nervous system is shot.

Zero hours of focus time.

Are there ways to address this situation? Of course, of course! I have tried several ways and failed, but there are other ways. 

There are also many ways to avoid making guests fear for their lives even if you don’t want to explain yourself, and should your mute learned helplessness persist, here is one: don’t use the scary gas over and use the crock pot to make rice pudding. I always thought rice pudding was a sad sort of trick and not really dessert, but this is pretty delicious. 

This recipe is by Sarah Waldman, from her book Feeding a Family

Put all this in a slow cooker on high for 4 hours:

¾ cup long-grain brown rice

3 ½ cups milk (whole milk or it can be oat milk, etc.)

¾ cup sugar or any granulated sweetener

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

Pinch kosher salt

5 tablespoons melted butter

At hour 4 or a bit earlier if things start to look too crackly or sizzly, stir in another cup of milk.

Top it with whipped cream, chopped pecans, and dark chocolate shavings or chocolate chips.