What Will Save Me from “A Drizzly November In My Soul?”

I use Grammarly for proofreading because, well, because every time I have a typo on this blog I cry
uncontrollably. I don’t, of course, but Grammarly offered me a $200 Amazon gift
card to start my post with that line, and they asked me to come up with a funny
reason. Comedy, of course, is tragedy plus time, and, I thought, if I turned a
typo into something tragic, it might be funny by the time you read it.

What is really tragic, though, is that I feel like I’m in
the culinary version of “Groundhog Day.” I know I’m not alone in this. By
definition, a parent who cooks is going to be a parent who gets stuck
repeatedly cooking the most popular dishes. Over the weekend, I was talking to one
of the dads I know through Nina's soccer. He cooks black beans, roasted chicken, a
meat and tomato sauce every single week. I call this a cycle of recipe
dependency—that is, we get addicted to the things that are easy and that our kids
will eat.

It’s not exactly a depressing situation—we are, after all,
eating well (guess what's back in season!)—but I miss the feeling of seeking out and succeeding at new dishes.
It reminds me of Ishmael from “Moby-Dick,” who starts the novel by saying:

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth;
whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself
involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of
every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand
of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from
deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats
off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

I’m not going to head out to sea (who would cook for Nina,
Pinta, and Santa Maria?), but I do like to explore my cookbook shelf.
 “The New Food Lover’s Companion,”
one of my favorite food books of all time, was recently updated. It is a
pocket-sized volume (that is, if your pocket is a bit large—this is a small but
thick book), organized alphabetically, that defines everything from “aamsul” (a
kiwi-sized fruit from western India,) to “zwieback (the twice-baked toast).”

It covers the basics with precision, observing that a hare
is “a larger relative of the rabbit,” and it “can weigh as much as 12 to 14
pounds, compared to a rabbit at about 5 pounds.”

It offers tasty tidbits about the origins of dishes,
pointing out that the name for “jambalaya” is thought to derive “from the
French jambon, meaning ‘ham,’ the main ingredient in many of the first
jambalayas.”

The book gets into folklore, noting that “in parts of Europe
it’s believed that rubbing the skin with eel oil will cause a person to see
fairies.”

And a good sense of humor is often present—about “Glühwein,”
it observes that the name of the German mulled wine translates as “glow wine,”
and “is so named not only because it’s hot, but because it gives those who
drink more than one or two a definite glow.”

The book is very handy for settling arguments (in a
pre-Internet kind of way) and for satisfying curiosities about odd foodstuffs.
Plus, it’s very fun to read, and good for getting out of a rut.