Kitchen Therapy & The World According to Garp

"If you are careful,' Garp wrote, 'if you use good ingredients, and you don't take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day; what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane."
? John Irving, The World According to Garp

I often refer to my creative bouts of experimentation with food as "kitchen therapy." And I love this Irving quote for how it legitimizes the feeling. On an otherwise ordinary Saturday in January, for instance, with a risk of going stir-crazy from the weather, cooking keeps me sane.

Today's therapeutic foreay resulted in a sort of chicken calzone. I started with fresh onion, garlic, peppers and tomatoes and sauteed them. Then I tossed in diced chicken, seasoned with various spices and a little sun-dried tomato paste, mixed in a bit of milk, and melted in cream cheese. After taking the mixture off the heat, I added lots of crumbled Fete cheese. All of this was spooned into squares of pizza dough, topped with new squares of dough, and the edges sealed. I baked the little pockets for 10 minutes, then brushed the top with Krauter butter, and baked about another 10 minutes til golden.

The only worthwhile product I could salvage from the day at least made for a lovely family "Abendbrot" (evening bread). And simultaneously returned for me a sense of balance in the world :)