Eating my Pain - Gabri's Muffin Platter

By Amy

I almost feel like I should apologize. I did write, in the short bio for the blog, that I’m not a writer or a cook by trade. I’m also not an artist – obviously. I could never compete with the master chefs in the books, but Gabri’s masterpiece of “a platter holding rings of muffins marvelously decorated with fruit and roses” was daunting to even attempt to make justice to.

I had originally intended to make many kinds of muffins, as Gabri had. He offered the agents a variety of carrot, date, banana, and a special “Carles de Mills” tribute muffin. I ended up making pistachio. I wasn’t cooking to drown out sorrow (Gabri was), nor did I have the excuse of a houseful of B&B guests to help me eat them.

So, in this interpretation of a book meal, I had only one muffin flavor, no roses (I did pick a leaf off my maracujá vine to add decorative vegetation), and only the single fruit I was actually going to eat for breakfast.

“Jane’s favorite. [Charles de Mills is] not just any rose, Chief Inspector. He’s considered by rosarians to be one of the finest in the world. An old garden rose. Only blooms once a season but with a show that’s spectacular. And then it’s gone. That’s why I made the muffins from rose water, as a homage to Jane. Then I ate them, as you saw. I always eat my pain.” Gabri smiled slightly. Looking at the size of the man, Gamache marveled at the amount of pain he must have. And fear perhaps. And anger? Who knows indeed.”

I confess that the first time I read this, I didn’t really pay attention to the bit about the muffins being on a decorated platter. I only noticed it after Libby mentioned being excited about this meal because the roses decorating the plate had enticed her imagination. I had no idea what she was talking about. Embarrassing, really. My brain registered “muffins” and moved on. I did pay attention to Gabri eating his pain. I could relate.

I ate my pain, too. I also ate insecurities, anxiety, unsuccessful quests for perfection, homesickness, frustrations, PMS and a typical adolescent search for identity. By the time I was 15 I had turned a genetic tendency for curviness into full-blown obesity. Not chubby cute. Actual obesity where there’s knee pain at 15 and doctors are telling you that you’d be okay if you just lost some weight. Then I started eating the feelings due to negative body image and the stress that comes from trying _not_ to eat. I knew exactly what Gabri meant about eating his pain.

It has been a couple of decades since I was compulsively eating my feelings and, in that time, I have made peace with my body, I have lost (regained and lost again) the excessive weight, discovered that I actually enjoy running, and have oscillated, for years,  within a healthy weight span. I will never be thin. The genetic tendency for curviness and a love of eating are unchangeable facts about me. I am healthy, though. Anyway, if given the choice, I think I'd always choose my own body over anyone else's (I'm used to it, it's part of who I am and what defines me) and I wouldn't want to lose pleasure in eating!

That said, my relationship with food is an ongoing learning process. I think anyone who has ever considered weight loss has gone through various attempts in dieting: restrictions, calorie counting, crazy diets, single-food-group diets, restriction of carbohydrates, vilifying of certain ingredients, binge-eating, manic avoidance of sugar – only to consume enormous quantities of it a few days (or hours) later… The list is long.

I remember laughing through Jennifer Crusie’s Bet Me, when the character Min tries (unsuccessfully) to make Chicken Marsala. Since she is constantly dieting and has subjected herself to a fat-and-carb free diet (Ha!), she is trying to make it with no butter, no olive oil, and no carbs. It’s a disaster. The scene is hilarious. The message is not.

While I no longer eat feelings like I used to, that girl still lives inside of me. Every once in a while she takes over and it takes some effort to control her (and I’m not always successful). Frequently, unlike Gabri’s beautiful homage, the ingestion of negative feelings is associated with tasteless quantities. I have challenged myself, in the past years, to go beyond the boundaries of over-restrictiveness, and to explore tastes and "prohibited" ingredients (Ah, the joyful freedom of allowing myself butter and olive oil).

It is impossible to abstain from food in our lives (unless you can photosynthesize) – to do so, as my seven year old says (wide-eyed and with an exaggerated scary whisper), “If you don’t eat, you’ll DIE of hunger! For real. Literally.” Unlike other addictions where the solution for control is frequently sought in abstinence, unhealthy use of food must be resolved with some kind of equilibrium. I have proposed to seek indulgence in taste and flavor, instead of quantity. I have slowly come to an awareness that food is not the enemy (nor should it be a crutch), that overeating doesn’t make anything taste better, and that it is alright to treat oneself if there is balance.

When I first mentioned this project to some friends who are not readers of the books, I had varied responses. One friend thought I was trying to crack the cookbook market. Another, who's recently discovered a love of cooking in the past few years, thought I had caught the gourmet-bug. A reader friend (although she has yet to read Penny’s books) thought it was a kind of book review. As I heard their interpretations of what they thought I was trying to do, I tried to explain it to myself. The best I could come up with is that maybe it’s a form of therapy.

Part of the fun of this project was to ransom some of the flavor in food. Sometimes there is no substitute. Sometimes you NEED sugar in a recipe. Sometimes you NEED butter. How do you make croissants without butter?

I think most people have been there, trying to adapt recipes (or other parts of life) that aren't easily changed. Of course, sometimes change is necessary – or just plain fun. There may be healthier versions of recipes, just as there should be allowances made for personal tastes or local ingredients. Both Libby and I, while not vegan or restrictively vegetarian, aren’t big meat eaters. Libby doesn’t eat red meat at all, and I only do so rarely… We live on opposite sides of the globe and might not find the same kinds of ingredients in our local markets. Many of the meals we’re preparing for the blog have been adapted.

There’s a big difference, though, in adapting a recipe to suit your taste and adapting it to suit a calorie count.

The muffins were delicious. My husband came home mid-morning to get something he’d forgotten and grabbed a muffin (or five) as brunch. They ended up being a celebration of a breakthrough in one of his projects. (He and a student had been working on something for days and they couldn't find a solution to the problem. He was beaming because they had finally made things work!).

If we can eat pain and inadequacy, we can also learn to eat the joy of celebration, the happiness in good company, and the sensuality of amazing blends of flavors. Eating with joy might be less compulsive and may be both more pleasurable and more moderate.

I enjoyed fresh maracujá juice with my own muffin and contemplated the fact that while my mind may have rationally understood these concepts, I still have a long way to go in my relationship with food.

Pistachio Muffins

Ingredients:

1 + 1/3 cups of flour

2 teaspoons of baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon (I always put more)

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon lemon zest

½ cup pistachios, chopped (in theory they’re supposed to be finely chopped… but… my muffins weren’t green because I used brown sugar and a bit of whole flour, too)

½ cup butter

2/3 cup sugar (I used brown)

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ teaspoon rum extract (I didn’t have any and didn’t add it)

½ cup milk

½ cup pistachios, coarsely chopped

How To:

Preheat the oven (the recipe called for 425 degrees, I just put it on the highest) and grease muffin tins (I use silicone ones so I didn’t need to grease them).

Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. Cream butter and sugar together. Beat the eggs, one at a time, into the creamed mixture until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and rum extracts.

Slowly add the dry mixture (about ¼ at a time) and milk, briefly mixing after each addition. It’s important not to overmix. Pour into tins. The original recipe (see link below) says to sprinkle the tops with the coarsely chopped pistachios. I didn’t have enough, so I left mine “unsprinkled”.

Bake for 15 in 375 degrees.

I adapted my recipe from: http://www.food.com/recipe/green-pistachio-muffins-239041

The quotes are from page 70 of the Paperback copy of Still Life.