Recipes for Global Warming

The high today is 75 here in Anaheim...so far.  The sun is shining with all its might and it is January.  In Queens, NY it is about 30 degrees.   It is easy to think that something is missing.  Right about now, I am often trying to find ways to keep warm and comfy.  As someone who is so immersed in culinary culture and whose life revolves around food, it is funny to see that everything that I know is changing.

Living in a new state on a new coast, yes, there are bound to be differences.  I was ready for this.  I never thought about what I would be giving up.  I never thought that I would not have the stomach to eat a nice thick, heavy with vegetables that had been meticulously stored months before.  In fact, we are even looking at growing those things now.  As I find myself buying seeds, I also find myself wondering what can go in the ground now.

It is 75 degrees outside!  Can I plant corn?  Can I put some peas in the ground?  It really does look and smell like spring outside.

Compromise seems to be the order of the day.  Several months ago, I had put up some chicken stock and it was a frozen block, mocking me, waiting to go into a nice heavy minestrone or a mulligatawny.  It now seems to know it's fate and seems to wonder why it has been awakened, like some character in a Sci Fi movie that was not supposed to be awakened until they reached Mars, but was pulled out of cryo-whatever far too early.

I take out some bacon and let it come to temperature slowly.  I add some onions, chopped into a nice dice and watch as they go from white, to gray, to a nice brown and mingle with bacon.  The stock goes grudgingly into a pot, under low heat, on the back burner.

Other veggies find their way into the pot.  Potatoes, kidney beans, carrots, and peas but they are fighting with the weather.  They need to be working to counteract the malaise of winter.  They need to be helping me think of spring.  They need to be helping me see through the evening haze and the overcast day.  Instead, they seem out of place.

There are some things that are missing.  The smell of oak in a burning fireplace.  The subtle fear that someone is going to open the door and let some of the heat out.  There is no fire and no fear because the windows are open and a gentle breeze is coming in.  I am wearing a t-shirt not a sweater.

As a sense cook, I am confused on days like this.  The weather begs me to put in basil and mint.  The time of year makes me want thyme and marjoram.

These are the things that are going to go by the way side, it seems.  Soon, it will be too hot in January to drink cocoa.  Apple cider in the heat of the day will seem silly and forced, even if it is October.

Global warming will not only change what we can eat.  It will not only change what is available; it will change what we want.  My soup today ended with a nice heavy mix of vegetables, large chunks of chicken, but was highlighted by peas and rice.  It felt like a strange mix of Spring and Winter.  It tasted confused, much the way I think it would feel to eat my mother's cranberry ginger cookies for dinner in August.