On the Quick Meal

Haste addles the brain. Haste introduces chaos to an orderly day.

Messages between mind and body become jumbled, twitchy, and both suffer the indignities of frenetic bumbling and the accompanying gross oversight.

I deplore haste. I feel that it impairs the more natural rhythmic quest for tranquility and contemplation that is our right and obligation, as humans, to pursue.

Haste is a consequence of overload. Life among avid, thankless, accurate, often heartless machines creates peculiar and complicated tensions which are, late in the day, then magnified by the strange dancing lessons of carting children and their friends, animals, equipment, toys, tricks, and the ensuing racket from place to place and back again.

Life is busy. We gain responsibilities with every social issue we apprehend. Some days are worse than others.

We cannot just flow along some times; we must consciously synchronize. We answer to schedules, expectations, hierarchy, leaky faucets, house plants, lists, appointments, deadlines, and in the process we forget that time is an idea in which we live and not the guiding force.

Perhaps the planet is shrinking.

In any case, I am not immune to frenzy.

In the name of haste, I have packed up every conceivable item necessary for a last minute outing and taken off without the baby. I have sewn the bottom of a good skirt together making myself a wool pillowcase. I have been thoroughly short-tempered. I have lost Camp Sherman entirely. I have knitted a blivet.

I have run out of gas, run over my purse, watered the laundry on the line, vacuumed up kindling, spilled raw milk in the car, and made coffee with no pot.

These little scenes from my life have similar conclusions. They have produced a mess and a rapidly deteriorating attitude.

A quick meal, under circumstances such as these, has not been carefully preplanned for glib assembly.

It is not boxed pasta and a little envelope of clever sauce purchased years ago for backpacking.

It is probably not one of those nutritious meals we should have made weeks ago and put into the freezer in anticipation of just such an occasion.

We are beyond take-out here, too much in pieces for a restaurant, and we have discovered that fast food has been eating us.

We are already home and hungry and surrounded by low-blood sugared individuals who are beginning to gnaw one another. We need comfort and appeasement and we need it to be forthcoming.

Stand back. Galloping out of the humblest pantry come the ingredients for Potato Latkes, your easy ticket to a moment of solace.

Peel and grate:

3 large baking potatoes

Press out the excess water thoroughly. Add:

1/2 onion, finely chopped.

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

1 tsp salt

3 Tbsp cracker meal or fine dry bread crumbs

black pepper to taste

Mix these all together, adding more bread crumbs if you need to, to make a dry-ish mix.

Heat a large, heavy skillet and melt some butter in it, about 11/2 Tbsp. Add an equal amount of salad oil. There should be about 1/8" of melted fat in the skillet.

Drop the pancake batter in by heaping spoonfuls and flatten slightly with the back of the spoon. Turn when golden and both sides are crisp and inviting.

Remove to drain on a clean brown bag and serve very hot with:

sour cream or yogurt

applesauce

Or try Corn Lightning Soup. If you have not managed to buy 4-5 ears of corn on the way home, you can use fresh frozen.

Start out by sautéing in about 2 Tbsp. butter:

1/2 C. onion

Add a bit of sweet pepper, red or green, celery, whatever you feel like and find in the vegetable drawer.

When the vegetables are tender but not soft, add the corn, cut from the ears, and toss it lightly into the sauteed vegetables. Add chopped fresh parsley if you have it, and a teaspoon of dill weed.

Now open a can of good quality cream-style corn and add it and enough milk to make a chowder, thick and homey; bring up the flavors with salt and black pepper to taste.

Serve it nice and hot with fresh tomatoes and crackers, and relax, let peace descend upon the multitudes. Make your private resolutions. Tomorrow will be better.