Transfer of Knowledge (and What I Learned from the "Mama Says" Ladies!)

My friend Caryn of The Pretty White Line is falling fast for this local, organic whole-food approach to meal planning, yet, let's face it, when you're new to it and a kohlrabi looks you in the eye, it could be enough to send you running in the other direction for a frozen pizza. And so it was that I brought Caryn with me to the CSA pickup yesterday, on a chilly morning that kept the Chain of Humanity quite small as we unloaded 51 boxes from Charlotte's truck.

I then invited Caryn (and her box) back to my house, where we opened up our treasure trove of weekly crops and then proceeded to slice, chop, sautee, bake, roast, blend and otherwise create the following dishes for her to take home with her (that's Caryn in the picture):

* Roasted beets and turnips with lemon thyme, tarragon and rosemary

* Sauteed beet and turnip greens with apples, garlic, onion and a handful of (non-local) raisins

* Corn muffins

* Roasted butternut squash, apple and pepper soup

It took an hour and a half from start to finish, including a relaxing lunch in the middle while the soup vegetables roasted. That's all. And 75% of the contents of that CSA box are now "processed." Plus, Caryn now knows how to do a bunch of things she didn't know how to do before. In fact, before we did this, she told me she needs recipes and my style of cooking was too loose for her to follow. But then, as she was stirring the fourth pan of greens, she said, "This isn't quite ready yet. It needs a couple more minutes."

And I said, "Caryn! You're off the book now. You're making an intuitive decision about something you just feel to be right. That's what it's all about."

Within minutes, she was suggesting additional ingredients to add to the soup, and different ways to serve the leftover butternut squash, and wondering if you can eat the outside of it, and suggesting she'd go online to figure out what to do with the kohlrabi (because, frankly, I'm clueless on that one, too, but if it's like everything else, we probably should just sautee the greens and roast the bulb).

And that's it. That's how you cook. Period. You look, you smell, you feel, you develop a relationship with what you're cooking and you make on-the-fly experimental decisions that suddenly seem to make sense.

The pots were barely cleaned when Iris and Lynn came over, two women whom I had never met but who had just published a "cookbook," if you could call it that. It's a set of large, round, laminated recipe cards in a pizza box titled "Mama Says, No More Frozen Pizza!"

Iris and Lynn developed the project as a reaction to the constant phone calls they received from their young adult children asking for recipes for favorite family meals, and other cooking advice. I especially like that Iris and Lynn make it simple, simple, simple for emerging cooks to make lovely, healthy meals with few ingredients and easy directions. Considering how few people cook anymore, this "transfer of knowledge" is absolutely critical in today's world.

My favorite part of my conversation with Iris and Lynn? When I asked how they decided to do this and Iris said they were discussing Chapter Two.

"Chapter Two?" I asked.

"Yes, you know, Chapter Two. The next phase of our lives, and what we wanted to do with it."

I thought of Caryn and how she was now cooking "off the book." And I realized, right then, right there, that perhaps that's what Chapter Two is all about. Trusting your intuition and making your own decisions.

For me, I'm leaning toward being a traveling feature writer for Nat Geo. (Dream on, right?) Good thing my Chapter Two is not for another ten years!

What's your Chapter Two?

And did someone say pizza? Might be time for another one of my specialties . . .