Cooking and the Soltera, Soltero, Solterx

Cooking for Companionship

Michael Sedano

I recently became a no longer married man faced with the prospect of cooking for one and dining alone. There are also new joys of cooking for a companion, dining and enjoying the fireside with a good meal, conversation, companionship. Cooking, and eating together, fashions increasing intimacy between strangers. Propinquity and liking are just a first consequence.

My new state makes me little different from the bachelor I was in April1968, a grad student living alone in Isla Vista, looking for steady companionship in the UCSB relationship desert. I enjoyed companionship on the debate circuit; the occasional date into Santa Barbara or Goleta. 

All my friends had graduated and moved to Frisco. I was solitary and dug it with a little equivocation.

Work and study, eye women at the burger bar, have coffee alone in the student union after class, cooking a lot of spaghetti cause it's easy, eating cold cereal for breakfast, alone.

Millions of single people share my kitchen predicament, but unlike so many others, I cook when I need to make an impression. Cooking at home saves money.

This brings me back to late May, 1968. Barbara and I enjoy a couple of  dates, resulting in Barbara asking to cook me dinner in my Isla Vista apartment. Barbara lives in Santa Barbara, so an evening meal takes on importance, on the courtship scale, an 8 out of 10.

Barbara wants to impress this guy, but Barbara is broke, and not a cook. 

The roommate, raven-haired Paula, has a boyfriend who cooks like a chef. Don gives Barbara a recipe for stroganoff. At forty-five cents a pound, Barbara can afford hamburger. My mom cooked stroganoff from round steak; I adapt the recipe below from hers. That was Barbara's competition, though she has no idea when thanking Don and Paula.

There was no question I loved Barbara already. Our town-and-gown relationship was desperate for a steadier companionship. Our second date found us getting along, comfortable like future lovers. We had auguries and ganas. 

A good meal would cement the foundation. Barbara told me how she wanted to impress me with her kitchen prowess. Her confidence and experimental attitude told her to go ahead and do it. Paula said I hope I don't lose a roommate.

A few months after that first meal, we provisioned at a Bakersfield mall and hit the road north.  Almond groves whizzed past in skeletal monotony when I asked Barbara to make us sandwiches for lunch.

“On the road? While we’re moving?” 

Barbara's family had not eaten in the car, on the road. My familia's lonche style was just dip the weenie in the mustard, wrap a slice of white bread around it, hand me a pickle, and next stop, Salinas. Barbara skeptically unwraps the loaf, effectively spreads some mayonnaise with a wooden coffee stick, lays bologna on the single slice of white Webber's bread, folds it and takes her first bite of a sandwich on the road as almond groves whizz past.

My bride tells me it is the most delicious bologna sandwich she’s ever eaten. Probably tells me that just to swell my head. We won't talk about pooping under a highway bridge, another first.

That May, 1968 afternoon, The Doors play on the stereo as I take my chair at the sturdy formica table that doubles as a study desk in every apartment in the mile-square Isla Vista student ghetto. Tonight in IV, hundreds of men are sitting down to meals cooked by a woman hopeful this food will feed his soul as well as his appetites.

I’ve cleared away my papers and books. Barbara lays two plates on the barren off-white surface. The singer wants his fire lighted, and my fire won't catch. I stare at the plate listening to Barbara hopefully offering me “beef stroganoff” from her hand. It is the color of shit on a shingle brownish grey with stirrings of white sour cream.

You gotta hand it to Barbara’s toughness. She sat there and watched my face grow aghast then I swing into action, pulling catsup from my cupboard to stir tons of that shit into the stuff on the plate until it takes on a grey-pinkish color. Barbara stares at what I've done to her food and gets asco. She doesn't have that word, yet.

I explain, apologetically, I do not eat white food. That doesn't sound right. I don't eat white-colored food. My food has to be red. Or brown. Preferably “spicy”. But not white. White-colored.

That was the night Barbara learned what “asco” means. White food gives me asco. She also learns to forgive me for boorishness. I offer to discuss how the basis of a long-term relationship, a key to companionship of the best kind, is red-colored food. She is tolerant, hurt, steaming.

That was 55 years ago. She stuck with me. Five months after we marry, I go into the Army for 19 months. My mother takes Barbara under her wing as soon as my ass hit Ft. Ord for Basic. My Mom teaches her daughter-in-law Mexican Chicana cooking. 

When I return from 13 months in Korea, in 1970 in time for our 2d anniversary--our first together-- Barbara’s repertoire of my comida is completely professional. There is nothing she cannot cook, and cook right, just like my Mother used to make. And it is all red. 

And ever shall be food without white, white-colored food, así es. Era.

Upshot

I was fortunate Barbara had a thick skin and saw something in me so she stuck around. Not all Solterx are in for the same kismet. It behooves them to sharpen their kitchen game. Expanding one’s courtship repertoire into the kitchen is a sure-fire something. 

The Gluten-free Chicano, remembering how it was back in 1968 before being struck by lightning and white food, white-colored food, offers a series of courtship food for the person with passing familiarity with the kitchen. The most important element is having an experimental attitude and the confidence in your abilities to overcome any obstacle.

Courtship Food

Gluten-free Beef Stroganoff on a Budget

“steak pieces” the butcher calls the tray. Odd-shaped strips of beef trimmed off carcasses in the process of cutting meat into t-bones and filets. The bargain isn’t the 4.99 a pound but the work half-done for me.

These fotos illustrate two servings. Cooking for one means having left-overs. Stroganoff for breakfast means find a friend and feed them the night before and don't have sobras. Stroganoff is fancy eating, courtship food. Plan a good playlist.

"Steak strips" are the right size, you could cut them in half lengthwise. Half-freeze them to make slicing a breeze and you won't cut your fingers. Cover the meat with garbanzo flour while the onions wilt in hot olive oil.

The Gluten-free Chicano uses his suegra's cast iron frying pan. Such a pan is a universal kitchen tool for everyone from tyro to chef.

Keeping the flame high, stir the meat and onions, add the sliced mushrooms. Increase quantities to feed more people, stir more vigorously the more volume you're moving.

When the meat has greyed, mostly, add equal volumes of tomato sauce and water. Add a lot of liquid if you like a lot of sauce. Some people love their noodles / rice / mashed potatoes to swim in that rich stroganoff sauce, that rich red stroganoff sauce. 

Lower the fire to simmer.

Cover the pan and simmer 20 minutes. Stir or shake the pan now and again.

Two large dollops of sour cream look like this. If you like extravagance, just use an entire container of sour cream. When you're doubling this to feed four, use the whole container.

Ingredients in a Recipe for Soul-nourishing Comida

Six strips of beef
Halfcup sliced mushrooms
4 slices off a white Onion
⅓ cup tomato sauce, ⅓ cup water (totally variable here if you want more sauce)
Good, healthy, sprinkle garlic powder, or 1-2 dientes minced
½ cup Cheap red wine
½ cup Sour cream (2 big scoops with a tablespoon)
Garbanzo flour, or other gluten-free flour
Coarse ground black pepper, pinche sal

Dowse the sliced beef in Garbanzo flour.
On a hot flame, get olive oil smoking
Wilt the onions and garlic for a few seconds

Add the beef and stir and stir.

Stir in the tomato sauce and the water. Make a thin soupy volume.
Stir in ½ cup or less of cheap red wine.

Lower the flame

Simmer for 20 minutes, covered. (You want all the alcohol and half the volume of liquid to reduce away, becoming puro flavor in the meat/hongos stew).

Stir in the sour cream.

Cover for five minutes or so, until the sour cream is fully blended and heated. The more sour cream, the longer you cook it to make a rich thick sauce. (If you added too much water or it didn't boil away enough, serve it anyway. Next time, you know.)

Serve over rice or gluten-free egg noodles.

If served as a courtship meal, be prepared. Get the ingredients to make eggs benedict for tomorrow’s breakfast.