I’m proudly Jamaican. My entire family is from Jamaica. The last time I got to visit was over Christmas break during junior year of high school; we had just finished building a new house on my family’s land. The typical routine is that as we drive from Kingston airport, we stop at the Juici Patty factory on the way to Saint Elizabeth. (I’ve never seen what it looks like, cause I’ve slept through it every time, and not one person decided it would be nice to wake Kami up so she can see what the factory looks like.) I usually wake up groggy 30 minutes later, but then I get a patty and a carton of sorrel (a drink made from hibiscus flowers) to eat during the ride. Then we get home, drive past the mango tree in the front yard that my mom’s parents are buried under, and see the house she grew up in slightly down the path (bright lavender, with a cross painted on the front door). In the morning, my mom makes me run down the road to grab a bag of flour so we can make fry dumpling for breakfast to eat with our ackee (the national fruit), and my aunt comes over with a whole bunch of mangoes and soursop from her tree. We head to the beach — my uncle drives us — and in the middle of the day, he surprises us with a big block of ice from the back of his truck, shaving some ice that we top with fruit punch syrup. My mom points out where she went to school and where she bought oranges right outside the school gate. I meet so much family I didn’t know existed, and get three times that number of mosquito bites. And then when we leave to come back to the states, we buy a box of frozen patties and stock up on white rum and red label wine at the airport duty free store. My mom didn’t grow up in the states at all. American history is not her strong point. But despite that, she raised my sister and I to be so aware of Black American history as well as our own culture. In third grade, she gave me The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. I read Sojourner Truth’s Autobiography, and made her out of a potato for a class project. If there was a new Black History movie, best believe my family was in the movie theatre. Or buying it on DVD and BluRay. (We didn’t even have a BluRay player.) Every MLK Jr. Day, my mom would sit my sister and me down (under our dining room table: our house had a weird set-up), and we would watch his speech start to finish. Now I take my mom out to watch The Color Purple (my favorite Broadway show of all time) and August Wilson plays, to try and return the favor. My mom did such a great job of raising my sister and me to be so educated and aware of blackness growing up in a society where we were taught to hate ourselves more than anything. Despite everything being stacked up against us, the mental tax that comes with existing in this oppressive system on the daily, I’m so happy every day to wake up and be black. There isn’t a more resilient group of people, despite those trying to stomp out our existence and dehumanize us. The power of black joy is unmatched: the music, the art, the poetry and writing and thought, the culture, the food, and the laughter. It feels weird to tack a recipe at the end of this, but I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you use it as a moment for some self care. (If you read 30 minutes of Audre Lorde, you may have these as a treat.) I took a pic and sent them to my mom when I first made them (isolating alone in my apartment), and she approved and said the crust looked good. Just like a patty from the store, it made a huge flaky mess whenever you took a bite. So it’s the real deal. Always keep reading, keep learning, keep listening. Jamaican Spinach Patties A Jamaican Patty is a flaky pastry, usually tinted orange, filled with meat or veg. Makes like 16. Recipes usually lie, but this time I’m not kidding, I promise. (This is a perfect recipe when your pantry is running low: I got so many meals out of the recipe. Plus, the ingredients are pretty cheap.) Ingredients for crust:
- Kami Beckford, Center for Creativity Student Ambassador. Find Kami's work on her website.
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When you have any dietary restrictions, either out of moral obligation or for the sake of your health, you’re bound to come up with fun ways to satisfy your wants while adhering to the rules. I’ve been a pescatarian* for some time now, so I’m accustomed to consuming a fair amount of odd meat replacements. Of course, there’s tofu, the vegetarian diet staple equally beloved or hated by all. (Once I discovered super-firm tofu, I’ve been firmly in the “love” camp.) It's easy to mold into whatever you need, from a filling smoothie thickener to the basis of an awesome chick’n sandwich. I’ve even used it to make fake beer-battered fish and, while I can’t say the result was a perfect replica, it definitely hit the spot. There’s also beans and lentils, which are great for burgers or meatballs; jackfruit, which makes some pretty good barbecue pulled pork for tacos; and nutritional yeast for a cheesy topping for popcorn. I’ve even had luck with finding good meat replacement options at the store, my favorite being Beyond Meat Italian sausages. It’s been a while since I’ve had real sausage, so I’ve had to ask my meat-eating friends and partner to make sure I wasn’t kidding myself with how weirdly accurate these were to the real deal. (Seriously, they even have a realistic casing: all hail science!) And like my experience with tofu fish (or its cute portmanteau, “tofish”), there’s options out there for things I still eat, like aquafaba** for egg whites, and the endless supply of milk replacement options like oat and almond milk. Aside from nutritional yeast, the jury is still out on cheese, unfortunately. As I love figuring out ways to reinvent foods I either have loved or still love, I keep an eye out for social media pages that inspire culinary creativity. Recently, I came across the new internet superstar (and absolute cinnamon bun) Tabitha Brown, a decades-long vegan who makes videos showing how to cook inventive and delicious meatless meals while giving you room to make them your own. One video I came across recently was a recipe for making tacos and, while the usual route people take to making meatless tacos includes the aforementioned tofu, beans, and jackfruit (all still great and creative options), she decided to use a protein I hadn’t used before: pecans. I was equally skeptical and excited to give it a try, so I planned to put the recipe to use for Cinco de Mayo, which my roommates and I would be spending safely together at home anyway. While I won’t go through Mrs. Brown’s recipe in detail here (you can find it on her Instagram page, among many other promising recipes), the recipe itself was so ingeniously creative that I couldn’t believe how easily the components came together. A handful of pecan halves turned into a scarily accurate imitation of ground beef. I added my own touches here and there, adjusting the amount of spice and substituting ingredients in my kitchen when I was out of the ones she prescribed. Mine didn’t come out perfectly: I kept it in the food processor for too long, so the texture was a little softer than I wanted (corrected somewhat when it was pan fried), but there was no denying how spot on the taste was. The experience of taking something like pecans to use in a way I hadn’t even thought to do before was both gratifying and inspiring, and I’m now thinking of all the different ways other things in my kitchen could be used differently. I foresee a lot of time rummaging through my cupboards and taste testing a lot of weird concoctions on the stove. In the meantime, I’m going to polish off the rest of those tacos.
You can find Tabitha Brown’s awesome pecan tacos on her instagram page. Definitions: * pescatarian: person who does not eat any animal-based proteins aside from fish and seafood. I personally am lacto-ovo, which means I also consume eggs and dairy, but this differs among pescatarians. ** aquafaba: an egg white replacement that comes from the leftover “water” from a can of chickpeas. Really useful for replacing egg whites in baking or frying, if not so much for making egg white scrambles. - Jasmine Green, Center for Creativity Assistant. Find Jasmine's work here or follow her on Instagram. We build, we do object work, we get outta comfort zones, we follow our fear. Yet, as an improvisor that appreciates quiet reflection and an occasional hiatus while embracing the craft, I have found that doing scenes alone and upping my object-work game while stuck solo in my house is starting to make it apparent that lack of stage time is inspiring weird new habits: conversations with inanimate objects (and the birds, squirrels, bunnies, and deer outside my windows) got old within a day. As I look longingly at photos of my previous house teams and our performances, I miss the laughter lighting up our faces, our confidence, our interactivity, our group mind, and some of our favorite warm-ups. Being isolated and Zooming can never be a substitute for the energy and excitement of playing Hot Spot or Beastie Boyz, Electric Company, or 5 Things, and ramping each other up to see who on the team will get ‘the get’ for the night’s show. After reading a BBC article about Shakespeare writing King Lear while hunkered down during the Plague, I have begun to feel like there is no telling where quarantine could channel your energies. But also: hey, let’s not pressure ourselves to produce another King Lear during lockdown. I overbought bananas (they aren’t social distancing) to bring a little joy and creativity to my kitchen space. I soon started to see a couple parallels between us improvisors and the much-loved banana bunch. (Stay with me.)
Look, I'm reaching to make connections -- just like we do in improv. We “A” to the “C” so we can stay ahead of the audience, going from beat to beat while creating magic on stage. While nothing takes away my longing to be with fellow comedians, I’m encouraged by some of my endless comedic heroes and many improv method books, as well as the plethora of improv blogs which offer me interesting insights into the craft while we are all on an unanticipated hiatus from the stage, our teams, our classes, our coaches, and our usual theatre communities. I'm gonna circle back to bananas now, because while the above is all real and true, I have recently been embracing a lot of butter and inactivity, and have found renewed luster and enthusiasm for one of my favorite desserts with far less unhealthy repercussions than ingredients that I can’t pronounce and would likely last beyond an apocalypse. I figure the least I can do is share a fun recipe I’ve discovered recently, so I give you... One-Ingredient Ice Cream ...made from, you guessed it: BANANAS! (I find the use of all-caps and bold italic helps from time to time to express my enthusiasm in this virtual realm when Zoom audio/video settings cannot handle my loudness and expression.)
At the point that the frozen banana pieces become the texture of fluffy soft serve, you have a decision to make: leave this concoction at fundamentally one ingredient, or add some fun, fantastic mix-ins: cookie butter, aka “Speculoos,” peanut butter, chocolate chips, chocolate syrup, Oreo pieces, or any manner of wild thing you find in the back of your pantry, you artistic mad scientist! (Be sure to practice a hearty mad scientist laugh as you blend: it really paints the scene.)
Seriously, I can’t wait to see you all back on your mainstage when this has concluded. In the meantime, I wish you awesome object-work practice at home, delicious and philosophical banana ice cream creations, and I commend any and all efforts toward nurturing your inner improvisor and artist: I’ve got your back. - Casey Klos, Year of Creativity Program Manager. Find her work on Instagram. It’s easier to be vegetarian than most people think. (That’s coming from a place of privilege: I can afford to choose to be vegetarian, and I have access to food staples and produce.) This is true in most situations, college dining halls excepted. I used to make a BBQ chickpea sandwich from the salad bar, and one day I had already toasted my bread, put my BBQ sauce on, and I went to the salad bar... and there were no chickpeas. Then there were no veggie burgers, and I couldn’t think of anything else to put in it, so I just ate toast and barbeque sauce for dinner. Sometimes I could tell my friends to go to The Perch first and tell me if they had tofu, and if they did, I would sneak up with my Tupperware to stash some tofu, or have my friends sneak some out for me in a cup covered in napkin and held closed with a hair tie (thank you, my sweet friends). I also had my handy rice cooker in my room, my mom’s frozen rice and peas in my mini fridge freezer, and one dish that I would wash in the tiny Sutherland sink. Now, I have a kitchen, a real freezer to store my mom’s rice and peas in, and a slightly larger sink to wash my three plates (it was four: I accidentally shattered one last week along with the apple crumble I'd made). And now that I have the ability to feed myself, I find being vegetarian to be easy. Or at least easier than people think. I think that when people think about vegetarian and vegan recipes, they think about fancy and expensive imitation meat burgers, raw cheesecakes made from cashews, and cauliflower rice that in no way tastes like rice (not even close: you cannot trick me with carbs): all of these expensive, weird, and inaccessible-sounding things. But you don’t need any of that! One of the best things about vegetarian and vegan meals is that they pare down recipes to their simplest forms. They force you to omit things, find replacements for other ingredients, and cut down on cooking time. Chili can be pared down to some browned onions, good seasonings, beans, and maybe some sweet potatoes for extra body. A hearty pasta sauce can replace ground beef with lentils or white cannellini beans. Instead of scrambled eggs, try scrambled tofu. This isn’t vegetarian propaganda, I promise! But during times when meat, eggs, and other standard ingredients may not be available (not like beans may be any more available: suddenly beans are the most popular guy in town), I like to be creative with my cooking by figuring out how to recreate or invent typical meals with plant-friendly substitutes, using as few ingredients as possible. It's good for saving food, and also helps you appreciate your food a li'l more because the ingredients get to shine! To get you started, here’s this vegan banana pancake recipe I love. No butter? No problem. No eggs available? Banana replaces the egg in this recipe: other egg substitutes include peanut butter, applesauce, flax, and chia seeds! These don’t work for every situation, though: you need to do some research and experimentation, 'cause we don’t have food to waste! I promise you they don’t taste any different: the only thing they taste like is delicious. If anything, they taste even lighter and fluffier. I posted a picture and the recipe for these on my Instagram; my sweet friend Erica told me it was the best thing she’s made, and I shed tears of happiness. These pancakes get a lot of love. I hope you enjoy! Vegan Pancake Recipe ● 1 really REALLY ripe banana (the spottier, the better! It’ll be sweeter!), mashed ● ¾ cup milk (I use almond) ● hearty splash of vanilla extract ● 1 tbsp oil ● 1 tbsp baking powder ● 2 heaping tbsp sugar (any type, I use brown) ● 1 cup flour ● a few generous dashes of cinnamon ● dash of salt You only need one bowl! Make sure your banana is ripe (I can’t say it enough) and really well mashed, and add all your wet ingredients. Mix, and add the dry ingredients. Mix again: the mixture should feel kinda fluffy. (Be careful not to overmix, though!) Cook in a frying pan low and slow. Be careful: if you cook them on high heat, the outside will burn and the inside will be undercooked. They’re sensitive. Enjoy! (Oh, and try and make some banana bread, too!) - Kami Beckford, Center for Creativity Student Ambassador. Find Kami's work on her website. The cast iron is hot, boiling the last droplets of water until they disappear in tiny steam clouds above the surface. I flood the pan with olive oil, and immediately it shimmers, gliding easily to coat every inch of the circular base. You can smell the seasoning that’s been baked into the cast iron start to migrate into the oil and bloom out, an odd and delicious cacophony of global flavors that somehow come together as one pleasant scent. Wintery white onions drop into the pan, agitating the oil as they sweat. Salt sprinkles down to encourage more water to escape the onion slices, causing them to become translucent, like icicles greeting the warmth of spring. Fresh chopped garlic and ginger join the mix, accompanied by ground cumin, garam masala, curry powder, cayenne pepper, and paprika, among many others, coating the pan in heaps of warm earthy shades. After a minute or two goes by, tomato paste makes its entry with a plop. Through mixing, it envelops all prior ingredients in its wake, including the olive oil, leaving the pan almost completely bare. With some time, the bright red paste darkens into crimson, bringing a depth of flavor to this burgeoning dish. By this point, the whole household knows by smell alone that I’m making one of my favorite dinner meals: chana masala. I’m far from the first person to say that our soft quarantine has already been stressful. Even though we aren’t as restricted as we could be, the days are still melting together, everyone is pretty uncertain about our future, and for how imperfect our previous "normal" was, it feels like a cakewalk compared to now. I’m a part of the few privileged enough to be able to work from home during this time, but dealing with a splintered social network and the uncertainty of my living situation as the owners of the apartment complex I live in are in the middle of a sale, let’s just say my anxiety has seen better days. My roommates are also on edge, struggling with mixed signals from management of their respective jobs. Even my cat Sophia is acting strange, but that’s more because we’re taking up all the premium couch space that’s usually empty during daylight hours. Luckily, as we have over a decade of friendship propping us up right now, we haven’t started trying to kill each other yet. But the stress still gets to us, and there is usually one thing we can all return to that helps to keep us sane: cooking. Of all the stress relievers, this feels like the most ancient. It’s easy to imagine how so many of the incredibly delicious and creative meals we know today were borne out of times as stressful as the one we live in now, as I finally have the ability to really test the comfort zone of my taste buds in a way that’s been difficult before. We all seem to occupy our free time with sharing recipes and ideas for things to cook. We joke about becoming famous by utilizing this time to learn how to make the best scones ever. But most of our time is spent right there over the stove with recipes as guidelines, willing to explore different flavor combinations and to try creating something new. While we drift more toward comfort foods for now, we find ways to incorporate vegetables and healthier alternatives whenever possible to see if we still like them. I've found out harmony exists in contrasting flavors like bitter and creamy, and how to (finally) make something delicious out of broccoli rabe, which up until now has been very difficult. I’ve been following a ten-week baking challenge with excitement, finally making cookies that aren’t chocolate chip. Our chilis are more robust and colorful than ever with the inclusion of vibrant vegetables like butternut squash. Not all of our dishes turn out perfectly, but we’ve felt more encouragement from our failures to keep going and get to the result we’re looking for. My roommate has been trying to perfect a recipe for savory apple turnovers, and I’m planning to make vegan fish and chips using celery root. It’ll probably take some tweaking, but I have hope that it will turn out just fine. I was hit with the realization the other day that, for me, cooking does something incredibly important aside from providing sustenance and a means for connection. It encourages me to be patient and to find more joy in the process of creating. It joins some of my favorite creative processes that feel the same way, like painting or writing a poem; it’s messy and layered, but with time and effort, it comes together into something beautiful. I find that a lot of my anxiety these days is wrapped up in the hope that things go back to normal quickly, that we hurriedly reach the end result of being able to re-enter society without thinking twice about the immediate safety of our neighbors or kin. That I can enjoy some of the non-essential joys of life, especially as summer approaches. I think back to a couple weeks ago when I was cooking my favorite dish, that chana masala. Admittedly I was pretty hungry by the time I started cooking, so I rushed simmering my chickpeas in the tomato sauce. While they were cooked, the resulting dish was less enjoyable than if I would’ve given it time to cook thoroughly and let the seasoning meld together in a way that only time allows. Focusing on the here and now, taking things day by day and giving ourselves enough time for this to pass is the only way we will get through this. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but I know it’s the only way to move forward. It's my baby sister’s birthday, so on an early morning trip to the grocery store, I gather items to make her some beignets to pick up. I can’t give her a party surrounded by her friends, or a weekend trip to an indoor waterpark like she usually loves for her special day. But in the full day of rising dough, floured hands, stirring custard, and sprinkling powdered sugar, I can give her the feeling that, even the absence of normalcy, everything will be okay. - Jasmine Green, Center for Creativity Assistant Jasmine’s Chana Masala Ingredients ●1/2 cup uncooked jasmine rice (white or brown) for serving (can substitute/pair with garlic naan) ● 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil ● 1/2 medium yellow onion, chopped ● 3 cloves garlic, pressed or minced ● 1/2 tablespoon peeled and minced fresh ginger (about a 1-inch piece) ● 1 teaspoons garam masala ● 3/4 teaspoon ground cumin ● 1/2 teaspoon paprika ● 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric ● 1/2 teaspoon curry powder ● 1/2 teaspoon onion powder ● 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder ● bay leaf (optional) ● 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper (optional) ● half a lemon ● 1 can (14 ounces) fire-roasted crushed tomatoes or whole peeled tomatoes, with their juices ● 1 small can (6 oz) tomato paste ● 1 can (14 ounces) chickpeas (or 1.5 cups cooked chickpeas), rinsed and drained ● 1/4 cup half and half ● 1/8 cup of brown sugar ● 1 tablespoon unsalted butter ● fine sea salt, to taste ● fresh cilantro, for garnish (optional) Tools ● Cast-iron pan (you can use other pans, but a well-seasoned cast iron works best for me) ● Small pot for cooking rice (can be substituted for rice maker) ● Food processor (optional, for quick dicing onions and garlic) ● Slotted wooden spatula Instructions Prior to starting your masala, prepare all of your ingredients. This recipe comes together quick in the first stages, so having everything on hand is key to ensuring nothing burns. To reduce the number of bowls you’re using for ingredients, feel free to combine your grated ginger and garlic and combine all seasonings aside from salt, powdered garlic, and powdered onion. Cook jasmine rice according to package instructions. This will more than likely be done prior to finishing your chana masala, so keep an eye on it as you cook. To start, heat your pan without oil on medium to medium high heat. This will keep your oil from burning as it reduces the time your oil is in the pan. Once the pan is sufficiently hot, add your oil to the pan. The oil should “shimmer” and glide across the pan easily. Immediately add the onions (and optional bay leaf) and sprinkle them with a pinch of salt. For 8 minutes, occasionally stir the onions around the pan to keep them from burning around the edges. Your onions should begin to sweat and become translucent. Once you have translucent onions, add the grated ginger and garlic directly to the pan and stir until fragrant, between 1-2 minutes. Once fragrant, add all seasonings aside from powdered onion and garlic. Stir and let the seasonings toast in the pan for another minute. When your seasonings have toasted, add tomato paste into onion mixture. Stir until onion mixture and tomato paste are well combined. Stir constantly until tomato paste turns from a bright red to a deep crimson color, about 5 minutes. Add diced tomatoes and chickpeas. Fill either tomato or chickpea can about halfway with water, and add that into the pan as well. Add lemon juice, powdered onion, and garlic and stir to combine. Turn heat down to simmer and cover to allow sauce to thicken for about 10 minutes. Uncover pan and stir. Add tablespoon of butter to emulsify the sauce. Add brown sugar, and stir to combine. Add in half-and-half and stir. At this point, your sauce should be a vibrant orange-red. Cover sauce and allow to simmer for another 5-10 minutes, and your dish should be ready. Salt to taste. To serve, scoop rice into the bottom of a decently-sized bowl into an even layer. Ladle masala on top of rice and top with shredded cilantro leaves. For an extra-decadent meal, pair with garlic naan. With all this extra time on my hands, I feel like I’ve watched every Bon Appetit video to ever exist. (Sohla, Brad, Gaby, and Andy are my favorites. If you haven’t watched a Bon Appetit video yet, I suggest Brad and Claire making doughnuts if you would like to see people cry over sourdough.) I turn it on as I cook, so it’s like we’re cooking together. (Note that I live with 14 plants, so it’s not as sad as it sounds). I enjoy cooking! As long as nothing burns, I find it to be a relaxing part of a daily routine. I’ve been doing it since I was little, and I only caught myself on fire once - remember to roll up your sleeves! - and forgot to take the chicken out the freezer to thaw four times. (Fear helps you learn real quick - if you know, you know). After all these years of cooking, I’ve found some ways to keep things interesting. First, seasoning your food with more than just a pinch of salt and pepper (please get you some Lawry’s) is always a good start. Once you do that, you can play around with finding ways to spin seemingly boring foods. Like oatmeal. My mom made oatmeal every weekend, telling us we needed something to stick to our ribs before we went out. If you don’t do anything to your oatmeal, it can look a little sad. Think about what you can add to it to make it more colorful, dessert-like, or substitute the grain to be used in a different way. The rice may be out of stock in the grocery store, but one aisle over, the oatmeal is looking pretty lonely. Some ideas:
For those lucky enough to have food, use some free time to experiment if you can. And it doesn’t have to be anything crazy: you don’t have to labor over a recipe for four hours and light things on fire (unless you want something extra crispy). In the most uncertain of times, self-care becomes even more important, and unfortunately, even more challenging. Feeding yourself is a part of self-care, and taking the time to nourish yourself is something you should be proud to do. And if making cooking more exciting is one path to help you take care of yourself, there’s no harm in giving it a try! Stay healthy, friends. Carrot Cake Oatmeal Ingredients
Instructions
- Kami Beckford, Center for Creativity Student Ambassador |
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