help I'm eating like a teenage boy

What Existential Terror Does To Self-Care [RECIPE]

Kenneth Mars in The Producers. Source unknown.

It is now February 11th, and we in America and beyond — because, let’s face it; this impacts all of us — are three weeks in from having our world turned upside down by a cast of characters who resemble Kenneth Mars in The Producers.

Only these people aren’t playing someone cruel; they actually are villainous in ways that make them seem like they’ve fallen straight out of Goldfinger. I grew up hearing all the stories. My grandmother shook her fist and cursed at the Hindenburg as it flew over her apartment building in Brooklyn on its way to Lakehurst, New Jersey, and we all know how that worked out. My parents took me to see The Sound of Music when it appeared in 1965; I was two. The Producers came out in 1967, when I was four. Hogan’s Heroes also appeared in 1965, and while my father hated it — really hated it, as a World War 2 fighter pilot and someone who lost much of his distant family to the Nazis — he began to tolerate it when he found out that Werner Klemperer, who played Colonel Klink, was Jewish, born in Cologne, and, with his family, had to flee Germany for their lives.

A few years later, the satire stopped in its tracks, and we had Cabaret, The Boys from Brazil, Holocaust, and after that, Schindler’s List, which I have not been able to watch, and never will. (Once, back in my “straight years,” such as they were, I dated a man whose parents were on Schindler’s actual list, and I heard the non-Hollywood stories directly from him. They are unspeakable.)

In the early nineties, I went to visit a very close friend in Pennsylvania who I knew from college — I had been maid of honor at her wedding — whose husband, a government contractor with a very high-security clearance had thought it appropriate to decorate their guest room, which also doubled as their little boy’s playroom, in authentic Nazi memorabilia. I stopped communicating with her shortly thereafter, which broke my heart, and a decade later, when I finally wrote an essay about the experience, she reached out to me to say that she had no control over her husband’s interests. I can’t keep him from collecting his Nazi stuff any more than I can keep him from collecting his guns.

Oh, I said.

So the F-word — the other F word — has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. If you are my age and you are an American (but even if you’re not) you have lived with it as a constant threat and you have ever since the ink dried on The Constitution. But even having grown up with it conceptually, in movies and bad-guy caricature-ish representations — apart from the actual McCarthy era and the behind-the-scenes Nixonian shenanigans — it’s always been there, whether we choose to believe that or not. It reminds me of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, which was said to be a test-run for the one that would kill thousands eight years later. These people — all of them — play a very long game while the rest of us (makers of art, scientists-for-the-good, community leaders, at least some clergy, people who feed/care/nurture/educate) tend to focus on the here and now like the AA folks say: one day at a time. But remember Lee Atwater? Remember the American Bund speech that Pat Buchanan gave at the 1992 Republican Convention that left many people — even many Republicans — running for the aisles? I do: the level of hatred was so frothing and over-the-top that I sat in my living room watching it, gape-mouthed. Also, that was the year that a lot of my friends with AIDS began to die in droves — I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count how many funerals and memorial services I went to in 1992 — while my friend’s husband (the Nazi memorabilia guy) rolled his eyes at me one night over a dinner of the spaetzle and veal knuckle he’d learn to cook while visiting the museum in Berchtesgaden (not kidding) and called it divine retribution for being freaks.

So here we are, and I have rolled right past my usual existential panic — I made it to 61 only to have to deal with these monsters again the way my forebears did (and if you’re from the UK, or France, Italy, Spain, or anywhere in Europe, the way your forebears did too) — right into a state of near-paralysis, and it takes everything I can do to engage in any level of self-care at times like this. I won’t accept the snark that claims I’m just a hysteric running around with my hair on fire; that’s plain old gaslighting. In truth, it is really hard to watch what’s happening and to make space and non-negotiable time for looking after oneself at moments like this. I marvel at my friends who manage to go for a daily walk, or a plunge, or a hike, or who meditate for twenty minutes every night come hell or high water.

There are certain things that I know I’m supposed to do, and would be far better off for: going to sleep early and getting up early; journaling, or, thanks to Sam Baker’s conversation with Julia Cameron on The Shift, doing pre-coffee morning pages (which I am finally revisiting even though I don’t historically love them nor do I necessary believe they are for everyone) as a way to keep my creative pipes clean and myself un-paralyzed (which means they are working and I need to apologize); meditating; drinking a ton of water and moving my body, the latter of which entails actually getting out of bed; not drinking; eating well. But these things are sometimes precarious, and the same things that push me towards saying WTF when it comes to alcohol or going to the gym are the same things that make me eat like a spotty teenage boy when I should be eating grains and leafy greens and fresh fish and fresh fruit instead of boxed macaroni and cheese and fried chicken and tortilla chips. I am convinced: the revolution was not fueled on kale.

My cooking habits right now have taken on the manner of a nervous tic: if I’m a wreck and I’m actually hungry (which is rare), I’ll just grab what’s there. Because I live with someone who is very interested in food and is also a great cook, it’s affected her too; she freely admits to eating bowls of onion dip and potato chips for dinner when I’m away on book tour. When she wanders into my office at around four in the afternoon and says So what are you thinking of for dinner and I say How do you feel about spaghetti and meatballs, or, worse, grilled cheese and bacon, she’s not going to say no. This finally reached its zenith when I came upon a photo from a few years back, when Susan decided to make, from scratch, a big tray of Scotch eggs for a neighborhood SuperBowl party. We shared one just to make sure it was edible (it was), brought the rest to the party, turned our backs, and they were gone in seconds.

Susan’s Scotch Eggs, circa 2012.

The other day, right around the time that the NEA grant announcements were being made, we were set to have an epic snowstorm, so we went to the supermarket (which was packed with people shopping for end times), and while Susan dutifully wandered off into the vegetable aisle, I went straight for the pork and found a small package of country-style pork ribs, which are not actually ribs at all, but sliced from where the shoulder meets the loin, making them very, very tough (and therefore very, very cheap) if you don’t cook them for many hours. Normally, I make smoked pork (or lamb) ribs once or twice a year and almost always during the summer because it’s incredibly messy barbecue food. Last Sunday, with our grill covered under snow, I gave myself the hours-long task of smoking these country ribs with neither a smoker nor a grill. I couldn’t use wood chips in the house, so I used Lapsang Souchong teabags, instead. There was a lot of foil involved, but after about three hours, we had smoked country ribs the leftovers of which will be pulled off the bone tonight and stuffed into corn tortillas with spicy slaw.

I’m between therapists right now, and this helped a lot.

I’m trying to restrain myself; at the moment, I would like to eat nothing but pizza, ribs, hamburgers, macaroni and cheese, Scotch eggs, and Rarebit, but I don’t think I’d make it to 62. At the rate this country is going, I may not anyway.

All I can manage is one day at a time.

Dead-of-Winter Lapsang Souchong-Smoked Country Style Ribs

Admission: I hate Lapsang Souchong tea. When Susan, who loves it, makes herself a cup (or God forbid, a pot), I can’t be in the house. Even her ex, who I very much do not like, used to call it Elephant Testicle Tea. BUT: it is nevertheless smoked tea, and therefore perfect for a hack to make oven-smoked ribs in the dead of winter when your grill is covered. (Also, there will be no more teabags left, so: no more tea. Oh well.)

Please do not skip the steaming step at the beginning of this recipe; it is key for producing the most tender meat, allowing the smoke to penetrate it.

(The first image below is of the ribs, right out of the steamer, and set onto the roasting rack. The second image is the finished result, after the basting with sauce.)

What you will need to accomplish this:

1- A small roasting pan with a rack. (I made only four very large ribs, but if you’re going to make more, you’ll need a larger pan and a bigger rack.)

2- A large steamer and pot.

3- Heavy-duty aluminum foil, assuming the tariffs haven’t kicked in.

4- As many bags of Lapsang Souchong as you have. I used around fifteen. The fresher, the better.

5- Narrow rectangular tart tin, with the bottom removed.

Note: Gas-mark indications are for my UK readers.

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Ingredients

Magic Dust dry rub from this recipe, which we love and keep on hand in large batches (for pork, chicken, beef, shrimp, and even tofu)

1-1/2 - 2 pounds thick country-style pork ribs, on the bone

10-15 bags of Lapsang-Souchong tea

Your preferred store-bought barbecue sauce (we like this one) but you can make your own. Start with this recipe.

1. Rub the ribs all over with magic dust, coating them completely. Shake off excess. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for a minimum of 4 hours, but preferably overnight.

2. Remove the ribs from the wrap, put on a plate, drape with foil, and let them come to room temperature for about an hour.

3. Set a large steamer basket over a pot halfway filled with water, bring to a boil, place the ribs in the basket, cover and steam for 40 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 300 degrees F/Gas Mark 2. While the oven is preheating, line the inside of a small to medium-sized roasting pan (ours is about 14 x 9 inches) with the tea bags. Remove the bottom of a narrow rectangular tart tin and set it into the roasting pan, upside down (see videos). Pour in enough water to come a quarter of the way up the sides of the roasting pan. Carefully remove the ribs from the steamer and set aside on a plate.

5. Place the roasting rack on top of the tart tin, and set the steamed ribs down on the rack (as shown in video, above). Seal tightly with heavy duty foil. Place in oven on a lower rack, and roast for 2 hours. Remove and check the water level; add more if necessary. Reseal and put back into the oven.

6. Continue to cook for another hour. Remove the roasting pan from the oven, and remove the foil. Warm about three quarters of a cup of barbecue sauce (in the microwave or in a small pot on the stove). Brush one side of the ribs with the sauce, turn over and repeat, and put back in the oven (without foil). Increase the oven temperature to 400 degrees F/Gas Mark 6; if you have a convection option, turn it on.

7. Roast the brushed ribs for thirty minutes, remove from oven, turn the ribs, and baste again. Roast for another minute or so. Brush them again, and repeat. (Check them often to make sure that they are not burning, which they will if your barbecue sauce has a high sugar content.)

8. Remove and let rest for 10 minutes. Serve immediately.