the yolk

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the Yolk is the blog of the University of Alberta Sociology Graduate Students' Association
www.yolksoc.blogspot.com
i just posted on the yolk about estate auctions..

The roommate cookbook

I have been having a houseguest this week- Rebecca. Some mornings I wake up and she’s making eggerinos- a signature breakfast dish of the Halifax hot spot Steverinos- where she used to work. Rebecca reminds me of what I miss about having roommates. Amongst many benefits, having a host of roommates has definitely augmented my culinary skills.
My friend Grant has a cookbook started by his former roommate Tamara that is a collection of recipes he has compiled from all of the people he’s lived with. It seems to me that in a culture of proliferating bridget jones-style “urban families,” the roommate-cookbook is a new index of sociality. The roommate-cookbook doesn’t replace but may complement the traditional mother-daughter recipe card book thing. Just to say that- while I definitely get pangs of nostalgia and intimacy when I see or smell an apple strudel in the making- thinking, as I do, of my Oma, my relationship to cooking is also intimately tied to the roommates that have shaped my domestic sphere. The roommate cookbook is also indicative of a particularly urban sensibility- shaped as it is by a barrage of outside lives- travel experiences, culinary traditions, etc. The roommate cookbook represents a particular late modern relationship to space, time, otherness in a form that is infused with the intimacy of food and living together…

My roommate cookbook would include: hamburger soup ala Laura Thompson- a childhood recipe that speaks to a delightful Gananoque upbringing. How to make sushi using mayonnaise--- a real trick my roommate Melanie swears by based on her years in Asia… Borscht- a recipe representing my roommate Tamara’s Russian Dukhabor roots… African stew and veggie bakes courtesy of my most foodie-esque roommate Jessica. how to cook crabs caught on salt spring island with an accompanying homemade salsa courtesy of my favourite hippie roommate Alix. Even my south-beach obsessed roommate Kelly who I didn’t like much after she hid my Jesus Hope-on-a-rope Soap taught me how to make protein-filled eggy quesadillas.

Cooking is an intimate indicator of ways of being. I love having houseguests or being a houseguest, because it opens up ways of being in the world—like being an anthropologist. Aha! I say to self, so this is how you do your dishes, or make your oatmeal or read your newspaper… I will end now with a recipe which I have shared with many roommates past- Baba Luba Brown Bread. This is a recipe I made ad nauseum when I worked at the Agriculture Museum in Ottawa. It was my boss’s Baba’s recipe.
Here it goes:

Put in small bowl ¼ cup luke warm water, 1 tsp sugar and 1 Tbsp yeast. Let sit for five minutes so the yeast eats the sugar and gets all bubbly.
In large bowl mix 2 cups water, ¼ cup oil, ¼ cup honey (or molasses) and 1 tsp sugar
Mix in bubbly yeast mixture
Add cup by cup 5-6 cups of flour, or 5 cups flour and 1 cup oats or whatever combo of flours….
Knead till the dough feels like your earlobe
Set in bowl covered with damp warm cloth to rise for an hour
Punch down and separate into two loaves and put in loaf pans
Let rise for another hour
Bake 350degrees for 45 mins… or until it looks ready.