The HomeBody Roundup: Edition 1

Caramelized shallot quesadillas, a tonic for election dread, and a truly orgasmic foodie film

Growing up, I understood that my role in the family was to fill our lives with beauty. My mother was devoted to the cleanliness of our house, our schedules, our morality. Dad was a missionary and then a pastor, both eyes always scanning the horizon for a new way to save the lost. My brother, never content to do what he was told simply because he’d been told, physically shook whenever he was directed past his will. He was the iconoclast, the fighter, the doubter, the thinker. And then there was my baby sister: happy, doughy, sweet, pretty, generous, present, content, angelic. She was the precise child all parents imagine their children will be but seldom are.

And then there was me, a tiny flame lit by the instinct that life was not meant to live from a distance but to slurp up and enjoy in the present. Understanding this helped me to figure out my unique path to the kitchen. Cooking for me is about enjoyment. I’m not motivated to cook with promises of ease or productivity, with mastery or technical know-how. A recipe that is a scientific dissection on how to make food without hurting yourself simply won’t do it for me. Not on its own, anyway. 

The inspiration that lies outside the kitchen makes me excited to cook: movies, novels, grocery stores, childhood memories, and even clothes have all seduced me into making something that takes longer to clean up than to eat. 

This brings me to our first installment of The HomeBody Roundup, in which I share the things that have made the kitchen—and home in general—a more beautiful place to spend time. I hope you enjoy these things as much as I have and share whatever things have made your plot of earth more beautiful in return.

A MOVIE ON FOOD // Délicieux 

This film, directed by Eric Besnard, starring Grégory Gadebois and Isabelle Carné, came out in 2021 and received little to none of the attention it deserved. Set in France in 1789, right at the beginning of the French Revolution, the story follows the life of an incredibly talented chef of a food-obsessed aristocrat in a time when the upper echelon of society flaunted their wealth by staging elaborate dinners lasting for hours.

Fired from his job for using potatoes and truffles in a puff pastry (the audacity!), our protagonist chef goes on to create the first restaurant, a place for people of any income level to eat. Along the way, he hires a woman of mysterious origins who offers to help him in exchange for learning the tricks of his trade. At the time this was unthinkable: hiring a woman, serving the poor good food, and leaving the prestige of a chef’s life to become a common cook.

If you liked the ASMR-rich writing of The Phantom Thread, you will love this movie. If you dipped into the visual delights of Chocolat or Babette’s Feast, then you will have this same culinary orgasm with Délicieux. Watching it in French with subtitles is the most enormous pleasure because French is more beautiful than most music. But I highly advise you to cook something before you watch as it will make you hungry.

What else can you expect? Flour falling in a soft thump from a wicker basket onto a wooden table, the soft whine of an iron cauldron swinging gently on a hook, the whoosh of flames, and the prickly sizzling of rotisserie quail dripping over the fire. You will see sprawling pastoral landscapes in every season and a snow-covered rabbit pulled gently from a trap. You will watch a completely nonsexual yet totally erotic tasting of herbs, spices, and mushrooms. And finally, you will voyeuristically relish watching two middle-aged people who have not been surgically altered to look like robots fall in love.

If you do not want to cook, make love, and then have your best friends over for dinner after watching this movie, I think you might be out of the reach of help. Godspeed. Contrary to what my adult language might insinuate, this is a truly wholesome film. Not for littles perhaps—there is a brief, non-graphic description of an attempted assault—but very okay for teens and maybe even preteens.

SOME COOKING MUSIC // Spotify’s Old Time-y Mix & Lepreezy on YouTube

There was no more boring time to be alive than the 90s. At least this is what my brain told me on long road trips in my parents’ faded turquoise Plymouth minivan. I’d invent a period drama instead about life in a horse-covered wagon, which my family used to ferry me from gas station to gas station, which were actually dry goods stores that contained the life-saving tincture for my Cholera. I’d wash dishes in our suburban town of Little Canada, Minnesota pretending I was a slave in Egypt with a mean master (my mother) who was blind to the musical genius in her midst because she was disguised as a dishmaid. As you can imagine, I was a treat to raise.

It’s still fun to pretend. I do like to escape to times when technology was not omnipresent and when people were not as divided as they seem now. I know it’s a bit of a fantasy but I like to indulge. Recently that’s included listening to what my husband calls “old timey music.”

Two very fun things spurred a new tradition for my husband and me: Spotify’s constantly changing Old Timey Mix and a YouTuber called Lepreezy. What I love about Lepreezy is that he/she (you don’t know who is behind the account) creates these beautiful remixes of old songs I’ve never heard. Sometimes they’re absurd. One diddy was about a woman who loves making her husband bacon in the morning. 

But often they’re sweet and charming lullabies, and Lepreezy mixes them with an atmosphere that sounds like they’re being played in another room or while it’s raining or during a snowstorm. Turning this music on at night in our household is a way of signaling that the day is now over and it’s time to rest. 

A RECIPE THAT ISN’T A RECIPE // quesadillas with caramelized shallots

My absolute favorite things to eat in the world are grown-up versions of childhood meals: a banana milkshake with kailua, PB&J atop thick sourdough with Malden salt, mac-n-cheese with a hearty roux and aged cheddar. You get the picture. 

Recently the thought popped into my head: Brooke, when was the last time you had a quesadilla? I was out on the stoop of my kitchen, thinking it over. The sun was being swallowed up by dusk and I could not think of the last time I’d enjoyed a simple quesadilla. The realization grieved me beyond words.

So I swung open the fridge to see what I had: corn tortillas, some raw cheddar, a can of pickled jalapeños, and, like, so many shallots. Onions are in short supply at the market and so I do what I can. I thinly sliced two or three shallots and caramelized them in olive oil while I shredded cheese, made a pan of ground beef, and threw a salad together.

Once the shallots were caramelized (less than 10 minutes on low-medium heat), I spread a lot of cheddar cheese on the tortilla with some pickled jalapeños and the caramelized shallots. Then I topped it with another tortilla, seared it on medium-low heat in some olive oil to create a crust, and flipped it when one side was nice and auburn.

Reader. READER. This quesadilla made me feel alive. Alive I tell you! I made it once more the night after. It was just as good. Then I made it again and again without the caramelized shallots. And it was even better.

A CEREAL // the real cereal

One of the greatest disappointments of my life has been the recent trend in cereals which promise nostalgia and health but offer neither (looking at you, Magic Spoon, you dismal excuse for a cereal). I LOVE CEREAL. I WANT CEREAL IN MY LIFE AT ALL TIMES. I’d lust for a version of said cereal that is not, well, disgusting or pumped with tons and tons of sugar and seed oils. And while there is almost always a family favorite like Cheerios or Puffins or Kix around, I recently discovered a brand called The Real Cereal that left me speechless. 

Currently they have cornflakes and rice crisps. The rice crisps are just one ingredient: organic brown rice. The cornflakes are just two ingredients: organic corn grits and sea salt. That’s it folks! And boy are they delicious, and crispy past the two seconds it takes for the milk to hit the bowl.  

Now what’s the catch, because there’s always a catch, right? 

The catch, for me, is the price and accessibility. So far, I’ve only found this cereal online and at Erewhon. You can get a bag on Amazon, but it’s cheaper to go on their website. Three boxes will cost you about twenty bucks. So this cereal is a wee bit fancy, y’all. I don’t use this cereal as a meal, usually just a delightful crunchy addition to a bowl of oatmeal, yogurt, or cottage cheese with fruit. Sometimes I confess that I eat a couple of handfuls when I’m feeling snacky. It’s a treat no matter what but to me, a true cereal connoisseur, it’s worth it.

QUOTE ON HOME (trigger warning: soft patriotism ahead!) // 

In an election year which I fear will bring more division than healing to the tender wounds of our nation, I am eager to find something that renders America as it truly is, the way our forebears imagined it. An impossible task, indeed, since intent and reality are not one in the same. America was built by people with ideals much more promising than their actual character. This quote reminded me what we as Americans are at our best; not a club of narcissistic millionaires or political thugs, but a collective of individuals and free thinkers bent on making really good stuff. Together.

The premise for the novel “Freddy & Fredericka” is what the author, Mark Halprin, calls his love letter to America. It follows two bumbling idiots, Frederick and Fredericka, the Prince and Princess of Wales, who, “As penance for departure from the royal ideal and instruction therein… are forced to travel through America penniless and incognito, with the object of reacquiring the deviant former colonies for the British Crown.” 

It is a kind of slap-stick comedy, a what-would-have-happened-if Princess Diana and Prince Charles ever got their shit together and decided to stay married. It is as ridiculous as it is meaningful, as poignant as it is ironic, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

This excerpt in particular comes at the end of a much longer speech near the conclusion of the book in which Freddy, having reached the apex of his two-year quest, finds himself the accidental primary candidate for the Republican party. This is his speech to the GOP convention, which is a reflection on all he has learned by being in America and traveling it on foot, from coast to coast. 

“I was born to be a king, and you were born not to have one. America does not need and cannot have a king, for it is majestic in itself as perhaps no country has ever been. And its greatest majesty is not the splendid landscape or the long and sunny coasts, not the Mississippi or the snows of the Pacific Crest. Its greatest majesty, its gift to the world, is that it has carried out God’s will to make each man a king, subservient only to Him. From the beginning, this has been the underlying force of every footfall, smile, and blink of the eye in this country. It, and not your power, is what has lifted you up, is what distinguishes you from others, and has made you the leader of the world. And may God bless you and keep you as you find your way.” 

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That’s all folks. Feel free to drop a comment with any other inspiring bits on what brings you home to the kitchen!

Edits by Lauren Ruef

Photos by Bethany Schrock