Buttermilk

I am an inveterate recipe reader. I skim cookbooks the way other people read novels, and am constantly on the lookout for something new, something tasty, something easy and original and praiseworthy to set on the table. I think it’s a function of a weird kind of personal ADD that relates solely to food. Other people may eat the same baloney sandwich for lunch every day for years—not me. I’m lucky if I can handle the same lunch two days in a row. Obviously, my palate is not designed for leftovers. Which explains the stacks of recipes on my coffee table and the shelves of cookbooks overflowing from my kitchen.

So, it’s no surprise that, every now and then, recipe, ingredients, and stars align correctly—almost-- and I  try something new. Today it is a cranberry tea cake. With the best of cookie-baking intentions, I had loaded my pre-Christmas refrigerator with butter and eggs and an inordinate number of cranberries. (Cranberries are a problem for me; I have scones and Jezebel Sauce and cranberry bread recipes—over and above normal cranberry sauce—and cranberries are only available for a month or so. Plus they are easily freezable, so I always figure I can freeze what I don’t use.) In any event, after the scones and Jezebel Sauce and adding them to everything from fruit salad to spiced peaches this holiday season, I still have about four bags in the refrigerator.  Just the time for a cranberry tea cake recipe to come along. And it did.

The fly in the ointment (or batter, if you will) is that the damned recipe calls for buttermilk. I do not buy buttermilk. It has a unique ability to creep to the back of my refrigerator shelf and expire, unbeknownst to the casual observer (i.e. me.) Also, the only size cartons it comes in are: not enough, too much, and way-too-much. I have thrown away as much buttermilk (it being nasty in consistency AND in taste) as I care to, and am therefore faced with the powdered version (out of it; it expires faster than I can use it), substitution (yogurt or sour cream, I’m told will work) or the old ‘stir a spoonful of vinegar in a cup of milk’ routine which I have never quite trusted.

Sometimes the world doesn’t give you what you want or what you need to do what you want to do.  Sometimes the alternatives aren’t that great, either. Sometimes the only choice is which disappointment you are able to live with most easily. Whether it’s a cranberry tea cake, a cashmere sweater, a popular toy or gadget, a new job, or sometimes, just a good meal on the table, there’s always a ‘buttermilk’ ingredient that stands in the way, a compromise that we might be unwilling or unable to make, a step too far for us to take right now.

Particularly at this time of the year, fresh from Christmas wish-fulfillment fantasies, and on the verge of post-holiday let-down, it’s good to recognize again that not all wishes come true—and that that is sometimes a good thing. It can be a challenge to make things work when you’re missing part of the puzzle. Buttermilk (or the lack thereof) opens the door for experimentation and often gives you a shot at something else entirely, something better than you’d hoped for.

(And, by the way…the tea cake turned out fine. I used the milk and vinegar and, while it didn’t rise as nicely as I’d hoped, it tastes pretty darned good. And I AM now down to only three bags of cranberries..)