Music to cook by. 4 September 2010 1:45 am
Posted by Tracy in : breakfast,cooking,eugene,friends,fun,Morning Glory,nyc,oregon,random,silly,vegan,vegetarian,writing , trackbackThis post is for the fabulous Chiara, who did one of those silly Facebook (I almost wrote LiveJournal) equivalents of a chain letter where you’re supposed to write down 15 albums in 15 minutes, albums that will stick with you forever, etc. As I started to respond, I arbitrarily tried to restrict myself to no more than one album by any given artist, or I would have gotten to Bowie and used up like six albums right there, and likewise with TMBG and Dar and Dan Bern… you get the idea. Also as I was writing I realized I was thinking in particular about music that is good to cook by, and also that it was making me want to write a TracyFood post on that subject for the first time in—urgh, I’m not even going to look. The point is: here is a list of albums which I have found kept me particularly excellent company in kitchens over the years, annotated where I wanted. Also, Chiara is awesome.
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1. Paul Simon, Graceland.
This was my go-to wake-up album for years and it was great for opening shifts when I was waking up to prep chores.
2. Sleater-Kinney, All Hands on the Bad One.
This one I picked because I had been wanting to listen to it for some time, and in fact I wrote much of this entry to an iTunes Genius mix based on the title track.
3. David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
I would also accept Bowie at the Beeb, and if both volumes is cheating the number limit then I’d go with Disc Two, because in my head it is all about X-Men. (“Gotta make way for the Homo superior” — if that isn’t eerily predicting Ian McKellen as Magneto, I… am an enormous geek, yup.)
4. Talking Heads, Stop Making Sense.
But Little Creatures is pretty great, too. David Byrne just has the power to make me shake it like only I can.
5. They Might Be Giants, Lincoln.
I think Apollo 18 is their best album, but Lincoln is my favorite. Although The Spine is actually really good cooking music too, now that I think about it.
6. Dar Williams, The Honesty Room (or maybe Mortal City; now I can’t decide!)
A rare exception to the “music to cook to” theme; if I had to cut one of the fifteen (say, to make room for some Spearhead, because again, booty-shaking music is good cooking music) this might be it.
7. Ani DiFranco, Living In Clip.
If I had to be stranded on a desert island with only one Ani album, this would be it.
8. Dan Bern, Fleeting Days.
This CD is in the stereo in the kitchen right now. It is fantastic, not just as kitchen music but in that function it does not hurt at all, no. (And now to toot my own horn just a little: I was so right on back in 2002 when I wrote about being reluctant to call New American Language Bernstein’s best because it was making me look forward so hard to whatever he was going to do next.)
9. Bruce Springsteen, Bruce Springsteen’s Greatest Hits
In the unlikely event that you did not already know all about my unholy love of Bruce, now you do. Deal with it.
10. The Clash, Combat Rock
“This is a public service announcement—”
11. The Pogues, Peace and Love
I have a fond memory of one Saint Patrick’s Day at Morning Glory, working shoulder-to-shoulder with another cook, Josh, and saying something like, “I don’t understand why we aren’t listening to the Pogues yet,” and him agreeing vigorously and immediately making it happen (though I don’t remember if he went out to commandeer the stereo or just worked his mojo on somebody out front; all I know is that the day got better from there).
12. Toshi Reagon, The Righteous Ones.
Again, for when I gotta shake it. Ask me some time about when she opened for Dar Williams at Central Park SummerStage in 1998.
13. David Byrne and Brian Eno, Everything That Happens.
This is as close as I got to repeating an artist, but I could not leave this one off. It is just so fine. (Also, another artist I’ve seen in free concert in NYC, along with Toshi, Dar, and TMBG.)
14. Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.
To quote an album referenced earlier: “glorious, awful noise.”
15. The Beatles, Abbey Road.
Not per se the best kitchen music, actually, but so dear to my heart that I just had to put it on the list. If in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make, then I say you’re doing OK.
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Honorable mention: Michael Franti and Spearhead, Yell Fire! or Everyone Deserves Music. To tell another cute Morning Glory story, once upon a time I had to cover a shift for the owner, my boss Gail, because she’d thrown out her back dancing at a Spearhead concert the night before. Now that’s what I call a good reason for not coming in to work.
I seem to be all Morning Glory-nostalgic lately, having at the end of last month successfully recreated Glory homefries and The Owl and the Pussycat tofu-mushroom-onion-tomato deliciousness, including the necessary spice mixes, which Gail was kind enough to share with me before I left. Tonight? Wondering what I’m going to do with all the homemade, unsweetened organic soy milk that I’ve made as a by-product of cooking soybean curds for my next attempt at recreating Morning Glory favorites in my New York City home kitchen: soysage patties. Vegan (and fellow vegan sympathizer) friends! What should I do with almost a gallon of delicious soymilk (besides get some apple juice and make Morning Glory-style sugar-free vegan waffles)? I have been drinking it, warm, like I got from a little stall in Flushing Chinatown last summer, but I can only do that for so long. And in any case right now I am up past my bedtime. But it is good to have finally written something here again.
Thanks, Chiara!
