This time of indefinite imposed isolation is an out-of-body, out-of-time, out-of-reality experience. We have all the time in the world. Only a few weeks ago that would have seemed like a wonderful thing. Something dreamed of but that our waking lives would never permit. All the time to read, watch a movie, talk, sleep, make love, play with the kids. But the reality of all the time in the world is not so comfortable. It feels like something to fill, something to hold back so that the looming emptiness of it doesn’t rush, like air into a vacuum, and blow us away.
Of course, you say, it isn’t true. I don’t really have all that time. I have work to do – or try to do. Family to check on, kids to supervise, stats to obsess over. We need to join the fight, be disciplined, be creative, keep things under control. And yet that time, that feeling of time, comes creeping back. Amorphous, indistinct, ubiquitous, menacing. Time unbound is all these things. It is palpable, chewy, stretching endlessly, ready to snap back in your face. Time is a tiger, waiting.
So, how to face time and tame it? Take up the slowest project you can think of and wait time out. Pick up Don Quixote and come back a month later. Learn everything there is to know about the brontosaurus. Break time’s patience. Hide from it longer than it can hide from you.
Baking is one way to defeat time that everyone seems to agree on. Along with toilet paper, supermarket shelves across the country have been denuded of flour, sugar, chocolate chips, baking powder and yeast. Bread seems to be the favored slowed food category. I’ve joined the frenzy, making a half-dozen loaves of so far, mostly whole wheat because that’s what was left in the cupboard. But also Anadama, that American stalwart with no canonical recipe or definite point of origin, which is the collective name of any combination of flours and yeast you throw together as long as it has cornmeal and molasses.
Another time-defying project is dulce de leche, the Argentinian caramel spread that is the featured ingredient in every dessert from Salta to Ushuaia. Containing nothing more than milk, sugar and baking soda to enhance its color, it requires several hours on the stove and continuous, if intermittent, attention. It is a boon to someone intent not just on passing time, but killing it dead.
Dulce de leche casero no es una receta para ansiosos. Making dulce de leche at home is not for the nervous cook. So proclaims the cheerily manic U-Tube host demonstrating the technique. This seems borne out by a second video: a 14-minute mini epic featuring the poorly lit, disembodied hand of Tia Fulana stirring away. This is accompanied by a running commentary on birds singing in the background, her faithful pot that never lets the dulce burn and the revelation that her oldest son likes it with vanilla and the other does not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90kzMDGPujs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUX3AIAVgLc
It may be possible to be too relaxed about making dulce de leche. My own saga lasted 2 ½ hours and produced a pallid substance the consistency of bathtub grout. Frantic google searches and the laconic advice of my husband (“You boiled the water off, just put it back in.”) sent me back to the stove. I dissolved the stubborn mess with water, added some cream and a bit more soda, and brought it to the boil. I stirred. In a slow half-hour the dulce was resurrected, turning brown and returning to a texture that could be spread without the use of heavy equipment.
A few more hours defeated. A whisker closer to normality.