Just a Schlep

I like to cook. I always have. Even as a child, I was always concocting something to eat.

But I’ve always tended to cook outside the box. Back in those aforementioned childhood days, I’d combine peanut butter, marshmallow fluff, and sweet breakfast cereal to make a sandwich. Yes, I did - and do - have a sweet tooth.

As a teen, you might have seen me with a salami, sliced pepperoni, Slim Jim, cheese sandwich, with a side of corn chips. That was, of course, before I adopted a more vegetarian diet in college.

And even when I followed recipes, I’d add my own spin. Once on a high school retreat several of us teen boys went into the retreat house kitchen late one night and found a box of chocolate chip cookie mix. We measured everything correctly according to the directions, but then I suggested we make just one giant cookie rather than the dozens of them. Several of the girls came into the kitchen when we pulled our cookie out of the oven. They were aghast. They chided us for not making all the regular-sized cookies for which the recipe called, but when it came to breaking off and eating chunks from the cookie they readily and happily joined us.

When in college, I lived on my own, and I had little money for dining out, so I had to cook all my meals. One of my staples involved macaroni and cheese - those were the days you could get four boxes for a dollar. Except I never ate it plain. I’d fry some onions, garlic, peppers, peanuts, carrots - whatever I had at hand - and mix it in.

I called it my Macaroni and Cheese Schlep.

Yes, I know “schlep” means to haul or carry, especially something heavy or awkward; a tedious or difficult journey; or an inept or stupid person. None of those definitions fit my culinary concoction, though the last definition does seem right for me.

But I liked the sound of the word, so that’s what I used for my little dish. I’m a poet who plays with words, after all. And I began using "schlep" for other creations as well.

I regularly went off recipe, added ingredients of my own liking, or combined recipes for different preparations that normally would not be combined.  

Some of my efforts were really not so odd - though I did not know it at the time. For example, instead of spaghetti sauce, I regularly added to plain spaghetti peas, cherry tomatoes, and various fried ingredients such as onions, peppers, garlic, spinach, chard, shrimp, and so on. My wife later told me that Italian cuisine often called for mixing spaghetti with vegetables.

When I met my wife, she liked my cooking, and my title for my appetizing inventions. Recently, she has begun jokingly suggesting we create our own podcast or YouTube videos about creative cooking, calling it something like “Savory Schleps” or “Schlepping with Lee.”

Probably not. But you never know ...

The other night, I combined a couple of recipes to make a treat. I used elements of a recipe for rice lentil balls with some from a recipe for vegetarian haggis to make rice/lentil/oatmeal biscuits.

My wife looked at them with apprehension when I took them out of the oven. But she later went back for seconds, and declared that I had to make them again.

Music to this schlep’s ears.

Pax et bonum