What Should We Do with February? A Fable in Two Recipes

Happy(?) February! It's the month when I'm thoroughly sick of freezing my butt off and know that there is no end in sight. Even reminding myself that this is the shortest month doesn't help. It's like getting tired of the usual takeout order, ordering something new, discovering that you absolutely hate it, and trying to console yourself by saying "Hey, at least there are enough leftovers that I can get two meals out of this!" Not really going to work. That's February.

The Chamberlain Calendar of American Cooking (Narcisse and Narcissa Chamberlain, 1957) doesn't quite know how to deal with February either. Partly, it tries to make February better by pretending the month just doesn't exist. What February? Pass the sweetcorn!

Granted, it's probably easier for modern shoppers to get "raw corn, freshly grated from the cob" in February than it was for 1950s shoppers, but it's still going to taste nothing like fresh-from-the-farmers'-market August sweetcorn. Pretending it's August won't make February disappear.

On some level, the writers seem to realize this. The recipe to represent the Pennsylvania Dutch seems to suggest a far more practical approach to dealing with midwinter blahs: Do the best with what you've got in February and eventually it will go away.

All the ingredients (dried butter beans, onion, sour cream, vinegar, sugar, and horseradish) should be pretty easy to find and keep in winter. That's the realism. The hope comes in the picture which, even with its bare trees, still seems to hint that spring is coming. After all, the branches aren't covered in snow! 

This second approach--culinary realism but photographic hope--is better. Even if I'd never eat German Sour Bean Salad (what with my extreme aversion to sour foods), I like that the recipe at least acknowledges there is stuff to eat in winter. People will make it through, as they do every year, even if they have to rely on staples that few people would count among their favorites.

Insisting on fresh sweetcorn when it's barely available and not at its best, but insisting the results will be terrific because the cook somehow willed them to be-- well, I've seen enough of that brand of delusion in the past few years! Pretending that reality will bend to suit our whims just isn't the way the world works, no matter how often people wish it were otherwise. I didn't really expect to see a fable for our times playing out in a cooking calendar, but there it is! Now, let's endure February.