Experience(d) Collector

Sweet Potato-Rosemary Biscuits for Year's End

2011-12-31T15:20:00.000-08:00

Friends, this is one of those "just made it up, haven't tested it multiple times, but want to write it down before I forget what I did" recipes (so proceed with caution). Most sweet potato biscuit recipes I've seen call for blending the sweet potato until smooth with milk and adding it to replace some of the liquid. In this take, I mash it up and cut it in with the fat, yielding little specks of discernible sweet potato. I also (always) favor buttermilk over sweet milk, so I tanged it up a bit, and then threw in some rosemary for good measure--since I love rosemary with sweet potato and also love it with ham.

My dad's family gathers every New Year's Eve to play poker and bingo, chat, catch up, y-a-w-n the closer it gets to midnight, eat, and--finally--stand at 12 to hold hands and sing Auld Lang Syne.

It's potluck. This year we have lots of Petit Jean ham left over from the farm lunch earlier today, so we're taking the rest of it down to Aunt Judy and Uncle Booger's. I whipped up these little biscuits to sandwich the ham bits with some sweet mustard. Enjoy!

Sweet Potato-Rosemary Biscuits

Stir together:

3 c. flour
1 T. baking powder
3/4 t. baking soda
1 t. salt
1 T. sugar

Cut in:

8 T. cold, unsalted butter
1 sweet potato (baked, cooled completely, and peeled), mashed
1 1/2 t. finely chopped rosemary

Stir in:

1 1/2 c. buttermilk (start with less, add just enough to make a wet, shaggy dough)

Turn dough onto heavily floured board (it will be quite wet). Pat into rectangle (with floured hands), about 1 1/2 inch thick. Cut into 2 inch squares. Place on buttered baking sheet (don't crowd, but they can touch lightly) and bake at 400 degrees until a rich, golden brown.

Serve hot with butter or cold with sweet mustard and thin slices of salty ham.

Makes approximately 2 dozen.

My table has rooms.

2011-07-09T13:58:00.000-07:00

In the background, away from the light: the mailroom and the packing/unpacking room.
In the middle: the vestibule (keys, purse) and the gift wrapping room.
In the foreground, in the light: the vanitas room (practical, ego, my self to the world) and the gravitas room (spiritual, intellectual, the world to my self and back again).

The table.

2011-04-30T17:19:00.000-07:00

I have ordered a table.

I was at a gathering Thursday night with a similar one, and when I walked in, I exclaimed about it. It's the table I'd been searching for--the one that was expansive enough, and showed itself off without adorning paints and turns and knobs. It looked like the tree it came from, just an adaptation, really, of "tree" and forest--a flat plane now, around which to sit and eat and talk...horizontal and not vertical, but still tree-ish, still harboring nests (all of us clamoring birds, mouths open to take in food and cheep, cheep, cheep our stories).

I have ordered a table, because it's not enough to have a surface to put food on. One must lean on it, chin cradled in palm supported by crooked elbow, ear cocked toward friends.

It will be big and sturdy. The man who is making it uses reclaimed Douglas Fir, and he warns of imperfections (oh, please, let there be many. Let there be nails from house boards or holes from worms, or gouges from a Downy Woodpecker).

It seemed urgent this week, this need for a real table. I think it was the way the sunshine (finally) and apple tree flowers and ripe rhubarb (after such a long winter) bumped up against the death of my friend, Kim Ricketts (who will never sit at this table, the person who would love it as much as I, who would know what it meant).

It's been one year since I moved into this house. She's the first person who saw it (Neighbor! We're neighbors! I must bring you cake!), and the books she brought me last month when I had a cold are still lying on the piano bench, because that's how fast time goes.

And one must have a table, because there are so many stories yet to tell, and plates of cake to share, and books to discuss, and friends to greet, who--like birds--light on your shoulder for such a short time, and hop excitedly, cheeping in a squeaky voice, and then fly away before you can tell them that you love them.

Living well is the best revenge.

2011-03-27T18:10:00.000-07:00

Two things:

1. I know I never returned to the placeholder post, that repository of memories (which had just happened, and weren't then, but are now) I had rushed to write as I was leaving Arkansas a few weeks ago.

2. My house got broken into in the interim.

No, three:

3. I spent a Sunday thinking about writing in a workshop with Crescent Dragonwagon.

What #3 taught me about #1 is that growing up in the South was formative for everything but my scholarly writing. It's the filter through which all impressions seep, regardless of my distance in time and place from my childhood. Every exercise we did in the workshop pulled up words, pictures, people, practices, feelings, fragrances, and textures...both actual ones and the texture of lived moments...from a relatively compressed period of my life.

What #1 taught me about #3 is that Crescent, for me, and unfairly perhaps, is more than a writer, teacher, and cookbook author. She is fixed in my mind as the former owner of Dairy Hollow House in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It was the first restaurant that brought together my rural Southern culinary roots and the elevation of local ingredients into visual and gustatory experiences. Things were never the same.

And what #2 taught me about #3 is that a writing practice can be felled with one brief whack of fate. I answered the phone on March 14th to hear my landlady telling me that there had been a break-in. I raced home and found my house turned up side down. In real terms, there was little damage, I didn't lose too much stuff, and I have renter's insurance. But the things that were taken--laptops and camera equipment, primarily--were my touchstones. Someone walked off with my tools for documenting, with snippets of drafts, with notes of ideas, with pictures of trips and people. They took them. And there's something so jarring about knowing that I will never have my memory jogged by looking at that scrap of a note, this placeholder for something I wanted to write. Whatever was there is gone.

This is really about guilt over procrastination, isn't it?

Maybe. But it's also about those moments that represent breaks from complacency. After the tornado in 1998, I was like a house afire. I traveled, learned things, started voice lessons...I was in a happy panic to do all those things that the tornado had shown me could be blown away without warning.

I wish I could promise myself that having my "recorders" taken would urge me to write and publish and craft and finish. No languishing, no waiting. Daily practice, making time, all that.

But truth is, I know it won't. I have a career and friends and family. I am busy almost all of the time, mostly doing things I love. I'm going back to Arkansas very soon, where I will stack up some more impressions and the backlog of things I want to write will grow, even before I've written about my last trip.

And really, is that so bad? To walk around all the time bursting with stories?

All the thieves got was plastic and metal.

I kept my full heart.

Some write, some cut wood.

2011-02-25T16:13:00.000-08:00

This little post is a placeholder for all the posts I want to write about last weekend in Arkansas. There's the one about Jimmy and how he "reads" the world, since he can't really read. There's the one about the phrase "to put out a washing"--which my Dad uses when he puts a load of clothes in the washer. And the one in which I plan out my future cabin. And Eliot's ashes. And Vivian, hoarder of pick-up trucks. And the non-cooks at the checkout line at the Clinton Wal-Mart. And breakfast with John and Jerry. And my inability to remember streets in Memphis, although I lived there. And why driving on back roads across Arkansas requires a different clock than driving on the streets of Seattle.

And why I've changed the name of my blog to SouthWard. Which is what I am, no matter where I reside.

On the loss of mystery.

2011-01-04T20:10:00.000-08:00

I don't want a dissected menu.

Every source listed, the names of the farms, the growing method, the driver of the truck from farm to table.

I know all the reasons it's good to provide that information to diners, but I don't want it. I want to trust a chef to source ethically, and then be utterly surprised by my meal.

I don't want to see pictures of restaurant food before I go there. When I first got my iPhone, I was taken by the ability to make a picture of a beautiful meal and send it to a friend in real time. But even that was about a desire to share an experience with an absent friend, or to record a moment with a loved one, or even a way of responding to something lovely--not so much a cold documentation or a collected badge or a notched culinary bedpost.

Maybe it's the constant noise: the blogs, the tweets, the yelpers, the foursquares. But I can't think of the last time I went into a new restaurant and was seduced by the experience itself: no pre-knowledge, no wonderment about dishes as they appeared, no anticipation building as a chef and his or her team crafted behind closed doors. No slow closing of the eyes as I finally saw and smelled and felt and tasted something and thought:

"this. I did not expect this."

I miss mystery.

New Year's Day recipes, 2011 (Angel Biscuits, Sweet Potato Cake, Cheddar-Sausage-Chile Cornbread)

2011-01-02T15:39:00.000-08:00

This was the first part of the note I sent:

Friends, it's a must. In the South (and in the Southern Diaspora), one eats black-eyes peas and greens on New Year's Day. The many peas signal prosperity; the greens signal wealth. I choose to think of both categories as figurative, since God knows we are not in professions that rake in literal riches, eh?

At any rate, New Year's Day also means a ham from Petit Jean Meats in Arkansas, one of which is on its way to me. I will be throwing it in the oven on January 1, making some peas and greens, baking some angel biscuits, and whatnot. I'd hate to eat alone.

It was a good day, this first day of the new year. In spite of the unexplained smoke pouring into my house instead of up the chimney (a conundrum, since I've had many fires in the fireplace), necessitating a last-minute moratorium on crackling fires, and defying my house's space limitations, we packed about 20 hungry souls in on a sunny, cold day in Seattle.

The menu:

Cheddar-Cayenne Crispies
Oysters Casino (courtesy of Patrick)
Regal Ransom (a bourbon cocktail, courtesy of Marc)
Arkansas Caviar (courtesy of Leslie, who may have ascribed it to a different state)
Petit Jean Ham
Cheddar-Sausage-Chile Cornbread
Black-eyed Peas
Collard and Red Cabbage Slaw
Angel Biscuits
Sweet Potato Cake
Bourbon Balls (courtesy of Kim)
Homemade Chocolate Doughnuts (courtesy of Jeanne)
Chocolate Chunk Cookies (courtesy of Kairu)
And drinks and sweets aplenty (courtesy of all)

There were requests for a couple of recipes, so here they are:

Angel Biscuits (so-called, because of the addition of yeast. Get it? They rise).

5 c. flour
1/8 c. sugar
1 T. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
1 c. cold butter, cut into cubes (plus more for brushing tops of biscuits)
1 pkg. yeast
4 T. warm water
2 c. buttermilk, at room temperature

Sift dry ingredients together. Cut in butter until it resembles small peas (confession: I do this in a large food processor, and then turn out into a large bowl before continuing). Dissolve and proof yeast in warm water. Add it and buttermilk to the bowl. Fold until just combined. It will still be a wet mess, but you just want to mix until there are no piles of dry flour. Turn into a large zipper type plastic bag and refrigerate over night. Next day: Roll out on a floured surface until between 1/2 and 3/4 inch thick. Cut with a biscuit cutter, gathering and re-using scraps until all the dough is used. Place biscuits on sheet pans or cookie sheets. Let them come to room temperature (they will just start to rise). Just before baking, brush liberally with melted butter. Bake at 375 degrees until golden brown. The beauty of these biscuits is that they HAVE to be made up the night before--clearing the morning for things other than mixing bowls! Also, the addition of yeast and sugar gives them a flavor and texture that is between a biscuit and a roll. So they can be dressed up for dinner, enjoyed for breakfast, or re-heated to good effect. Makes +/- 3 dozen, depending on the size of your biscuit cutter.

Sweet Potato Cake

I found a version of this recipe in an old cookbook in my uncle's cabin in Arkansas. I tweaked it a bit (which is to say that I didn't write it down and hoped I remembered it more or less correctly), and was VERY happy with the result. This is a perfect cake to serve with tea or coffee in the afternoon: not too gooey or sweet, very fragrant and moist.

1 1/2 c. canola oil
2 c. sugar
4 egg yolks
4 T. hot water
2 1/2 c. flour (I used White Lily; use AP otherwise)
1 T. baking powder
3/4 t. salt
1 t. cinnamon
1 t. freshly ground nutmeg (fresh is crucial)
1 1/2 c. grated raw sweet potato
1 c. chopped pecans
1 t. vanilla paste (extract will do)
4 stiffly beaten egg whites

Combine oil, sugar, egg yolks, and hot water in the bowl of a stand mixer using the paddle attachment. Beat until homogenous and fluffy. Sift together dry ingredients and add slowly to wet mixture while the mixer is on low, scraping down sides occasionally. Stir in sweet potato, pecans, and vanilla. Remove bowl and fold egg whites into batter, taking care not to completely deflate the whites. Bake in a greased and floured bundt or tube pan at 325 degrees for approximately 75 minutes, or until a toothpick tests clean. Let cake cool in pan for 10 minutes before inverting onto a cooling rack. I don't think this cake needs one thing--I suppose you could dress it up with some whipped cream, but it's really lovely on its own.

Cheddar-Sausage-Chile Cornbread (Gluten-Free)

Admission: I made this recipe gluten-free only because I was expecting gluten-intolerant guests. I replaced the wheat flour with rice flour, and I LOVED it. I will make it this way from now on, since the rice flour really lightened the texture considerably.

1 1/2 lbs. southern style pork breakfast sausage
1 onion, chopped
1 can diced roasted green chilis, drained

3 cobs of corn, scraped to include all the juice (use a can of creamed corn if no fresh corn)

12 oz. sharp cheddar cheese, shredded (do not use pre-shredded)

2 c. finely ground WHITE cornmeal (Sigh. Use yellow if you must.)
1 c. rice flour

1 1/2 t. salt
1 t. baking soda
3 eggs, beaten
1 3/4 c. buttermilk
1/4 c. canola oil
1 t. freshly ground black pepper

Brown sausage, breaking it up as you stir it. Remove with slotted spoon into large mixing bowl. Add onion to grease in skillet, cooking until soft but not yet brown. Add to sausage using slotted spoon. When cool, add chilis, corn, and cheese. Set aside. In a separate bowl, mix dry ingredients. Beat together eggs, buttermilk, oil, and pepper. Pour over dry ingredients and whisk well (bonus: rice flour has no gluten, so beat with impunity!!!). Add to sausage mixture and mix well. Pour into greased shallow baking dish and bake at 350 degrees for 50-55 minutes, or until golden brown and set in the middle.

DEGSAN: Don't Ever Get Shooked About Nothing

2010-12-30T09:59:00.000-08:00

Over the years, one by one, my Dad and his brothers have returned to Black Hill Road. Its counterpart is Ivywood Road, both names amusing recent attempts by Van Buren County, Arkansas to give a pedigree to washboard dirt roads in the middle of nowhere in the Ozark foothills. Mamaw and Papaw raised their first kids there, before Papaw moved them away to preach elsewhere, and his people had built the house they lived in. By the time I came along, Mamaw and Papaw had returned to the area to retire, had bought a farm up the road, worked it until they died. I had spent many weekends there, sleeping on quilt pallets, trembling in fear at Papaw's fire and brimstone preaching at Old Euseba Baptist Church, churning ice cream outside, shelling purple hull peas into paper grocery sacks, watching Mamaw make fried pies and cornmeal dumplings.

After Mamaw and Papaw died, their house was sold (we bought the adjacent acreage) and there was no gathering place. "Old House"--the original homestead down the road--belonged to someone else. But as things go out there in the country, everyone knew the lineage of that house, and the fact that it sat on land another man happened to own made no difference. It was still the Ward place. The owner, too, had no reason to stand in the way of our family using the house on his investment acreage, so in the late 60s/early 70s, we all started using it again. My Uncle Joe, a contractor, fixed it up enough to make it weathertight. Cooking and heat were by fire; water was by well; bodily "business" was *cough* taken care of out of sight of people and in the presence of woodland creatures.

Even love couldn't best the passage of time, though, and eventually Old House crumbled and fell. In the meantime, my parents had gone in with Dad's younger brother Bill and his wife, Suzy, to buy 16 acres and a house on the other side of the family acreage. What started as a weekend getaway spot soon became Dad's primary residence. After he retired, he stayed there more and more. Mom goes up on weekends and they entertain there, but for all practical purposes, he lives there and she holds down the fort in the "city" apartment.

Bill and Suzy sold their share in the house and built their own cabin up the road...and another tiny one...and another one...and another one. "Cabin Village" was born. And when I was trying to raise money to buy my house in Minnesota several years ago, I sold Uncle Joe ten acres of my land, upon which he built HIS cabin.

The 3 remaining Ward boys (Bobby and Butch had already passed) now cultivate a practice of hospitality for their sisters, the rest of the family, and the many friends attached to them. Joe and Dad are writers; Bill is a photographer, and together they chronicle the old foodways and musicways and loveways of the family and the region. All tables are big. All cabins are 90% great room for eating and singing, 10% for sleeping. Fireplaces are central. Much of the traffic on Black Hill Road is the 3 brothers driving back and forth to each others' places. The rest of the family diaspora--from coast to coast, from north to south across the country--know that they can show up unannounced and be fallen upon with hugs around the neck, skillets of cornbread, extra logs thrown on the fire in the winter or a trip to the pond to fish in the summer.

The prevailing philosophy is DEGSAN: Don't Ever Get Shooked About Nothing...a phrase coined by Uncle Joe. There have been plenty of things to get "shooked" about over the years, from divorces to changing political and social arrangements to money woes to sickness and death of loved ones, but in the grand scheme of things, every one in the family knows that a visit to Black Hill Road holds the mightiest of quakes tight.

Soon I will build my own cabin there. Dad and I walked around the edge of the pond a couple of days ago and identified the ridge it would sit on. Dad is 80. His brothers are in their 70s. I feel a sense of urgency and responsibility, since the line of hospitality along Black Hill Road needs to stay unbroken.

Dad and Uncle Joe and Uncle Bill would, of course, just say "DEGSAN" to my handwringing, but this is what happens when young girls go away and grow up and only have the benefit of the mind's eye to know what a scissor-tailed flycatcher looks like on a fence wire.

In the meantime, I'm keeping my cornbread skillet seasoned.

Thirsting at the full well, or...Thanksgiving

2010-11-24T12:26:00.000-08:00

I am not a Buddhist. I've never been able to Be.Here.Now.

I've shuttled between nostalgia for the past and dreams for the future: When I Open A Southern Restaurant In Seattle; When I Build A Cabin On My Land In The Ozarks; When I Win The Lottery And Continue To Work Because I Am Just Wired Up That Way...

But I'm going to practice this "being present to the moment" business. I've known for about a month that my Dad's lymphoma had likely returned. All the symptoms from last time were there, and each sequential appointment--first with the family doctor, and then the blood labs, and then the oncologist, and then the scans, and then the biopsies--have all led, incrementally, from likely to certainly.

And over the weeks, I have gone from dread to denial to hope to sullenness to fatigue to joy many times over. Mostly I've been preparing myself to shore up my folks, and I confess that I've dwelled on the less hopeful scenarios (even though Dad's oncologist is hopeful about treatment).

But here's the deal: Dad is alive right now, and every second I spend not Being.Here.Now is a waste. It's like standing at a full well, dipping up bucket after bucket of refreshing water, even as I moan about eventual thirst. We have time yet.

Now, at Thanksgiving, I'm going to do the things my father has taught me: to love cooking and music; to lay a perfect fire in the fireplace; to have an outsized capacity for wonder; to excel at laughing; to embody pragmatism and idealism at one and the same time; to feed the birds puffed up on my frozen back deck rail; and to always, always, recognize the power of story.

I'll be home in a month. Meanwhile, there's firewood on the front porch and it's a snow day. Time to make pie and have a big glass of cool, clear water.

Giving thanks.

The night the windows steam.

2010-10-03T21:01:00.000-07:00

Perhaps it was talking to my dad about laying in firewood for the winter. He reminded me of the way to remember to lay a good fire, which was to first remember the middle of a long poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, Snowbound, which was to remember my Uncle Joe, who quotes the poem often while laying fires.

...We piled, with care, our nightly stack
Of wood against the chimney-back, --
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,
And on its top the stout back-stick;
The knotty forestick laid apart,
And filled between with curious art

The ragged brush; then, hovering near,
We watched the first red blaze appear,
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
Until the old, rude-furnished room
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;
While radiant with a mimic flame
Outside the sparkling drift became,
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free...

Read the whole poem here.

Perhaps it was driving up to Skagit Valley in a convertible today, too chilly, shouting over the whipping wind, passing pumpkins in fields, pumpkins on country porches.

Perhaps it was the presence of five quince, left over from a "fried pie" cooking demo at the Queen Anne Farmer's Market, at which an old woman from Louisiana rewound her life to childhood in the first bite and took her granddaughter (brought to the market demo specifically to meet fried pies) with her--grasped urgently by the hand and exhorted to remember, too, the place she had never known but that lived in her blood all the same.

Whatever it was, I made a stew for a Sunday night. I should have invited friends, for the pot that causes the windows to steam that first evening in the fall deserves company--started in daylight, bubbling, liminal, to nighttime. It's not a stew that evokes my childhood, save for the comfort, the heat, the cleared sinuses, the steamy forehead by lamplight.

I had read a recipe last fall that featured quince in a lamb stew. I couldn't remember where I saw it, but it had generally northern African spices. My version is brazen in its disregard for state boundaries, and draws instead on cuisines from many of the countries that border the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean. It is spicy from the chilis, tart from the quince, rich from the lamb, sweet from the honey. I hope you enjoy it, and that it will comfort you when cold and dark are outside and warmth and light are with you and your bowl.

Spicy Lamb and Quince Stew

2 lbs. lamb shoulder, cut in large chunks
6 T. olive oil
2-3 T. coriander seeds, toasted and crushed
2-3 T. cumin seeds, toasted and crushed
5-6 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
3-4 hot red chilis, stemmed and cut into thirds
2-3 T. sweet paprika
1 1/2 t. cayenne pepper
1/2 t. saffron threads
one cinnamon stick
2-3 onions, chopped
salt and black pepper
1 c. water
4 c. chicken stock
4 T. tomato paste
3 T. honey
5-6 quince, cored and cut into chunks (no need to peel)
1 c. Israeli couscous
cilantro

Put lamb in a large bowl and add 1/2 the olive oil, the garlic, coriander, cumin, chilis, paprika, and cayenne. Stir to coat the lamb, cover, and refrigerate 24 hours.

Put the rest of the oil in a large dutch oven and brown the lamb in batches, removing to a plate to rest. Remove all but a coating of the oil. Add the water to deglaze the pot, scraping up the brown bits. Add the lamb (with juices) back to the pot, and add the saffron, cinnamon, onions, salt and pepper (start with 1 t. of each--add more salt at the very end to taste), chicken stock, and tomato paste.

Stew at low heat (just a simmer) for 1 1/2 hours or until the lamb is fork tender. Add the quince and the honey and stew for another hour. Add couscous in the last 20 minutes. Adjust seasonings and serve with cilantro leaves.

Rote Grütze mit Vanillesosse (compote of red fruits with vanilla sauce)

2010-07-18T14:51:00.000-07:00

My mom says looking at German makes her want to gargle. But listen: this dish is not at all like mouthwash. It's Berlin in the summertime, it's what's on those seasonal chalkboard menus outside of sidewalk cafés under the boulevard tree canopies. It's cold-smooth-tart-creamy-fruity-sweet. And vanilla-y. Act fast, Seattle, because it depends on red currants, available at the U-District farmer's market, and likely only a couple more weeks. Don't say I didn't warn you.

For the Grütze:

1 pint each strawberries, red cherries, raspberries, red currants (cleaned, hulled, pitted, etc.--cut cherries in half)
1-2 lemons
1/2-1 cup sugar
1-2 T. cornstarch

Put washed and prepared fruit (drained well) in a large saucepan and mash with a potato masher until much of the juice has been released. You want the fruit to stay relatively chunky, though. Depending on the sweetness of your fruit, add the juice of 1-2 lemons and 1/2-1 cup sugar. I wish I could tell you more specifically--but it just depends on that fruit. The result should be sweet, but not toothache-inducing--remember that the vanilla sauce will be sweet, too. And the lemon should brighten it, but not to the point that it screams CITRUS. Having achieved the perfect balance (for you) of sweet and tart, bring to a boil, stirring regularly, and then lower to a simmer. You are not making jam here. You want the fruit to read fresh, not preserved, so only simmer for a few minutes (skimming and removing foam from the surface). Meanwhile, dissolve 1-2 T. cornstarch* in just enough cold water to make a slurry. Pour in a steady stream into the bubbling fruit, stirring constantly. When it starts to thicken, remove from the heat and let cool (stirring occasionally to keep a skin from forming). Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight, or at least 5-6 hours. It should be absolutely chilled. Serve topped with vanilla sauce.

*Some people add more cornstarch to get a more solid product that you can mold. I don't care for that--I really like the presentation of the thickened compote in a glass dish, with the vanilla sauce filling the irregular peaks and valleys. That is to say, the first Rote Grütze I ever had was unmolded, and that's the standard for me.

Vanillesosse

1 1/2 c. whole milk
1/2 c. (minus 2 T.) heavy cream
2 egg yolks
2 t. cornstarch
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 t. salt
scrapings of 1/2 vanilla bean (or 1 t. vanilla paste)

Bring milk, cream, vanilla slowly to a boil (stir occasionally so it doesn't scorch). While it's heating, beat egg yolks, sugar, salt, cornstarch, and 2 T. heavy cream (make sure the cream is very cold) with a whisk. Beat a few tablespoons of the hot milk mixture into the egg yolk-sugar mixture to temper it; return all the egg mixture into the milk mixture, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil, lower temperature (stirring all the while), and cook until thickened. Remove from heat. Pour through a strainer into a bowl. When cooled somewhat, cover and chill thoroughly.

Serve over Rote Grütze.

tip: I've also used the Grütze and the vanilla sauce as two components of a great trifle. Layer it with some Chambord-soaked cake and whipped cream in a trifle dish. Yum.

My family's barbeque sauce, tweaked.

2010-06-27T20:21:00.000-07:00

Truth be told, the origins of this sauce lie outside my family.

Folks who lived in Little Rock, Arkansas in the 1950s and 60s will well remember The Shack. There have been various BBQ smokehouses with that name since then, and a plethora of recipes have popped up on the internet and elsewhere (one I remember in the warehouse district in Minneapolis), all claiming to be the original "Shack" recipe. But those of us who cruised up and down Markham in Little Rock in those days developed taste buds that know the difference: it has to be lip-puckeringly tart from vinegar and heavy on the black pepper. This is a savory sauce: salty, tart, spicy.

Back then, my mother's brother drove a bread truck and delivered the buns daily to The Shack. Uncle Bobby somehow got the recipe, and it became my family's sauce of choice from that point forward. But as those things go, a family of cooks and foodlovers played with it, adding this thing there and taking away this other thing, and now--except for a few Must Haves--there are nuanced versions scribbled down in each of our recipe drawers and binders.

I love this evolution of recipes. Like languages and dialects, recipes and their variants move and shift with the friends and guests and loved ones that taste them and want to recreate the experience.

I made this sauce for a BBQ today here in Seattle. It graced pork shoulder, coaxed and coddled and pulled into hickory-smoked glory by my friend, Larry, who had made another equally delicious version of apple-smoked pork.

I hope the friends who try this will inflect it with their own voice.

Serve on smoked, pulled pork shoulder. Be sure to make a creamy, tart coleslaw for the bun, too!

Barbeque Sauce

2 c. Heinz ketchup
1 c. water
1/2 c. apple cider vinegar
1 oz. salt
1 oz. black pepper (medium grind or finer)
1 oz. sugar or sorghum or cane molasses
1 oz. chile powder*

Mix all ingredients and bring to a boil, stirring often. Reduce heat and simmer 5-6 minutes. Bottle and refrigerate, preferably several days before its use. To serve, re-heat. This is ideal on pork, but does a fine job on chicken, too.

*You can use commercial chile powder, but I prefer to make my own:

1 c. crushed, dried chile pods, stems and caps removed (I used chile from Chimayo, NM--a fruity, medium-hot pepper)
2 T. sweet ground chile
1 t. whole cumin seeds
1-2 t. ground chipotle
1 t. garlic powder
1 t. oregano powder

Place crushed chile pods and cumin in a skillet. Toast until just giving off fragrance. Remove from heat and cool. Grind in a coffee grinder in batches. Stir in remaining ingredients. Keep in an airtight jar.

First cooking memory: Chocolate Meringue Pie

2010-06-14T09:25:00.000-07:00

711 E. 17th St., Little Rock, Arkansas.

1964. Summer.

I wasn't tall enough to stand over the cooktop and stir the filling. My perspective on Nanny's pie-making was this: if I circled around, at eye level we would have the bottom of the iron skillet resting on the grate, the blue flame underneath, the yellow formica with the boomerangs. Then the bottom of Nanny's arm, her thinned-out skin sagging and undulating with the stir of the spoon. Then the tie of her apron. Behind me the open window--waves of heat washing in on the breeze--and around to the icebox, and continuing to the doorway into the living room, and finally back over the counter to the stirring and the black iron, steam rising now as the sugar and cocoa and flour and milk and a pinch of salt started to cook.

My boy cousins giggling and shrieking as they ran around and around the house, in and out of the bushes. Long, low cars passing the house, indolent, men with one arm on the steering wheel and the other stretched along the back of the passenger seat. KALO, souuuuuuuuul radio, approaching and fading with the cars.

I wanted to make that pie, and knew I could, if only I could reach it.

Nanny brought over the stepstool. It, too, was yellow, its seat a padded vinyl, and its steps ridged rubber treads. Its legs were chrome, and usually I sat on the seat as I watched her, but this time was different. She steadied me on the bottom step and walked me through: into a clean skillet went the dry ingredients (what I didn't spill on the floor). As I teetered on the step, she fetched the milk out of the icebox and a measuring cup. She poured the milk in and told me to yell "stop" when it reached that line right there, and I did. I stirred as she poured the milk in the skillet and she showed me how to keep the mixture moving along the bottom, and what it looked like when it was thick enough to take off the heat.

"It's like Moses parting the Red Sea, see there? See how the river parts and lets the Israelites cross?"

She showed me how to separate eggs, and didn't say a word when it took 7 or 8 to get the 3 clean whites and yolks into the two bowls. I beat the yolks with a fork, and spooned a bit of the hot chocolate mixture into them at her prompting (Nanny didn't use the word "temper"--I doubt if she'd ever heard it), and put them back into the skillet, my young arm already tiring from the endless stirring. She didn't grab the spoon away when the first bubble boiled up, and stayed calm as she told me to turn the fire off.

Then the butter and vanilla, and stir, stir, stir, until that knob of butter finished its spiral trail and was all gone.

Looking back now, I'm sure Nanny must have hoisted the skillet on and off the heat and managed the flame surreptitiously, but I only recall feeling very sovereign. I do remember her holding the skillet over the baked pie shell as I clumsily scooped (most of) the filling in, but even then she adopted the stance of handmaiden. We beat the meringue together and spread and sculpted it on top of the chocolate filling. I wonder if she had to bite her lip to allow such a disheveled set of cowlicks and spikes to abide on the top of that pie. She didn't act like it.

A quick goldening in the oven and there it was.

My first one.

There was no fawning and cooing, no badge or ribbon. Baking a pie in Arkansas in 1964 was just what girls learned. It was like making a bed with hospital corners or knowing how to dry your own back with a towel.

But the celebration was there nonetheless. The washing and sewing were postponed. Eggs were wasted. An extra chocolate pie was made on that day, when normally she would have made one chocolate and one lemon.

She tied the apron around me, just as solemnly as she would have set a crown on my head.

I had made my first pie.

Nanny deemed it good. I hope you like it, too.

Southern-Style Chocolate Meringue Pie

4 T. flour
Pinch salt
1 c. sugar
1/3 c. cocoa
2 c. milk (start with a small can of evaporated milk, top off with whole milk to make 2 c.)*
3 eggs, separated
1 T. vanilla
3 T. salted butter (Nanny used salted; I use unsalted, but add a bigger pinch of salt to the dry ingredients)
5 T. sugar
Pinch of cream of tartar, optional

1 pre-baked pie shell (use your favorite recipe)

In an iron skillet, blend together the dry ingredients, mashing with fork to eliminate clumps of cocoa. Turn heat to medium and add milk, stirring constantly until thick enough that the spoon leaves a trail at the bottom of the skillet. Remove from flame. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks. Add 2-3 tablespoons or so, one at a time, of the hot chocolate mixture, beating well. Return skillet to flame and add the egg yolks, stirring quickly and thoroughly to incorporate and avoid scrambling or curdling. Cook, still stirring, until quite thick. Remove from heat and add vanilla and butter. Stir until the butter is melted and blended in. Set aside to cool slightly (about 10 minutes) before pouring into pre-baked pie shell. Spread evenly and top with meringue, spreading that to cover the filling completely (you should have a seal between meringue and crust—it will shrink away slightly when it’s baked, and you don’t want the filling exposed). Bake in a 400 degree oven for 4-5 minutes, watching closely, until the meringue peaks are golden.

Meringue: beat the egg whites until very foamy. While still beating, gradually add 5 T. sugar (and cream of tartar, if using) continue to beat until the meringue holds soft peaks, but is not dry.

*When I make this pie these days, I often just use 2 c. of half-n-half, or if I’m REALLY feeling brazen, cream. Nanny would have used plain old Hershey’s cocoa, but the better cocoas really elevate the flavor. Same with vanilla. Also, this filling makes a great warm chocolate pudding, topped with whipped cream, if you don’t have time to make a pie crust.

Out with the old, in with the new.

2010-05-01T14:22:00.000-07:00

March 8? Really? I haven't posted anything since March 8?

Here is the annotated bullet point list of why:

1. Page proofs of the book. Done. Next step, indexable proofs, and then it's really gone. The professional indexer we hired has already started working on it and finds it "fascinating" and really, if I can make a professional indexer's work more fun, I'm all for it.

2. Work. Let's just say it's busy. Really, really busy. The work will bear fruit, I think, but in the meantime...busy.

3. My friends Alex and Eric got married in Mexico and I went down for the wedding. But first: I took a little alone time in Tulum, and my daily "to do" list consisted of: wake up to the sounds of waves and birds; coffee and huevos rancheros in the open air restaurant, to which I walked through the sand, barefoot; lie under an umbrella and read a novel; lather, rinse, repeat. It was perfect.

4. I moved. I'm still in the midst of chaotic stacks of boxes, but here is what is in order: I realized I have many friends in Seattle (I can't begin to articulate my joy at this realization), without whose help I could not have managed; I live in a light-filled house with a lovely yard and a woodburning fireplace; I can walk to a farmer's market; I share walls with no one. I celebrated my insularity by banging joyfully on the piano.

5. I am poised to...I don't even know. But I love the feeling of cresting a hill in my life, not quite sure what I will see when I get to the top and can pick up speed.

In the meantime, how's by you?

It's the time of the season...

2010-03-08T19:41:00.000-08:00

...for l-o-v-i-n-g...

Tell me you don't start singing that song by The Zombies.
Strike that. I just showed my age.

Tell me you don't like the sentiment, whether you know the song or not, then.

You can't. If you were in Seattle this weekend, you know what I mean. After months of grey sky and spittle rain and not-cold-not-hot temperatures, your heart quickened for a bit, before the weather turned its back on you today.

Oh, but for just a bit...

You opened the sunroof during errands, didn't you? You considered sandals, before you remembered that it wasn't quite pedicure season yet. You dug in the earth or walked the dog a block further or got an ice cream.

Me, I went on an impromptu photo safari with my friend, M. We were playing with our iPhone cameras and we strolled through the community garden and smelled fragrant things and saw green buds swelling, not in the merry month of May, but March. March!

And it's OK now that the chill has returned.

Because the door to spring opened ever so fleetingly, and I craned my neck and saw it.

And felt it.

It was right there on this tree, when I put my hand out and caressed the bark where the sun was shining on it.

Warm. Warm under my hand.

It's the time.

Sometimes what you want is an old-fashioned layer cake.

2010-03-01T21:09:00.000-08:00

My Aunt Judy is one of those cooks. You know the kind: does it by feel, does it well, doesn't crow about it, but would nod if asked: "So, Aunt Judy, do you think you pretty much have the banana pudding market cornered?"

At some point, I don't remember when, she started showing up at our house on my Dad's birthday, December 17, with a layered coconut cake for her big brother. We lived on E. Post Oak Drive in Conway, Arkansas, in one of those early 70s ranch-style houses. The cake always sat on the breakfast bar (just who designed that awful harvest gold-patterned formica, anyway?), with toothpicks providing the tent poles for the plastic wrap swaddling it. It never quite made it to the refrigerator, since there were 4 of us at home, and others would stop by to wish my Dad a happy birthday. But many years later, Dad developed Type II diabetes, and that was the end of the cake delivery.

Recently I was flipping through our family cookbook, looking for something else, and I came across Aunt Judy's recipe. Although there are multiple components, each individual one is pretty easy--as are most of the recipes that come from a time and a place where fussy cooking would have been met with narrowed eyes.

A buttermilk cake, vanilla curd filling, boiled frosting (yeah, it's corn syrup. Repent with extra kale tomorrow!), and coconut. That's it. I tweaked Judy's recipe just a bit, to try to get a little more coconut flavor in, update some ingredients, and add some salt. I also used fresh coconut (which, frankly, was a nightmare, since I couldn't find mature coconuts).

It would be a better cake if Aunt Judy had been here to help mix and stir and tell stories and laugh, and then sing alto next to me as we worked through some songs as the cake baked, but it's pretty good all the same. Yes. I'm nodding.

Coconut Layer Cake

For the cake:
1 1/2 c. sugar
1 c. canola oil
1/2 c. coconut milk
1/2 t. salt
1 t. soda
2 t. baking powder
2 c. flour
1 c. buttermilk
3 eggs

Mix sugar, oil, and coconut milk with a whisk until smooth. Whisk in eggs and beat well (no electric mixer!). Mix dry ingredients and add alternately with buttermilk. Bake in 2 9-in layer pans at 325 until golden and a toothpick tests clean. Cool completely and split layers horizontally.

For the filling:
1/2 c. evaporated milk
1/2 c. coconut milk
1 stick butter, cut into pieces
1 t. vanilla extract or vanilla paste, or 1/2 vanilla bean, scraped
1 c. sugar
1/2 t. salt
3 egg yolks

Combine in a cold saucepan and turn on heat to medium. Stir to combine (be sure to get yolks mixed in well and get them off the bottom of the saucepan). Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until starting to thicken. Cool slightly and spread between first 3 cake layers.

For the frosting:
1 c. white corn syrup
1/4 t. salt
3 egg whites

Beat egg whites until stiff. Boil corn syrup and salt for 1 minute. Pour in steady stream into egg whites, beating constantly, until stiff and glossy.

For the topping:

Coconut, fresh or flaked (toasted either way)

Ice the filled cake with the frosting and sprinkle coconut on top (and sides, if desired).

Kabocha Squash Ice Cream with 5-Spice and Crystallized Ginger

2010-02-27T16:29:00.000-08:00

I made ice cream for a gathering last weekend, and I hated it. Mostly I hated that I was in a hurry, and had too many things planned, and was scrambling, which led to scrambled eggs, which led to starting over, which led to less time and more scrambling. I also just didn't particularly like the recipe--it had 10 (gasp, 10!) egg yolks per quart, and I didn't like the egginess. But I didn't like my execution, either, and all and all, I felt I had thrown down a self-to-self gauntlet over ice cream. I went home and started the week by challenging myself to a duel. I and I won.

This is the result. I was well pleased.

I took some flavors and ingredients that intrigue me, and riffed a bit off of David Lebovitz' fine pumpkin ice cream recipe. Here's the link to an online version of his recipe, so you can see what I changed: http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2009/11/pumpkin_ice_cream_recipe.html

1 1/2 c. whole milk
1 c. heavy cream
1/3 fine sugar (I use caster sugar)
1 t. ground ginger
1 rounded T. 5-spice powder (make sure it has Sichuan pepper in it)
1/2 t. kosher salt
4 large egg yolks
1/4 c. packed dark brown sugar
1/2 t. vanilla extract
1 cup kabocha squash puree (seed and roast, then puree)
3 T. minced crystallized ginger

Mix the milk, cream, caster sugar, spices, and salt in a saucepan. Warm until starting to bubble, stirring occasionally, being careful not to scorch.

Whisk the egg yolks briskly in a medium bowl until smooth and thick. To temper the eggs, add 1 cup of the warm milk mixture (in a slow, steady drizzle) to the yolks, whisking constantly.
Return the egg/milk mixture back to the saucepan and stir to combine with the remaining milk and cream. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture starts to thicken and coat the spoon, but avoid letting bubbles develop. Bubbles lead to scrambled eggs--not an appetizing ice cream confection.

Pour the mixture into an icy bowl (see below), whisk in the brown sugar, and stir until cool. Chill for several hours. When completely cold, stir in squash puree and vanilla, and pour through a fine mesh strainer into an ice cream maker. You should be able to scrape almost all of the mixture through the strainer, but it will smooth out the texture nicely. Process until you have a soft ice cream and then add the ginger. Process a couple of minutes more and remove to a freezer-appropriate container. Freeze overnight.Makes +/- one quart.

*Icy bowl: rather than make a conventional ice bath by nesting a bowl in a larger bowl of ice, I put one bowl inside another one and pour water around it. I put a bag of beans or weights into the bowl to force the water up the sides, and then I freeze the whole thing. I find it easier to deal with, since the bowls are essentially fused together by the frozen, solid ice.

Nanny, Zula, and the Cataract Surgery

2010-02-24T20:57:00.000-08:00

Nanny was my great-grandmother. She was the sweetest woman who ever lived, and one of the sassiest. She made all my clothes, all of them, with matching outfits for my Barbie dolls. She and I quilted together. We cooked. I learned how to make pies from her, chocolate and lemon meringue. She always had stewed apricots in the refrigerator and she kept her long hair in a bun. She could break into tears-streaming-laughter at the slightest provocation, and she kept a snuff can behind her platform rocker.

She also lived to be a million (OK, close to 100), and her elder sister, Zula, lived to be even older. She was sassier--if possible--than Nanny, and lived on top of Petit Jean Mountain, way out in the country. When she was already in her 90s, it was determined that Aunt Zula's quality of life (which was still considerable) could be enhanced with the removal of her cataracts.

This would require a trip to the big city, Little Rock, and she would recover at the apartment Nanny was sharing with her daughter (my grandmother, Mommo).

So Aint (this is how it's pronounced, not "Aunt" at all) Zula showed up, went under the knife, and then prepared to spend her first night at Mommo and Nanny's widow apartment (they had lived together with their husbands, my Papaw and Daddy Gene, in a house across the river previously).

Now Mommo had the larger bedroom, with a king-sized bed. Nanny's room was smaller. So they figured that the "sick room" would be Mommo's, since both Nanny and Zula could fit in that bed, and since Nanny was going to be the caregiver, and all preparations were made. Zula, with her bandaged eyes, was helped to the bathroom, helped out of her clothes and into her nightgown, and helped into the side of the bed closest to the bathroom right there in the large master bedroom. Mommo relocated to the small bedroom and retired for the evening, and Nanny went to the foreign sleeping berth she would occupy for the night--the far side of the king-sized bed.

In their 90s, but still sisters, they giggled and told stories, and finally drifted off.

All was well.

Until Nanny woke up in the night and decided she needed to "tinkle"--in the language of my people. She carefully got up and teetered to the bathroom. However, she had never really paid attention to the layout in her daughter's bathroom, and so when she, um, sat down where she thought she was supposed to (it was the middle of the night, friends, she was groggy), it was the negative space of the bathtub and not the welcoming seat of the toilet.

She hollered for Mommo. Mommo was OUT or wearing earplugs or who knows? But she didn't wake up. Zula did. And Zula, being the sturdy Mountain Girl she was, wasn't about to be hampered by bandaged eyes. Not when her beloved sister was braying in the bathroom. She got up, staggered, arms outward for balance and to avoid walls, blind as a bat, to the bathroom. Her searching arms were too high to detect that Nanny, having fallen backwards into the tub, had stick legs protruding into her way, and so Zula promptly tripped over them and joined her sister in the tub.

Pause here for the visual.

Eventually Mommo did wake up and help the hapless girls back into bed, but not before they had peed themselves laughing and shrieking.

I miss them all. Whatever else I have gotten from the women in my family--a love of cooking, an appreciation for music, a metaphor-laden vocabulary--the thing I appreciate the very most is the embodied and spontaneous ability to pee myself laughing, even when I'm blind and tangled up in the bathtub.

Nanny is on the left. Zula is on the right. They are both laughing and wearing red, bless their hearts.

Stinging Nettle Tart with Bacon and Parmesan

2010-02-16T21:11:00.000-08:00

It's been a crazy mild winter in Seattle. According to my friends who know such things and can school us transplants (roughly 99% of Seattle residents, from what I gather), it is a consequently crazy early stinging nettle season.

Now I'd had nettles before, in soup, mostly, and a delicious risotto, just last night, made by my friend Marc. But I'd never actually held one in my hand until last week. Let me pause and let you reflect on that: held.in.my.hand. Turns out the "stinging" part of "stinging nettles" is not just a poetic embellishment--those improbably green and inviting critters STING. I bought a bag from Foraged and Found at the farmers market, and the bag split. I was just trying to close the bag somehow, and my poor hands suffered for hours. All of this is to say USE GLOVES to prepare them. I'm not kidding. I just used TWO PAIRS of latex gloves and still got a couple of stings, but it's worth it! It's green and spring and hope and delicious! Now the green blade riseth!!! [I apologize to my non-choral/hymn friends for that reference.]

As I tasted a fried nettle leaf while Marc was preparing the risotto, I had one of those evocative taste moments. It reminded me of poke sallet, which we had gathered in the Ozark woods and fields back in Arkansas in my childhood. Poke, like nettles, has a warning attached. It evidently contains some sort of unsavory component, so it has to be boiled twice: the first time one throws away the water and then starts over (conventional wisdom is that it's "poison"--but I grew up in a family of Wide-Eyed, Arm-Waving Storytellers, so I don't know if it's really true). [see below for an anecdote from my mother about poke sallet] At any rate, both poke and nettles make you work for them, and so I thought I might try to honor my bag of nettles by making a tart--riffing off a quiche my Aunt Dena used to make with Poke Sallet back during the High Quiche Years, the 70s.

I did. It was tasty. I wanted you to know.

Stinging Nettle Tart with Bacon and Parmesan

1 recipe Yeasted Tart Dough*
8 cups fresh nettles (use gloves to remove stems; wash; you should have about 6 c. of leaves)
1 T. aged Balsamic vinegar
4 thick slices bacon (I used home cured and smoked Bay and Black Pepper by my friend, Larry, and I apologize for the fact that I am not able to share it with you.)
1 shallot
3 eggs
1 c. heavy cream
1/3 c. Greek yogurt or sour cream
1/2 c. freshly grated Parmesan cheese
salt, freshly ground black pepper
a few scrapes of fresh nutmeg

Bring a large pot of water to boil. Add the washed nettle leaves (did I mention you should be wearing gloves??) and simmer for a few minutes. You don't want to cook them and mute that green, just deactivate the DEVIL in them. Drain. Pulse in a food processor until chopped, but not pureed. Drain well and squeeze all water from them. Sprinkle on the vinegar and season with salt and pepper.

Chop the bacon and brown in a large skillet. If there is more than 2 T. of grease, remove some of it. To the bacon and grease, add the shallot. Cook until just short of golden, stir in the nettles and toss around for a minute or two. Remove from heat and cool.

Beat eggs, dairy, cheese, salt and pepper to taste (how salty is your bacon? I can't say.), and a bit of nutmeg.

Press the tart dough into and up the sides of a tart pan with a removable bottom. Spread the cooled nettle and bacon mixture evenly over the tart shell.

Pour in the custard and jostle the pan a bit to even it out. Place on a sheet pan and bake at 375 degrees until puffy, set, and golden, about 30-35 minutes. Let cool slightly before serving--this tart is more tasty if it's just warm, not blazing hot.

I think I would love to serve this to friends for an early-spring-please-let-me-believe-winter-is-over brunch, along with bowls of citrus, strong, fragrant coffee, and hours of conversation.

* Yeasted Tart Dough, adapted from Deborah Madison's classic The Greens Cookbook

1 t. active dry yeast (I used 1/2 T. fresh yeast)
1/4 c. warm water
pinch of sugar
1 egg
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 c. flour (I used more, since I was using whole wheat pastry flour)
1/2 t. salt
3 T. soft butter

Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the warm water. When bubbly, stir in the egg. Add the butter and half the flour. Stir with a wooden spoon and add flour, bit by bit, until the dough is pulled together enough to turn over with your hand. Knead in the bowl by folding the dough over onto itself and adding flour if it gets too sticky. Once it is smooth and pliable, form into a ball (all in the bowl) and cover the bowl with a towel. Set aside.

This is my mother's comment about poke sallet: Re: the poke sallet...it's not really "poisonous"...but, it IS strong enough to blister a one-year-old's lips and surrounding areas! Which is precisely what happened to you, Jenifer! Not knowing about poke sallet my own self, I gave you a taste of it, and you LOVED it! Scarfed it down in record time for a toddler of your age! Long story short, when your lips swelled and every place the greens touched turned beet red...I rushed you off to the pediatrician, who healed you, but voiced his "displeasure" with me. Well, I was merely a child myself...what can I say? I've learned a few lessons since then...and still love poke sallet!!! :):)

February, I'm done with you.

2010-02-12T14:18:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty "glass half full" on most days, but I've had it.

It's mid-February, and the darkness is wearing on me, Seattle. It's grey, it's gloomy, it's damp.

I get up in the morning and it's dark. I leave work and it's dark. I plunge around in my bedroom area (it's a loft, so I just get an "area"--not a room) at crack of dawn-of-my-discontent, and look for clothes. I find myself wearing the same thing over and over, because it's easier to wash and dry things in the brightly lit bathroom than to put them away by lantern-light (hyperbole), never to find them again until springtime (more hyperbole).

See? There's me, looking for drama. And that's the problem: this winter is monotone. Daytime highs in the 50s, grey, spitty rain to chance of rain to just rained.

Bring on a gullywasher! A frog-strangler! Or blazing sunshine! Or a wind incident!

Alternately: give me time. With time, I could plan leisurely evenings, every night, with candles and hot chocolate or wine, with my friends, with music, with conversation "um Gott und die Welt" (a German phrase that means a conversation that encompasses everything--from God to the entire world), with laughter, with food.

Seattle winters, you should come packaged with time.

My glass needs filling.

The biga genealogy.

2010-01-28T20:49:00.000-08:00

Really? This is how my matriarchy came to be?

I put a pear in some water and let some yeast develop. I fed it water and flour every day.

It grew to be strong. It gurgled and cooed, it bubbled.

At first, I gave the castings away to people I knew. Lorna and Henry, Mike and Jenise, Patricia and John, Larry and Kristen, Patrick.

Now the next generation of biga-lets is coming to be, as Patricia shares some of her castings. And maybe they will share, too.

And so on. And so on. And so on.

All from that one Seckel pear that I bought at the University District Farmer's Market in Seattle from Jerzy Boys Fruit in Chelan.

I love thinking about one pear leading to all that bread in all those homes with all those folks and all that sweat and all that heat and all that love.

May the smells be comforting and the butter be plentiful.

Rise up, little yeast children. Feed my friends.

The Ferment

2010-01-07T21:02:00.000-08:00

On March 29 1998, my last sourdough starter died.

I was teaching at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN, and living in the director's apartment of Crossroads International House on campus. Spring break had just started and it was quiet. My cat and I were sprawled on the floor, hugging the peace left in the wake of college students scattering to beaches, to homes away. The window was open, since it was balmy for Minnesota at that time of the year.

I heard the siren, but dismissed it. It was late winter in Minnesota. It must be a test.

The phone rang and it was Campus Security telling me that it was, indeed, a bona fide tornado warning and that I should gather the remaining international students in the building and take cover. I was skeptical, but responsible, so I gathered them and we went downstairs to the lounge--there was no basement, per se, but the lounge was on the lower level of the building and had a TV. We tuned in and watched the angry red dot--a classic supercell signature--on the image head east toward us. The siren sounded again.

This time I took my cordless phone and went out back to scan the sky. It was still warm and breezy, but the sun was shining. I called a friend in Mankato and asked what it looked like there. She said it was dark and ominous. I shrugged and went back in.

The students asked if I shouldn't go upstairs and get my cat. Now, I had grown up in Arkansas, where late afternoon sirens were a regular occurrence. Still skeptical, still responsible, I went upstairs and stuffed a complaining Eliot into his carrier and grabbed my cell phone.

The third siren sounded. I put Eliot in the lounge kitchen and went back outside. By now it was getting dark on the horizon, like a black shade being lifted from ground to sky. I didn't see a funnel (I later learned the supercell was close to a mile wide), but soon I saw debris peppering the sky, and I knew. Things went very quickly then: in one second, I turned, ran inside, screamed for the students to take cover, had the door slam behind me, felt the building shake, my ears pop, see the lights go out, acknowledge the windows shattering, feel the ceiling explode and fall over us. All the time I screamed at the students "tell me you're OK!! Keep shouting!!!"--as if their audible voices and mine would hold something at bay.

Two minutes of two years later, it was over. St. Peter tornado

Eliot's carrier was in a different room than the one I had placed him in, covered in debris. Aside from a fervently voiced unhappiness, he was OK. The students were shaken but fine. We were eventually evacuated, and I wasn't allowed to return until 3 weeks later to try to salvage what I could. I lost a lot: art, furniture, all my contact sheets and negatives and prints, my car, my sense of invulnerabilty.

But the only thing I cried over was my sourdough starter.

When I opened the refrigerator door, the spoiled food's stench almost knocking me down, I grabbed at the crock and looked in. I knew it was dead, and I sat down on the broken glass on the floor and wept. Wept for the yeasts from Ohio, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Minnesota that had fed the starter. Wept for all the bread I had baked with and for friends and family. Wept for the one living thing I had cared for, besides Eliot, for over ten years: not a husband, not a child--my sustained relationships were with a dear cat and a crock full of the yeasts of homes and meals and friendships. And now the yeasts had been blown away.

Looking back, I think the tornado swirled away a kind of stagnation. I'm brave and brazen now, grabbing experiences by the collar and demanding that they cough up their riches.

But I never started another crock of sourdough.

Until now.

Seattle, I am starting my little batch of biga, begun last night, with you. Maybe I'll move again one day, and your yeasts will go with me. But for now I'm bubbling and alive, and you, Seattle, will make bread with me. We'll share it with people we love. One Seckel pear, bought from a local farmer at the U-District Farmer's Market, one bag of local flour, and the yeasts flying around in this apartment in early January 2010...

the ferment.

"Dude, that is so analog!"

2010-01-07T16:41:00.000-08:00

In the digital age, this gentle rebuke refers to anything that is old-fashioned. It says less about the object or concept being described than it does about the person who is employing the old school thing. And while it is usually deployed in a harmless and joshing manner, it does point to a seeming divide between things, art, people, ideas, and processes we line up on the side of "analog" and those we put on the "digital" side. The Analogues are portrayed as threatened by the Digibots and the Digibots are claimed to scoff at the nostalgic Analogues.

But as with many divides, most of the anxieties about what a "Digital Age" means reside at the edges of the spectrum. Extreme Analogues portend the end of western civilization as we know it and decry the rush to embrace new technologies just because they are new. And extreme Digibots fiddle with their new toys in alternate realities, putting on and taking off identities as they construct new avatars and projects for themselves, ablaze with creativity, multi-tasking their way into Brave New Worlds of immediacy and excess.

And yet, most of us live and create far from these stereotyped edges of the grayscale. So-called digital natives, those born after 1980, are not as uniformly immersed in digital culture as popular media would have us believe, and even my lifelong photographer uncle--in his 70s--has a Facebook page and works with Photoshop as well as with chemicals and enlargers.

This is, of course, not the first time we have found ourselves wringing our hands over shifts in the means of production of culture. Surely the oral storytellers blanched when the first cave dweller scrawled ancient graphic novels onto walls. No doubt the first prints led to a gulp in the throat of many a Chinese artist. Johannes Gutenberg perhaps suffered a few withering glances from monastic calligraphers when he churned out Bibles with his printing press. No wonder early photographs depict grim, resigned faces, since the age of mechanical reproduction was destined to mean the end of art. Or was it?

The fact is that we still tell stories. We still paint. We still draw. We still use analog cameras. We still go to live theater. We still sing and draw bows across strings. What has changed, perhaps, is that the pace of change has accelerated to the extent that in my lifetime, I have seen tools develop and become extinct many times over. But the alteration is in the TOOLS, not the impulse to create and appreciate art, which is human and not mechanical. And just as I would choose a certain set of tools to build an adobe house and a different set to build a wooden house, my digital tools are not helpful in designing and articulating certain visions and my analog tools fail at others.

Just so, no digital experience can replicate the texture of a live performance, and analog does not serve to widen access the way digital technology can. A couple of years ago, I sat in on a final rehearsal for a dance production. It was alternately moving, playful, urgent, languid, powerful, and painful. It was in the rehearsal studio in historic Kerry Hall, intimate, and I was in the thick of it. I had to pull my legs back repeatedly, so as not to trip someone. Necklaces of sweat lashed me from more than one dancer. I smelled heat, shampoo, laundry detergent, determination. I heard the squeak of bare feet on the floor, the music, the counting, the grunts of effort, the propelling breaths. I witnessed focus and grace and I thought of the generations of feet that had leapt and been grounded on those floors. I turned to my colleague, who had choreographed one of the pieces, and whispered to him: "I can barely keep from weeping, this is so beautiful." This is the power of analog.

But just this week, I sat in the Main Gallery, where artists Paul Rucker and Hans Teuber led a group of us through terrain that spanned disciplines and bridged digital and analog production and performance. Paul had used digital technology to create graphic musical scores, which he then printed and crafted into puzzles. He placed the puzzle pieces into little containers and invited the audience to choose a puzzle and a tray, and assemble them. We placed the completed puzzles on a table in front of Paul on cello and Hans on saxophone, and they then improvised--essence of analog--on the impressions they gleaned from the snippets of image score in front of them. In the meantime, Paul and Hans and the audience were chatting back and forth and handing puzzles around, and I was snapping photos with my iPhone of the proceedings and e-mailing the images in real time to a friend of mine 15 states away.

I confess that I am an unapologetic user of digital social media; that I have bought a print from Jen Bekman's 20x200 digital arts project; that I tweet and do everything but buy flowers for my iPhone and my iMac and my tiny Lumix camera. But some of my most transcendent moments are standing in a circle with a handful of other singers working on a William Byrd Mass; I have been known to spend the better part of a paycheck on a drawing; and you will have to wrench my dog-eared copy of Rilke's Duino Elegies from my cold, dead hands.

This is what it means to live in watershed moments. Analog per se is not threatened by digital, nor will one replace the other. But digital technology does affect the way we study, create, disseminate, critique, document, and archive art in this new century. Our role as arts educators is to support our students as they navigate these ever-changing waters and to model a fascination with the questions: to challenge ourselves and them to explore the current, where it is more treacherous and yet more exhilarating than the safety of either shore. Where they swim will depend on factors beyond our knowing. But at least they will be used to the water.

Jenifer K. Ward

--published in InSight 09, the Cornish Magazine

I'm sitting at my father's desk.

2009-12-25T14:27:00.000-08:00

To my right are photographs of his mother, his father, his grandfather.

His mom sits cross-legged on a lawn in front of a fence. The year is 1925. She's wearing a dress, but still she sits cross-legged on a lawn. I must take after her. Her head is cocked to one side, she grins, the hat is rakish.

The other photograph shows his dad and his grandfather. They are looking straight ahead, not smiling. They are wearing hunting caps and carry guns. Papaw points his gun to the ground, as he's supposed to. He was a preacher. Great-Grandfather points his gun out the right side of the frame, reckless. He has a pipe in his mouth. He raised cotton for cash, but otherwise grew vegetables and hunted in the woods.

My father yells in from the other room: "it was a hard life."

Coffee is fragrant, I hear the fire pop--it's fat wood.

I will go back in now and sit down and plan with my dad the oven sequence for tomorrow. The ham must go in by 6 to accomodate the stollen at 9 to be ready for the family as they arrive at 10, bearing their version of frankincense and myrrh: casserole dishes.

My life is blessed, sitting here at my father's desk, suddenly young and small.

Fried Chicken

2009-12-17T21:21:00.000-08:00

If I were to use last night's potluck as grist for a scenewriting mill, the soundtrack would be this:

my Arkansas family singing an old gospel song:

I'll meet you in the morning with a "how do you do" and we'll sit down by the river and with rapture auld acquaintance renew...

over which the laughter of friends, the snippets of conversation, and the sizzle of chicken frying could be heard.

The occasion was a "Southern" potluck, right here in Seattle. My home and my home, a gentle collision. There was a theme, represented by fried chicken, biscuits, collards, Red Velvet Cake, and the like. There were variations: the Southern classics inflected by the region in which they were being prepared; the dishes designed to make me twitch (SUGAR! in CORNBREAD!); the fanciful and joyous interpretations of what might be Southern, if that cookbook or this friend had given good direction.

What was JUST like a Southern potluck was the celebration of the simplest of fare. Beans. Greens. Cornmeal. Chicken wings. Sweet Potatoes. And what was not at all like a Southern potluck? My bottle of pepper sauce was as full as when I brought it. I swear, y'all. It would have been DOUSED on beans and greens back home. That bottle would have been empty 5 people into a line at a dinner-on-the-ground. We'll have a do-over. And next time I'll baptize each and every one of you with pepper sauce.

Here is my preparation for fried chicken. It's not crispy--more like tooth-cracking crunchy, so beware if you have dentures.

Fried Chicken

Get a butcher to break down your chicken thusly:

legs, thighs, wings, breasts cut in half, necks separated from body; backs cut in half; giblets.

Day 1, evening: prepare a brine of roughly 1 gallon of water and 1 cup of kosher salt. Bring to a boil and dissolve salt. Take from stove and throw in a lemon, halved, and a couple of bay leaves. Let chill overnight.

Day 2, morning: put your chicken in large ziploc bags (I bag it with chicken pieces in one and giblets separate) and ladle in brine. Chill all day.

Day 2, evening: rinse off chicken and drain. In a very large bowl, stir 2-3 T. of Louisiana Hot Sauce or Sriracha (or similar) into 1/2 gallon of buttermilk. Place chicken (innards can now be reunited with the, um, outards) in the buttermilk and stir to coat. Cover and chill overnight.

Day 3, morning: turn the chicken and return to the refrigerator.

Day 3, evening: Toss chicken piece by piece in all-purpose flour and place in clean bags. Let sit for a bit--you're trying to develop almost a paste more than a "batter"--it will be sticky.

Heat fat (about 1/2 inch deep) in a large iron skillet until a speck of flour sizzles immediately in it. I use a ratio of about 60% lard, 30% peanut oil, and 10% bacon drippings. I stand by this combination of fat types, but sure, play around.

While the fat is heating up, take the chicken out and dredge it one more time, this time in White Lily® flour (or another low-gluten flour--you could use pastry flour or cornstarch in a pinch), and shake off excess flour. Lower skin side down into the fat. Watch your heat--as you're adding the chicken, you want to maintain an even fry, so you might have to increase the flame at this stage and then ratchet it back down again. Do NOT flip the chicken again and again. Let it cook until the bottom is a deep golden brown and THEN turn it. When the other side is done, take it out and drain it skin side up on a rack, salting lightly. Fry the giblets last, and create a diversion so that you can have the gizzard before anyone else notices there is one.

If you want to make gravy, pour off almost all the fat, but keep the brown crispies in the skillet. Add an equal amount of flour and stir well (and continuously). When the flour has turned golden brown, slowly add a couple of cups of whole milk or (gasp) half-and-half or (GASP) cream. Immediately start stirring to smooth out lumps--it'll thicken up pretty quickly, so you need to work fast. Taste for salt and then add a LOT of fresh black pepper just before you pour it up into a bowl. Finally, hope that someone else has made some mashed potatoes or hot biscuits, because you will be in a lather from frying the chicken. Sit down and pass everything around and give thanks for the chickens and for the friends or family who are around your table with you. Worry about the clean-up later.

Enjoy!

My Twittiquette Manifesto

2009-12-02T20:22:00.000-08:00

Here's what I love about the Seattle intersection of Twitter and Foodlovers: there is a real, live community of warm, gifted, funny, discerning, generous, talented, ethical, hospitable, and empathetic people behind the avatars. Not all people are all of those things all of the time, but that's a pretty daunting string of qualities for any one person to embody 24/7, no?

And here's what I worry about: no one really knows yet how to negotiate the parameters and etiquette of online social networking that leads to such community in real life.

So here's my Own Private Twittiquette Manifesto, which may be adopted or scorned by others. But it will guide my behavior:

1. If I tweet that I'm with a group of people at a public location, say, a café, I will not be surprised or alarmed if others want to join. That's the risk I run for being public. If I make something sound enticing, who can blame people for being enticed?

2. If someone else tweets that there is a group of people at a public location, say, a café, and I really want to go, I will DM someone in that group and inquire about whether it's a private function. If I don't know anyone in the group well enough to DM them, I will stay at home and enjoy the banter of others.

3. If people are discussing a gathering at someone's home, and I'm not explicitly invited, I assume no invitation. I will accept that there is no way that everyone can go to everything; that people have limited entertainment space; and that I will go to something else at another time.

4. If I'm hosting something, I will try not to tweet about it unless I'm oriented toward openness or prepared to explain my guest policy otherwise.

5. I will never bring extra people along to something at someone's home without explicit permission from the host.

6. But I will be gracious if someone brings someone else to my home--I will not embarrass anyone.

The reality is that this is all murky. In addition to safety (I mean, it goes without saying that I will not meet someone no one's vouched for the first time by handing out my address, right?), my guiding principle is that I want to support community. I also want to be IN community. That doesn't mean I get to go to everything, it doesn't mean I want to be in exclusionary community, it doesn't mean I have enough space to host as many people as I would like. Murky, see?

But the murkiness and risk of tripping are a small price to pay for being on this community journey, which is mostly a delicious (in every sense of the word) adventure.

For that I give thanks.

What are your thoughts?

the chicken back

2009-11-28T23:36:00.000-08:00

Let me start at the end and reel backwards.

Tonight I stewed a chicken, so that I could prepare a pot of Nanny's chicken and dumplings for a gathering tomorrow evening. A simple dish, this. It's essentially chicken and flour, which means that the chicken must be worthy of starring in a fragrant pot of broth and dough. I went with my friend Becky up to Skagit River Ranch to see about one, since she needed to pick up something anyway. Truth be told, I could have bought the chicken in a store. But it was a holiday weekend, it was a sunny day, it was a chance to spend time with a friend with a change of scenery...in short, a lark. And larks are in short supply. We started our lark thusly, perfectly:

Becky: "Hi, I need coffee."
Jenifer: "Well, you know, we're going to be passing Frost Doughnuts on the way up."
Becky: "Let's go."

Once at the Ranch, we made short work of our purchases (I got some eggs, too, and a recipe, and availed myself of the restroom--which is a story in and of itself), and then we went out to explore the land. We were accompanied by the sweetest dog on the face of the earth,

and we met some goats and a bull and chased some chickens around in the mud. It was nose-drippingly cold and beautiful and alternately misty and sunny. I thought for a moment I could live there and I remembered that as much as I love the city, I come from the country. Sometimes a visit to the touchstone is necessary.

We left the Ranch and puttered around in the Skagit Valley: a lunch at Slough Food in Edison, a GPS-less meandering in search of the Rexville Grocery (I was the optimist: "well, I-5 is to our east--worst that can happen is that we end up at the Puget Sound to our west. Oh, look: there's the Puget Sound!").

We saw trumpeter swans and bald eagles, we sang 60s songs at the tops of our lungs, we stopped and got MORE doughnuts (oops, I probably wasn't supposed to reveal that) and all in all, it was a most Lark-Worthy Day.

But about that chicken:

As I was taking it out of the broth, it fell apart in my hands and I found myself holding the chicken back. The smell of that unctuous goodness, the steam on my face, and the back bone in my hand reminded me that Nanny never, ever ate any piece of chicken other than the back. When she fried it on Sundays, she handed around the best parts to everyone else and insisted that the back is all she wanted. And the truth is, she was not sacrificing. She was fed as surely by our appreciation of the meal as by any little bit of meat, and it's taken me a lifetime to figure that out.

I saw it Thanksgiving night as Marc fussed over us all with the most incredible spread:

I saw it Friday as Becky led me to Slough Food, where she thought we might find a delightful lunch:

I see it every time I'm invited to someone's home or taken to a new restaurant or shown a favorite book.

And I say out loud, right now, how privileged I am to share my life with people whose stance is grounded in generosity.

Thank you, friends, for giving me the shirt off your back, I mean, the chicken off your, um... just thank you.

Chicken backs, by the way, when fried well, have the most delightful crispy bits...

Family dinner.

2009-11-18T21:12:00.000-08:00

There was a moment last night at the "family dinner" at Delancey.

Looking down the table of candles, wine glasses, and smiling faces, I focused in on a young woman and her grandmother, and three narratives of "family" converged.

I cried. Actual, surprising, unexpected tears.

Families of origin: mirrored there in the love Gina and Elsie--their names, I found out later--shared with each other. Elsie was, by far, the oldest person there, and Gina was proud to have her grandmother on her arm. Elsie claimed she was having an "adventure" and Gina assured us Elsie would adopt us all, gladly. We believed her. We loved her. We were glad she was there. We thought of our own grandmothers.

Families of choice: a table of people who love food, love life, will fall on a plate of wood-fire crisped bread and homemade butter as if it were the last meal on earth. Who will photograph it, tweet it, commit it to the mind's autograph book. "We were here. We were fed. We were sustained." These are my people.

Families of affinity: Brandon and Molly have created a space where people want to be. They make beautiful food, day in and day out. But last night, they turned the apron over to their sous-chef, Charlie. A few months into the life of the restaurant, they put their sous-chef front and center and gave him the freedom (and the support and muscle and sweat, no doubt) to prepare a 4-day rabbit braise. It was a wonderful meal. We clapped and raised our glasses of hot bourbon-spiked apple cider and drank to Charlie's meal. We drank to Brandon and Molly's graciousness. We drank to each other and to all being in love with a candle-twinkled room on a cold, rainy night.

And to Elsie and Gina.

And to oysters slurped in glee.

And to friends who are family.

Sweeping up.

2009-11-16T21:08:00.000-08:00

You know what it feels like when you've swept a room?

You start with the big sweep, the wide swaths across the room.
And then you make another pass, gathering up more debris as you go.
And then again, down to the dust.
And then again, back and forth, back and forth into the dustpan.
Must.Get.Even.Teensy.Dust.
Again, left, again, right.
Some into the cracks of the concrete on the floor.
Some into the pan.
Big broom down now, on hands and knees with a small whisk.
Again, again, again, again.

Until you have it all.

And then you look at the dustpan with satisfaction, lift the lid of the trashcan, drop the contents down into the darkness.

But some of the dust flies up and makes you cough.

That's what the final editing process for the book felt like last night--three years, ending with dust and a little cough.

I always sleep well in a clean house.

The finish line.

2009-11-13T18:43:00.000-08:00

I'm almost in the bell lap with this book.

This is the final weekend push: an editing frenzy, glued to the desk chair, praying to the Internets not to take down Skype or Google Docs.

My co-editor will try to persuade me to slow down and look hard at something and I will counter with the deadline, the deadline, don't get it perfect just get it done we don't have time.

But first:

I acknowledge the long week (to nod to self care).
I listen to music (to have something soar in me).
I wash the sheets (to swaddle me when it's time to break).
I look at photos (to wallpaper my soul).

Head down now, into the wind, deep breaths...

and run.

Hot Water Gingerbread with Persimmon

2009-11-07T20:34:00.000-08:00

"Oh, no, you di'nt!" (Nanny might have said)

Oh, yes, I did. I took my great-grandmother's hot water gingerbread recipe and gave it a makeover. Not that it needed one--that gingerbread holds up quite well, both objectively (it really is good) and subjectively (it evokes. Oh, it evokes).

But I had persimmons, see. Not the soft, jammy kind that would have given me pulp for persimmon bars or cookies (which would have evoked Aunt Marketa, not Nanny), but the sturdy ones. And while I like paper-thin slices of persimmon in a fall salad as much as the next girl, that's not what was calling. It's been stormy and cold and wet and dark here. And I've been huddled under the stairs (where my desk resides--not horror movie-ish) at the computer, pushing to get a revised manuscript turned around.

Gingerbread. This is the best costume, er, baked good for the day (with apologies to Little Edie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG5baCxTtgw).

So I played a bit. Tinkered with the original recipe (used a combination of whole-wheat pastry flour and cornmeal instead of all-purpose flour; butter instead of oleo; cane instead of sorghum molasses; added fresh ginger), and then recklessly and unapologetically threw in two diced Fuyu persimmons. One confession: I should have placed a disc of greased parchment in the bottom of the cake pan, since I had added fresh fruit to the batter. It wouldn't, um, release itself completely (notice the transfer of blame to the cake, with the clever use of a reflexive verb). In spite of that cosmetic flaw, it's a tasty treat. I will definitely add it to my fall repertoire.

Hot Water Gingerbread with Persimmon

1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. unsalted butter
1 c. molasses (sorghum, if you can get it; otherwise, cane)
2 c. whole-wheat pastry flour
1/2 c. cornmeal
1/2 t. salt
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. cloves
1/2 t. ground ginger
1/2 t. fresh nutmeg
2 t. baking soda
1 c. boiling water
2 t. grated fresh ginger
2 eggs, well-beaten
2 Fuyu persimmons (ripe, but still firm), peeled and diced

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter and sugar. Stir together flour, meal, and spices. Dissolve soda in boiling water. Add molasses to sugar mixture, then add soda water. Mix again. Stir in flour. Beat in ginger and eggs quickly (so they don't scramble), then stir in persimmon. The batter is relatively runny, so don't panic and toss extra flour in. Bake in a round cake or 8x8 inch square pan, greased and lined with buttered parchment, roughly 45 minutes or until the center is set and a toothpick tests clean.

Let cool 20 minutes in the pan and then remove. Serve plain (alone at desk, with tea, while writing) or with sweetened whipped cream (with friends at a table, with tea, while talking).

Stay warm. Think of great-grandmothers.

[Above: the top view. Below: the bottom aka true confession view.]

Give us astonishment.

2009-11-06T22:54:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the things I want to write about mill around in my head until a certain moment when they all decide to rush the door and elbow each other to get out first.

Like tonight.

Stored up from the week were:

lying on the acupuncture table and grinning out of nowhere, for no reason, and wondering why;

and falling in love ever more deeply with my life, my city, my old-new-newer friends;

and finally getting word about the book contract;

and responding with a late night canning frenzy, pears and ginger;

and singing along (all parts) with Schubert's Erlkönig at the top of my lungs at the stop light and realizing my window was cracked and the "can you spare anything" guy at the intersection had lowered his sign to stare at me;

and the world-cracking thunderstorms from the last two days, which took me back to the tornado of 1998, when I lost so much--art, furniture, car, photo negatives, 15 year old sourdough starter (with the yeasts of four states...the only thing I cried over)--and gained even more (courage, brazenness);

and this poem by Adam Zagajewski:

A Flame

God, give us a long winter
and quiet music, and patient mouths,
and a little pride--before
our age ends,
Give us astonishment
and a flame, high, bright.

--from Without End: New and Selected Poems

"Come With Me"

2009-10-28T18:11:00.000-07:00

This is what we're saying, after all, when we tell a story.

And this is the title of the little book I just received in the mail, sent to me by father, authored by his brother. Uncle Joe. In his late 70s. A storyteller all his life, who finally gathered up his stories at the exhortation of his brothers and his wife and made a book.

My dad edited it and their brother, my Uncle Bill, provided the many photographs that tell another version of those stories. I know most of them already. And still, my heart breaks with joy at the sight of them on pages, all together, names and images and turns of phrase that add up to my family and my home and Uncle Joe's overalls and his cornbread and his laugh and the cigarettes he sneaks and the jelly he gives me as "rent" for the muscadines he poaches from my land, adjacent to his in Van Buren County, Arkansas.

From his acknowledgments, speaking about his brothers:

They are both experienced authors, and a few months ago they decided that this book should be published...we had to have a "book meeting" every Friday morning following breakfast. After sixteen weeks, thirty five pounds of ham and two hundred eighty-eight biscuits, we got it all together.

He has always wanted to write a book.

And now he has.

My uncle, the author.

Sitting Shiva, Holding the Wake: Remembering Gourmet Magazine

2009-10-26T21:05:00.000-07:00

From the time I was a small child, I knew that a death meant food and laughter and crying and more food.

People gathered. They brought platters of cold fried chicken or deviled eggs, a pound of coffee in a can.

They sat on webbed lawn chairs in living rooms, and the bereaved were hovered over by ladies in dresses and brooches and men in short-sleeved shirts and ties.

There was some crying, but not as much as there were laughter and stories. Sometimes the recounting was about a silly habit the deceased had, or the time the hand brake had given out on his car, sending him running down the dirt road after the runaway vehicle. Oh, the chortling, and then the sighs and the handkerchiefs dabbed at eyes and noses.

Just so, this past Saturday, a group of us gathered to remember: not a person, but an institution--Gourmet Magazine. Instructed to prepare a favorite recipe from the long history of the publication to share, we had compared ideas throughout the weeks ahead. No one really called dibs on anything, but as the day of the celebration approached, we started to stake out our culinary claims.

And on the night of the party (from wake to celebration to party), we arrived one by one and two by two. It was already dark and there were twinkling lights decorating Kim's house. We came in, holiday style, all bundled and apple-cheeked, bearing cloth-covered dishes and bags. There was a fire in the fireplace, candles, stacks of plates, and extra chairs. Oohs and aahs and nods of recognition as each new dish was unveiled and placed on the table. "Oh, yes, that was a classic!" "We always made this one for birthdays." Several of us made cocktails from the Gourmet collection, and folks gathered to mix them up and clink glasses, nibbling at the finger foods and showing great restraint around the larger dishes.

Finally someone, I don't remember who, grabbed a plate and we all fell on the repast spread out before us. Dishes balanced on laps, cheeks even more apple-y from the Cranberry Gin and Tonics and the fire, shouted greetings to late arrivals. Jon gave an oyster-shucking demonstration and we cheered as shuckapprentices tried their hand under his careful guidance. Daisy the Collie tried desperately to get her nose into the guacamole, into anything and shhhhhh, don't tell, I did hold my empty plate to her sweet head for her to lick as clean as a whistle.

We went around the room and told stories about what Gourmet had represented in our lives. We meant it when we said it would endure, and surely our gathering and respect for the good food offered and our genuine affection for each other were testaments to the cultural bond we all shared--because of a magazine.

The Magazine of Good Living.

All of us in that warm house on Saturday night found our way to each other because of our love of Good Living. Gourmet was our scripture. Our Requiem, our Shiva, were appropriately marked by smiles and pampered palates, hugs and compliments over a crust just so, a presentation artfully designed, a flavor that awakened a memory.

It led a full, rich life, that magazine. It fed full, rich lives.

We live better because of it.

Let us give thanks.

The art of art.

2009-10-23T21:04:00.000-07:00

I was in one of those conversations.

Two art collectors in a clearing at a gallery, circling each other rhetorically, sizing each other up.

I was supposed to be fawning over the stuff I was there to see, but I really couldn't. Damn me and my honesty (I once drove 20 miles in Appalachia to return the excess money a cashier had returned to me after an insignificant transaction, much to her confusion). So I said, half apologetically, "I don't love it."

I could tell my conversation partner didn't know where to go with that, and since I didn't want to get into any chest-thumping about something as capricious as what art I love, I gestured toward my friends gathering at the door, shrugged my shoulders faux-ruefully, and scurried out.

Fast forward to tonight.

I swept into a West Seattle home of strangers, was greeted like family, could barely look at the art because of the engaging conversation still in the foyer...and the living room...and the stairwell...and the bathroom...and the kitchen.

No posturing. Images that spoke to me. People that cared about art, life, each other. Generosity of spirit, generation of the spark that fueled the return of me to myself at the end of a hard week.

And it made me think: so much of the art in my home is not about a careful calculation of collector value (although I'm lucky that I've made good choices in that regard), but rather is about the very subjective experience I have when I encounter it.

Sometimes I buy something because the image follows me around. I keep turning to look at it. I go past it and back up. I look at it over my shoulder again and again, and I know.

And sometimes I collect something because I love who made it. Every single time I look up at the brooding, painted eyes over my desk, I think of Jerry. John is in every cup of coffee I drink from the stoneware he made.

And sometimes, like tonight, I am seduced by the combination of a quick drive through Friday evening rush hour traffic with a friend, our animated chatter the soundtrack to the city lights receding behind our drizzle-soaked window; arriving at a warm home on this windy night; compelling images that tweak my memory-strings; the easy hospitality of people who love sharing food and space with friends; a painter who is honest and frank, both in his work and in his being; a photographer whose skillful, intimate photographs are juxtaposed with her nervousness and broad smile (nerves trumped by delight).

I would have loved the paintings and the photographs without all that.

But I got a soul-feeding, too.

Nanny's Chow Chow

2009-10-21T11:41:00.000-07:00

And, no, it's not a breed of canine.

It's a relish, omnipresent on plates at 711 E. 17th Street in Little Rock, AR during my childhood. It's what Nanny and Daddy Gene, my maternal great-grandmother and great-grandfather, canned at the end of the summer with all those green tomatoes still on the vines just before first frost. It was the tart and crunchy that went with the greasy and salty on the rest of the plate.

Here's my mom's description, upon receiving some from her brother recently:

It was delicious! We opened one of the two jars and served it up at the farm today, and it brought back fond memories! Nanny ALWAYS served chow chow with turkey (or chicken) and dressing...always!! Of course it was a staple for other foods and occasions, as well! You said we might want to add more salt, but we don't need it anymore than you do (even though we grew up on it...my favorite meal was fried saltmeat, fried okra, fried or boiled new potatoes, turnip greens, purple hull peas (or great northern beans), fresh tomatoes out of Daddy Gene's garden, along with green onions, cucumbers and radishes...and slathered in "grease gravy", with cornbread to sop it all up! I'd give anything to have just one more of those meals!

And here's my uncle's e-mail from this morning, a response to a request for the recipe. Seems Seattle is overrun with green tomatoes, and chow chow is the first thing that occurred to me.

Here is the recipe. I changed it a little because I started using an electric grinder, The percentage of the mix can vary a little. Each batch has a little different flavor. Nanny just used what she had. She liked a lot of flavor and hot pepper. She used the long red peppers because that is what Daddy Gene grew. The recipe makes about 40-50 pints. You might try half that on your first batch.

It's messy! On my first batch my feet were sticking to the floor!

Good luck. Let me know how it turns out.

And here, friends, is the recipe, in my uncle's own words. I wish I had a picture, too. If anyone makes it, let me know--I would be happy to make you some cornbread for barter. Enjoy.

Nannie’s Chow-Chow Recipe

Ingredients:

One crate of green tomatoes
One-half bushel Onions
One-half bushel Bell Peppers (a mix of green and red adds color)
Twelve to Fourteen heads of Cabbage (medium size)
Five cups of Apple Vinegar
Four cups Sugar
One-half cup Salt
Small bag of Pickling Spices (about one and a half to two inches in diameter
One-half pound of Hot Peppers (about 20 to 50 depending on the pepper used)

Grinding Instructions:

If using an electric meat grinder, use the largest holed grinder plate. Grind each ingredient separately and keep separate. Reserve all the fluid in each ingredient. It is best to grind because it produces more reserve liquid. If a food processor is used you may have to add water when cooking. If you must cook in more than one batch, try to estimate the volume of each ingredient and keep the blend as close to the same as possible in each batch.

Cooking Instructions:

Bring Vinegar, Sugar and Salt mixture to a boil and place the bag of Pickling Spice in the liquid when it is early in the boiling process. Let the Pickling Spices boil for awhile. (The longer the stronger, you can add more later) Remove before adding the ground ingredients. Reserve the bag of Pickling Spices for possible later use. Place the ground ingredients into a large Pot (the flatter the better, you may have to use two burners) and add the Vinegar mix. Add all of the reserved liquid. You must have enough liquid to cover the solids when you seal the jars.)

Bring the mix to a simmer under medium heat while stirring frequently and cook until the cabbage is soft but not mushy. Start to taste when nearing completion and add more flavor to your taste. Judge the taste with a small amount that has been cooled in a small bowl in the refrigerator or freezer. You can add more pickling spice by heating a small amount of Vinegar or water in a cup and letting the bag of spice soak for awhile. Make sure there is enough liquid at the end. It should look like you have too much liquid at the end of the cook. Boil your jars and lids and fill with the mix making sure there is liquid at the top. Use pints for condiment use and pints or quarts for side dish use. Seal the tops tightly and tighten more when cooled. You can use the water bath method but Nanny never did and we have never had a problem with spoilage if used in a few months.

For condiment use the ratio of ground ingredients should be about 30% Cabbage, 35% Tomatoes, 20% Onion and 15% Bell Pepper.
For side dish use the ratio of ground ingredients should be about 35% Cabbage, 35% Tomatoes, 15% Onion and 15% Bell Pepper.

A half crate of green tomatoes is about half a grocery sack. Adjust all the ingredients (ground and flavors) to the tomatoes. You can use more Cabbage than above if you can’t find enough green tomatoes. You can adjust the flavors at the end. I usually make a lot more of the Vinegar mix than I think I need (double) and add more to taste near the end of the cook. Nanny always added more near the end. I have never had too much liquid at the end. When opened a jar should be eaten in two or three weeks. If you buy jars and want to use the box for storage, you need to reinforce the box with tape. I use cayenne peppers.

You will usually need to do one batch to get it the way you like. I screwed up my first batch every way possible and it was still good.

Update: I told my uncle there were some friends who might be making this, and he got all excited. Here's his response:

It is great to have a lot of tomatoes. They can use more tomatoes in the recipe and get a better side dish type of chow-chow. I think they would probably like that type of chow-chow better if it's their first time to taste it. It could still be used as a condiment. If they use a food processor, I would use the large grater disk. Unless they have tasted Nanny's original they may not know how to adjust the flavor. I would advise them to make it a little stronger than the recipe because I usually add more of the vinegar mix at the end. It's fun to make if you already have the tomatoes. It gives you the old frontier spirit if you have grown the tomatoes!

You might not know that chow-chow was the vitamin pills for rural people in the old days. It was eaten almost every day. Nannie and Daddy Gene ate it with every full meal.

Give your friends my best!

Grown-Up Tea Party (quince fried pies; cheese & bacon grits)

2009-10-18T16:08:00.000-07:00

It's not that I never had good tea parties growing up, it's just that they were in my head.

Today I went to one with real, live people and animated conversation in a light-filled room. There were nibblies of every sort and jams and curds and teas. Some people brought traditional tea party fare and others brought "it's a celebration and this is what my people do" offerings. Still others shared the bounty from season's end gardens or the farmer's market.

All of us ate too much and apologized not one bit for it. Here's to grown-ups getting their little kid tea party on.

My contributions were quince fried pies and cheese and bacon grits.

QUINCE FRIED PIES

dough for 12-ish pies:

2 c. flour

1/2 t. salt

1/2 c. rendered leaf lard (you could use shortening, but butter would burn, I think)

1/2 c. whole, raw milk from Sea Breeze Farm (sure, use a different kind, but you'll miss the love!)

Sift flour and salt together. Mix in cold lard with fingertips until it resembles sand. Stir in milk until shaggy and just holding together. Turn onto floured board, gather together into a ball, then a flat disk, and cut into quarters. Cut those into thirds and form into a small ball. This dough is more forgiving than pie dough--it's really closer to a biscuit dough, and the lard makes it easier to work with.

filling:

5 quince, peeled, cored, and diced (give yourself time; quince are ornery)

water to just cover

+/- 1 cup sugar (depends on how astringent the quince are--you'll just have to play*)

1 knife tip ground cloves

2 knife tips ground cinnamon

1 T. fresh lemon juice

1 t. vanilla (scrapings of a vanilla bean handy? even better)

3 T. butter

Place fruit and sugar in a saucepan with just enough water to cover. Bring to a boil and then lower the heat to a simmer. Add the spices and lemon juice. Stew the fruit over low heat until it's soft, but still a bit chunky, and most of the liquid has cooked away. At the very end, stir in vanilla and butter. Let cool (if you do this ahead and refrigerate, bring back to room temperature before proceeding).

Assemblage and fryage (I made that second word up):

1 c. or more of leaf lard

1 c. sugar

Roll each circle of dough into a 5 in. circle. Place a heaping soup spoon of filling in center. Moisten edges of dough with your fingertip and water, then fold over gently (careful--don't tear dough) and seal all edges completely. Crimp with a fork. Continue with the rest of the dough.

Put lard in a steep-sided, wide skillet and heat until a tiny ball of dough sizzles mightily when tested in it. Gently lay the pies in, without crowding, a few at a time. Fry in batches until golden, then turn gently and fry the other side. You may have to stand them upright, too, to get an all-over gold (add more lard as necessary). Take pies up and immediately place them on a plate of sugar, turning quickly to coat all sides. Remove to rack to cool.

These are good at room temperature, but I encourage you to organize your life around having at least one while still warm. Or kind of wreck the first one, so you'll be forced to eat it, lest you serve something unsightly to a guest. Hospitality requires it, you know. wink

*it's for a tea party, after all

CHEESE AND BACON GRITS

2 c. stone-ground grits

6 c. water

1 t. salt

4 T. butter

1/2 lb. shredded cheese (I used Beecher's Flagship and Estrella Valentina*)

12 strips bacon, cooked and crumbled (I used Skagit River Ranch)

1 c. milk

3 large eggs

1/2-1 tsp. Louisiana Hot Sauce or similar (heck, we're in Seattle, maybe Sriracha!)

1 t. fresh thyme leaves

cracked black pepper and additional salt to taste (depends on saltiness of your bacon and cheese)

Bring water and salt to boil and add grits in a steady stream, stirring constantly to avoid lumps. Lower heat and cook, stirring often, until water has been absorbed. Remove from heat. Stir in butter and transfer to large mixing bowl. Beat eggs and milk and hot sauce together, then stir into grits. Add cheese (reserve 1/2 cup), bacon and thyme; season with pepper and (if needed) salt. Pour into ungreased, shallow dish. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Sprinkle remaining cheese over top and bake for an additional 1/2 hour or so. The grits should not jiggle when they're done and the top should be golden. [Note: today, 12/6/09, I actually DID use Sriracha. I liked it even better than Louisiana Hot Sauce, as chagrined as I am to say it.]

*A reader on Shauna and Dan Ahern's "pork, knife & spoon" blog's re-printing of this recipe reminded me that these are Puget Sound cheeses. For those in other regions, just choose a hard cheese that is bold and flavorful and sharp enough to cut your tongue! http://porkknifeandspoon.com/2009/12/08/cheese-and-bacon-grits/

S & H Green Stamps

2009-10-17T15:39:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while someone will say something that yanks me from where I am to a long-ago forgotten place--forgotten because of how inconsequential it was In The Grand Scheme Of My Life.

Like last night.

I was sitting at The Hideout with a group of friends and colleagues, sipping a Lillet on the rocks, when one of them mentioned S & H green stamps. Seems she had encountered some thing or another that made reference to them and had no idea what they were.

Since I was the Elder in the group (made manifest by the fact that I DID know what they were), I explained their history with the handy assistance of an iPhone and Wikipedia.

What I didn't explain, though, was the memory of a little red patent leather pocketbook stuffed with dollars and an "identification card" filled out with perfect cursive script and school photos of my friends and jauntily folded over strips of S & H green stamps.

Or the booklets that contained the sheets of them, that got fatter and fatter as more stamps were affixed, or the smell of a bottle of Mucilage or the feeling of running a finger over a full page of stamps and noting the ragged edges of the stamps as it went. Or the brown grocery bag that held the completed booklets and the redemption catalog next to Nanny's platform rocker and behind her snuff spittle can. Or the excitement of going, finally, finally, with a full bag of completed booklets to the S & H Redemption Center to turn it all in for some then coveted and now irretrievably discarded treasure.

To be honest, I can't remember one item I ever got for those stamps. The thing was not greater than the sum of its stamps, gathered 3 or 4 at a time and over months and months.

Petite green markers of delayed gratification, they were, like the practice of putting clothes on "layaway" at M.M. Cohn's in Little Rock until I had paid them enough money to pick the clothes up and take them home.

Typing these words, I think of how foreign this would read to someone half my age.

"Save S & H green stamps and trade them in for an object."
"Put clothes on 'Layaway' until you have paid for them."

As awkward and unfamiliar as bowing in Japan or eating with bare hands in North Africa.

And I lament something as I think about this, but I'm not sure what...

A practice, a ritual, a habit?

Surely not the S & H green stamps themselves, or the items they procured for me. Nor even the notion of delayed gratification.

I will go right now and tweet about this...
in 140 characters (instantaneous and succinct)...

and muse later about the slight discomfort I feel...

On gravy.

2009-10-14T20:14:00.000-07:00

I don't experience things in isolation.

Whatever stimuli lap up on the shores of my consciousness join other stimuli, some still foamy, some soaked in.

My experience of a meal this time last week--a tangle of dishes, smells, laughs, and stories at a potluck--was layered onto the sum of meals shared with friends and family in every corner of the world over a lifetime.

So when I recounted to a new friend what red-eye gravy was (essentially ham grease and hot coffee), I was on a stool in downtown Seattle and, at the same time, in the kitchen in a farmhouse on a red dirt road in Van Buren County, Arkansas in the 1960s.

And when I talked to my dad on the phone this weekend, and he told about how he and his brothers still make red-eye gravy for Saturday morning breakfast at the cabin, he was holding a cell phone link between himself and his Seattle daughter, as well as standing knee-high to his own mother in the kitchen he knew first.

"Oh, I remember that sound," he said. "She would take up the ham and put it on a plate and while it was still sizzling, she'd pour that coffee in with a big old 'WHOOSH' and Lord, that would cause a cloud of steam." He paused. "I miss that old girl," he admitted. And I paused, too. Mamaw, in her dress and clip on earrings, but with sturdy shoes, an apron, and a lumberjack jacket--because a preacher farmer's wife is both a lady and needs to get the hogs slopped, after all. Mamaw with her slightly high-pitched voice and her flour bin drawer built into the cabinetry. Mamaw with her pans of biscuits and jars of sorghum.

Dad and I rehearsed whole litanies of memory in the instant it took the "whoosh" to cross the airwaves, but litanies require a moment of silence as punctuation. We gave it. And then we moved on to other matters: how the dogs are; how well the pond and lake are filling up; how I want to spend some time in the darkroom over Christmas with him and his brother with some old school black and white film and chemicals.

I hung up, but stayed, Matrix-like, caught between there and here. At the farmer's market on Saturday, I didn't steer toward the things I might: chanterelles, local apples. No, I packed my bag with turnips and greens, scoured each stand for still-green tomatoes, accepted fresh cranberry beans as a local compromise (had we known them in Arkansas, surely they would have been our floral, fragrant legume of choice). I also tucked in a packet of pig skin, courtesy of Sea Breeze Farm, which I turned into cracklings later that day.

Sunday passed, Monday, Tuesday, and me still psychically stuck in the foothills of the Ozarks, but unable to leave work and other commitments aside to go there wholly.

But tonight was the night. I put rendered pork fat in my treasured skillet and put it in the oven at 450 to heat. I measured out two cups of stone-ground cornmeal into a bowl with a bit of salt, soda, and baking powder, and then quickly beat in an egg and 1 1/2 cups of buttermilk, plus a handful of cracklings. When the skillet was smoking, I pulled it out of the oven, swirled the grease around in a flash and poured it with the most luscious sizzle into the batter and beat like hell, quickly, and then quicker still back into the still blazing hot iron skillet, and back into the oven. [Whew. If that takes more than 30 seconds, start to finish, pitch it out and start over, friends.]

Beans were already simmering and the turnips and greens were in the pressure cooker (the jiggle also a sound of my childhood).

I tossed the green tomatoes in the leftover cornbread batter still in the bowl, tossed them in more cornmeal and quick, into a skillet with more rendered pork fat.

I cut up a bit of fresh onion and trimmed two radishes. Once the cornbread was done, I took it out and turned it onto a cutting board. No need to run a spatula around, this skillet is so well-seasoned that the cornbread slides right out. A matter of pride, that.

It was good. It was very, very good, in that way that memory foods are.

And now, full circle, the host of last week's potluck has sent a note that we are gathering again, impromptu. We can come in our sweats, our PJs. We can come as we are, because as we are is good. As we are: funny, smart, engaged, busy, committed, curious, talkative, sense-appreciators. Who know better than to let experiences pass. Who know to gather up memories greedily.

Who know that gravy is not just gravy.

Measurements for Cracklin' Cornbread + Cracklin' recipe

rendered pork fat or bacon grease

2 cups stone-ground cornmeal
1 t. salt
1/2 t. baking soda
1 t. baking powder
1 egg
1 1/2 cups of buttermilk
1 handful of cracklings
(process outlined in blog)

Cracklings: for 1 1/2 lbs. pig skin, cut it into strips, simmer in 2-3 cups water with 4 t. baking soda and 2 t. salt until skin is tender (45 minutes-1 hour). Remove from water and dry completely. Place skin side up on jelly roll-ish pan (i.e. heavy and shallow, but still a bit of wall) and place in 425 degree oven. Skin will blister and render fat (it's a mess when the blisters pop, no way around it). When the skin is rich brown and blistering has subsided, it's done. Cracklin' image here. Drain on paper towels. Clean oven.

A rising tide lifts all boats.

2009-10-05T09:00:00.001-07:00

My immediate response to the announcement that Condé Nast is closing Gourmet magazine has been waves of nostalgia. Not for what Gourmet is today, really, although I still love it, but for what it meant to the evolution of my food consciousness.

Growing up in Arkansas in the 1970s, Gourmet set me apart. I glimpsed in its pages a world beyond Velveeta and Cream of Mushroom soup, and in my teenaged brain, "apart" was where I wanted to be. My friends and I started a gourmet club and wrecked our parents' kitchens in succession, when it was our turn to host. I had my first taste of Lebanese cuisine in one of those gatherings, and I can still remember that initial explosion of exoticism in my mouth.

My parents were part of a similar, grown-up, club and the dinners ran the gamut: at one end, valiant efforts at trying to re-create meals from Gourmet's pages with the ingredients available at the Conway, Arkansas Piggly-Wiggly store; at the other, my Aunt Dena and Uncle Joe being emboldened to craft the epitome of 1973 glamour--a Gourmet quiche--out of a humble ingredient: poke sallet. The word locavore didn't exist yet, but surely that was a prototype.

In short, in those days and in that place, saying one got a recipe from Gourmet Magazine was the culinary equivalent of steering a Rolls Royce into a crowded parking lot of Ford trucks.

So what has changed? Why is Gourmet closing? Many will lament the dumbing down of High Culinary Culture and blame the Food Network's "BAM!" and "How good is that???" approach to cooking. A little dab of EVOO and every person on the block has genius aspirations.

Others will point to the prevalence of food blogs and the immediacy of online resources, and to the wiki-tization of knowledge.

Still others will bemoan the cultural shift away from reflective practices...the slow turning of material pages in one's hands, by lamplight, in peace and quiet at the end of a day.

And surely all those things are somewhat at play.

But the good side of all these things is that people are now in love with cooking and food in all its cultural manifestations: from food blogs to twitter conferences to TV shows to mainstream movies about culinary icons to farmer's markets to CSA programs to farm-to-table dinners...people feel empowered to take spoon in hand and craft bread to break together with loved ones.

And in spite of my personal sadness that Gourmet is returning to dock, I can't help looking at all the many boats bobbing in the water out there and knowing in my heart that I learned to navigate my craft and love the water due, in part, to Gourmet's influence.

A salute to you, then, Gourmet. Ironic that your pinnacle status contributed to a democratization of food culture.

And I hope my parents still have all those back issues in the storage shed.

Now that's service.

2009-10-02T21:27:00.000-07:00

Many, many years ago, maybe 1989 or so, I was living in Wooster, Ohio. I was in my first teaching job at a small, private liberal arts college in a midsized, practical, midwestern town.

I was teaching German cinema and finishing my dissertation and had found a dear friend in Elizabeth. Both of us struggled mightily with making a life in a place where our way of being in the world--brazenly devoted to beautiful food, personal adornment, much laughter, and, well, just generally EXCESSIVE in every way--seemed so counter to the culture.

We made common cause. We threw lavish dinner parties, and shared two apartments in one house, and spent Saturday mornings in our bathrobes eating croissants and drinking cappuccino out of her handpainted majolica imported from Italy. Of Italian extraction herself, Elizabeth had quite a collection of dishes, and I admired them regularly. At one point, her sister Teresa must have witnessed my envy, because soon she made me a gift of one of these cups. Was it my birthday? I don't remember.

But after a while, I had my own collection. Piece by piece, friends added to it--every birthday a cup or a plate, larger serving dishes for larger landmarks. Most of the pieces came from a little store on Columbus Avenue in the North Beach neighborhood in San Francisco, where I spent a good portion of my 1993 fall sabbatical. By that time, Elizabeth had left Wooster for good, and she was gracious enough to let me camp in the front room of her Bernal Heights home (underneath her landlord, whose devotion to Steely Dan knew no boundaries of time or volume). There I pounded away on an article for the Women in German Yearbook and boarded BART several days a week to go over to the Berkeley campus and imagine that my Visiting Scholar status meant something fancier than, essentially, library privileges.

Where Prufrock measured out his life in coffeespoons, Elizabeth and I measured out that fall in dollars spent on culinary adventures up one side and down the other of the Bay Area. Greens? Did it. Chez Panisse? Of course. And the dinner parties, oh, the dinner parties.

And still, we had our touchstone, which was Biordi. We'd drive to North Beach in Elizabeth's Saturn, park, and either have a little lunch or coffee, or maybe wander around City Lights Books. Each trip was different, but each ended with our noses pressed to the windowpane of Biordi.

Since that time, I have added to my collection by poring over the annual catalog that comes in the mail. Occasionally, a friend will still send me a piece, or--as in the case a few years ago--I took my own trip to Italy and returned home with some bowls wrapped in articles of clothing.

This past December, I was in San Francisco again for a conference. On my last day in town, my friend Joseph drove me to North Beach and I went into Biordi to see about making a purchase of plain salad plates and plain pasta bowls. Because the dinner plates and cups and serving pieces are so ornate, I had started purchasing unpainted salad and pasta bowls, but I only had four of each (and eight each of the cups and plates). The store seemed unchanged since 1993, and Gianfranco located my "record" in his index file box. All my purchases were still noted there, and I was given a respectful acknowledgment for being a steadfast customer over the years. I made my order, paid for it, left my mailing address, and left with a promise of a box of dishes from Italy about three months hence.

April came and went, as did the first part of the summer. Then a phone call came, with an apology--turns out the order from Italy was all wrong, and we would have to start over. Finally a box arrived, but it contained plain dinner plates. Still wrong!

After several phone calls and e-mails, I got this note from Gianfranco:

I am going to Italy in two week and this time
I will ship them myself (if I have room in my suitcase I will take them here
with me on 9/22). Again my apologies!

Gianfranco

Today, a box arrived. It contained the right dishes. They were wrapped in Gianfranco's shirt.

I was stunned. The shirt off his back cradled my dishes all the way from Italy back to the west coast. I'll send it back to him now, but I can't help thinking that it's probably the most improbable and charming gesture of customer service I will ever encounter.

And somehow in keeping with a man who sells beautiful vessels for the breaking of bread among friends.

The cup is Teresa. The serving bowls are Elizabeth. The coffee urn is Karen for my dissertation celebration. The small bowls are Italy and my parents and brother and sister-in-law and I sitting around a table drinking Santa Cristina (oh, that's just table wine, Bellissima!). Each dish has been plated with something delicious and served to my family of friends in Wooster, in Memphis, in St. Peter, in Seattle. Laughter has surrounded them, and love. Hands, not only mine, have carefully, oh, so carefully, washed them in warm suds as the last wine is being passed around late at night.

Now I will wash the new plates and add them to the collection. They have a tall order to fill, if they are to compete with their china cabinet mates for happiness plated and served.

They've got a good start.

"Nothing is original."

2009-10-01T19:51:00.000-07:00

And yet...

no one else, in the history of all creation, ever stood at the exact latitude/longitude coordinates as I did today at 5:30 PM on October 1, 2009.

I, alone, was there on Queen Anne hill in Seattle, surrounded by friends and strangers at the last farmer's market of the season.

Only I had a conversation--facing east--about the intersection of art and food while rain drops pelted me, and only my shoulder felt the weight of my Book Culture bag filled with chanterelle mushrooms and the last huckleberries of the season and two loaves of bread and a book. Only my back went rigid when I saw Becky throwing vegetables into a cast-iron skillet, since only I have spent a lifetime protecting my own skillet from being touched by anything but cornbread batter.

Only I took a picture of Keren and her little boy with my iPhone camera to distract him from the fact that he was fussy, and only I had the combination of a Banh Mi sandwich and a cup of burnt sugar gelato for supper in my car, pointing west.

And now I am home, between the seasons, with tomatoes bubbling on the stove, since they arrived in my CSA box somewhat worse for the wear. I'm doing the unoriginal save: chopping them up and turning them into sauce, as generations of thrifty cooks have done before me.

No grand art, this.

But it's my performance, and no one else takes this particular spoon in hand, to stir this day's collection of memories into tomorrow's sustenance.

To everything, turn.

2009-09-30T21:05:00.000-07:00

I have a hook on the closet door in my entry. In the summer, I come in from my p-patch and hang my sun hat on that hook. When I reach up, little bits of garden dirt fall down to the floor.

Yesterday, I came in from work and removed the hat from the hook and replaced it with my raincoat. I raised it up and droplets of water splashed onto the bits of dirt still there from the weekend.

...this is a ritual moment, when water mixes with earth and signifies the end of a beautiful summer...

I stood there for a while, holding the hat in my hands, as reverently as a prayer book.

One sigh, one smile, one silent acknowledgment of a good summer in Seattle.

...now begins the great silence...

But this year, let there be soup.

Triple Chocolate Truffle Cookies with Candied Ginger

2009-09-27T19:45:00.000-07:00

It's good enough to have a sunny Sunday afternoon in late September in Seattle (it sounds like I'm hissing, if you read that out loud. Trust me, I'm not). But such a day high on a 26th-floor downtown patio overlooking the city, with a far view of the Puget Sound, Mt. Rainier, Lake Union, and Mt. Baker, surrounded by new friends, beautiful and lovingly prepared nibblies, libations, and laughter? Friends, that's an embarrassment of riches. Thanks to @bonnevivante for her hospitality.

Here's the recipe for my own lovingly prepared nibbly. Fair warning: they're rich, they're seductive, they'll have their way with you.

Triple Chocolate Truffle Cookies with Candied Ginger

6 T. unsalted butter
4 oz. unsweetened chocolate**
2 c. bittersweet chocolate chips**
1 c. sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 t. pure vanilla extract
1/2 c. flour
2 T. cocoa powder**
1/4 t. salt
1/4 t. baking powder
1/2 c. chopped candied ginger*

Melt butter, unsweetened chocolate, and 1 c. of the chocolate chips together in a double boiler or at low power in a microwave. Stir and set aside to cool.

Beat eggs and sugar until absolutely smooth and add vanilla.

Sift together dry ingredients.

While beating egg mixture at low speed (stand mixer is easiest), add cooled chocolate mixture. When fully incorporated, turn to absolute lowest speed and add dry mixture slowly until just incorporated. Scrape down sides, then stir in remaining chocolate chips and ginger. The mixture will be the consistency of very thick cake batter or ganache.

Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Next day: preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roll mixture (which is now quite hard) into 1 1/2 inch balls and place on ungreased cookie sheets (tip: when your hands start getting chocolatey, wash them. Otherwise, they stick to the dough and the cookies will have a rough exterior). Bake approximately 12-15 minutes, or until puffed and cracked on the surface. The cookies will be soft on the inside, so go by an exterior that is dry to the touch and doesn't yield to very slight pressure. Cool on racks.

*I have always made these cookies without this addition. Just tried it today and was hooked. You could use other dried or candied fruit (orange peel, dried cherries, etc.), but it's crucial that it be dried--liquid would screw up the recipe.

**Get the highest quality you can find.

Three Crushes

2009-09-24T21:05:00.000-07:00

1. The Container Store. I don't go there to fulfill a practical need to contain something. I go there to innoculate myself against chaos, to pick up vessels and binders and then visualize (yeah, just like in yoga or weight loss) a clean desk and spice jars all the same size and matching hangers. I baptize myself in the waters of order and emerge cleansed of my sins of procrastination and not-putting-things-away.

2. Levenger. It's not that I need pens and paper. I could visit the supply closet at my office for serviceable writing paraphernalia. No, it's that I need the vision of myself with the time to feel the weight of a good pen in my hand, to brush my fingers over luscious paper, to hear the sound of the nib as I write letters (with beautiful, measured penmanship) to each of my friends in far-flung places. Who, in a few days, will receive them and think of me. They will shuffle to their respective desks and sit down with their own beautiful paper and pens, and they will sip tea as they craft a message back to me in the late afternoon sunlight.

3. Sur la Table. I don't really lack one thing in my kitchen, but in Sur la Table I can throw the most gracious, lovely dinner parties. When I'm there, my mind is spacious enough to seat everyone I admire, and I make them the most savory, delightful nibblies. We sit and muse and murmur and linger and smile and love each other and sip wine and tell stories and time stops and the candles never burn all the way down and tomorrow never comes.

Arkansas piano, German music, Minnesota voice lessons, Seattle sun.

2009-09-21T22:17:00.000-07:00

Bright Star. A Review and a Review of a Review.

2009-09-20T21:15:00.000-07:00

I started out in Women's Film Studies back in the day when we essentialized. Women were this way and that way and it was different from men, and so were the films they made. And then I lived through the realization that there were all sorts of other variables besides biology: women also had race and class and lived experiences and sexualities and nationalities, all of which were as foundational as sex and gender for shaping the stories they told. And recently I've been having discussions about women's voices and men's voices in the craft of film, and, let's face it, I'm annoyed at my (boy) neighbor's incessant viewing of loud, crashing (boy) action films.

So now I want to make an unapologetic, full-circle move back to brazen essentializing. Because I just saw a "woman's film" and read a "man's review" of it.

Oh, Jane Campion, thank you. Thank you for "Bright Star" and its lingering, sanctifying extreme close-ups of needles being threaded, of scissors cutting ribbons, of embroidered pillow slips. Of fabrics and jams and teacups and interiors--the holy mise-en-scene of domestic spheres.

Thank you for the breath-catching scenes of fingers tracing a beloved's forbidden hand, the knocks on walls that served as telegraphic connection in the night, the suspense that you created as letters with red wax stamps and florid script were awaited one day, and another, and another.

Thank you for showing the hand-me-down social roles being learned and displayed in the young sister's blush, for the patient camera, the painterly nature scenes.

Thank you for framing the narrative with sewing at the beginning--the binding--and with cutting at the end--the severing.

Thank you for poetry and sonorous voice-overs.

To be fair, the New York Times (boy) reviewer A. O. Scott loved the film as much as I did. And while I agree with him that this is a film about poetry, social morés, social hypocrisy, and the power of chaste ardor, I can't help but marvel that I found the cinematically reverential approach to domestic detail so central to a film when A. O. Scott misses it.

I'm eager to discuss this film with girls and boys alike.

In the meantime, I'm dusting off my college poetry collections and leaving you, fair readers, with this pleasure:

When I Have Fears

by John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Toad Suck and Twitter Synchronicity

2009-09-18T20:58:00.000-07:00

I was sitting outside at Joe Bar today with @ChefReinvented (and Bubba, 'natch), scheming about an idea.

After the scheming, we meandered on a conversational path that went from the food scene in Seattle to A Very Fun Business Idea Which Is Still Top Secret to how to manage worlds crashing together on Facebook to German cinema to why Berlin is a cool city with a textured identity to the fact that I'm from...

wait for it...

TOAD SUCK, ARKANSAS.

It's an improbable origin, true. Even more improbable is that my very own father, also a schemer, schemed and dreamed up the now cultishly attended Toad Suck Daze festival. Yep, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and I am the daughter of the original Head of the Toad Council. The Head Toad. Which makes me a Tadpole, I guess, but never mind that.

So @ChefReinvented and I had a good laugh over that and other things, and went our separate ways. I went back to work, and then home, and then to the gym, and then back home to have a bowl of soup and catch up on what twitterlicious Friday night banter might be happening.

Up pops this tweet from @Herbguy: Proud to say I've been to TOAD SUCK, ARKANSAS. Anyone else been there?

I blink hard and look again. Still there. Toad.Suck.Arkansas. Now it's a small world, so I figure, OK, so maybe @ChefReinvented said something, or there was an earlier tweet that I missed while I was at the gym.

But no! I check, and no. Nothing was said. This was out of the blue and @Herbguy is now suspected of being some sort of mindreader or being otherwise omniscient.

Or, it's like one of my co-workers says: "Twitter gets in your head, man."

Behold the fine cuisine of Toad Suck, NOT available on Twitter, in spite of its skillz:

Mary Travers, Rest in Peace

2009-09-16T21:13:00.000-07:00

Mary Travers died.

"And when I'm gone, and when I'm dead, dead, and gone, there'll be one child born and a world to carry on, to carry on."

Laura Nyro wrote this when she was 17. Peter, Paul and Mary recorded it in 1966. I listened to it in 2009 when I read of Mary's passing.

I can't explain why I sobbed.

Maybe because Peter, Paul and Mary were playing all the time when I was a child and I can sing all the parts to all the songs from some deep place of utterly embodied memory.

Maybe because Mary sang for a better world, and her death makes me marvel at all that has been accomplished since she lifted her voice so many years ago, thanks in part to her.

Maybe because so much distance is yet to be covered, and her deep, resonant voice won't accompany our journey.

I'm listening to these songs over and over now on iTunes, singing along, and remembering the LPs and 10 Windsor Drive and my mom at the piano and my dad on sax and the harmonies that have sustained us all.

Mary, thank you for being one of the first voices I wanted to emulate, as a singer, and as a citizen of a scattered world.

3 seeds.

2009-09-14T21:22:00.001-07:00

My friend Chris came into my office in late July with a bag of "Sarzana" squash seeds from Italy. She asked if I wanted a few, since they produced lovely, delicately flavored courgettes and were compact, plant-wise--meaning they didn't vine and trail off over everything in a 15-foot radius.

I loved the package: so very not "American seed packet" in format, with planting instructions in Italian.

I held out my hand and she tipped 1,2,3,4,5,6 seeds into it, which I placed in an envelope labeled "Sarzana" and put in my purse. A few days later, three of those seeds were in a mound of dirt in the front of my plot, and a few days ago, I harvested my first squash.

I sliced them thinly, lengthwise, dredged them in flour, and fried them up in hot olive oil until they were golden brown with some darker brown spots on each side.

QUICKLY onto a paper towel; QUICKLY a sprinkle of sea salt and a few turns of the peppermill; QUICKLY a squeeze of lemon--just a few drops--and ooooooh, a race to the table to sit down while they were still blistering hot.

That's late summer on a plate, right there.

Twitter, Impressionism, and My Mind's Nose

2009-09-13T16:35:00.000-07:00

@fourchickens Pressure cooker growing up in AR was always turnips and greens. I hear that jiggle sound, I smell greens in mind's nose.

Something about the 140 character limit on Twitter posts (like the one I sent above to @fourchickens) aligns well with the impressionistic modality of sense memories.

They, too, are fleeting and concentrated. The actual smell of turnip greens (which I love) is not nearly as evocative as reading a brief tweet from @shibaguyz about their pressure cooker. Which leads to calling up the sound in my mind's ear. Which leads to a scene in my mind's eye. Which leads to the smell in my mind's nose. Which is inseparable from the feel of steam on my mind's skin as I recall the countless times I stood just behind my mother holding vigil over a live pressure cooker.

And today: @bonnevivante posted an ode to pie crusts made with lard from an older NYT piece. I read the word "lard" and my mind's tongue tasted and felt Mamaw's fried pies, and my fingers knew just how they had rested in my hand as a child, the grease and flour dust on my palm, wiped surreptitiously on my pants leg, when I knew I shouldn't.

Ohhhhh, is that recipe in the family cookbook, I wonder? I haven't thought of those pies in years...the extra ones on a plate, tucked in between the Louisiana Hot Sauce bottle and salt and pepper shakers under a square cloth on the middle of the kitchen table...usually filled with the apples or peaches she had dried, but sometimes with chocolate...always gone before the next meal...

I think about what will linger about my life today. When I'm old, what will I smell or read that will call up "Seattle, late summer 2009" and cause me to stop what I'm doing, throw my head back, and close my eyes?

What impression, what smell will bring me back to this day? What will lead me to love the moment doubly--the then and the memory of then?

Frank Bruni: "I'm not the guy for this."

2009-09-11T21:11:00.000-07:00

Frank Bruni is on a book tour, now that his book "Born Round" is out and he's no longer the New York Times food critic.

I just returned from hearing him chat with Warren Etheredge at one of the "Words & Wine" events that Kim Ricketts puts on in Seattle. They talked about all manner of things: "eating widely" as a reasonable credential for being a food critic; mothers as stiff competition for Christian martyrs; good and bad food experiences; the expectation people have that you MUST be a good cook if you're a good eater (FB prefers to consume, he tells us); the reality that food criticism is no longer a "local" phenomenon in the internet age, and that a review is as much about a vicarious experience as it is about gathering data on whether a restaurant is worth (or not) visiting; the difficulty of finding synonyms for "tender" without resorting to "toothsome" and other verbal contortions.

I would have been content with hearing much more about any one of those conversation strands, but it was a different topic altogether that intrigued me the most, not at all food-related.

Bruni said that he often thinks, when first being offered an opportunity like New York Times food critic, "I'm not the guy for this."

And I wondered:

How does he get out of his own way in those moments? How does he drive down the middle between humility and ego? How does he take his self-doubts, his admitted issues with body image (which he battles not with fad diets but with exercise, good trainers, and a short attention span--being BORED with self-loathing, turns out, is more effective for him than The Cabbage Soup Diet), and STILL step right up to the opportunity and say "Yes. I am called to do this" and go out and trump self-doubt with self-confidence?

It's not that I'm fascinated by the "imposter complex" as a psychological phenomenon (we'll save my own Ph.D. completion stories for another blog post).

No, what I am musing on this evening is that, while there are many models of Ego Made Flesh who combine self-aggrandizement with success, they are far less compelling to me than Frank Bruni's combination of success and humility. The ability to move between direct and honest critique of a famed restaurant and the statement that sometimes a 1/4-pounder with cheese is what's called for; the graciousness with which he indulges audience questions; the lowered eyes and covering of his face when Warren or an audience member points out his considerable attractiveness: these are endearing.

And while I might not say "no" to tagging along with him to a destination restaurant, the truth is that I left the evening thinking I would much rather share a conversation with him among friends, over scrambled eggs. Or lingering over some modest fare made transcendent by embracing appetite, hospitality, intellect, and spaciousness of spirit around a big table of fellow travelers.

I'm glad he thinks he's "not the guy for this" as he greets the world every day, because if he did...he wouldn't be.

I like to play dress-up.

2009-08-31T21:27:00.000-07:00

I don't have The One Big Passion. I've always thought I wanted one. To be a Potter. To be a Weaver. To be a Writer. To be a Photographer. To be a Painter. To be a Filmmaker. To be a Singer. To be a Chef. I've done or still do or want to do all those things. But none exclusively.

I've always thought I had some kind of ADD, some deficiency that made me unable to concentrate on just one thing. Or that I just hadn't found the one thing that would get me to settle down. I was the Bachelorette of Callings. No commitments, baby, no tying me down.

But lately I've been thinking it's altogether something else. I reckon it's not an accident that I loved to play dress-up as a child. When my parents would go out, I'd go into their bedroom and turn their closets inside out and upside down as I put on one thing after another. Mom's stuff, Dad's stuff--sometimes combined--and always accessorized with whatever trinkets and oversized shoes allowed me to inhabit and move freely in the faraway worlds in my head. There were soundtracks in there and smells and furniture and pets and foods. I would invite my real friends (of which there were few, truth be told, until I got older) to come over and participate, but they got frustrated by my inability to stick with one narrative. I was in and out of a story before they ever got past "once upon a time" and, really, what was the point of trying to keep up?

In college, my first roommate used to throw her hands up at my habit of sitting in front of the stereo, changing LPs like a short-order cook flipping pancakes, Al Green to Beethoven's "Pastorale" Symphony to Dave Brubeck to Linda Ronstadt and all the time singing along on not one, but ALL the parts.

And now I'm officially middle-aged and on a trajectory toward dotage, I suppose. I embrace the irony that my depth is my flightiness and I give deep and solemn thanks that I can clap with joy at so many things, all on the same day, and DO.

There's a term for this in German: "Lebenskünstler"--someone who is an artist and whose medium is life. It sounds much more impressive in German, but really, it's just a fancy way of saying that I'm someone who (still) likes to play dress-up.

culinary stream of consciousness

2009-08-30T13:39:00.000-07:00

It started pretty innocently: ever since I moved to the west coast, 3 summers' worth of time, I've been awed by the fact that I can actually get Real.Cherries and Real.Figs and Real.Huckleberries. Sure, I'm happy about other things, too, but I got over my Salmon.Euphoria pretty quickly, and the catch in my throat when I round a bend and get a glimpse of Mt. Rainier is no longer accompanied by an audible gasp.

But the fruit? Still inspires actual hand-clapping. My latest thing is working up glazes for figs, running them under the broiler and then scraping the fruity, bubbly, steaming goo off onto a scoop of hard-frozen vanilla ice cream and then RUNNING to the couch to enjoy it mid-melt. If I trip, it's no good--pre-melt and post-melt are not the same experience, and plus, there's the mess on the carpet.

Last night I made some with orange juice and balsamic vinegar, and the flavor took me instantly to a childhood place: 711 E. 17th St. in Little Rock, AR, sitting on a counter stool at a bar with a yellow top and a boomerang pattern, watching my great-grandmother, Nanny, making Lane Cake.

I actually hated it. My little girl palate wasn't down with vinegar in a cake frosting, and Black Walnuts had some sort of acrid thing going on that alarmed me. And raisins? Meh. Too "lunchbox" to be on a cake. But somehow the taste memory lingered--like a happy virus lying dormant--and it came alive last night, transformed into something that made sense.

Turns out, though, that Nanny's recipe wasn't at all traditional. I've been poking around on the internet, and hers didn't have candied cherries or coconut or icing, per se. It was a vanilla-y, butter-y cake (well, oleo-y), and it had a cooked filling that featured vinegar, Black and English walnuts, pecans, and raisins that oozed out from between the layers and down the sides.

So what to do? I'm thinking of taking my fig/balsamic/orange thing and some of the other components of Nanny's cake and see if I can't come up with a hybrid. She was a great experimenter, so I feel certain she would approve.

First challenge: I'm not in the Ozarks. Where do I get Black Walnuts?

Good sitting weather.

2009-08-24T22:45:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it's not enough to ruminate alone.
Sometimes it's not enough to e-mail and tweet and blog and call and text.

It's good sitting weather outside tonight.

A porch would be called for.

A porch and two rocking chairs and creak-able boards.
And chuck-will's-widows in the distance.
Two friends sitting in the dark, sipping and sighing.

Saying nothing.
Saying everything.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=2745380

And here is a response to this post from my far away friend, Lea, who totally got it:

"If I had a mind to
I think Id like to shuffle on down where
I hear they do hear
Chuck Will's Widow in the air

tinkling icecubes in empty glasses
like soft spoken persuasions of longing
no expectations of flutterings
only constant calling

finally soothing, quieting
knowing the song will always be
for those who need to hear
there, diligent on duty"

Lea

Chris, we hardly knew ye.

2009-08-20T16:21:00.000-07:00

My friend Chris is dead. Story is, he took his own life Monday. I wasn't there. Truth is, he was always an enigma. The man could tell a story. He is one of the most intriguing figures I'll ever know. Never at peace. Until now. May he finally have some rest.

burnt toast and cow butter

2009-08-18T09:53:00.000-07:00

This morning I made some toast to serve as a vehicle for a slather of thick Greek yogurt and peach preserves. Naturally, I burned the toast. I took it from the toaster and carried it over to the sink to scrape, scrape, scrape the burned edges off and redeem the otherwise perfectly good slab of Macrina goodness from the countertop compost bucket AKA fruit fly hotspot.

I've burned lots of toast in my lifetime, and every.single.time.I.do, I think of my maternal grandmother, Mommo. When I was a kid, I spent lots of time at her house on E. 17th St. in Little Rock, where she lived with my grandfather and both her parents. I adored the rest of them, but had a somewhat conflicted relationship with her.

Here's an example of why: once I returned from a year abroad in Germany, and when I emerged from the jetway at the airport to see all the waiting throng (pre-TSA) after 12 months away, and sporting a super fab and hip German haircut, Mommo frowned, put her hands on her hips, and screamed: "Jenifer, why do you deliberately sabotage your appearance??? I HATE that haircut!!!" But that's a different story...

Mommo also had a tendency to burn toast, and in my stubborn child way, I refused to eat it. It was SULLIED! It was not PERFECT!!! Never mind that the toast had been scraped, that there were no more burned edges--there were no EDGES!!! At all!!! It was aesthetically compromised, and I demanded a do-over.

Now I understand why she was so frustrated with me. It's not even that she had been raised during the Great Depression and to throw away salvageable toast was unthinkable, it's just that I've learned in the meantime that the good bits of Macrina toast trump the uneven edge.

Even more puzzling was my childhood aversion to "cow butter." My paternal grandparents lived on a farm and my grandmother churned her own butter. It was ever present on the table and accompanied the homemade biscuits or cornbread that she made for crowds of Cecil B. DeMille proportions at every single meal. Oh, how everyone fawned over that butter. Problem was, I had seen the cow get milked--an unsavory process, to my teensy child eyes--had seen the churning process, had seen Mamaw's batwing arm undulate and flap as she churned, had seen the clots separate from the buttermilk, had seen the paddling to get the water out...and none of that added up in an appetizing way to "butter" for me.

So while everyone else clawed and scratched to get a bit of that creamy goodness on their bread or their cob of corn or their grits, I demanded Sherwin-Williams colored Mazola. Oleo! I wanted a stick of oleo on the table!

I think now of all the butter I missed. Of all the sweat and love and, yes, duty and fatigue, that Mamaw put into it. Of the biscuits she made every night and put in the icebox to haul out in the morning to come to temperature while she milked the cows or fed the chickens, of the aunts and uncles and cousins and the splendid table and the cedar chest I sat on, and the singing and laughter, and the red, red dirt of the road in front of the house, and the cow that produced that butter, and the ridiculous stick of waxy, y-e-l-l-o-w Mazola.

I want a do-over.

signs of life

2009-08-16T20:31:00.000-07:00

Between my apartment door and my plot in the community garden--about a block's worth of walk--is the gazebo of the Cascade People's Center. During the day, the benches are empty, and underneath them are plastic grocery bags of stuff, a sleeping bag here, a piece of cardboard there. As soon as dusk approaches, the people who belong to those things return one by one and prepare to stretch out for the night. This is where they live, but they know to be scarce during the light.

The rats, more plentiful, aren't bound by the fear of being ushered away, and they are brazen even in the bright sunshine.

Across from the gazebo is a small grove of flowering trees, under which is ground cover with small, glossy leaves (cool in the heat of the day) and a few rocks and concrete sculptures with mosaic. During our hot spell a couple of weeks ago, the people who are normally gone by day stayed. They didn't sit in the gazebo, but they sat in the cool ground cover under the trees.

Today I walked past that spot and this is what I saw. A Ben and Jerry's container, filled with dried up roses, blueberries, and other flora. Left behind.

I wonder if it was a shrine. Or a memorial.

Or the kind of sign of civilization that causes people to adorn their dinner tables with vases of flowers.

I hope there was once ice cream in that container, and that the people who ate it had good company and together took some comfort from that cold deliciousness.

I thought about picking it up and throwing it away, but on second thought, I determined that it was not trash.

Oh, to be taller. Or more willing to risk brambles.

2009-08-14T15:53:00.001-07:00

Water, water everywhere.

2009-08-13T18:06:00.000-07:00

Let the record show: on August 13, 2009, at 5:30 PM, your blogmistress heard thunder. At 5:35 PM, she was sitting in her car with the rain coming down in torrents. At 5:40 PM, she drove past the garden, and could swear she saw the hollyhocks straining upward, the fruit trees smiling from canopy to roots.

And now, at home, the window is open and the rain is still coming down. Not an isolated shower, this. Not a tease of droplets, after a parched summer. No, this is the rain that is rhythmic, that creates puddles, that rolls in waves down Fairview toward Lake Union, that causes cars to rev and scream their way up Denny Hill.

One might curse it, if it were December and the veil of wet darkness had grown heavy and with months of winter yet to come.

But it's not. It's August, after dry, after hot, and with more dry forecast.

So for this evening, it is simply relief and grace. I'm tempted to go to the garden and remember what it feels like to pull a weed out of sodden ground, but instead, I will sit by the open window--TV off--with a cup of tea.

Eyes closed.

Just the sound of the rain.

Blackberries on Mercer

2009-08-12T20:57:00.000-07:00

I stopped to wait for the "walk" signal during rush hour traffic on Mercer. I saw these blackberries, growing clean out of the pavement. I ate a few, perfect, sweet, plump, and I wished I had a bucket with me.

For an instant the whizzing traffic was the wind sweeping across the field, and the seagulls were Eastern Meadowlarks, and my t-shirt was an apron, and I would pick the berries and put them in my apron, and I would walk back to the house and the screen door would whine and slap as it shut behind me, and there would be a pie and strands of hair glued with sweat to my brow, and my sturdy prairie husband, after a long day of toil, would eat it with no words but with eyes closed in savoring, in appreciation.

Then the light changed and I picked my way through the jam of cars waiting to enter the I-5 ramp.

I might go back tomorrow.

"You were moving very slowly."

2009-08-10T21:00:00.000-07:00

Look. I don't really like light opera. I'm not much of a fan of musicals, either ("Spring Awakening" notwithstanding). But I'm a season ticket holder at a certain local theater, and this month's performance was, well, I don't quite know what it was. Wagner meets a barbecue meets the Porter Wagoner show meets a tractor pull meets...yeah. I don't know.

Still, I'm down with camp, and I figured it would be that. And so I enlisted my friend W, a Texan and a foodie, to go along. We started off with a fabulous cold, roasted chicken with a lovely mayonnaise, a bread-tomato salad, and a little wine at Café Presse. We sat outside. The breeze was cool, the sun was out, perfect! The evening was off to a great start!

Got to the theater and settled in. Check. Heard the announcement to turn off cell phones. Check. I took out my iPhone and dutifully flipped the little side switch to silence the thing and put it back in my purse. The...uhhhh...show? spectacle? hootenanny? started and I found my jaw tightening. Everyone around me was acting like this was the most profound thing they'd ever seen or heard, and I was just starting to analyze how that could be when I heard the tell-tale sign of someone's phone. Sigh.

How TIRESOME. I, and everyone else, started craning necks around in indignant disbelief--I mean, I wasn't so sure I liked this particular show, but it's the principle, people! It was very close to me, and the curious thing was that it wasn't a typical ringtone. It was Pink Martini! Pink Martini singing "Donde estas Yolanda" and that's no shrinking violet of a tune. All of a sudden it hit me. That was my Pandora radio on the iPhone, tuned to the Pink Martini station, and it WAS PLAYING. OUT LOUD. IN SPITE OF THE OFF SWITCH. What the...?!?!

My heart went from a dead stop to pounding out of my chest (oh, great, even MORE noise), and I fumbled with my purse and tried every possible way to turn the phone off without removing it from the muffling effect of its dark home. But, I mean, how do you turn a phone off that you think is already, you know, OFF?

I had to take it out. People are practically surrounding me with torches and pitchforks at this point (in their minds and mine), but I finally managed to turn the thing completely off.

I spent most of the rest of the first act trying to get my core body temperature and heart rate back to "normal" range, and eventually settled back into my low-grade disdain for the Teuto-Texan, Tex-Deutsch, uhhh, hybrid thing unfolding in front of me. OK, it was kind of entertaining, and there were some funny lines and songs, and so all was well.

Intermission came, the lights went up, and people dispersed. I recounted with horror to W what had transpired with the phone, and we had a good laugh.

Until a man and a woman appeared in the row in front of us, standing, looking down at me. "Are you the woman with the phone?" Oh, crap. I'm at Friedrichsstrasse border crossing. It's 1983 and I'm in East Berlin and the border guards know I haven't spent all my 25 East Marks and they're on to me, man. "Yeah, I'm terribly sorry, I didn't think it was mine, since I had turned the switch to "silence" and I..." They stopped me, disapprovingly. "You were moving very slowly." Um, well, yeah, I repeated that I, too was looking around for the perpetrator, since I had turned the switch, and... "We saw you and you were moving slowly. In such a situation you must react immediately and..." OK, now WAIT a minute. I interrupted. "Listen, I understand that. What YOU are not hearing is that I didn't think it was my phone! I had turned OFF the phone feature and somehow the radio app got activated--I don't understand myself--but I.DID.NOT.THINK.IT.WAS.MY.PHONE!" Finally, the woman seemed to get it and said I must have been mortified.

Meanwhile, she and her man friend are still towering over me, still have their arms crossed, are still speaking loudly, are still drawing attention to themselves as The Theater Grenzpolizei and me as the person trying to swim my way through the pan-Berlin sewers.

I think they finally just gave up. There's not much of a narrative arc to "earnest" and so they just shuffled back to their seats and sat down.

Oh, and the musical? The costumes were fun, and I'll never hear the word "hogtied" again without thinking of it.

not a fairytale

2009-08-10T09:26:00.000-07:00

My personal trainer at the gym keeps telling me to take a "day off" from time to time, and truth be told, that scares me. I know all the reasons I should: avoid boredom; avoid sense of deprivation; rattle my metabolism; give me tools to learn moderation; blahblahblah.

But the great fear is that I will get off the trail, find some beautiful valley, which will lead me to a mountain, which will reveal this and that and yet another thing I should behold...and, oh, the waterfall! and before you know it...I've lost the trail altogether. I will have eaten all the breadcrumbs I left to find my way back and there I'll be. Hansel and Gretel all rolled into one, reclining on the ground, stuffing her face with breadcrumbs at the foot of a waterfall.

footwashing

2009-07-30T09:40:00.000-07:00

The news today is HEAT, HEAT, and MORE HEAT.

And from the middle of this record heat wave, here in the 86 degree INTERIOR of my apartment at 8 AM, I have to say I'm tired of it.

I grew up in Arkansas, so I'm no stranger to heat like this. It's unrelenting there in the summer, and the humidity is always wrapped around you like a shawl of thick soup. And even though almost everyone has air conditioning these days, it was not so when I was a child.

And because I was a child, the standard tricks for cooling off were always linked to being cared for: my mom urging me to drink ice water, my dad placing a bowl of ice on the kitchen table and positioning an oscillating fan behind it and making sure that my brother and I were in its path as we ate our supper. My great-grandmother turning on the attic fan at night to pull the slightly cooler air in from outside and taking me to the bathroom to run cold water over my wrists, just at the pulse points: "it will cool your blood so you can sleep!" My other grandmother making all the children sit on the edges of the beds before retiring, as she moved from room to room in the dark with a basin of cold water and a washcloth, bathing our feet before we put them onto the white sheets.

I couldn't help thinking about these things the last few nights as I walked past the gazebo into the community garden at dusk to water my second crop of mustard greens and my beet seedlings for fall.

There were the men and women who frequent the benches and line the mulched beds beneath trees. Their plastic bags were with them, their pants legs rolled up, their shirts open, their hair plastered with sweat to their faces. They had water...I looked for that. But it was miserable. And though a couple smiled and greeted me and remarked on the misery of such temperatures, there were others who lowered their eyes as I passed.

I got to the shed and retrieved the water key and the watering can and set about my business. I wondered what would happen if I gathered up all those people and sat them down on one of the benches, one-by-one, and poured this cool water over their feet. If I would be refreshing them or just washing away my own sense of conflictedness about the social and cultural realities that structured my life and theirs.

I finished watering and walked back through the lushness (why, oh, why, didn't I plant tomatoes, this of all years? I could have even managed okra, I'm certain, with this weather!), and though I wanted to escape out the front entrance, I retraced my steps.

I walked back through the makeshift encampment, and I met the eyes of everyone who met mine.

There is no message to this musing, no end.

It's still very hot.

I miss my grandmothers.

Green beans for Salade Niçoise at Elizabeth's dinner party. New York, 6/20/09

2009-06-28T22:47:00.001-07:00

I harvested some garlic scapes tonight.

2009-06-07T20:18:00.000-07:00

I harvested some garlic scapes tonight, in order to allow my garlic bulbs to develop more robustly and juicily. Really? No. I harvested some garlic scapes tonight, in order to bring something back from the garden. To have a need for the little knife Zoe helped me find in the shed. To claim something besides a weed. To walk triumphantly back to my apartment, with dirty fingers and green bounty curling around them. To see something new and just picked in my sink. To make something that promises to be delicious and to put it in my refrigerator and know that when I get home after a stressful day at work tomorrow, there will be sunshine and greenness and dirt and community and sweat and pungent, garlicky hope in there to greet me and adorn a plate of pasta.

Nature, meet culture.

2009-05-09T17:23:00.000-07:00

Dull and cool.

2009-02-15T19:25:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite weathercasters described the current Seattle weather pattern as "dull and cool"--and so, too, is my mood. Not in the dumps, not in the clouds, not happy, not sad, just...dull and cool.

Since I'm a girl of extremes, this is a hard pattern for me to endure. Give me euphoria, I'm fine. Give me wailing-gnashing-of-teeth despair, I can handle it.

But dull and cool? That sends every instinct I have in the direction of something that excites the senses.

Like, oh, say, artisan chocolates. Or a tasting flight of red wines. Or a sampling of different meats at Salumi's.

If I were made of money and time, I could easily transfer that search for heightened sensory input to a Spa Walk. I just made that up, but it would be like an Art Walk. Except that instead of roaming from gallery to gallery, you would roam from spa to spa and try all the different services. Actually, there would be no roaming, because after the first one, you would be so blissed out that you would need to be pushed about on a massage table with wheels, preferably with some Velcro™ tabs keeping the modesty covers from flying off into the Puget Sound.

But you get the idea.

Creekside: or Elective Affinities

2008-12-09T17:02:00.000-08:00

You know a weekend is off to a good start when the stranger picking you up at the BART station has decent priorities: no road trip, however short, should begin without coffee, water, a bathroom (input/output) and a GPS. In other words, Noa and I hit it off in an instant.

Both on the invitation list for Elizabeth's 50th birthday party in Sonoma County, we knew each other only as, well, a fellow FOE: friend of Elizabeth. We sorted basic information out in the first few minutes--our connection and history with our mutual friend; level of A/C needed in the car; and tunes or no tunes, and then quickly moved on to the crucial things. Like, should we barrel ahead to Glen Ellen or will anyone notice if we stop at this free tasting at Cline on the right, right there, oh my God, it's free. Virtue won out, and we rolled past, heads craning wistfully in unison.

Elizabeth greeted us at the Gaige House Inn and was rightly proud of the place she had chosen to host us. It was beautiful, well-appointed, and serene, with jetted tubs in the suites and a constant supply of homemade cookies in the main house. The atmosphere was festive, and we all ran about like children afraid to miss something: there were the inviting suites, but oh, a hot tub and a pool, and a creek, and wineries, but look at all the people arriving and the hugging and squeals of recognition and long, evolved relationships playing out in the moments of embrace in the entryway. Just as we would settle back into the deep couches and leather chairs and our heartbeats would slow, someone else arrived, and we all jumped up again, so many panting puppies, clamoring to be part of the welcome. And in truth, it was our reunion, too. Even the ones never met in person were part of the storied pageant of Elizabeth's life, and we had all heard, had all seen.

At sundown, Noa started up to her room to observe the lighting of Shabbat candles. She was encouraged to stay in the living room and the handful of us there gathered around the table with her. In that moment, the peculiarities of our respective religious traditions didn't matter. We were with Noa as she lit the two candles and prayed, and with each other as we considered the week past and the weekend to come in silent, heartfelt connection. I stood with my eyes closed and my mind's voice uttered the names of all those around me, of Elizabeth, of her parents gone before her, of my own loved ones, and then eyes open and "Shabbat Shalom" and kisses all around. A deep, centering breath. An exhalation of peace. All the meanings of Sabbath knitted together and please don't let me cry so early in the weekend.

Neil had inquired at the Fig Café down the road about dinner for such a large group. While they didn't take reservations, they did think they could accommodate us with an hour's notice, so we gathered flashlights and headed single-file down the road in the dark. We must have been a sight to the other diners, all jammed as we were in the entryway, grown men and women giggling and pawing each other, beams still waving madly from the still-on flashlights stuck in coat pockets.

The restaurant staff moved tables together and finally we were seated and enjoying a lovely meal…except for Chad and Harry, whose plan to split a salad and a pizza was dashed by the acoustics in the venue and the fact that Terry was sitting between them. The dotted line of communication yielded up two salads and no pizza. Still, we all had fun and were not thrown out of the restaurant for laughing too much, even when we caused a scene trying to remember the name of the Magic Slate™ children's toy. "No, no, not the Etch-a-Sketch™"--and we all made the knob-turny motion with our two hands in the air, much to the alarm of patrons at the next table. Was this a sign? When a group, double-digit in size, starts to make the knob-turny motion in unison while cackling loudly, it does tend to cause a suspicious narrowing of eyes among those in proximity.

In keeping with the child theme, dessert for most of us was a glorified and decadent ice cream sandwich. Terry, though, chose the Artisan Cheese Plate, which inspired a round of pondering at my end of the table. Just once, I explained, I longed to see a Pasteurized Cheese Plate on the menu. A foil-wrapped wedge of Laughing Cow™, a squirt of Cheez Whiz™, a Kraft™ American Single in its cellophane wrap…and we were off into a pairing dilemma around the proper cracker for such a feast.

By the time we returned to the inn, most of us were starting to fade. A few toddled off to the hot tub, a few to enjoy their luscious suites, and a few had a glass of wine in the living room. I said goodnight and went to #10, filled the tub, cued up The Dale Warland Singers' "Lux Aurumque" on the iPod-outfitted stereo, and engaged the jets. Sacred choral music is not often thought of as the soundtrack to an evening in the Jacuzzi™, I'll grant it. I never claimed to be conventional.

I awoke Saturday and showered and made it to my 9:30 breakfast seating. Eve served me coffee with hot milk and Chad regaled us with stories of, um, his beautiful, beautiful friend Betty. It was moving. Really. I can't repeat it. But it involved a menorah and a nativity scene and that's all I'll say. *wiping tear* I gave Elizabeth a birthday card with an insert. She blushed.

After breakfast, we retired to the drawing room for a refined game of Jenga™. Both Eve and Noa refused to consult the rules, but it was exciting, if unsportsmanlike. While most of the group went to tour wineries, I and Neil and Terry wandered into town and had sandwiches at a sports bar-ish kind of place with aggressive flies and a man in a Hawaiian shirt. I wore my sunglasses. The sky was blue. Audaciously red Japanese maple leaves lined the gutters, and I grinned from ear to ear in sheer relaxation and brazen inattention to the work e-mails piling up in my inbox.

In the afternoon, I had a back facial in the spa room upstairs. This is like a facial, except on one's back--why it's not called a backcial, I couldn't say. But it involved the customary cleansers, exfoliants, and unguents and no shortage of massage. The highlight was the placing of warm rolled towels down either side of my torso, followed by the torturously slow dribbling of lines of hot oil, in sequence, over the whole of my back. I drifted from weeping to sleeping to drooling and back again. I may have asked the aesthetician to marry me in a particularly blissed out moment--I can't promise I didn't.

Everyone re-convened in the main house in their festive dinner party clothes. We filled cars and headed toward El Dorado Kitchen in Sonoma, where we were treated to riches upon riches: Prosecco toasts, nibblies on trays, a fabulous dinner punctuated by tributes and poems and dedications to Elizabeth from her family of friends, and mostly the flushed faces and sore cheek muscles that come from uninterrupted smiling and laughter, not to mention Pinot Noir. Chad, Harry, Robert, and I returned home in the rolling Gospel-mobile, Robert swaddled in his woolen wrap and leading us all in a rousing chorus of "This Little Light of Mine."

Somehow a water blessing ritual morphed into a spontaneous dance party, sacred and profane, seamless. Candace fetched her iPod player and Sharon, Neil, and I became DJ Triple Threat Old School, no doubt, yo. Why Neil had Chris Williamson on his iPod and I had the Weather Girls on mine is anyone's guess, and yet it seemed strangely appropriate.

Sunday morning ushered in the long goodbye. Lingering over breakfast, lingering over coffee, lingering over the newspaper, lingering over the notion that we should all make a pact to do this every year, to form an intentional retirement community at the end of it all (Neil: "this is my kind of assisted living"), to keep expansive and spacious and smile and grace and generous and gift all pedestrian words in our lives' vocabularies. Trust your instincts, indeed.

And now we're all back in our homes, whatever that means. Elizabeth, this blog's for you. We all showered you with words of gratitude for the gift of time, space, each other, and your enduring friendship, and we meant every word. I, for one, know that your best gift was seeing us all happy and in love with the experience you gave us. And you did. And we were.

Thank you, dear friend.

Don't rain on my parade.

2008-11-30T19:29:00.000-08:00

But, of course, since this is Seattle, a little rain never stops anyone.

Up at dark:thirty on Black Friday, eager to get downtown with my friend to claim a spot in a parking garage and have breakfast down by the water. I had made a hair appointment for 10:15 the month before, not realizing that it was the biggest shopping day of the year.

But we were in good shape, time-wise, and would have plenty of time to greet the day over coffee, eggs, and a view beforehand.

The closer we got to downtown, the more crowded it got. Surely this wasn't all from shopping (said the clueless nonstrategic shopper to herself under her breath), I mean, there were whole SCHOOLBUSES pulling into surface lots! I knew I was not the most committed to a bargain, and so perhaps there were truly people who made shopping on this day a varsity activity--I was never one of those people, and always chose Varsity Sleeping Late over shopping when given the chance.

But as we inched along in the car, it soon became clear. Long lines of gangly teenagers wearing ill-fitting band uniforms, Santa hats, and carrying all manner of instruments, check. Families with folding chairs, check. A parade! But it was raining! As a relative newcomer to Seattle, my first response was to be devastated for all the parade planners and participants, and then I realized that this was, of course, exactly what "normal" looked like here on the day after Thanksgiving. No one seemed concerned, so I quickly re-calibrated my expectations and looked for parking.

Once settled, we decided to scrap the sit-down breakfast and grabbed a latte and a breakfast snack from my favorite Italian purveyor.

We have a ritual. I enter with a flamboyant "Buon Giorno!" and he always puts his hands over his heart and flirts and tries to speak Italian with me. He knows I am all show and no go when it comes to Italian, but he loves me for trying. I would marry him in a heartbeat, if he promised to talk to me like that every morning.

Back out into the street, hoods pulled up and beverages steaming, we made our way past the staging area. Various kennel club breed groups play heavily in the Seattle parade scene, evidently, since we had to pick our way through sequential gaggles of Scotties, Dalmations, and English Sheepdogs, all bedecked in holiday attire (bless their patient but humiliated little canine hearts). They were delightful. Their owners frightened me as they held umbrellas over their charges.

The high school bands were all over the map. There was the disciplined and organized school from the affluent suburb, counting under their breath, with mascot-appliqued covers for the tubas and music with triplets. They were followed by the ragtag group with a young band leader, all marching out of sequence and playing Christmas medleys in the manageable key of C and in 4/4 time.

The boys in this group looked, to a one, like they would rather be swallowed up into the bowels of hell than submit themselves to the utter humiliation that was befalling them at this moment. Insensitive mothers ran out and got into their sons' faces with video cameras, beaming with pride as the boys closed their eyes in shame, still counting "1,2,3 and 4" as the rain dripped from their noses onto their music.

My favorite was the inner-city drum corps and their parents. The drummers took this as their debut onto the world stage, by God, and they were going to KICK it. Their parents ran through the crowds, staying even with the band, shouting encouragement and announcing "that's my baby!!!!" There was a dance group preceding them from the same school, and they strutted and turned and snapped and threw their heads back and everyone knew they were fine, fine, fine. Yes, ma'am.

I, for my part, indulged in a rare swelling of "oh, why didn't I have a child?" sentiment, as I watched dads hoist little ones onto their shoulders and moms clear the path for THEIR kids to get the candy being thrown from floats.

But that's not where I went with my life. I came here instead. To a life filled with ups and downs, regret and relief, incredible friends and a loving family, annoyances and blessings.

It's the end of the Thanksgiving weekend. I slept some, ate some, talked to many, collected a few experiences, have a refrigerator full of leftovers and an iPhone camera full of memories of a soggy parade.

It's not what my Aunt Mildred would have wanted for me, but I quite like it, all in all.

Not knowing what...

2008-11-11T16:52:00.000-08:00

I met D. at the bookstore at noon.

It was already a good day...a holiday, so I slept in. I had just stumbled down the stairs and started making coffee when he called at nine. We had planned to take advantage of the day off by doing something, but we weren't sure what.

Not knowing what--and committing to it--is a fine way to spend a windfall of time.

I padded around the apartment in my jammies for a while, sipping coffee, checking e-mail, deciding not to clean or organize or pay bills or any of those other things that would get in the way of not knowing what.

A quick shower, a pair of jeans (oh, midweek transgression, JEANS!), and out the door to wait for my cab.

I stood in the drizzle, considering the fallen flower blossoms next to the fallen leaves on the ground, and noted that this would not have been possible in Minnesota. There the seasons were distinct. A caesura after each stanza and before the next one began. Summer. Stop. Fall. Stop. Winter. CONTINUE FOREVER AND THEN STOP. Spring. Stop. But in Seattle, the seasons overlap and recede and progress in ways that are more insidious than jarring.

Once at the bookstore, D. and I poked around and picked books up and put them back down again. Not knowing what means you don't want to be heavy laden with books at the start of the day. We crossed the street and took our chances at getting a table at Carmine's. We were just early enough that it worked, and Maria plied us with sausages and polenta and Montepulciano, while Frank Sinatra crooned and Carmine roamed the room and made sure everyone was happy. We were. We laughed and talked and schemed and ate and toasted and knew that such days were gifts.

Back outside, we wandered around Pioneer Square, peeking in stores, tucking little purchases in my bag, not meeting the eyes of the park bench dwellers, wrapped in sodden blankets amidst their woeful lean-to's of bags and cardboard.

Drizzle and chill sent us onto a bus, and we careened along First Avenue to the Pike Place Market, where we wished we had room for the pierogi and bought rosmarino salami for later and regarded the vistas of vegetables and meats while planning the dinner parties we would throw if we were each made of time and money. We tucked into the Athenian and grabbed a booth by the window to watch the gulls and ferries out on the Sound and to warm up and sit for a bit.

We headed up to the core of downtown and said our goodbyes, D. to head back his way and me to walk home. I stopped in my favorite little Italian café and had a cookie and a coffee, the house wine of Seattle.

By now it was dark and had started drizzling again.

I made it home, head down but without the hood of my raincoat, and find myself sitting at the computer now, confronted once again with my Real Life. It's not a bad one, truth be told, and I almost feel guilty for having departures that are no better than the place I live.

blood is thicker

2008-10-18T14:29:00.000-07:00

I called my dad this morning because it was cold out.

I grew up in the hills of the Ozarks, and my family has made a culture out of the love of crisp air and fallen leaves. Perhaps it's because summers are so long and still and steamy there, or maybe it's more about the kinds of things that represent comfort in cold times: warm beverages, fires in fireplaces, enveloping clothes, the conversations that become more spacious as activity slows down.

He is always so delighted when I call him, and this time his brother had come up from his cabin to sit in front of the fire and talk. He got on the extension, and so I spent a while with them. My uncle and I differ on many things, and our relationship is evidence that blood is sometimes thicker than politics or religion--I adore him and he me. We talked about the algae abatement plan on the pond, and about the 4 bass he had caught. My dad filled me in on the beaver dam and the excellent crop of pears.

My uncle was crowing about the white oak that had been hit by lightning and about the wood pile it had produced last spring and about this morning being the first test of how good it was. It was good. He said he heard the birds sing when it got going and then launched into one of his stories: an old man, dying, claims he can hear birds calling from the fireplace. His wife leans in close and tells him that the birds sat on those branches when they were still a tree in the summertime, and that the birds' songs got stored up in them. Warming the branches again releases the song.

I told my uncle and my dad about one of my favorite short poems by Wendell Berry:

Best of any song is bird song in the quiet.
But first you must have the quiet.

The three of us sat there on the phone in the quiet and pondered that, and I heard my dad's hound dog out on the porch, wailing at the approaching mail truck still a mile away down the gravel road. When there are no cars, sound carries.

I am homesick this morning.

Not because I don't love my life--I do. But because I know where my life came from: the earth and angle of the light and persimmon trees and creeks and branches and hunting dogs and coffee cups and lichen-covered firewood.

And the people who are old and full of life. Who love me and each other in spite of differences. Who take time on a Saturday morning to have a conversation.

I wish I had a fireplace.

But I AM charming!

2008-10-07T16:58:00.000-07:00

So I'm sitting on the big swath of steps outside the Whole Foods in my neighborhood at noon today. A diverse group of people tends to go visit the various hot bars/cold bars/sandwich bars and whatnot at lunchtime and then spread out on these steps when the weather's nice.

I have my turkey chili and I'm hunkered down, legs akimbo. My shopping bag is on the step below me, between my legs, and I'm leaning way over, so I don't dribble chili on my grey silk scarf.

It's a great day. Blue sky, golden leaves, breezy and brisk, a little too cool to be sitting outside, but the sun is blazing down on us all and the mood reflects it.

This older woman walks in front of me, wearing a wool coat and carrying a pocketbook. You ladies know what I mean when I say pocketbook--carried over the arm in the crook of the elbow; metal clasp. She stops in front of me and glares.

Huh?

She walks a few steps further, looks sternly back over her shoulder, and stops. She turns around and comes back, and stops again.

Huh? I'm getting puzzled now.

Finally, she leans over towards me and hisses: "I miss the good old days when women still went to CHARM SCHOOL."

No title, no resolution.

2008-09-29T17:14:00.000-07:00

I. An employee was sitting in my office today, asking me to look over a grant application. I couldn't really do it, since I will be involved in deciding whether she gets the grant later, but I told her I would be happy to just listen to her describe her project to me and ask questions.

She started and I listened. It was fascinating, so naturally I jumped in every now and then and inserted a little comment or inquiry. She would cock her head and her eyes would get big and then she would tear into the answer. It was a great conversation.

She stayed a long time, and when she got up to leave she said she knew I couldn't be her mentor, given our relationship, but that the talk had made her think of me that way.

I just said "Oh, E, all I did was prime the pump. All that stuff was in there, dying to come out. It's a miracle I didn't get washed away once you opened up and let it go!"

II. I don't prime the pump in other people's lives enough. It's hard to get things going just enough and then to shut up. To let them come to their own conclusions in my presence. To bear witness to their shivering into an answer without wrapping them up in my ready-made cloak of authority.

III. I walk around a lot and I've begun to mark my walks by what I find in, on, or near chain-link fences. They're like see-through memorials, these fences. Sometimes I stand at a fence and wonder who left all the stuff there, the litter, the remnants, the discarded. I wonder if they were sauntering parallel to the fence and just dropped something distractedly, or if they walked right up to the fence, perpendicular-wise, acknowledged the barrier, and just said "well, I can't continue. I'll leave this here as a sign of where I gave up." I wonder where they all are now; whether they made it to the other side.

This is one of those blogs without resolution.

For you musicians, I'm sorry to leave you hanging on a 7th. ; )

Dream

2008-09-28T17:21:00.000-07:00

I'm parked outside a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop on 4th Avenue and my parents, aunts, uncles, and other extended family are in a caravan on the street. I need to run back to help my dad with something, and when I return, my car has been stolen. I panic and call the police to report it. Only the police department has adopted one of those "press 1 to report a rape; press 2 to report a break-in; press 3 to report a committed murder; press 4 to report an impending murder..." systems. I'm pressing ZERO ZERO ZERO, since that usually goes to a live person. Which is what I get. Only my live person is an outsourced police switchboard person in India somewhere and he can't understand me.

South Beach Diet™, you owe me.

2008-09-15T17:28:00.000-07:00

I busted up my knee about a month ago, and have not been able to get around on it until now. That, combined with the fact that I tend to go out for just about every single meal with my Fellow Gourmands and Varsity Enablers, aka my friends, has led to me feeling sluggish and icky.

So today was the day. Kick Start City! Wrestle those cravings to the ground! Phase I, hear I come!

I got all ready this weekend, buying the requisite groceries, lining up my cheese sticks and whatnot, trying to convince myself that Splenda™-sweetened fudgesicles were going to be JUUUUUUUST like a glass of Tempranillo in the evening...

I made my lunch for today, and got the greens and cherry tomatoes in their little bags, the tuna mixed up with a couple of capers, some Dijon, and some inky black olives, made sure I had some parceled out almonds for a snack...oh, I was feeling so organized and motivated! I had my Last Supper, only I substituted pasta for Body and Chianti for Blood, and then it was off to bed.

Fast forward to this morning. Overslept. By a lot. Leapt out of bed, cleared the bathtub edge like a doped up hurdler, wet my hair and reached for the...D'OH. Empty shower bottle. I had meant to replace it yesterday. OK, no problem, out of the shower, new bottle, back in without slipping in the pool of water on the floor, showered without further incident, back out, dried the pool and myself and my hair in record time (of course by now I was in a lather again, but no time to remedy that), wrestled with clothes in the closet, leaving a pile of empty hangers twisted in the dark recesses of the closet floor, threw on my day's raiment and then hobbled down the stairs.

Oh, right. South Beach. No grabbing a cheddar-dill scone at the coffeehouse on my way to work. Um, OK. Now imagine this next part speeded up, with The William Tell Overture playing: a little tin of tomato juice is retrieved from the fridge and set down next to the computer. I break an egg into a bowl and beat it quickly and dump it into a skillet with some Smart Balance™ and diced Canadian-style bacon and a trace of low-fat cheddar cheese. Easy peasy! Onto a plate it goes, and I sit down to log into LL quickly as I'm eating.

I grab my tomato juice can and shake vigorously, and...

NOOOOOOOO. I had already opened it!

Tomato juice all over me, the keyboard, the pens in my pen holder, the wall, the rug under my desk chair.

I wish I could say that the scene got reeled back in, rewind-style, and that it was just as gripping* as the first part of my tale, but truth be told: it was more like a newsreel of a defeated WWII soldier trudging along in a rain-gutted road, vacant-eyed and resigned to whatever was over the horizon, as I cleaned up the mess and changed clothes.

Anyway, I finally got to work, half an hour late, and announced my entrance with a loud, dramatic "DON'T ANYONE CROSS ME TODAY, I MEAN IT" as I brandished my bag of almonds.

Tomorrow is another day.

*Editorial license

Fugue: Hot, Mild, Hot Again

2008-08-20T17:33:00.000-07:00

I. I remarked to someone that you can take the folks out of Arkansas, but you can't take the Arkansas out of the folks. My parents, brother, and sister-in-law arrived last Wednesday, and I picked them up at the airport. They were here for four days and I learned that a) they could charm a dog off a meat truck; b) my mother had never seen a bluetooth ("What is that thing going off in that man's ear??? There's blue lights buzzing in there!!!!"); c) I am too impatient with them as they grow older; d) the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

I made them go sailing. My mother, once seated, refused to move a muscle and my father hunkered down in the floor, terrified we would keel over and they would be dashed into the Puget Sound to be gobbled up by errant killer whales.

I took them to La Carta de Oaxaca and made them do a tasting flight of salsas, from mild to hot. My mom said "I'll tell you what, that's so hot, it'll melt your earwax!" but proceeded to do everything but clean the little bowls out with her finger.

We went to the locks to watch the salmon leap and flop up the salmon ladder and my dad said he wished he'd brought his pole.

My brother and I tried to act like we weren't as alike as we are and my sister-in-law assured us that, oh, yes, we were.

II. On Sunday morning, we got up at dark:thirty in order to get to the airport plenty early for their 7:30 AM flight. Since they had booked their travel, I had learned that I would need to go to a memorial service back in Minnesota, so I got a flight at 9. I got them to their gate and went on to mine. I left without incident and they sat and sat and sat, while their bum plane was repaired. They missed their connection in Atlanta and had to spend the night, but not before they called me at a diner in Edina, MN--interrupting my dinner with a friend--to frantically ask me to "get on my iPhone" and look for another flight. No luck.

III. Speaking of dinners with friends, I tried my best to soak in time with a beloved one instead of squandering it by regretting all the time I didn't spend with him when I lived in MN and had the chance. But now I'm here to say that I regret that water under the bridge. B, come visit. Door's always open for you. I live within walking distance of 40 movie screens.

IV. I drove to my old town, and past my house. The kids who bought it (BLESS THEIR HEARTS) have repaired one of the sagging retaining walls and have domesticated it entirely. Lots of hearts and geese and "welcome to our home!" signs and it is so not me and so appropriate for that town. Which may explain why I'm no longer in it. But I'm glad they're happy and I hope that I left good juju there for them.

I think about the stray hairs from my now-dead feline companion that must get sucked up into their vacuum cleaner now and again, silky black ghosts of a sweet soul who loved that house more than I did.

V. The memorial service. Let us be silent and reverent about that. A life well-lived was celebrated and a passing mourned. My shoulder was soaked with tears by someone who feels lost and alone right now. Krumkake was baked in preparation, a box of ashes was picked up at the mortuary and some flowers arranged, a Norwegian flag draped around the vase. Songs were sung and a certain woman from Seattle remembered that music resonating through her vocal chords and face is like a sacred drug, even when the way out is through passages swollen from crying. A throng of old friends was greeted. Family and friends were gathered around a table afterwards to laugh and tell stories and eat and sigh and wonder how the empty space will ever be less gaping, knowing, though, that it will.

I realized that my decision to leave them all and move to Seattle was absolutely the right one.

And yet I still stopped at a Scandinavian import store on the way out of town and bought a Krumkake iron to be sent to me.

My life is like a fugue. The one line ends, the other line picks up, but the first line weaves back in, again and again.

Don, Rest in Peace

2008-08-07T13:48:00.000-07:00

When Don and I were in high school a few miles from each other, we both spent many summer weekends at the Buffalo River in the Arkansas Ozarks. It was an ongoing party, and everyone belonged. There was indiscretion and wild abandon and merriment, floating the river during the day and talking by multiple campfires at night.

We joked over the last few years that we had probably encountered each other back then, just by the law of averages and geography.

When we met the first time in person, we were convinced of it, though. Either that or we had been separated at birth, one of us snatched from the nursery in a hospital in Van Buren County, to be separated from the other for 45 years--never mind the couple of years in difference in age. So clear was our recognition of each other. So intense was the feeling of seeing kin in each other.

We used to end phone calls with "you're my people." I told this to his sister yesterday and she started crying and said "me and him, we're just alike. I tell that to everybody I love."

He used to comment on my blogs with "it's time for you to come home."

He knew I was a restless soul and loved crashing around in the world. But he knew, and mirrored back to me in every conversation, that I was a girl from the Ozarks before I was ever anything else, and that red dirt and sorghum molasses and sweet tea were running through my veins as surely as blood.

He delighted in pointing out the soft contours of my accent, where the South remained and couldn't be hidden.

He made me promise never to dumb myself down. God, D, no one can get away with finding my vulnerability and saying it out loud. How did you pull that off?

I've been thinking a lot about the various handwringings about how to honor him.

And I think he wouldn't want it.

He was not a fan of the grand gesture.

I think he would want us to love each other, not suffer fools, say the hard word when it needed to be said, and extend the shoulder to cry on when that was called for.

He would want us to own our own issues and work on them with no need for attention.

He would want us to laugh at ridiculous youtube videos and poke fun at excess and putting on of airs.

He would want us to live our lives with integrity and call people and text them and IM them and remind them that someone far away thought they were worth the bandwidth and time.

He would want us to drink ordinary coffee and eat lots of Petit Jean bacon and say "pfffffft" when someone turned up their nose at it.

And shop at Wal-Mart.

And get on with our lives, and give away our love and commitments wantonly.

I am proud that he thought I deserved his friendship. I will miss him terribly.

city. summer.

2008-07-15T13:43:00.000-07:00

I. I ate lunch at an outdoor table today, since the only thing better than outdoor dining in Seattle in July is, um, well, lots of things...but it's pretty darned good. Trust me.

At the table next to me was a middle-aged man, attractive in that Dick-Clark-You'll-Take-My-Youth-Elixir-Out-Of-My-Cold-Dead-Hands kind of way. He was wearing a wedding ring and got up every few minutes to take a call from a cell phone. He always came over closer to my table, turning his back on his dining companion, and spoke in hushed tones to someone named "yes, dear"--I presumed his wife.

Remaining at the table was a very young man, Asian, petite, with delicate features, a furrowed brow, and a nervous titter. His English was passable, but clearly not his first language. He was wearing a tennis visor. He looked in the opposite direction when his companion took his calls, with his fork down and his hands in his lap.

Between interruptions, the middle-aged man fawned urgently, apologetically, over the young one. He cut his food for him, cooed, and took little morsels between two fingers and fed them to him, as if to a bird.

When they were finished, the older man stood up and pointed to the hotel entrance next to the patio where we were sitting, and the young man shuffled off, looking for affirmation over his shoulder.

I wanted to hope that this was all a happy scene, but I know it wasn't.

II. After my evening walk to Lake Union, I returned home by way of a little community garden. Everything is a tangle of vines, fragrance, color, and texture right now. Raspberries hang over the fence. Lilies stick out between the pickets.

I cut through the garden on a public path, stopping to admire a particularly lovely blossom, or to squeeze a bit of lavender between my fingers to smell.

Under an overgrown rosemary jungle, I saw a book, open. Holding it was a woman, laid out on a sleeping bag. Next to her were multiple shopping bags, her shoes, several recycled jugs, and some cigarettes.

She lives there.

People like to say "those who live outdoors" instead of "the homeless" here. Supposedly it bestows dignity on the outdoor dwellers. But I think it just bestows a guilt-free pass on the rest of us.

Why, it's just like urban camping, when you put it that way...

III. Next day: I walked downtown for lunch and passed three homeless people sitting in the entrance to a building. They were having a big old time, laughing and sharing a cigarette. I looked over and smiled at them as I strode past, and the woman sitting between the two men leapt to her feet.

"Will you do something for us?"

I confess to ripping through my mental rolodex of excuses for why I was not about to give them money. She held out a disposable camera.

"Will you take a picture of us? We're best friends."

My shoulders relaxed and I smiled again, this time the awkward smile of someone pinballing between relief, guilt, and admiration. I took the plastic camera and the woman ran to crouch down between her two friends. They all slung their arms over each other and put their faces together, mugging for the moment.

"One, two, three, smile!"

I returned the camera, they thanked me, and I walked away, brow furrowed...but of course it wouldn't have made any sense at all for them to have a real camera.

Where would they keep it?

I had cauliflower and thyme soup with goat cheese crostini for lunch.

Eddie, where have you been all my life?

2008-07-14T22:17:00.000-07:00

I have to say that I came late to Eddie Izzard. Thanks to my friend Joseph, I finally put together the person I had seen in dramatic roles with Eddie the Comic. As much as I loved the first bits of the the first DVD I saw, I have come to become one of those One Drink Shy of a Stalker sorts of fans. And, I mean, I'm OLD. And have a grown-up job! And a Ph.D.! And...and...and it's unseemly, isn't it?

Still, I adore him. Not just because he's funny and darling, but because he's brilliant and HUMANE and ETHICAL and involved in the world.

In preparation for his show at the Paramount in Seattle, I sat in front of my computer when the pre-sale tickets were about to become available, password in hand. Refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh, and then SCORE! Front row seats. I knew I would move heaven and earth to get Joseph up here from California to go with me, because I couldn't imagine a more perfect Eddie Accomplice for the evening.

To say we loved it is a ridiculous understatement. To say I now bark orders to my co-workers in fake Latin and mimed coughs (*cough* TIGER *cough*) doesn't quite get it. To say I ask people accusingly where their quilt is when I'm missing something only makes sense to people who saw the show.

But here's the deal: this is a man who, in spite of his fame and cult following, stands for things. He puts his money where his mouth is. He advocates and gives back and pays forward. He comes out of the stage door and talks to people as if they're real, respected fellow citizens.

He wears his various passions on his sleeve unapologetically, and couldn't the world use a hell of a lot more of that? All while nursing aching faces from two hours of sustained laughing and grinning.

One could do worse on a Saturday night.

Vancouver

2008-07-05T16:24:00.000-07:00

7/4/08

I. This train is bound for glory...
or at least Vancouver.

It's Thursday, and my window seat gives me a view of the fields. The window on the other side of the aisle, by the seat I want, the one with the Puget Sound, is covered with a curtain.

A whole family has spread itself out, like in a tent, settled in for a nap in the sun. But there is no sun, only grey mist, and my earphones dripping thick sounds of Leonard Cohen into my head.

They have Indian passports and several generations. The grandmother is my seatmate, and her purple silk sari brushes my arm whenever she moves. She burbles and gurgles in a tongue I don't understand, and her daughter is up and down from her own seat to adjust footrests, open packets of food, dispense water, and offer tissues.

When I am old, I will be the Blanche DuBois of train travel...relying on the kindness of strangers to show me how the seat reclines. No daughter will hover over me.

But for now, I am young and free and and moving north, with a train whistle heralding my approach.

II. There are two kinds of travelers. One kind knows things and has seen pictures of things and has read things about their destinations. They are going to strange places in search of the familiar.

The other kind sets out with no itinerary, no plan, no knowledge of the new place. There is a need to be estranged, to start from scratch, to think that a surprise might be around every corner, and on every unknown face.

Sometimes I'm the former. This time I'm the latter.

III. I'm sitting on a low wall at Robson Square, near the Law Courts. Gaggles of attorneys stride by in both directions, pulling rolling briefcases along. It's humid here, and warmer than the forecast had predicted. The men carry their suit jackets over their shoulders on one finger. Sweat is lightly stamped on the backs of their dress shirts, and they don't care. But the women dab constantly at their temples and pull their blouses away from their backs, as they walk fast and look up at the men and never stop smiling.

I wonder what percentage of a Canadian man's Canadian dollar a Canadian woman earns.

IV. I sit in the hotel bar alone at the end of the evening. I have walked and walked and walked, but my head is less fatigued than my body, so I look at the wine menu. I choose a tasting flight of British Columbia reds, and the little glasses are brought to me with olives and smoked almonds. It's a Thursday night, so I'm all alone, except for a couple of businessmen at the bar proper, and the musicians.

The drummer is young, white, and blonde. The guitarist is old, black, and dressed to the nines. He is decked out, from his excellent fedora to his spats, and he knows he looks fine. I'm seated right next to them, and the old man looks at me as he speaks into the microphone: "How are you, young lady?" Oh, candlelight, you lying seductress. I grin at him and tell him I am well--even better, now that I am here and about to hear him play. They do a couple of old jazz standards and forget that I'm there.

I write and sip and think that I might get a fedora before too long...

7/6/08

Rainy Saturdays and big art museums in old buildings are meant for each other. I hit the Vancouver Art Gallery as soon as they opened, because there were two shows I really wanted to see.

I spent the first part of the day on the two floors devoted to "KRAZY!"--a wonderful collection of cartoons, comics, graphic novels, animé, video, and everything in between. It was curated by Art Spiegelman of "MAUS" fame, and it was truly remarkable.

Aside from the fact that I loved it myself, I loved that the spaces were packed with young people who might not otherwise have darkened the doors of a museum...

But the second show was the one I really came for: Zhang Huan's "Altered States"--a retrospective of his work, spanning his first years in China, his move to New York, and then his return to Shanghai.

His most recent work is what caught my fascination. When he returned to China, he started observing people at Buddhist temples. They would signal their devotion by burning incense and then placing the sticks in the sand at the foot of the Buddha. Barrels and barrels of incense ash were produced on a daily basis, and Huan contracted with the temples to haul it away. He now makes large scale sculptures of human forms, using the incense ash.

As he puts it, he is sculpting out of the dreams and wishes of his countrymen, and the sculptures--full of desire and fervent devotion, but soon ashes to ashes--will disintegrate over time.

I sat on a bench and stared and stared. No one else seemed particularly drawn to these sculptures, but I could not take my eyes off of them. They made me cry and smile at the same time.

The train ride home was odd, because I was again swept into an Indian family. The northbound grandmother wore a sari; the southbound grandmother wore a sweater that smelled of mothballs.

Both of them wore brown socks that had the big toe divided from the rest of the sock.

This time I had the Puget Sound window, and beautiful scenery. I saw two bald eagles. I listened to my iPod. I wrote in my little Moleskine cahier.

I came home.

Now I am going to crawl into my very own bed and rest well. I've already got the coffee ground and in the pot for tomorrow. All I have to do is stumble down the stairs, open the door for the Sunday paper, hit "on" and greet the day...

good night, all.

Big Hand

2008-06-23T16:20:00.000-07:00

It has to be a really dark night, still, no moon.

It has to be a red dirt country road in the South, no streetlights, no pavement, no cars.

It has to be still, no breeze, and warm and sticky.

It has to be quiet. The only sound can be junebugs and chuck-will's-widows and katydids and locusts and a distant hound. And the nervous titter of little children and the long, crunching strides of grown-up feet on dirt and rocks, with the quicker, irregular pat-pat-pats of the kids.

Way down the road is someone with a broom--the Big Hand--hiding in the brush in the ditch or behind a cedar stand on the side of the road. No one knows where the Big Hand is. No one knows.

And everyone walks, single file, ten feet or so apart, down the road in the dark in the stillness and the quiet, waiting and walking.

The grown-ups have broad smiles on their faces in the darkness, remembering what the kids are feeling right now.

The kids are about to throw up from excitement and fear--but not really, because Daddy is right behind me.

Please don't let the Big Hand get me. Please let me be the one the Big Hand gets.

At some point, unpredictably, the person with the broom LEAPS out into the road, shrieking "BIG HAND!!!!" and runs after whatever shadowy shape is closest. Everyone goes wild, screaming, laughing, running, tripping, hearts pounding out of ribcages, and the ruckus can be heard in every holler for miles.

The first person to get swatted becomes the Big Hand, and the game starts over.

Once we get back to the house, Mamaw gives us water from the well bucket and we all get on our pallets on the floor in the various rooms. She goes from kid to kid with a basin and cloths, washing first our faces and then our feet. We cover up with the sheets and giggle, still juiced up with adrenaline. We hear the muffled conversation and laughter of our parents and aunts and uncles out on the porch and finally, like a drug has taken effect, we bat our eyes more slowly, let go of our cousin's hand under the covers, and drift off to sleep.

It's a good game.

bran muffin

2008-06-22T16:19:00.000-07:00

One of my great pleasures in Seattle is strolling through the Pike Place Market early in the morning, just as the vendors are setting up.

No tourists yet, just old Asian women arranging flowers and strapping lads raking ice into place for the fish.

USUALLY.

Today, a gaggle of tottering oldsters, all bedecked with tour company baseball caps, cameras, fanny packs, and brand new Rockport shoes had been disgorged by a bus, and they were shuffling hither and yon. My friends and I were trying to get through the line at Lowell's, so we could order our eggs and find a table by the window. There were any number of container barges and cruise ships and ferries to be monitored as we drank our coffee, and we were eager to get seated and start the stirring, sipping, and reflecting.

But no, the universe had other things in mind. A snarky cashier needed to be brought together with said oldsters, all of whom were hard of hearing. The cashier had a litany, and these congregants had not realized they were slacking in their half of the call and response:

"I want eggs."

"How do you want them?"

"And a bran muffin."

"THE EGGS, how do you want them?"

"And a cup of coffee."

"How do you want the EGGS?"

This was bad enough, but then disaster struck when a blueberry muffin was produced instead of a bran muffin. The wife of the man ordering had already walked off with the muffin, as he was trying to exchange it for a bran. Between the wife not understanding that she had the wrong muffin, the man not understanding that he had to return the blueberry if he wanted to get a bran, and the cashier not understanding that no amount of shouting and tattoo-wielding and piercing-clinking was going to intimidate the old man and his wife into understanding the dilemma, the line had snaked out the door and into the produce stand next door.

S. and I tried to ask the universe "how can we help you give the man his bran muffin so that he will get the !&@! out of the line?" (we really took the zen movie to heart), and eventually the universe caved in and spoke to the cashier: "Look, Chica, forget about the math. Two out, money for one in, it's all good."

All this time, "Disco Inferno" was playing. I thought about inviting the whole assembled congregation to forget about the muffins and join me in a little liturgical dance, but I refrained.

It was an oddly satisfying, if cognitively dissonant, soundtrack to the morning.

Zen. Not.

2008-06-20T16:14:00.000-07:00

I. How to Cook Your Life is a lovely documentary about Zen Chef Edward Espe Brown. I watched it with my guest/collaborator over the course of our evenings, as a peaceful reward to our hard work during the days. S. was able to flow effortlessly into the film. She is more focused and obedient than I. When EEB said to the people in the film to breathe deeply, S. breathed deeply, too. When he said to BE the package of cheese you can't get open--to ASK the cheese package how you can help it get open--S. nodded solemnly in affirmation.

By this time, of course, I had hauled my laptop over into my lap and was checking the weather, answering e-mail, reading blogs, and wondering how the Garage Band application works.

II. I had noticed earlier in the day that my tires were dangerously low. Let me quickly gloss over the embarrassing fact that I've never put air in my own tires. Oh, right, I can't gloss over that, damn it, since the fact is central to this story. OK, so sue me, I've never done it. I've always been a religious "every 3 months" oil changer, and the tires were always serviced then, and somehow I've just made it coasting through luck on Good Air Juju. But sure enough, I knew that I had to take the plunge, so S. and I set out to find a gas station.

I'll skip over the 20 minutes of us standing in front of the air machine, reading and re-reading the instructions. I'll delete the section about the panhandlers trying to get money from us. Finally, S. went in and confessed our shame to the assembled masses in the convenience store area, and returned with some guy wearing a solicitous smirk, who showed us how to do it.

It looked so easy. The first one was done, he stood up and handed me the hose, and sauntered (I swear the grin reached all the way around the back of his head) away.

I grasped the hose like I was holding on to the head of a deadly snake and went to my knees.

I took the cap off the, uh, air thingie, and promptly dropped it into the wheel well (or so I thought). I scrambled and patted the concrete, reamed out the inside of the wheel well with my blind, fumbling hand, and S. said the thought she saw something on the ground.

I'll skip the part about S. crawling under the car, looking for the cap and getting stuck in bubblegum, and me shouting to the tire "TELL ME HOW I CAN HELP YOU FILL YOURSELF, YOU @!$#!! TIRE!!!"

By this time, we were both weeping with laughter, and had pretty much tied the entire car up in a huge bow made of the air hose. But the tires are all plumped out at roughly 30...um, some measurement.

III. I don't see myself joining a Zen monastery anytime soon. I'm pretty sure I would be kicked out in the first 10 minutes.

Compline

2008-06-02T16:12:00.000-07:00

However befuddled I am as they begin, they are just that: a beginning. I should never doubt Mondays. I fidgeted my way through the entire day at work, so I could come home and have no meeting, no plan, no social engagement, no responsibility to be the boss of me.

Work shoes off, walking shoes on, and I was out the door. I meandered up and down the streets of my new neighborhood, discovering things I've never seen while in my car. A tiny park with a group of people playing, of all things, kickball.

Oooh, Danny Dixon, wherever you are, you are still frozen in my mind as the hottest sixth-grader ever. The sound that reddish ball makes when it's kicked, hard, across the field brings you right into sweet focus in my mind's eye. My now transported pre-pubescent heart flutters at your memory...but my grown-up heart re-boots and suspects you're lying on a couch in a wife-beater, somewhere in rural Arkansas, drinking a Pabst right about now.

Down at Lake Union, I step between goose turds and pigeons hoping for a bit of bread from the boys eating hot dogs gotten from who knows where. The sun is behind clouds and there's a hole in the wooden boat moored at the landing.

I head back up the hill and step into a taco stand for dinner. There are 6 people in there and we are each alone. We are divided evenly between those of us staring straight into our food and those of us with eyes darting from person to person, looking at the space above each person's head, conscious of how we display our chewing, our swallowing.

I e-mail an iPhone picture and drop a glop of guacamole onto my pant leg.

I don't care.

It's the end of the day and one needn't worry about messes. 7:35 PM and I am blessedly unfettered.

I might just take a bath.

With bubbles.

Now begins The Great Silence.

SIFF and meat loaf

2008-05-20T16:10:00.000-07:00

Soooo...

I leave my office at noon, since the showers have blown through and the sun is coming out. I need to pick up my tickets for the Seattle International Film Festival downtown, and think this will a) take care of an errand; b) give me a reason for a noontime walk.

Two blocks away, and I remember that I have left the confirmation sheets lying in my printer, so I dash back home, race upstairs, grab the documents, and am off again.

By the time I screech into the SIFF booth at Pacific Place, I'm deep into my lunch hour, and am starting to realize how silly it is to try to pack all of this into 60 minutes. But I figure "breathless, and wearing sunglasses" is a good persona for someone buying SIFF tickets, no?

The boi working the desk is quite ultra-deluxe, in that all dressed in black, tragically hip kind of way, but he's got nothing on me. I'm wearing black and charcoal. Ha.

I saunter up, grin, lean forward, and triumphantly (but not TOO triumphantly, because that would be so NOT cool) slap my sheets of paper down in front of him.

He's all business and grabs the sheets up, scanning the sheets for meaning.

Can he not find the confirmation code?
Has the printer garbled something up?
Did it spit out blank paper?

None of the above.

He looks up at me with the blank stare of someone being addressed in a completely foreign tongue.

What I have handed him is an unsolicited but dutifully printed out e-mail from my mother, giving step-by-step instructions for how to prepare her MEAT LOAF.

CLUNK.

That is the sound of my pride hitting the concrete floor.

linen

2008-05-15T16:09:00.000-07:00

I wore linen for the first time this season.

I retrieved it from the back of the closet last night and washed it, just so I could hang it up to dry and be all fragrant and fresh when I pulled it over my head this morning.

I opened the window in my office this morning so the breeze could ripple the fabric and my bangs.

I smiled a lot.

I looked down at my painted toes in my sandals and wiggled them. The polish is a bit chipped. My socks didn't care this winter, but the sun pays attention to these things.

one (wo)man's trash is another (wo)man's treasure

2008-05-09T20:23:00.000-07:00

This is part travelblogue, part journal, part connection to far-flung friends, part tap-tap-tapping of fingers on touchstone keys.

I'm drunk on lack of sleep and overstimulation--too woozy to offer up anything coherent, too wired to let it go and slip under the covers.

I've been to the other side of the country and back, I helped a friend say goodbye to her mother, I kissed men in subways and women on the street next to steam pipes. I broke bread with people I see too infrequently. I learned to drink single-malt scotch. I took iPhone pictures and fired them, little moments in time, deployed across space to the other coast and into a friend's eyes. Sometimes the images were refracted back to me through his wry comments.

I took in all manner of art and believed that it's the only thing that will save us in the end. I told this to people standing next to me and they agreed.

I saw a dress made of discarded teabags. It was part of a rite of passage. I was humbled to stand next to it and its creator.

I thought it high time to start singing again. I wonder if I will.

I was greeted like a soldier returning from war at my favorite restaurant, even though I was there last week…I realized that I was a "regular" someplace. Me of the restless soul.

I relinquished my competence and control and softened into a willingness to be pampered. A good night's sleep and I'll be back to my usual armored self, but with a chink.

I made someone shush and listen to geeky choral music. He didn't mind.

I taught a friend a word I love that doesn't exist in English.

It's "Lebenskünstler" and it means an artist whose medium is life itself.

I think my life of dabbling in every experience I could wrestle to the ground has always been an attempt to be one of those. Singing and taking pictures and painting and weaving and throwing pots and acting and writing have all just been a foil, a legitimation of my gluttonous desire to do, see, hear, taste, feel, and know everything in my range.

I unpacked my bag, washed its contents, and folded it all right back into the bag.

The car picks me up at 0530 tomorrow, and off I go again.

yin-yang

2008-05-01T19:42:00.000-07:00

+ I love my iPhone and the ability to take reasonably decent pictures and send them to my friends on the spot. This one is so green and pink and red and fresh and lush and spring. I know spring isn't an adjective. Sue me. ; )

- I hate living in a condo I love, only to have the owner try to sell it out from under me. From his perspective, I've been paying his mortgage while he speculates and invests. Now that he has a little cash flow issue, on the market it goes. "Can we go month to month when your lease expires at the end of this month?" he asks. "Sure we can" I answer. After two weeks of disrupting showings, I have given notice and paid a deposit on a new loft. He's horrified! He has cash flow issues! What about the rent I've been paying? Karma, dude. I feel not one speck of guilt. OK, maybe one tiny specklet, but only because I'm a nice person.

+ I love procrastinating about going to the gym, finally going at the last possible moment in the evening, and coming home to feel great AND virtuous.

- I hate suspecting that someone called me yesterday under the guise of wanting to chat, and spent half an hour to get around to what he really wanted: to know if a mutual friend is "available" for a romantic relationship. Just call and ask that. We're not in junior high. Don't waste my time.

+ I love that I am curious.

- I hate that I have a great recipe for taramosalata and a jar of tarama and no one around to appreciate it.

+ I love that I get to go get my hair cut tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I have such short hair so that I can go really often, and I'm equally sure that I'm more interested in the shampoo and head massage ritual than the cut.

- I hate that I don't have any particular flourish of an ending to this blog.

+ I love that my friends won't care and others won't read it in the first place.

who I am

2008-04-30T21:14:00.001-07:00

"Rinsk" is a made-up name, given to me by my dad. Sometimes he embellishes it, and then it's "Rinsky-dinsky"--I don't know where it came from, but he's the only one who calls me that. It's not his serious name for me, when the conversation involves money or death or pain or disease or war. It's a "come home soon" name. A "you are smart and funny and you're my daughter" name.

I am so going to blog about you (or: my 50th birthday)

2008-04-22T16:05:00.000-07:00

I am so going to blog about you.

Actually, I'm not.

I'm going to blog about strawberries, and how giant, red, sweet, perfect, succulent ones should be in abundant supply at all times.

And I'm also going to blog about good beds and vacation house kitchens that are well-stocked and porcelain bathtubs in spacious, wood-floored bathrooms.

And people who open up their home with gracious hospitality and an attitude of "well, why wouldn't we?"--even though they had never met me.

And old, weathered men who burst with excitement to show me the nesting peregrines with a spotting scope and go on and on about "breathing" season.

And seagulls that let me walk right up to them.

And friends who make long drives, bearing healing balm and laughter.

And other friends who take off work early to buy me dinner and presents and make me wish I lived closer.

And old movie houses with seats that are beaten down by decades of use.

And tractor pulls and purple flowers that are everywhere but no one knows what they're called and windchimes and competitive joke-telling and handmade birthday cards.

And having perfect company and a supportive witness as I gingerly stepped from one decade into the next.

And feeling, therefore, so rich.

patronage

2008-04-09T16:03:00.000-07:00

I was the first patron of a young artist yesterday.

I had seen a student show and remarked on one of the pieces. I got a call from the studio and was told that the young man was there packing up everything, if I wanted to come down. He had been told that there was someone interested in his work, so he had a heads up.

He was so nervous! He feverishly laid everything out for me, including other things in his portfolio, things he pulled out of binders...I half expected him to empty his pockets onto the table. He talked very earnestly about the series of prints, and put things into the "I'm happy with this" pile or the "this one's not very strong" pile.

I asked him how he was going to price everything and he looked like a deer in the headlights. He asked how much I would pay, and I said he would have to just get right over that. He was going to have to step up and name a price, as awkward as I know that felt to him.

He gulped and said a number. I said I would take #4 of the series. He grinned and looked over at his instructor and SHE grinned. I took his e-mail address and asked him to set the piece aside for me.

As I left, I heard the unmistakable sound of a "high five" being exchanged, and before the door closed behind me, he was babbling and giggling like mad.

It almost doesn't even matter if I get the piece now, although it's intended as a gift. Watching that kid go from "one day I want to be an artist" to "I'm an artist and I just sold my first piece" in the course of a half hour was worth what I paid and more.

Easter weekend '08

2008-03-23T16:01:00.000-07:00

Friday afternoon, 6 PM, work is done for the week and it's still light out. It's that long shadow kind of day, and I walk in and out of patches of sunlight where they fall between downtown buildings. It's a familiar straight shot to the water from my place, up and down hills, and I take it fast...long strides distancing me from the stress of the last few days. When I crest 2nd Avenue, I get my first glimpse of Elliott Bay, and I grin every single time. This is the perfect end to the week, and it's become a (good weather) ritual: down to the water, snapping iPhone photos as I go, along the market, back up Pike Street, the dive-y Vietnamese noodle shop, and home.

There's a blind man with a guitar in front of the piroshky shop, singing "you are all I need…I lay all of me at your feet." At his feet is an empty coffee can that plinks when coins hit it. At the next corner is a blind man sitting cross-legged with a blind dog. And walking along Pike, a blind man with his stick in front of him and a group of ne'er-do-well hecklers following along behind. I feel guilty for my sight, and for wanting to photograph all of them, for reasons that are unclear to me.

Crossing 3rd is an old woman dressed in white from head to toe, carrying a 24-pack of white toilet paper.

Saturday is a blur of tax documents, photocopying, organizing, and cursing.

Today brings a 70mm screening of Lawrence of Arabia at the Cinerama, which will clock in at closer to four hours than three…I'm thinking aisle seat…followed by tapas and the theater with friends.

I can find no parallel to resurrection in my weekend. I have risen, indeed, but only from my bed on an Easter morning in March in Seattle.

waste not, want not

2008-03-17T15:59:00.000-07:00

My great-grandmother fried two chickens every Sunday. She parceled out all the pieces to everyone around the big oblong table, and took the fried chicken backs for herself. She claimed they were her favorite. She had hair down past her hips, and every night she removed the hairpins, unloosed the bun, and brushed her hair. She then pulled the hair out of the hairbrush and put it in a bag. When the bag was full, she stuffed the hair into homemade pincushions that she fashioned out of fabric scraps and sewed them up.

She made all my childhood clothes.

Spring has sprung for the time being in Seattle. It may rain tomorrow or the next day, so I walked and walked and walked in the sunshine today. I was greedy and demanding as I pulled down the rays to my upturned face, and I took no notice of whether or not I was getting more than my fair share.

I don't feel the least bit guilty.

just melting sand

2008-03-12T15:53:00.000-07:00

I spent yesterday watching glassblowers in a timbered shelter in the middle of old growth forest north of Seattle.

Every turn from I-5 got progressively more remote. The trees got taller and thicker, the lichens greener and hardier. Small signs warned “no visitors”, but we had an invitation (would I have been less excited if everyone could wander in? I fear I would have been…). We were a bit early, so we parked the car and stood in silence near the pond.

Silence is not golden, it’s green and lush and slick with the remnants of a rain shower.

At the appointed time, we walked in single file up the path to the hot-glass shop, where 2 teams of artists were working. It was cold out, so the closer we got to the kilns, the more delicious it felt. We didn’t want to be in the way (or maybe it felt too sacred up close…like walking right up to an altar or standing on a grave), so we stood back a bit, where cold outside air and hot fire air played tug of war. The whole space glowed orange, and all the artists’ faces seemed to beam. Maybe it was just the sweat, but surely giving birth to such incredible shapes helped. Globs of molten glass were pulled out of the oven on poles, cajoled and prodded into swirls and orbs with torches and metal paddles. How utterly improbable.

I was transfixed.

I want to do that.

I want to throw my coat off, reach toward the fire, birth beauty, and sweat and beam.

One artist looked up at me and knew me. “It’s your first time.” He grinned at my speechlessness.

“We’re just melting some sand, baby. Just melting sand.”

grown up and cool

2008-02-26T15:52:00.000-08:00

One of the things I love about living downtown is that I can leave work, shake the dust of the office off my shoes, and then head into the traffic and lights and humanity at "Feierabend"--a not very translatable German word that is both the end of the work day and the greeting you give to people to acknowledge that transition from professional to personal.

This evening I walked down to the Pike Place Market and bought a loaf of 8-grain bread at a bakery. The guy was horrified that he didn't have the 12-grain that I wanted, and he gave me his card and told me to call ahead and that he would hold a loaf for me next time...and then he gave me the 8-grain for half price.

A homeless woman shouted out to me "I love your earrings!!! It's the first thing I noticed when you walked by! Those are GREAT!" And she grinned a big, lopsided grin and ducked, waving, into an alleyway.

Another woman fell out of her wheelchair and hit her head on the street at the corner of 6th and Pine and 15 people swooped down to tend to her, while another 5 directed traffic away from and her and 10 more called 911 on their cellphones. I was useless, except to hold her hand and talk to her. She said she was afraid, and to please keep talking to her until help came. Once the firetruck with the first responders arrived, about the same time as the woman's son got there, everyone dispersed silently. We'll never see each other again, so we can't test the bond that formed in a second around the woman on the ground.

I stopped in a little risotteria and had a glass of barbera and a plate of tomato-y rice by candlelight, all by myself. I felt more grown up than alone. The waiter talked to me as if he found it more cool than pathetic to serve a single woman with a loaf of bread and cheeks flushed from a walk and a streetside drama, surreptitiously taking iPhone pictures at passersby on the other side of the window.

Dean Martin crooned.

It was good.

living the questions

2008-02-18T15:45:00.000-08:00

What a gorgeous morning. What began as a series of curses, a smashing of the alarm clock with a hammer, a stumbling into clothes and to the gym--I forgot it was a holiday and made an appointment with my trainer for dark:thirty, stupidstupidstupid, but ah, well, now it's done--has turned into a bright expanse of day ahead of me.

I may take a leisurely bath with salts and unguents instead of a utilitarian shower.

I may walk down to the Sculpture Park and turn my face toward the sun instead of ticking off a life maintenance errand from my list.

And I may ponder questions instead of tilting at the windmills of my life, my career, my relationships, my age, money, unrequited loves, unredeemed dreams...there's time enough for that tomorrow and tomorrow.

...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903
in Letters to a Young Poet

In Praise of the Humble Saltine

2008-02-11T15:43:00.000-08:00

I don't quite remember when it happened. First there were Ritz crackers, then Wheat Thins and Triscuit. Then "water biscuits" and pita chips and lavosh and rosemary-scented crispbreads of every stripe.

But somewhere along the line, the humble saltine cracker was tossed aside as old school, as passé, as soooo last century.

The saltine was the go-to snack of childhood camping trips and interminable car rides to visit relatives in the southern part of the state. The package held up well, and served as deferential companion to cans of Armour potted meat, vienna sausages, and sardines, along with a little bottle of Louisiana hot sauce: a long, rectangular, waxed paper bridesmaid.

My dad would pull the Rambler over to a roadside picnic table, and we would all peel our sweaty skin from the car seats and race over to get spots on the end. My brother was terribly fair-skinned, so my mom would secure a cloth diaper around his little shoulders with a diaper pin to prevent "blistering"--it was never just a sunburn, always the apocalyptic-sounding blistering.

The saltine tin came out, then the cans (the potted meat can was wrapped in white paper), the bottle of hot sauce, and then--finally--the metal ice chest with bottles of Nehi grape soda and Big Red. If we were lucky, there would be a bag of orange slices or marshmallow circus peanuts to round out the repast.

My stomach churns to think about most of those things today. It's a wonder we survived.

But saltines, I feel, got a bad rap. Tossed aside for no reason other than fashion, they did yeoman's work for years and years as vehicle for peanut butter and pimiento cheese, as binder for salmon croquettes, and as the lunchtime accompaniment to chili or tomato soup (the night time upgrade was cornbread for chili and grilled cheese for the soup).

I, too, passed them by for more glamorous starch, until I got sick in December. I was eating lots of soup, and, well, being sick just calls for comfort any way you can get it. No mom here, no grandmother to dab at my fevered brow, no dad with a brand new coloring book and crayons from Woolworth's...

...so I reprised the saltine, out of sheer nostalgia and desire for something that hearkened back to home.

And now, by God, I'm leaving Oz and its fancy crispbread, and returning, unapologetically, to the saltines of my youth.

There's no place like home.
There's no place like home.
There's no place like home.

chosen families

2008-02-05T13:34:00.000-08:00

Since I was flying out of Arkansas at dark:thirty on Sunday morning, I decided to spend the night with my friends J and J, who live in Little Rock, as opposed to on a dirt road an hour and a half north.

After a too-short visit and too much wine, I crawled into "my" bed, which is always made up for me as if I am the Queen of Sheba, and forced myself into a few hours of fitful sleep before 0500 reveille. They got up with me and made me cappuccino while I showered, stood in their robes on the porch in the dark, and waved and blew kisses as I drove away. What sweet boys.

Uneventful flights to NYC.

First revelation on the ground: the iPhone's sensitive "touch" pad is way too sensitive for keyboarding in a speeding and lurching New York yellow cab. My "I landed safely" e-mail to my parents and J and J ended up being something like "A banjo ate me." Imagine their horror. I'm sure my mother believed that her worst fears about NYC had been confirmed.

I raced to meet Tara for a late brunch. We picked up right where we left off (only I come to lament that we live on opposite coasts more and more, each time we hang out). This time we had a lively conversation about things that are usually shared in privacy. The fact that conversation pretty much stopped between the two guys to my left tells me that we had an audience, who got an earful. They also got to witness two grown women fall on a basket of gougeres with passionate abandon.

Because we were so focused on our conversation, we didn't notice at first that everyone in our area had left, the waitstaff had removed all the tables but ours, and the water had been withheld for hours. Passive-aggressive bastards. By the time we looked up, we resembled a table for two in the middle of a vast, empty dance floor.

We relocated to a Korean Tea House, where T had good tea and I had something that smelled and tasted like squash baby food. But the Asian plinky-plinky (T's term) musical rendition of "Hey, Jude" wafting through the air made us giggly, and we continued on until dusk and "look at the time"--since we both had other plans for the evening.

I can't say too much about the transcendent meal I had at Bouley that evening, because it would be sinful to lord it over the blogosphere. It.Was.To.Die.For. I got back to the hotel 5 minutes before the end of the Super Bowl, just in time to figure out that all the subsequent hullabaloo outside was happy cheering and not Cloverfield screaming.

Meeting the next day. Blahblah.

Got to Newark for my 6:45 PM flight at 4:30. That would have been fine, except for the fact that my flight didn't actually leave until 9:45. The plane had been a victim of a bird strike, which meant lots of cleaning, checking, and maintenance men coming out with tales of carnage afterwards. The pilot warned us not to be alarmed if we smelled a Thanksgiving turkey sort of odor as he fired up the engines. TMI. Let us live in ignorant bliss, please.

After 6 hours of flying (and sleeping a bit, thanks to the Not Full Flight Gods, the incantation of a helpful friend, and a row to myself), I got home. Thankful to have spent time with my family, both blood and chosen, thankful to have friends in all corners of the world, and thankful to have a wonderful Tempur-pedic mattress to come home to.

I'm not particularly thankful that the Giants won the Super Bowl. I had about as much investment in that game as in, um, some other thing in which I have little investment.

This is so (not) about me.

2008-01-28T13:31:00.000-08:00

My aunt will die within the next few hours.

I started a webpage for our family on a non-profit site that allows loved ones to communicate with each other, sign a guestbook, leave loving, thoughtful, supportive words to each other as we all wait these last days.

I did this freely.

I adore my family. At our core, we are very similar and share the same values. But I express mine very differently.

The guestbook is already filled with deeply felt sentiments that have the common thread of the Lord's loving arms, making the final journey to a heavenly home, trusting in the comfort of Jesus.

This is so not about me.

This is about a faith life that my aunt has led and that has been shared by her family and friends--all reflected in these comments.

This is so not about me.

I want to write in the guestbook in big bold letters that this is sad and she is dying and we should all be wailing and there is no heavenly home and this is sad and she is dying and going away and she has suffered and she will have rest and we will miss her and this is sad this is sad this is sad.

I am sad and I don't feel embraced at all by the Lord right now.

This is so not about me.
This is about the life she has led and how she and her family choose to understand this part of her journey.

I want to be selfless.

I want to be gracious.

I want to understand grace.