Thankful Fors

I've been thinking this week about what I'm thankful for. There are so many things, some trivial, some not so. I am thankful for my yoga teacher, Helen McGee, tonight, because my yoga practice last night reminded me that yoga, and life, are work juxtaposed with joy.

Sometimes I feel that because I have no children of my own, I have no joy, but there is so much joy interspersed throughout my life in small doses that I sometimes forget it. Joy does not come from other people, even children: it comes from inside. It is important to remember, when something is difficult or annoying, like &$@@%# chair pose, or revolved triangle, or whatever doesn't seem to be working any given week, that there is joy to be found not only in doing it, but in the fact that I can do it. Life is also work, and joy, in equal measure. Sometimes in yoga, and in work, I find myself striving so hard. To get, to be, to achieve the next thing, the next level. I have to remind myself to be joyful at that very second, relax for just a second the need to strive endlessly toward an ever-moving horizon.

I am grateful for my home, which is calm and warm and welcoming. I know that although I don't have a "home" to go home to for the holidays, where my husband Mike is will always be home. I will always have a home that feels like coming home with my friend Karen. I am grateful for being able to practice yoga, because I may not always be strong or able enough to do so. I am grateful for all of my little girls and boys, who allow me to share some of the overflowing love that I have for little people with them, and give some back, too. (Children, that is, not Little People.)



I am so grateful for my friendship with my grandparents. Maybe it wasn't the best thing that my parents had children so young, but it has given me the opportunity to come to know my grandparents as people and as friends. I feel very lucky to have had that chance. I'm thankful that I still have my parents, and I hope that we can find ways to understand each other better.

I am grateful for my friends, new and old. I have always been the sort of person who doesn't notice the passing of time with friends. I am happy to jump back in wherever we last left off.

I am grateful for my husband Mike. He is really a good man. Today, I listened to him talk to the one-millionth lost tourist, trying to find Stag's Leap Wine Cellars, who ended up here at Stags' Leap Winery. He was patient and good-humored and kind.

When I drive to the winery a couple of days each week, there is a house on a corner on the north-west side of Redwood Road. There is always a ladder leaning horizontally against the wall, and a small pickup truck in the driveway. In the house lives a grandfather, and probably a grandmother. On weekdays, the grandfather is outside in the front yard in the morning with a fat old, amiable chocolate labrador retriever and a toddler who looks to be just starting to really walk on his own.

When I see them outside in the yard, it makes me cry, and I don't know why. It makes my day when they are there as I speed by. I feel like I want them to be there forever, walking down the sidewalk along the edge of the lawn, or down the front path. Today, the baby boy was throwing an apple into the street. The dog was wagging his tail slowly. I've honked and waved at them before, but they don't get it. The grandfather just looks puzzled as he half-waves, trying to recognize the person in the car. I'm thankful for them, too.

I guess I've gotten to that point in my life where I start to cry at just about anything. I feel like I realize how precious things are, and it has turned me into a gooey human Cadbury egg, less the tooth-killing sweetness. There are tons of things that aren't perfect in my life, but at this moment, this 2007 day before Thanksgiving moment, I don't really care. Life is so short and so full of little treasures every day. There are so many other things I'm grateful for that I haven't listed. If you're one of them, I mean you, too. Remember the part about equal parts work and joy, and allow yourself the joy part, even if you're cleaning stalls and pitching hay.

I'm just glad to be here.

Pumpkin Soup Reminiscing

The first time I ever had pumpkin soup was on a prom date. I was a junior, and I was with my senior boyfriend, Steve Hilliker. Not only was Steve a senior, but he was on the swim team, ski club, speech team, and cute and nice, too. I was head over heels for him. He really was my first official love. He was a gentleman. It took me years before I learned to let someone be that nice to me and not get weirded out by it. We played video games at the arcade (Centipede and Galaga, anyone?) and made out like crazed weasels at every opportunity, until he graduated, got a scholarship to West Point and I felt dumped and deserted. (Selfish thinking there.) I am sure he is still a very nice guy. I still think about him, and his very nice family, and wonder what they are doing now, and where they are.

His family once invited me to go out to a special dinner with them. The restaurant was Le Bistro in Stockton (apparently still going strong). Le Bistro was so fancy that Modestans would drive all the way to Stockton to eat there. I had never been to anyplace so fancy. I studied up on Miss Manners, who said to use the silverware from the outside in, and not to order the cheapest or the most expensive dish, but to order something in the middle. I think. I was still petrified about going. My friend Susan Reilly, who had actually eaten there once before, briefed me on the menu: "Just order the pepper steak," she said. She loaned me a dress, too, a truly 80's masterpiece with vertical mint and white stripes, a little round white collar and a pink bow.

There were waiters in long white aprons and an actual wine list that was presented to the host. Big, leather-bound menus that completely hid the person reading them. I think I smiled at Steve from behind mine. I ordered the pepper steak. I used my silverware from the outside in. I think.

Thinking back on that life-changing meal, where I first learned that my table was my domain, I realize that it wasn't that night that I had the pumpkin soup. Or if it was, I don't specifically remember it that night. I just remember the pepper steak, which is damn good if you ever get to try it, and the total awkwardness of being at a fancy restaurant with your boyfriend and his worldly parents. For the prom, Steve took me back to Le Bistro. It was a very grown-up thing to do. I think the waiter might have recognized him and offered him the wine list just to make him feel mature, but he was too nice a guy to actually order from it. Or I made that up. I'm sorry to say that I don't remember the soup on that night either, but we had other things on our minds. Dancing.

So the following year, after Steve went away to college and I ruled the school (ha!), I took my new boyfriend to the prom. As adorable as he was, it wasn't a love thing. It was half rebound, half power trip, half infatuation. (Ok, so I did not major in math.) He was very, very cute, but he was also a freshman, and I was a senior. I was in charge. Of course, I took him to the "only" fine restaurant. I cringe to think of how we must have appeared and acted then, knowing now how much waiters at very nice restaurants adore prom nights.

We went with another couple. All three were younger than me, and not as well-versed in fine dining, compared to my TWO prior experiences. So many cringe-worthy memories are pelting me right now that I can barely keep up. Strawberries speared with too-long dragon lady red fingernails applied especially for prom night. Lots of "shushing" to my dining companions for being too silly. There's more, but it's too embarrassing to speak of.

And the pumpkin soup. The pumpkin soup that would begin an obsession. Creamy, pumpkin-y, strange and delicious. I must have at least ten pumpkin soup recipes in my big cookbook binder. Here is the one that I eventually made up myself. It varies in its incarnations, and I think the best one was one I emailed a couple of years ago and now can't find. Now's the time of year to use it. Football season. Homecoming. Think of boyfriends and chilly, foggy mornings, and fall leaves and sweaters.

Pumpkin Soup

Ingredients
2 cups pumpkin (canned or home-roasted and pureed, or butternut squash, or acorn squash)
1/2 onion finely diced
1 carrot, finely diced
(Carrot and onion are optional-- they give a fuller, sweeter flavor, but if you don't have a stick blender or a regular blender to use to puree the soup, and you don't want weird little bits to chew, you'll have to strain the soup after it cooks. I hate blending, and I hate straining, so I just leave the bits, or cook it long enough that they mush into the soup.)
Butter or olive oil
1 tsp salt
Pepper
3-4 fresh sage leaves, minced
3 cups liquid of your choice. More if you need to stretch it out. I like a mix of mostly chicken stock finished with heavy cream, rather than the other way around. I am sure that the soup at Le Bistro was mostly cream with a bit of pumpkin stirred in. You could use milk, or water and stock, or water and milk or basically whatever you have on hand. This soup is very loosely organized.

Method
Saute onion and carrot in butter or olive oil in a large saucepan until tender and slightly caramelized. Add sage, stir. You can add minced garlic, if you like.

Add pumpkin. Cook a little bit so that the pumpkin gets some caramelizing in, too.

Add stock.

(If desired, this is where you would puree with stick blender or blender. Don't forget to put the top on loosely if you use a blender.)

Return to pan. Heat to a simmer. Stir and season with salt and pepper to your liking. At the very end, lower the heat and stir in the heavy cream. Check the salt level.

Nice with a little spiral of creme fraiche and a whole sage leaf on top.

Ok, goodnight. I'm going to sleep. May visions of sugar-freshmen dance in your heads.

P.S. Canned pumpkin is really good for you and has only one ingredient.

Trivia: I once worked in a factory where I helped with training materials for jobs which included "Pumpkin Elevator Operator".

The Natural

I have learned from a reliable source that this is Robert Redford's favorite dishwashing soap.

Yes, it is true.

I don't know if you know this, but Mr. Redford lives at least part of the time around Calistoga, which is a little north of here. And apparently, he shops at a health food store I sometimes go to in St. Helena. After I selected this detergent, all by myself, the owner told me that he stocks it because Bob came in and asked him to. The owner said he told Bob he was concerned about wine glasses being sparkling, this being wine country and all. Bob sent down his assistant later that day with a freshly washed wine glass to show him (the health food store owner) how nicely they came out, even without rinse aid.

I don't actually know if anyone calls him Bob, but I didn't want to keep typing Robert Redford. Although that might mean that my blog comes up on searches for him. Which could be mildly interesting for fans, or just annoying.

Endorsed by eco-conscious wineglass-washing celebrities everywhere.

Thanksgiving Recipes

Thanksgiving has always been a strange time for me. Through the years, my family has come apart and come back together in different ways, then apart again. In the early days, we'd get together at Grandma's house in Fort Ord, and later in Lake Tahoe, where it was crisp and sometimes snowy, for a very traditional dinner. I still remember the time we all laughed along with "The Laughing Woodsman" as the music went back and forth between the stereo speakers behind the table. As in a lot of families, there was rivalry and squabbling, to which the children were mostly oblivious. There was always a slightly uncomfortable but jovial mix of clever sarcasm, good-natured fun-poking, and hurt feelings.

I have always loved to cook, and I dreamed of someday being the one to host the family, make beautiful, delicious food, and mend the things that were broken. Over the years, we've all gotten so far away, physically and in many cases, emotionally. My own house has always been too small to be the place to go. The older I've gotten, the more I've realized that the family I wanted to bring together doesn't really want to be together. Nobody wants to travel to or be trapped at anyone else's house. We've all found our own tribes, and it seems like everyone is happy to be where they are. Even my grandparents, who still live in Tahoe, seem content to be among their many friends at favorite restaurants and casinos for the holidays. I used to feel bad about the fact that they were "alone" and took it personally that they didn't want to try and recreate the old family holiday at their house or mine. I have realized that they have a whole world of people who care about them up there, and that is where they prefer to be. Who can blame them?

Maybe everyone had an ideal in their head, based on movies and television commercials where women in frilly aprons lift steamy pies from the oven, and golden turkeys bask in the glow of candles and familial smiles, and we just never were that. Or maybe it was just me. Seems like everyone got disappointed over the years and gave up. There was laughter, and funny things happened, like the time my Aunt Cathy said, "Gee, that's FART!" really loudly at the table when she meant to say "funny and smart." But there were fights, too.

The year my parents got divorced, my dad moved out, and my sister ran away. Obviously we weren't going to Grandma's that year. My mom and I were left to our own devices, so we made lasagna and watched a movie and had a very nice time. Very "you and me against the world"-- at least we had each other. And then after that, everyone had their own thing to do, including Mom, and that short-lived tradition was out the window.

For Mike and I, the holiday soon became a marathon of driving and eating, going from my dad and stepmom's house to his mom's house, and back to my mom's house--or the house where my mom was having dinner, back to my dad's house. At some point, my sister would show up at my dad's with her husband or boyfriend, her children and her migraine, having just run a similar race. Eventually, everyone just decided to do it his or her own way, and that was that. (40 years of family history in a very small nutshell.)

These days, Mike and I enjoy the calm of our house, the fact that no one has to drive anywhere, watch football or shout, and especially our tradition of dinner at Monty and Emilio's. Our gracious friends host a Thanksgiving that is warm, cozy and welcoming-- and delicious on top of that. Maybe we have a nice time because no one there is related. Maybe we just don't know each other well enough yet... Mike and I started going as "strays" a few years ago, but it has become what we like to do, and now it feels like family. I am already looking forward to the oyster dressing.

Mike and I still make up our own Thanksgiving dinner on another day of the week anyway so that I get a chance to cook and bake. It just wouldn't be Thanksgiving without pie for breakfast, leftover stuffing and turkey sandwiches. And it is absolutely required that I make a grand turkey pot pie, usually the Sunday after the holiday, with a big puffy crust and peas, carrots, potatoes and celery. Since this post has gotten so long, I'll post that recipe later on.

Here are my "It wouldn't be Thanksgiving without..." recipes:

Herb Bread Stuffing
1 Acme herb "slab" cut into medium cubes and toasted in the oven or dried
(this is a rosemary-herb "slipper" style bread, sort of like focaccia, without as much oil, very spongy and golden with a tender crust.)
3 ribs celery, chopped
1-2 onions, chopped
1 Fuji or Granny Smith Apple, chopped or diced
1/2 c dried cherries (optional)
2-4 cups chicken stock
Sage
Thyme
Salt and Pepper
Optional: 2 chicken-cherry or traditional sage pork sausages, de-skinned, browned and crumbled

Saute celery and onion (and sausage if desired) until soft and slightly golden. Add sage, thyme and apple. Deglaze pan with chicken stock, stir. Add cherries.
In a big bowl, mix bread, veggies and stock from pan. Keep adding extra chicken stock until very moist. The bread will soak up all of the stock. You can place the bowl in the refrigerator and turn the mix once or twice if you are making this in advance, or place in a sturdy zip-top bag. Just keep adding stock until the bread won't soak up any more. Depending on how fine you like your stuffing, you can mash it around with a fork or leave it more chunky.
Spread into a glass baking dish and bake until brown and crispy on top.

Creamed Onions
3-5 white onions (depending on how many people you are feeding)
butter/olive oil
heavy cream
salt
pepper
nutmeg

Cook onions over low heat in 1/2 butter 1/2 olive oil until quite golden and caramelized. Add cream, salt, pepper and a pinch of nutmeg. Allow to thicken, but not to boil. Slightly sweet, oniony and creamy, these are a great condiment for turkey.

Dinner Rolls
4+ C Flour
1 1/4 tsp yeast
1 C milk
1/3 c sugar
1/3 c butter
1 tsp salt
2 eggs

Mix 2 C flour + yeast
Melt butter with milk, sugar and salt in a small pan
Add to flour and yeat mixture
Stir in eggs
Mix in remaining flour until soft and sticky
Knead for at least 5 minutes
Rise 1 hour
Punch down
Rest 10 minutes
Shape
Rise 30 minutes
Bake 12-15 minutes- undercooked is better than overbaked
(I don't know which sort of a wash gives these rolls a shiny gloss, but you could use it if you like.)

Butter pie crust
1 c butter (try half butter and half Spectrum shortening)
2 c flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 c ice water
(The original recipe, from Cooking Light, calls for 1/4 cup sugar as well. I find that the pumpkin custard takes longer to bake than the fruit pies for which the crust was designed, and the sugar browns too much. Mom's crust was always a sturdy, straightforward Crisco, flour, salt and ice water.)

Mom's Famous (Secret) Pumpkin Pie
(Makes 2 pies)
2 crusts, rolled and chilled
1 Large can pumpkin (or equivalent amount home-roasted and pureed): Libby is best.
2 cans sweetened condensed (NOT evaporated) milk: Borden is best.
2 large eggs
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp eac ginger and nutmeg
+/- 2 C HOT water

Mix and pour into crusts
Bake at 375 degrees 50-55 minutes until center ever so slightly wiggly

THE Cranberry Sauce
My favorite cranberry sauce is the recipe on the bag (courtesy of Ocean Spray):

1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 12-ounce package fresh or frozen cranberries, rinsed and drained.

Combine water and sugar in a medium saucepan. Bring to boil; add cranberries, return to boil. Reduce heat and boil gently for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Cover and cool completely at room temperature. Refrigerate until serving time. Makes 2 1/4 cups.

If you are the sort that likes orange zest and stuff in yours, go for it.

Mashed Potatoes and Gravy
I'm noting these because they are essential to the holiday, but I'm not providing a recipe per se. Everyone makes theirs a little differently. I always leave the skin on the potatoes. I'm a skin-eating type of person. I wash everything (contrary to popular belief) but I peel nothing. Sometimes I use Yukon Golds, sometimes regular old brown russets. Never red potatoes. We also always use 1/2 butter and 1/2 olive oil, milk, soy milk or cream, plenty of pepper and a little salt. As for the gravy, just make sure you mix the flour well with the butter or turkey drippings to start, then add liquid a little at a time and whisk. Cold flour, dropped into liquid, will make those nasty lumps.

There's always a green vegetable, like green beans or broccoli, and maybe a salad, but who really cares? Nobody daydreams about green beans the weeks before the holiday, do they?

At Monty's, there are other traditions from his past, like oyster dressing and turnips. The relish plate was always an important feature at Grandma's. A crystal dish with baby corn, little pickles, red and white radishes, celery, and the all-important canned black olives. It is an obligatory part of Thanksgiving to stick olives on all of your fingers and eat them off one by one. When black olives no longer fit on your fingers, you are a grown-up, and you must host your own Thanksgiving dinner. Those are the rules. Grandma (who is an avid recipe collector) made a cranberry sauce at least one year with orange zest and ginger ale in it. Maybe even canned mandarins. It was a very fancy cranberry relish and everyone seemed to like it.

For me, I love to start first thing in the morning with the rolls, getting that warm yeasty smell all through the house, then put the pies in to bake while the rolls are rising so that they can cool and set before dinner. I love to take a walk or do something brisk that gets the circulation going in between cooking and eating, like raking leaves, so that I feel like I've done something physical during the day besides kneading bread.

Fall

If you can't tell how dark those apples are, they are so dark that someone saw them in my basket and said, "Wow, are those apples?" They are called Arkansas Blacks. They taste a little like a cross between a Granny Smith and a Red Delicious. I still prefer Fujis. But they were so beautiful I couldn't resist them.

A Birthday Card

This card is one of several by Cara Scissoria (Scissor-ee-uh? Scizz-or-eeya?) of Los Angeles. These cards crack me up.

The Silver Palette

Ok, I'm not going to explain or justify this. I was shopping for a pair of plain black dress pants when I came across this silver trench coat on the rack at Macy's. I brought it home, but the tags are still on it. Silver: lamé or just lame? Poll at right. Please vote.

Happy Landings

Ok, I finished "Floor Sample". Reading it felt like watching a video shot from first-person perspective of trying to land a parachute through lots and lots of trees for a very long time: harrowing, dangerous, and fast paced, but with a soft landing. At the end, she simply walked her dog. (Sorry if I spoiled that for you.) Her realizations, admissions, and finally, release from the compulsion that kept her madly moving house back and forth across the U.S., were like the puff of that parachute expanding as it brought her safely to the ground. And me with her.

Mad Skillz

Hank Bates is/was a friend of mine. We used to swim on the swim team together in college. I haven’t talked to him in oh, I don’t know, about nine years. He and his lovely wife have two little daughters now, and still live in Santa Cruz. We sometimes trade Christmas cards, unless they send Valentine’s Day cards, which they have done.

Hank Bates taught me how to fold fitted sheets. I was hanging out at the guys' Bay Street house one afternoon, and Hank was folding his laundry. When I saw Hank tuck the corners inside each other, and single-handedly arrange the sheet into a neat square, I was fascinated and made him do it again. I had never seen anyone do anything with a fitted sheet besides wad it lopsidedly into a lumpy oblong, a method Mike still favors today. In fact, the mere sight of a fitted sheet will make Mike leave the area immediately.

He showed me again, maybe even twice, and ever since that day I have also been able to fold a fitted sheet into a neat square. All by myself. (My Mom may note that she caught me trying to make my husband help me fold a sheet, but that was a very large flat sheet.)

So every time I fold my sheets, I think of Hank Bates. An all-around nice guy who is a pretty good carpenter and can also fold linens. If I had some kind of prize or award to give him for teaching me this skill, this is where I would do it. A "Lifey Award" maybe.

Before you get the wrong impression, I should tell you that Mike and I have reached a perfect agreement regarding laundry-- he does his, I do mine, and when it's sheets or towels, we both fold.

If you are feeling left out because your sheets are still in a wrinkled wad, you can watch this helpful video.

Breaking it Up

Shortly after my last post, I wrapped up "What to Eat". I am so glad I worked through it. It will be a handy reference book to have on the shelf, and has reinforced my already fairly healthy eating strategy. Although I enjoyed it all, the last page and a half included a powerful summation of WHY to make good food choices:

"You cast your vote for your choice of food environment every time you put something in your shopping cart or order off a menu. If enough people vote with you, changes will happen.

If, for example, the Organic Standards will continue to mean something in the United States (and I am convinced that they must), it will be because hundreds of thousands of people will demand that nothing be done to weaken them. That is how personal responsibility really works. If you think you as an individual cannot do enough to make a difference, join with others who believe as you do. Plenty of organizations are devoted to making food healthier and more friendly to the environment, and to making such food more widely available. They will welcome your membership and support.

You eat. Willingly or not, you participate in the environment of food choice. The choices you make about food are as much about the kind of world you want to live in as they are about what to have for dinner. Food choices are about your future and that of your children. They are about nothing less than democracy in action.

I truly believe that one person can make a difference and that food is a great place to begin to make that difference. Yes, you should use personal responsibility -- informed personal responsibility-- to make food choices you believe in. Exercise your First Amendment rights and speak out. And enjoy your dinner."

PS- if you feel like you are having deja vu, I extracted this from the long and rambling email from a couple of days ago. It was just too damn long.

Crazy Woman on the Run

Moving right along, I next picked up "Floor Sample" by Julia Cameron. I was given one of her books, "The Artist's Way" as a gift a few years ago. Unlike the first book, which is designed to help artists unblock and access creativity, this book is a memoir of Julia's life. Ms. Cameron is enviably prolific as a writer. She has written twenty-four books, and is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, songwriter and poet, according to her book jacket. In her book jacket photo, she looks mostly like Gena Rowlands, a classic, if out-dated beauty. (What's with the hair?) As I read, I imagine her to be a tall, wild-eyed, frantic, freaky artist-type in a printed robe from the 60s. She looks slightly startled-- I think she's had some work done. She's got to get those soft-focus, my-hand-is-stuck-to-my-face photos off her website, though.

She begins as a young journalist, casually name-dropping the prestigious colleges to which she is accepted out of high school as she slips into a fitful cycle of attention-getting writing and binge drinking. As a highly-functional and creative alcoholic, she meets and marries Martin Scorcese, loses him due to her drinking (with a little help from a then young and seductive Liza Minelli) and finally finds the path to sobriety in Los Angeles. Whew. I have read a lot of former-alcoholic memoirs, and I wasn't thinking this was going to be one. (By the way, I am not going to read "Dry" next, if anyone has any other suggestions of what to read, I'd love to hear them.)

Once sober, Ms. Cameron begins a relentless pattern of hungrily pursuing creative endeavors and running away from home. Or running to home, as the case may be. I should have counted from the beginning how many times she's moved. Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Manhattan, Manhattan to Taos, New Mexico, from Taos, back to New York, back to Los Angeles, to Chicago, back to Taos, to Venice Beach, back to Taos, to London, back from London to Taos, no wait, New York, no, oh, I forgot Vermont.

The minute she completes a huge creative task, or sometimes in the middle of it, she decides that she's lonely for the place she left, or that her currrent digs feel "wrong", leaves her belongings (always for someone else to pack up and have delivered to her), her dogs (I keep saying to myself "but what about the DOGS???"), even her horses, and just rents or buys a "cute, airy, light-filled" flat, apartment, house, townhouse, condo, ranch, walk-up or brownstone in the next destination on the map. Sometimes she moves more than once within the same city, trying on houses like printed caftans and tossing them aside.

I'm about an eighth away from finishing this book, and I have had to put it down twice because I feel like if I have to read about her being led by her creative muse (or nervous breakdowns, or fear of the abyss, or psychotic episodes, or ex-husbands) to move again, I'm going to throw the book against the wall. I don’t want to be mean to her. I want to like her.

There have been a few moments of clarity in this book when I saw her as coming very close to a creative role model. Her books have sold millions (I guess that helps cover all those cleaning deposits) and she clearly is someone who has successfully merged creativity with financial success, which is not usually the case. But if she were my friend, she would really piss me off. I have a hard time believing in her.

At this moment in the book, she's feeling as though she's slowly slipping back into the same disconnected and hallucinatory mental state that could have cost her life, and did put her in the mental state that facilitated her surreal and casual rape in a park in London, while she was feeling electricity and talking to trees or something. But instead of seeking a doctor who will prescribe the one drug that actually seems to work well for her, she calls a Native American shaman in another state who diagnoses her over the phone and prescribes a plethora of herbal treatments and fasting. Because what a person needs when they are on the edge of mental collapse is to stop eating and start ingesting large amounts of unknown herbal substances. She's once again tossed aside all of the advice of supportive fellow sober friends about eating and sleeping properly, and she's channeling music from her creative god. (If she was Andrew Lloyd Weber, I think we'd have heard about it by now. Maybe you have. I haven't.) But perhaps I'm being too harsh. It is that time of the month.

I'm torn. I really want to believe that her "morning pages" daily writing exercise, wherein the writer allows the "muse" to speak without judgment, is a good idea, and something that would work to release innate creativity. But I find her a difficult person to believe in now that I've read this book. Or almost read it. As long as she doesn't move again.

And that's it for now.

*note, on page 327, she finally notices AFTER moving two more times: "Surely it had been madness moving from place to place to place, New York to Los Angeles to Taos." Where were all her friends when this was happening???

At the Park

Tuesday, a bunch of friends and I had lunch at the park with all of the kids. We ate the lunches we brought, and then hung around for a couple of hours watching the little ones play (and playing with them). One person is a chef, another a nurse, a jewelry designer, another is going to school, couple of full-time moms with equally full plates, but we lucked out and had a common day off this week. It was a fun day and the weather was gorgeous-- very warm. I love hanging out with these kids. Their parents aren't too bad, either.

Bean Soup

Whoops! While I was writing that last entry, my big white beans went from whole-beans-to-be-marinated-with-peperonata to bean soup. They were cooking in chicken stock, so it will taste good, but not exactly what I had in mind. I'll just go buy a little Niman ham end at the store and chop it up in there. That and a salad and some crusty bread will be dinner. ...except Wednesday is date night, so I guess it will be lunch.

Something to Do with Peppers

Ok, veggie-box people, here's a recipe from the newsletter to use up some of those peppers. I hear some people don't have a problem using them up, because their children will blindly reach for and munch on them if they are set out sliced in bowls. But I have no pepper-eating gremlins munching about my living room, so I had a pepper backlog, and this is a pretty good recipe. Today I'm going to try it with "hard boiled eggs as a salad" as recommended in the newsletter, and mix it with some cooked, marinated giant white beans.

Peperonata
From Moosewood Cooks at Home by the Moosewood Collective

1 lb peppers- mixed colors (or not)
2-3 white onions
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 fresh tomatoes
2 T red wine or balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper
(1 tsp sugar optional- I didn't use it)

Slice the peppers and onions lengthwise into strips. Heat the oil in a large skillet or saucepan. Add the peppers and onions and saute on medium heat, stirring frequently, for 10 to 15 minutes, until tender and lightly browned.

While the vegetables saute, chop the tomatoes. Stir the tomatoes and vinegar into the peppers and cook for about 5 minutes more, until the liquid is evaporated. Add salt and pepper to taste, sugar if desired.

Serve hot (last night it was with sliced London broil and farro). Covered in the refrigerator, Peperonata will keep for about a week. Allow to come to room temperature before serving.

The recipe includes the following suggestions: "Serve on toasted bread or grilled polenta, over pasta with a piquant cheese such as ricotta salata, as a vegetable side dish or relish, mixed with steamed green beans, on a baked potato, with hard-boiled eggs as a salad, or as a quesadilla filling. It's wonderful in frittatas; and then you can use the leftover frittata as a sandwich!" Enthusiastic little vegetable multi-taskers, those Moosewood folks.

Farro is "pearled" barley. (Not to be confused with Pearl Bailey.) I was making it for the first time last night, so I diced some white onion and sauteed the onion until soft, then added the farro and some chicken stock, about an inch over the top of the grains, then let it simmer, stirring now and then, until tender but still a little al dente. There was a little bit of chicken stock still liquid when it was finished, which was absorbed or evaporated between finishing and eating. I stirred in a little salt and a handful of raisins. Chopped herbs would be nice, too, maybe a little parsley and fresh thyme, but I didn't do that.

It was really tasty with the peperonata, and today the leftovers will make a nice salad. It could replace rice in any type of rice dish or salad. It doesn't get creamy like risotto, but you could add cheese and make it in a similar fashion to risotto. You could also stir it into soups, or mix it with chopped chicken in a burrito. Here are some more recipes. It's a "one ingredient" product, and most of the grain is still intact, so it should be pretty good for you, and slow to digest.

A Cozy Nook

Look what I did with my poorly-covered ottomans (ottomen?): I made a cozy window seat for reading in my office. If I'm in here, I tend to be at the desk. It's nice to have a space to read that has plenty of light during the day and is not right in front of the computer.