Thinking Cookbooks on Cook 'n Scribble
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| photo by Leslie Hassler |
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Sometimes, I write in other places...
...Like this one. A lot of similar themes, ideas (food, love, life, you know...) So keep your eyes peeled!
Thinking Cookbooks on Cook 'n Scribble
Thinking Cookbooks on Cook 'n Scribble
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Reasons to Believe
Change is on the horizon. I felt it so strongly yesterday, driving north along the eastern seaboard. Pulling onto the residential streets of Brooklyn, travel weary and over-caffeinated, I noticed the first dry leaves scattered amid the car tires. A week from today, I leap into a new adventure as a doctorate student in food studies. I've been wrapped up in logistics and planning, fretting and cleaning and trying to put everything in order around me, trying to stave off the inevitable messiness of life. It's always a losing battle. I should know by now, but it took a weekend away in Frederick, Maryland to lend a little perspective. I got a good long run in along back country roads, walked around a beautiful historic town, took a great yoga class (the teacher made me cry when she said "in this time of changing winds, it can be hard to find your balance"), and listened to a lot of oldies. But the real reason I was down in the mid-Atlantic was my dear friend Meredith.
This past weekend, she and her beloved Dan invited their nearest and dearest to gather around them and celebrate their incredible love story, their deep friendship and the start of their new chapter as husband and wife.
In my head, I've been imagining the toast I would have given to them. In front of a hundred people, it might not have come out like this. But here's the gist:
Mer and I are soul sisters of sorts. We knew we were meant for each other almost immediately when we met. It was a beautiful October day, and we were sitting at a patio table a month into my freshman and Mer's junior year of college. We were both pouring a lot of our energy into reproductive rights and sexual health at the time, and both had plans to deliver babies for a living. She had a smile that stretched from ear to ear, a bustling, infectious energy, and like me, a mom sick with cancer. Unlike me, though, Mer had already been seasoned by the rigors and roller coaster of care-taking, grief and fear that come with long-term illness. I was new to the game. I didn't know then how much her resilience and arms-wide-open approach to life would guide me through my own waves of grief and change.
We spent time cooking together and taking walks. We, along with a whole crew of wacky, fun-loving outdoors folk, got naked as part of Tufts Wilderness Orientation. We studied together. We checked in on our families daily, taking care from afar and going home often. We talked about how the fear of losing the people and structure that we've come to take as givens makes us want to fill up our lives with more love, more life.
On Valentine's Day of my sophomore year, Meredith sat with me for hours while we tried to coordinate an ambulance dispatch to my mom's house in New York from our student center in Massachusetts, then drove me home in the middle of the night so I could be with my mom in the ER. The next afternoon, Mer was supposed to take a huge statistics exam. But the moment I started to fret over my interrupting her near perfect academic record, she shushed me and calmly explained to me that she'd talk to her professor about what had happened. She was sure she'd understand. Meredith's always had a little more faith than I.
Years have passed since then. Between the two of us, we've accrued two bachelors degrees, lost three parents and stood fast alongside eighteen years of cancer's and loss's Big Life Lessons. We've both loved a lot, and said bittersweet goodbyes. Separately, we've traveled. We've cooked. We've gone for runs, long walks, hikes. We've both done a lot of yoga. We've read novels and planted gardens and worked on farms. We've drunk a lot of wine. We've sat in chilly movie theaters and watched chick flicks and fallen asleep early. We haven't once lived in the same city since Mer graduated from college in 2006.
And through it all-- all the loss, and reeling, and grief and joy-- we've both hungered for love. The kind that builds you up and fills you out, makes you burst with a sense of belonging and recognition and compassion. We've yearned to nurture and also to be cared for. We've looked for kindness and humor, sharp minds and good looks. And we've both doubted its existence.
But two years ago, when she least expected it, Mer met Dan. The first time we spoke about him, her voice sounded different, calmer. She was already sure, she told me, using the words kismet and beshert. And this past Sunday, she married him.
There was an incredible presence of love, contentment and community under that tent, as the rain poured down over the vineyard. There was a lot of talk about God being present. I'm still not sure what I think on that matter, but I do know there was a palpable energy, a force-field of sorts, surrounding Dan and Mer and, indeed, all of us under the pavilion roof as they made their vows. I cried. A lot of us cried. And as soon as the ceremony ended, the rain stopped and a rainbow arced over the back fields. A sign of luck and love from those not with us if ever there were one (I was far too busy making friends to go snap any photos). Inside, we sang and danced the Hora and drank lots of wine. Feeling a little overcome, I walked barefoot in the rain-wet field and looked up at the stars.
Mer, Dan and a handful of us stayed up late into the night. We laughed a lot, so hard our bellies hurt. New friendships were formed (not surprisingly, as the two of them only associate with the creme-de-la-creme of the human race, as far as I can tell), the ring of love radiating outward from the newlyweds.
Never, in my life, have I felt such faith. That things have a way of working themselves out, and life takes shape, curveballs and all. We can go along for the ride, or we can resist. Love morphs and ebbs, but, like matter, it doesn't ever disappear. Not really. As long as we invite it in and tend to it kindly, it'll tend to us as well.
So here's to Mer and Dan. To many, many happy years. Thank you for reminding us all of the reasons to believe.
This past weekend, she and her beloved Dan invited their nearest and dearest to gather around them and celebrate their incredible love story, their deep friendship and the start of their new chapter as husband and wife.
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| Barn from my run-- Frederick, MD |
Mer and I are soul sisters of sorts. We knew we were meant for each other almost immediately when we met. It was a beautiful October day, and we were sitting at a patio table a month into my freshman and Mer's junior year of college. We were both pouring a lot of our energy into reproductive rights and sexual health at the time, and both had plans to deliver babies for a living. She had a smile that stretched from ear to ear, a bustling, infectious energy, and like me, a mom sick with cancer. Unlike me, though, Mer had already been seasoned by the rigors and roller coaster of care-taking, grief and fear that come with long-term illness. I was new to the game. I didn't know then how much her resilience and arms-wide-open approach to life would guide me through my own waves of grief and change.
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| Downtown Historic Frederick |
On Valentine's Day of my sophomore year, Meredith sat with me for hours while we tried to coordinate an ambulance dispatch to my mom's house in New York from our student center in Massachusetts, then drove me home in the middle of the night so I could be with my mom in the ER. The next afternoon, Mer was supposed to take a huge statistics exam. But the moment I started to fret over my interrupting her near perfect academic record, she shushed me and calmly explained to me that she'd talk to her professor about what had happened. She was sure she'd understand. Meredith's always had a little more faith than I.
Years have passed since then. Between the two of us, we've accrued two bachelors degrees, lost three parents and stood fast alongside eighteen years of cancer's and loss's Big Life Lessons. We've both loved a lot, and said bittersweet goodbyes. Separately, we've traveled. We've cooked. We've gone for runs, long walks, hikes. We've both done a lot of yoga. We've read novels and planted gardens and worked on farms. We've drunk a lot of wine. We've sat in chilly movie theaters and watched chick flicks and fallen asleep early. We haven't once lived in the same city since Mer graduated from college in 2006.
And through it all-- all the loss, and reeling, and grief and joy-- we've both hungered for love. The kind that builds you up and fills you out, makes you burst with a sense of belonging and recognition and compassion. We've yearned to nurture and also to be cared for. We've looked for kindness and humor, sharp minds and good looks. And we've both doubted its existence.
But two years ago, when she least expected it, Mer met Dan. The first time we spoke about him, her voice sounded different, calmer. She was already sure, she told me, using the words kismet and beshert. And this past Sunday, she married him.
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| Mer at her Tish, sounding ever so sage on matters companionship, love and marriage |
Mer, Dan and a handful of us stayed up late into the night. We laughed a lot, so hard our bellies hurt. New friendships were formed (not surprisingly, as the two of them only associate with the creme-de-la-creme of the human race, as far as I can tell), the ring of love radiating outward from the newlyweds.
Never, in my life, have I felt such faith. That things have a way of working themselves out, and life takes shape, curveballs and all. We can go along for the ride, or we can resist. Love morphs and ebbs, but, like matter, it doesn't ever disappear. Not really. As long as we invite it in and tend to it kindly, it'll tend to us as well.
So here's to Mer and Dan. To many, many happy years. Thank you for reminding us all of the reasons to believe.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Popping the Maine Bubble: Post Vacation Blues
At 4:30 this past Monday afternoon, a beautiful summer day, I was sitting in Western Massachusetts at my desk, reunited with my laptop after a week and a half of (blissful, and very necessary) separation. And I was panicking.
I'm was not ready to be back. Five days later, as the rain patters on my apartment's skylight in Brooklyn, I'm still not.
Before that, Trouble and I had tentatively eased off Isle au Haut, lingering as we drove south, not wanting the luster to wear off our week of vacation. We stopped in Belfast to eat bar food and watch the Olympic soccer final, then passed Trouble's son and his friend off to another family (who was taking them for yet another week of Maine barefoot fun) and headed south to Portland. On the way, we popped into LL Bean to check out camping gear and then stopped for Maine popcorn shrimp and I fed Trouble his first crab roll at Days in Yarmouth. In Portland, where I was studying when we first met, we ate oysters and drank cocktails, then revisited Miyake-- the site of our first date-- for an extraordinary succession of sushi courses.
Already, it seems worlds away.
But backing up. Isle au Haut. Right. That little spit of rock and pine 7 miles off the coast of Stonington, Maine in Penobscot Bay. I've been going since I was nine months old, missing only a couple of summers to teenage poutiness and busyness. My mother's parents bought a bright old cottage by the water back in the 60s, and it's been in our family ever since. To me, it is one of the most stunningly beautiful places in the world. More importantly, it's like sacred ground. The little Isle contains so many family memories of parents and grandparents, firsts and falls, berries and pies and pancakes and lobsters and bee-stings. It's cold-water swims and starlit nights and sparklers on the porch. It's unbearable mosquitoes at dusk and foggy mornings that turn into brilliantly blue afternoons. It's long talks over tea and wine, games of Scrabble and Monopoly and lots and lots of reading.
It's the only place I know where I can fill up the days with nothing more than a good book, a long walk, and lots of cooking and eating. A nice swim is icing on the cake, but on a rainy day, even that seems like too much effort. It always takes a couple days to recalibrate the body and mind to the slower pace and nosedive in stimulation, but once you've gotten into Island Mode, it always seems as though the world's always been bare feet, blueberry stains and long, plan-less days.
This year was a supremely lazy one. The spring and early summer have been so jam packed with travel and logistics that it felt perfectly delicious to just rest. I didn't get as much exercise as I thought I would and didn't get through half the pile of books I had lugged along for the trip. We went to my friends Kate and Steve's fabulous chocolate shop, Black Dinah Chocolatiers, several times for coffee, pastries and chocolate. I let Trouble and my brother, Pete-- who joined us for three nights midweek-- take the helm at the stove as frequently as they were inclined to, and I happily washed and dried dishes as often as needed in return. I baked fewer pies (but more crisps) than I usually do, and wrote almost none, save a few scribbled notes here and there. But we all took naps, Trouble competed in his first triathalon, we saw a few shooting stars, and we read aloud a lot.
I could tell you about the meals we had (and there were some really triumphant ones, including a batch of cochinita pibil slow-cooked by Trouble in anticipation of Pete's arrival and eaten in "hippie tortillas", or the blueberry crisps and pancakes, lobster straight from my old friend Jason's boat, or even the fried calamari we made with freshly Island-caught squid our final night), but I don't much feel like it. I'll let some of the photos speak for themselves to give you an idea.
On Isle au Haut, the meals feel as essential to the day as brushing your teeth much more than they do any sort of hype-worthy climax. On the Island, everyone cooks-- there's no other choice. No restaurants. No bars. Just home kitchens. And we like it that way. But furthermore, when it comes right down to it, especially when I'm trying to maximize my time hiking in the woods and being barefoot on the lawn, I don't want to be stuck poring over recipes. I'd rather breakfast on ripe peaches and blueberries and have a cold lunch of leftover cole-slaw and pork than fuss over something new.
Molly Wizenberg's August 9 post on Orangette resonated deeply with me. She was describing a few summer treats she had whipped up, but then followed up with this: "It was all tasty. But to be 100% honest, none of it made me feel like writing about it. The truth is, I think I like a bowl of raw blueberries, or a few slices of peach, or a pile of plain roasted zucchini, more than anything interesting that I could make or bake from them. The Life Lessons of Molly Wizenberg, age 33 3/4".
Being on Isle au Haut is one big life lesson, at least when "life" means this tech-crazed runaround existence we all seem to be so caught up in these days. On the Island, life slows down. WAY down. The mail boat comes and goes, measuring the hours. The sun rises, the gulls call, you make coffee and listen to the lobster boats chug out of the thorofare. And then, somehow, before you can even quite remember how you've passed the day, you're turning off the last light to fall into the deepest kind of sleep, uninterrupted by planes or lights or the rush of far off (or nearby) highway traffic.
But here's the startling thing. You leave the Island, and so much of that seems to slip away. Some of the magic remains, as long as you stay in Maine, but for me, crossing the border at Kittery back into "lower" New England is a surefire reminder that fall is coming near. Today, as Trouble as I wound back through the roads of Western Massachusetts, having taken as many diversions as we could, we found ourselves looking at each other with a quiet sense of dread. I looked up from the book I was reading aloud in the passenger seat.
"I feel like the summer's over," I said.
"It is," Trouble replied, eking out a half smile.
We stretched out the feeling a bit, with Trouble skipping out of work early one day for ice cream and an early movie (we saw Ruby Sparks, our plan B when our first choice was sold out-- I loved it!), and then, the next, for a long drive across Massachusetts and into the Berkshires to visit Mass MoCA. It was all fun, and felt spontaneous and fancy-free, but it wasn't quite Maine. The bubble had burst.
I know I should be grateful for the time we had. For the peace of mind and the break from the whirring of the world. And I am. Really. But right now, back to my apartment and cooking for one, with the air conditioner pumping away to keep the oppressive heat at bay and the school-year just around the corner, I can't help think about how fleeting the time and places we hold most dear always seem to be. And wishing-- though I know it's fruitless-- that we could hold on a little bit longer.
I'm was not ready to be back. Five days later, as the rain patters on my apartment's skylight in Brooklyn, I'm still not.
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| Trouble digging into his first ever crab roll at Days |
Just the day before, Trouble and I were sitting in a secluded spot in North Berwick, Maine, gorging ourselves on a wood-fired meal of braised chicken raised on site by my dad's cousin Pete, his wonderful wife Rebekah, and Rebekah's baby brother (and fellow food-writer/agent-sharer) Joe Yonan. Pete showed off the expanded gardens on the homestead, in a state of full late-summer boom, and then gave Trouble, me and Don and Samantha behind Rabelais a tour of the extraordinary house he built by hand. Rebekah and Joe had prepared an eye-popping feast, and neighbors and friends contributed sides, drinks and desserts. The conversation was easy, the afternoon hot and still (until a heavy downpour drove us stragglers indoors). Pete's sisters, Bonnie and Wendy, showed up en route north from New York late in the evening, having come from visiting Bonnie's daughter in the Bronx and my step-mom in Westchester County. We laughed and opened more wine, talked about youngest sibling-hood and the woes of freelancing. It was a wonderful, wonderful way to end a week in Maine.
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| the beehives at Pete and Rebekah's North Berwick homestead |
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| Pete and Rebekah's gardens and greenhouse |
Already, it seems worlds away.
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| Our little boathouse-cum-garage and dinghy on the thorofare |
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| The view from Mt. Champlain, the Island's highest point |
It's the only place I know where I can fill up the days with nothing more than a good book, a long walk, and lots of cooking and eating. A nice swim is icing on the cake, but on a rainy day, even that seems like too much effort. It always takes a couple days to recalibrate the body and mind to the slower pace and nosedive in stimulation, but once you've gotten into Island Mode, it always seems as though the world's always been bare feet, blueberry stains and long, plan-less days.
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| The bunkhouse with our little blue Jeep Comanche |
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| Black Dinah-- this way! |
This year was a supremely lazy one. The spring and early summer have been so jam packed with travel and logistics that it felt perfectly delicious to just rest. I didn't get as much exercise as I thought I would and didn't get through half the pile of books I had lugged along for the trip. We went to my friends Kate and Steve's fabulous chocolate shop, Black Dinah Chocolatiers, several times for coffee, pastries and chocolate. I let Trouble and my brother, Pete-- who joined us for three nights midweek-- take the helm at the stove as frequently as they were inclined to, and I happily washed and dried dishes as often as needed in return. I baked fewer pies (but more crisps) than I usually do, and wrote almost none, save a few scribbled notes here and there. But we all took naps, Trouble competed in his first triathalon, we saw a few shooting stars, and we read aloud a lot.
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| Jason's lobsters, hands down the best in Maine (and the world, if you ask me) |
On Isle au Haut, the meals feel as essential to the day as brushing your teeth much more than they do any sort of hype-worthy climax. On the Island, everyone cooks-- there's no other choice. No restaurants. No bars. Just home kitchens. And we like it that way. But furthermore, when it comes right down to it, especially when I'm trying to maximize my time hiking in the woods and being barefoot on the lawn, I don't want to be stuck poring over recipes. I'd rather breakfast on ripe peaches and blueberries and have a cold lunch of leftover cole-slaw and pork than fuss over something new.
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| Leaving the Island on the Miss Lizzie in morning "pea soup" |
Molly Wizenberg's August 9 post on Orangette resonated deeply with me. She was describing a few summer treats she had whipped up, but then followed up with this: "It was all tasty. But to be 100% honest, none of it made me feel like writing about it. The truth is, I think I like a bowl of raw blueberries, or a few slices of peach, or a pile of plain roasted zucchini, more than anything interesting that I could make or bake from them. The Life Lessons of Molly Wizenberg, age 33 3/4".
Being on Isle au Haut is one big life lesson, at least when "life" means this tech-crazed runaround existence we all seem to be so caught up in these days. On the Island, life slows down. WAY down. The mail boat comes and goes, measuring the hours. The sun rises, the gulls call, you make coffee and listen to the lobster boats chug out of the thorofare. And then, somehow, before you can even quite remember how you've passed the day, you're turning off the last light to fall into the deepest kind of sleep, uninterrupted by planes or lights or the rush of far off (or nearby) highway traffic.
But here's the startling thing. You leave the Island, and so much of that seems to slip away. Some of the magic remains, as long as you stay in Maine, but for me, crossing the border at Kittery back into "lower" New England is a surefire reminder that fall is coming near. Today, as Trouble as I wound back through the roads of Western Massachusetts, having taken as many diversions as we could, we found ourselves looking at each other with a quiet sense of dread. I looked up from the book I was reading aloud in the passenger seat.
"I feel like the summer's over," I said.
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| Me pedaling the generator bicycle in the Mass MoCA Airstream installation |
"It is," Trouble replied, eking out a half smile.
We stretched out the feeling a bit, with Trouble skipping out of work early one day for ice cream and an early movie (we saw Ruby Sparks, our plan B when our first choice was sold out-- I loved it!), and then, the next, for a long drive across Massachusetts and into the Berkshires to visit Mass MoCA. It was all fun, and felt spontaneous and fancy-free, but it wasn't quite Maine. The bubble had burst.
I know I should be grateful for the time we had. For the peace of mind and the break from the whirring of the world. And I am. Really. But right now, back to my apartment and cooking for one, with the air conditioner pumping away to keep the oppressive heat at bay and the school-year just around the corner, I can't help think about how fleeting the time and places we hold most dear always seem to be. And wishing-- though I know it's fruitless-- that we could hold on a little bit longer.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
When the Dust Settles and You Dare to Peek...
July has been a tough month. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised I've been feeling this way, as I've never been much for high summer. As young kid, I used to pine wistfully after the pale green anticipation of spring, or yearn ahead to the nestling excitement of autumn. I loved going back to school and buying school supplies and the cool crispness of the air. The long, humid, unstructured days of July? Not so much.
There's something about the kick-back languor of summer that I never quite trusted. Would it pull me through to September's reassuring days of regimen? Would the mosquitoes quit their incessant buzzing in my hot, still bedroom at night? Would people ever stop telling me I should enjoy the freedom and just go play already?
This year, I've been feeling that same unease again.
I was away for most of the month, traveling and working in Brazil. But even before taking off, I had felt that things were left undone, ends untied. The peas were just starting to come up in the garden, and I wasn't going to be around to harvest them. The tomatoes were becoming gangly, but in all my rushing around getting ready to go, I hadn't had time to trellis them. And the night before I flew, I had an argument with a family member that struck right down to bitter bone, leaving me feeling lonely, wrung out and then, inevitably, defensive.
Then there were the weeks away, busy and isolating and moving almost every night, with nothing to do but keep my eye on work, work, work. There was no structure, so I tried frantically to build some. I had a co-author to manage and a to-do list I desperately wanted to check off by the time I returned to the States. But Brazil isn't a place that's particularly conducive to getting from point A to B in any sort of direct way. Instead, she seems to take joy in first telling you to take off your seatbelt and throw caution to the wind, then throws large speed bumps in the road and pops you up out of your seat, cracking your head on the ceiling and leaving you, bewildered, wondering why you put yourself on this crazy ride again and again (this actually happened while I was there, but it also feels like an apt metaphor for the big, sassy country down there I've so come to love). You might get where you're going, eventually and somehow, or end up at another destination entirely. There's no telling. I've never encountered another place that makes it so clear that any sense of control we think we have is an illusion.
When I landed back in New York at the end of the trip, exhausted and feeling terribly isolated, it all melted down. I found myself immediately heaping the blame for the discomfort and fright I had been feeling on the people I loved most. And then, of course, I felt worse.
Brooklyn, upon my arrival, was stupefyingly hot and humid (as she's wont to be in late July). I don't take the heat and humidity well (one might be wondering right now-- why do you go to Brazil, then? My answer-- why do any of us repeatedly put ourselves in challenging situations? I firmly believe we go-- albeit unconsciously-- seeking the lessons we need to learn again and again until we learn them good and hard). The night after I got home from Brazil, I was walking towards my apartment along Prospect Park after having a beer with a friend when the sky turned a dark, moldy grayish yellow and the undersides of the leaves began to show themselves. Then the rain came pelting down, as though someone had just upturned a bucket over the block. I opened my umbrella, futilely trying to shield my face and my leather purse from the driving water. As I struggled against the tugging gusts, a man walked up beside me, a wide smile spread across his lips. "May as well surrender, don't you think?" he said, looking at me with water dripping from his eyelashes.
Back home, after I wrung out my dress, I thought about what the man had said. Perhaps he was right, that what I needed to do was just give in and let the storm chew me up and spit me out. Let up on my loved ones a bit and just feel whatever it was that was emerging rather than running myself ragged trying to fight it back.
Then the phone rang. Too soon. Before I had had a chance to let any of those thoughts sink in or declare a truce with myself. And there was conflict, again, staring me square in the face. Before I knew it, I had blown things up again, the lightning cracking outside my window a mirror to my electric and impulsive reactions, hot and unexpectedly aimed.
A couple days later, I drove north to Western MA to see Trouble. It had been a month, and I had felt so distant from him during my peripatetic travels and his busiest of work months. One final, tempestuous storm raged as I drove northwest through Connecticut. I turned on my brights and set my windshield wipers on their fastest tick-tock and charged on through.
I curled close to Trouble and slept more deeply than I had since I left. I hadn't realized how badly I just needed touch, familiarity, the woods, and how the absence of all those things had made me feel edgy, had caused me to unleash my careless tongue onto dangerous planes.
I spent my first two days in New England in a sort of relieved haze, exhausted but glad that I didn't have to hold it all together anymore.
By day three, after an impromptu day-trip to Vermont through golden-hued back country roads and a good sweaty run, I felt that old antsy-ness rising. I felt ready to work, to engage again. After coffee and sending Trouble off to work, I sat down to write. But it didn't come. I got up, folded laundry, brushed my teeth. Still, nothing. So I pulled on a pair of shoes and went outside, still dressed only in pajamas. By the edge of the driveway, the highbush blueberries caught my eye. The branches were hanging heavy, dark dusty purple orbs low and exposed. I hadn't known Trouble had berry bushes when I began dating him, or even when I first took stock of the yard. And though he told me once, I had completely forgotten.
Excited, I hurried back inside, grabbed a container, then set to cleaning the bushes of all their ripe fruit. As my fingers worked, my mind began turning. Thoughts came to rest like feathers that had been caught up in maelstrom, suddenly carried down on a soft, still summer evening. I was pleased with the bounty that had presented itself to me without my asking for it. Fortified by the harvest, I tentatively headed back to take a peek at the vegetable garden.
When spring emerged, I had started on the garden. I had envisioned a perfect square and straight rows, mulched and weed-free and giving forth more vegetables than I could manage in the kitchen. But I had left for Brazil just as the days were heating up and the garden called for my attention, and I felt guilty and disappointed in myself for not having tended the patch more attentively after building the beds, spreading compost, turning soil and sowing seeds with such care. I wanted not to look, ashamed at my abandonment of something I had begun with such vigor and intent. Then I thought of the blueberries and their surprise generosity.
I made my way back through the yard. The small plot (which had never quite become a square, but had been tilled into a rather Texas-shaped thing) was overgrown with weeds. The peas had gone to seed, and a few thick stalks shot up where the sweet tendrils had once climbed. At first I was overwhelmed. Then, as I came nearer, the bright, fire-tip hues of ripe fruit caught my eye.
The tomato plants were lying on the ground (no one ever got around to taming them into vertical submission with twine or cage). I picked several handfuls of sungolds and salvaged a few striated red heirlooms into my t-shirt. Further encouraged, I picked my way gingerly among the weeds to examine the other rows.
There were, too, green beans hanging from their wily stalks. Some lay on the ground, a bit dustier for neglect, but still slender and fully formed. I went back inside for a colander.
I picked all the ready specimens, then saw a good deal of flawless parsley and snipped that too. A row of salad turnips appeared bed-headed, but despite the muss, the white spheres had emerged from the soil. I pulled a few and examined the cracks that had heaved through some of them in their overripe state. Instead of despair, I found myself imagining the bitter greens scrambled with eggs and jars of spicy kimchi.
The romaine was all long gone, and many of my herbs hadn't taken in the clayey, shady patch. But the nasturtiums were big and thriving and the eggplants were getting ready to fruit. I discovered some sorrel, too, which had soldiered through amid a circle of weeds that seemed hellbent on smothering it back. I caught myself laughing out loud as I snipped off a few of the pale, oblong leaves, thinking of sweet pea and sorrel soup.
I brought everything back inside to the cool kitchen and laid the food on the kitchen counter, then went outside to gather the eggs from the coop. I separated the berries from the beans and the tomatoes, then filled a bowl with cold water to revive the greens from the shock of having been harvested. The motions felt fine, familiar and useful, slowly waking me from my July funk.
I wiped the sweat from my forehead, smearing garden dirt across my brow as I went. And then I sat down to write, suddenly full of lucidity. Despite the neglect, my garden had pulled through. Maybe because she knew I needed it. But more likely, because love works like that. You send it outwards in some direction, hoping it'll come back to you immediately, and in just way you've imagined, clean and uncomplicated and endlessly comforting. But it never happens that way. Instead, all the feeling and labor you pour in comes around and opens to you just at the moment when you've thrown up your hands. When you finally surrender. To the rain, to the distance, to the heat and weeds of summer. Sure, the beans may be a bit dirtier for wear, and some of the tomatoes, inevitably, will rot on the ground. You may even have to pull back the weeds to find the lemony snap of sorrel, and remember that, at first, she appears to be a weed herself. The reward is in the reassuring surprise that the heart you put in usually waits to come back around to tap you on the shoulder until it sees the window of vulnerability. That is, when you can finally taste the sweet on your tongue. And, as it so often happens, just when you thought it was lost.
There's something about the kick-back languor of summer that I never quite trusted. Would it pull me through to September's reassuring days of regimen? Would the mosquitoes quit their incessant buzzing in my hot, still bedroom at night? Would people ever stop telling me I should enjoy the freedom and just go play already?
This year, I've been feeling that same unease again.
I was away for most of the month, traveling and working in Brazil. But even before taking off, I had felt that things were left undone, ends untied. The peas were just starting to come up in the garden, and I wasn't going to be around to harvest them. The tomatoes were becoming gangly, but in all my rushing around getting ready to go, I hadn't had time to trellis them. And the night before I flew, I had an argument with a family member that struck right down to bitter bone, leaving me feeling lonely, wrung out and then, inevitably, defensive.
Then there were the weeks away, busy and isolating and moving almost every night, with nothing to do but keep my eye on work, work, work. There was no structure, so I tried frantically to build some. I had a co-author to manage and a to-do list I desperately wanted to check off by the time I returned to the States. But Brazil isn't a place that's particularly conducive to getting from point A to B in any sort of direct way. Instead, she seems to take joy in first telling you to take off your seatbelt and throw caution to the wind, then throws large speed bumps in the road and pops you up out of your seat, cracking your head on the ceiling and leaving you, bewildered, wondering why you put yourself on this crazy ride again and again (this actually happened while I was there, but it also feels like an apt metaphor for the big, sassy country down there I've so come to love). You might get where you're going, eventually and somehow, or end up at another destination entirely. There's no telling. I've never encountered another place that makes it so clear that any sense of control we think we have is an illusion.
When I landed back in New York at the end of the trip, exhausted and feeling terribly isolated, it all melted down. I found myself immediately heaping the blame for the discomfort and fright I had been feeling on the people I loved most. And then, of course, I felt worse.
Brooklyn, upon my arrival, was stupefyingly hot and humid (as she's wont to be in late July). I don't take the heat and humidity well (one might be wondering right now-- why do you go to Brazil, then? My answer-- why do any of us repeatedly put ourselves in challenging situations? I firmly believe we go-- albeit unconsciously-- seeking the lessons we need to learn again and again until we learn them good and hard). The night after I got home from Brazil, I was walking towards my apartment along Prospect Park after having a beer with a friend when the sky turned a dark, moldy grayish yellow and the undersides of the leaves began to show themselves. Then the rain came pelting down, as though someone had just upturned a bucket over the block. I opened my umbrella, futilely trying to shield my face and my leather purse from the driving water. As I struggled against the tugging gusts, a man walked up beside me, a wide smile spread across his lips. "May as well surrender, don't you think?" he said, looking at me with water dripping from his eyelashes.
Back home, after I wrung out my dress, I thought about what the man had said. Perhaps he was right, that what I needed to do was just give in and let the storm chew me up and spit me out. Let up on my loved ones a bit and just feel whatever it was that was emerging rather than running myself ragged trying to fight it back.
Then the phone rang. Too soon. Before I had had a chance to let any of those thoughts sink in or declare a truce with myself. And there was conflict, again, staring me square in the face. Before I knew it, I had blown things up again, the lightning cracking outside my window a mirror to my electric and impulsive reactions, hot and unexpectedly aimed.
A couple days later, I drove north to Western MA to see Trouble. It had been a month, and I had felt so distant from him during my peripatetic travels and his busiest of work months. One final, tempestuous storm raged as I drove northwest through Connecticut. I turned on my brights and set my windshield wipers on their fastest tick-tock and charged on through.
I curled close to Trouble and slept more deeply than I had since I left. I hadn't realized how badly I just needed touch, familiarity, the woods, and how the absence of all those things had made me feel edgy, had caused me to unleash my careless tongue onto dangerous planes.
I spent my first two days in New England in a sort of relieved haze, exhausted but glad that I didn't have to hold it all together anymore.
By day three, after an impromptu day-trip to Vermont through golden-hued back country roads and a good sweaty run, I felt that old antsy-ness rising. I felt ready to work, to engage again. After coffee and sending Trouble off to work, I sat down to write. But it didn't come. I got up, folded laundry, brushed my teeth. Still, nothing. So I pulled on a pair of shoes and went outside, still dressed only in pajamas. By the edge of the driveway, the highbush blueberries caught my eye. The branches were hanging heavy, dark dusty purple orbs low and exposed. I hadn't known Trouble had berry bushes when I began dating him, or even when I first took stock of the yard. And though he told me once, I had completely forgotten.
Excited, I hurried back inside, grabbed a container, then set to cleaning the bushes of all their ripe fruit. As my fingers worked, my mind began turning. Thoughts came to rest like feathers that had been caught up in maelstrom, suddenly carried down on a soft, still summer evening. I was pleased with the bounty that had presented itself to me without my asking for it. Fortified by the harvest, I tentatively headed back to take a peek at the vegetable garden.
When spring emerged, I had started on the garden. I had envisioned a perfect square and straight rows, mulched and weed-free and giving forth more vegetables than I could manage in the kitchen. But I had left for Brazil just as the days were heating up and the garden called for my attention, and I felt guilty and disappointed in myself for not having tended the patch more attentively after building the beds, spreading compost, turning soil and sowing seeds with such care. I wanted not to look, ashamed at my abandonment of something I had begun with such vigor and intent. Then I thought of the blueberries and their surprise generosity.
I made my way back through the yard. The small plot (which had never quite become a square, but had been tilled into a rather Texas-shaped thing) was overgrown with weeds. The peas had gone to seed, and a few thick stalks shot up where the sweet tendrils had once climbed. At first I was overwhelmed. Then, as I came nearer, the bright, fire-tip hues of ripe fruit caught my eye.The tomato plants were lying on the ground (no one ever got around to taming them into vertical submission with twine or cage). I picked several handfuls of sungolds and salvaged a few striated red heirlooms into my t-shirt. Further encouraged, I picked my way gingerly among the weeds to examine the other rows.
There were, too, green beans hanging from their wily stalks. Some lay on the ground, a bit dustier for neglect, but still slender and fully formed. I went back inside for a colander.
I picked all the ready specimens, then saw a good deal of flawless parsley and snipped that too. A row of salad turnips appeared bed-headed, but despite the muss, the white spheres had emerged from the soil. I pulled a few and examined the cracks that had heaved through some of them in their overripe state. Instead of despair, I found myself imagining the bitter greens scrambled with eggs and jars of spicy kimchi.
The romaine was all long gone, and many of my herbs hadn't taken in the clayey, shady patch. But the nasturtiums were big and thriving and the eggplants were getting ready to fruit. I discovered some sorrel, too, which had soldiered through amid a circle of weeds that seemed hellbent on smothering it back. I caught myself laughing out loud as I snipped off a few of the pale, oblong leaves, thinking of sweet pea and sorrel soup.I brought everything back inside to the cool kitchen and laid the food on the kitchen counter, then went outside to gather the eggs from the coop. I separated the berries from the beans and the tomatoes, then filled a bowl with cold water to revive the greens from the shock of having been harvested. The motions felt fine, familiar and useful, slowly waking me from my July funk.
I wiped the sweat from my forehead, smearing garden dirt across my brow as I went. And then I sat down to write, suddenly full of lucidity. Despite the neglect, my garden had pulled through. Maybe because she knew I needed it. But more likely, because love works like that. You send it outwards in some direction, hoping it'll come back to you immediately, and in just way you've imagined, clean and uncomplicated and endlessly comforting. But it never happens that way. Instead, all the feeling and labor you pour in comes around and opens to you just at the moment when you've thrown up your hands. When you finally surrender. To the rain, to the distance, to the heat and weeds of summer. Sure, the beans may be a bit dirtier for wear, and some of the tomatoes, inevitably, will rot on the ground. You may even have to pull back the weeds to find the lemony snap of sorrel, and remember that, at first, she appears to be a weed herself. The reward is in the reassuring surprise that the heart you put in usually waits to come back around to tap you on the shoulder until it sees the window of vulnerability. That is, when you can finally taste the sweet on your tongue. And, as it so often happens, just when you thought it was lost.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Brazil, July 2012, Em Breve
Estou cansada. Excuse me, I meant to say I'm tired. Muito. Very.
For the past three weeks, I've been in Brazil (now you're saying "poor baby". I know, I know). I'm here to work. Together with chef and activist extraordinaire, Teresa Corção, I'm plugging away at my first cookbook (Okay, I'm not really plugging away. I'm not much of a plugger. Work on this book so far has been more like fast and furious spurts and then lulls that make me anxious. Needless to say, Brazil, as much as I love it, can test this New Yorker's patience), which documents the foundational role of the manioc root (also known as cassava, yuca and tapioca, depending on where you are in the world) in Brazil's diverse cuisines.
Luckily for me, I've folded my passion for food, stories, history and travel into my (nascent) career. And I've been afforded some incredible adventures because of it. But still, trying to cram in enough to give me fodder for the next six months of work on the book, coupled with being on the road and switching languages constantly, has left me tuckered out.
Now that I'm at the tail end of the trip, though, I realize I haven't written a single word about my time here.
So here's the whirlwind synopsis of my travels with a map to help with the geography: Teresa met me in the Rio airport after a red-eye from New York. We got on another plane to Salvador de Bahia. We spent one night there, supping at Beto Pimentel's legendary Paraiso Tropical, then spent the night at our host Chef Tereza Paim's house before hitting the road for the interior. We drove and stopped to eat, drove and stopped to talk, drove and stopped to shop. We visited the riverside city of Cachoeira and then spent the night in a small pousada in Valença, Bahia. The next day we drove some more. Visited more. Ate some more. We waited two hours in a seemingly endless line of cars to take the ferry back to Salvador. We spent one night back at Tereza's place, and squeezed in a visit to an international chocolate festival. The next morning, we drove to Cira's little roadside stand to eat what is widely considered the best acarajé in Brazil (I concur). Then to Praia do Forte, where Tereza has a home and a restaurant. Welcome respite with some time on the beach, a gorgeous meal at Tereza's restaurant. I even broke out my rusty capoeira moves in the street (aided by a good dose of Cachaça).
The next day, it was an early flight back to Rio. Four days of meetings down at Teresa's restaurant in the city center (where I am always treated like a queen and fed exceptionally well). Work work work. Not much time to explore the city. Plus, it was rainy and cool. Then off again we went, this time to São Paulo, where we were meeting with a publishing house. Sampa (as SP is often referred to) is a hideous, smog-filled city. BUT, their culinary scene is one of the best in the world. We ate four extraordinarily good meals-- a beautiful, traditional Brazilian lunch at Mara Salles's Tordesilhas, a gorgeous parade of plates flaunting the simplicity of Kappo cuisine at Kinoshita, had a late lunch at Neide Rigo's house in the leafy Lapa neighborhood, and one of the most artfully executed (and generously gifted) meals of my life at Alex Atala's D.O.M. The next morning, stuffed and giddy, we caught a bus to the south of Minas Gerais. One night in the small city of Pouso Alegre, Minas Gerais (where we learned how to make pasteis, or small wonton-like snacks, of manioc starch and cornmeal) and then to the absurdly beautiful mountaintop town of Gonçalves, where chef Tanea Romão of Kitanda hosted us in her lovely little house and fed us ridiculously good and simple food. Then back to Sampa by car, then a flight to Rio. Two nights in Rio. Work at the restaurant. Then a 36-hour blitz to step into the activist circles in Nova Friburgo, a mountainous region about 2 hours inland from Rio, where Teresa and her Ecochefs group are trying to pilot the first CSA in the state of Rio. Then back to Rio, where we've been testing recipes, transcribing Alex's introduction and planning out our tasks for the next six months (task one should be, if we're to be logical about the whole thing, procuring book contract).
We ate a lot. And very, very well. We saw a lot of manioc being harvested, processed, packaged and cooked. We ate quite a bit of it, too. Right now, the whole trip feels like a blur of overstimulation, one I can't make much sense of at the moment.
I have a couple days to catch up on sleep, walks, reading and writing, a nice little buffer to have before transitioning back to life in the States. I've got a small back porch in the flat I'm renting for this last stretch, surrounded on three sides by (slightly) tamed jungle. I've been sitting out here a lot. Hummingbirds keep coming to visit me. I always think they should get tired, seeing as they're always moving and flapping those wings with such extraordinary frequency. But they don't. I'm the one lacking stamina, at least in relative terms.
Maybe when I get back to New York and have a few days of space between this big, crazy, beautifully colorful country and me, I'll have more reflective things to say. But for now, I'm going to hop in the shower and head up to my friend Simone's house for one last big Brazilian lunch.
Então, até mais...
For the past three weeks, I've been in Brazil (now you're saying "poor baby". I know, I know). I'm here to work. Together with chef and activist extraordinaire, Teresa Corção, I'm plugging away at my first cookbook (Okay, I'm not really plugging away. I'm not much of a plugger. Work on this book so far has been more like fast and furious spurts and then lulls that make me anxious. Needless to say, Brazil, as much as I love it, can test this New Yorker's patience), which documents the foundational role of the manioc root (also known as cassava, yuca and tapioca, depending on where you are in the world) in Brazil's diverse cuisines.
Luckily for me, I've folded my passion for food, stories, history and travel into my (nascent) career. And I've been afforded some incredible adventures because of it. But still, trying to cram in enough to give me fodder for the next six months of work on the book, coupled with being on the road and switching languages constantly, has left me tuckered out.
Now that I'm at the tail end of the trip, though, I realize I haven't written a single word about my time here.
The next day, it was an early flight back to Rio. Four days of meetings down at Teresa's restaurant in the city center (where I am always treated like a queen and fed exceptionally well). Work work work. Not much time to explore the city. Plus, it was rainy and cool. Then off again we went, this time to São Paulo, where we were meeting with a publishing house. Sampa (as SP is often referred to) is a hideous, smog-filled city. BUT, their culinary scene is one of the best in the world. We ate four extraordinarily good meals-- a beautiful, traditional Brazilian lunch at Mara Salles's Tordesilhas, a gorgeous parade of plates flaunting the simplicity of Kappo cuisine at Kinoshita, had a late lunch at Neide Rigo's house in the leafy Lapa neighborhood, and one of the most artfully executed (and generously gifted) meals of my life at Alex Atala's D.O.M. The next morning, stuffed and giddy, we caught a bus to the south of Minas Gerais. One night in the small city of Pouso Alegre, Minas Gerais (where we learned how to make pasteis, or small wonton-like snacks, of manioc starch and cornmeal) and then to the absurdly beautiful mountaintop town of Gonçalves, where chef Tanea Romão of Kitanda hosted us in her lovely little house and fed us ridiculously good and simple food. Then back to Sampa by car, then a flight to Rio. Two nights in Rio. Work at the restaurant. Then a 36-hour blitz to step into the activist circles in Nova Friburgo, a mountainous region about 2 hours inland from Rio, where Teresa and her Ecochefs group are trying to pilot the first CSA in the state of Rio. Then back to Rio, where we've been testing recipes, transcribing Alex's introduction and planning out our tasks for the next six months (task one should be, if we're to be logical about the whole thing, procuring book contract).
We ate a lot. And very, very well. We saw a lot of manioc being harvested, processed, packaged and cooked. We ate quite a bit of it, too. Right now, the whole trip feels like a blur of overstimulation, one I can't make much sense of at the moment.
I have a couple days to catch up on sleep, walks, reading and writing, a nice little buffer to have before transitioning back to life in the States. I've got a small back porch in the flat I'm renting for this last stretch, surrounded on three sides by (slightly) tamed jungle. I've been sitting out here a lot. Hummingbirds keep coming to visit me. I always think they should get tired, seeing as they're always moving and flapping those wings with such extraordinary frequency. But they don't. I'm the one lacking stamina, at least in relative terms.
Maybe when I get back to New York and have a few days of space between this big, crazy, beautifully colorful country and me, I'll have more reflective things to say. But for now, I'm going to hop in the shower and head up to my friend Simone's house for one last big Brazilian lunch.
Então, até mais...
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Surprise!
The first black raspberries
caught my eye when I was headed
to the old red gray barn.
I pulled them off their prickly stems,
and ate them out out of hand.
Immediately.
I'm glad I didn't have to fight the bees
for this June surprise.
Monday, June 25, 2012
Great Gifts and a Busy Kitchen
"Sometimes great gifts come to us. Regardless of the form they arrive in, serendipity is involved and the source is unpredictable. The timing, however, is always right. In fact, it's the timing that's essential when it comes to receiving something that has the power to clarify, distill or, beneficently, disturb our lives." -- Deborah Madison, introduction to The Supper of the Lamb
I have just had an extraordinary week. A week that fell into my lap laden with gifts. It was a week of meeting remarkable people-- some lauded by the wider world for their talents and accomplishments, and some not. Some live lives furious and scattered, living all around, both geographically and intellectually. Many, like me, move back and forth from city to country. I loved each of them.
After such an awe-filled week, it's impossible for me not to look back over my shoulder and wonder exactly what conditions aligned to make it so. In this case there are a few immediate answers: good food in great quantities, beautiful scenery, quiet and space. My days were filled with an easy rhythm of cooking, reading, writing, walking, swimming and conversation. I slept deeply each night after long, leisurely reading sessions. But why this particular place, with these particularly people (all of whom I have just recently met) and why exactly now-- in this particular hot, clear week of summer? Those answers elude me. As well they should. Because timing isn't formulaic. If it were, we would surely ruin it with all our fretting and planning, measurements and analyses. Or at least I would.
So what, you may wonder, was this week all about? Rewind. Let's go back to the end of May. That goat roast I wrote about recently? Molly O'Neill-- a tremendously important and well-known food writer, journalist and oral historian-- was a guest of ours there. Along with a videographer. Just a week before the soiree was to commence, I received an email from Molly saying she had heard about the party from our "mutual friend", Kathy, a certain radio producer whom I met exactly once at the IACP conference back in April. Kathy and I talked for no more than five minutes, but I liked her immediately. She had a cackling laugh, wore fabulous boots to go with her wild hair, and she loves cooking, stories and radio. So I invited her to the goat roast.
She passed along the news to Molly. Molly ended up coming, Kathy didn't make it. Molly came, primarily, to film and interview Trouble as he prepared the goat in the tradition of his native Oaxaca. Molly spent much of the day with Trouble, but she and I connected over a love of oral history and interviewing in the field, over our dogs and over green smoothies. Go figure.
A week or so after the party, I got a call from Molly. She had been planning a small retreat for memoirists and cookbook writers needing help finishing their books, and she suddenly had two openings. She wanted to know if I knew anyone who might be interested, and also if I knew someone who might be able to assist her with the cooking in exchange for attending some of the workshops. With no one immediately coming to mind, I forwarded the email along to my agent, and forgot about it.
A week or so later (two weeks ago today) I missed a call. The person on the line left a message. It was Molly. She wanted to know if I was interested in attending the retreat. I emailed her back-- "money is tight right now, I'm about to be traveling for three weeks in Brazil to work on my cookbook", and I didn't think I could afford it. But I thanked her for thinking of me. "Then let's do it as an internship-- no charge for you!" she wrote back promptly. "You can help me cook, shop and menu plan, and in exchange you'll take part in the afternoon workshops and have a couple one-on-one sessions with me."
I couldn't say no. I wasn't even sure I wanted to, but I was immediately nervous. I'm not a tremendous cook. I think of myself as able, indeed, but I cook mostly for myself, sometimes for close friends. I make a lot of grains, greens and eggs. I don't cook much meat. I make a mean pie, but that's about as far as my kitchen confidence extends. Still, I agreed to show up in a week with a car loaded down with rations for the week. And to run the kitchen.
On Monday afternoon, I pulled into a tiny hamlet near Albany, New York. Row houses were clustered together on the short strip of Main Street. Mountains climbed up to the right, and I could hear the rush of a creek ricocheting off lush greenery and tumbling stones. I met Molly at her house in town, and then she drove me up to the "manor house" where the other writers and I would be staying (and eating).
The place was strangely familiar to me. It looked like my grandparents' (on my mother's side) house. Sprawling and white, the house was built around an enormous bright kitchen with an extra fridge and chest freezer in the basement. Bedrooms and bathrooms moved away from narrow staircases like wings on the second floor. There was a faint smell of dust, mothballs, and old cotton. The kitchen curtains were the same as my grandparents'. The antique iron used as a doorstop was the same. The dented tin measuring cups I found in the kitchen drawers were the same. I felt immediately at home.
The funny thing is, when you feel at home-- because of the people, the place, the smells whose familiarity creep up on you unexpectedly-- you act as if you're at home. I settled right in. Over the course of a short week, I swam and ran and met a slew of new (and fascinating) people. I played with bearded collies and walked barefoot and swam on the summer solstice. I walked in the woods and visited farms and got a tick bite. But the real meat of the week, for me, was the dual work of my hands and my mind-- the result of meditations on food and memory. Cooking and writing.
I greeted each morning on the back porch with coffee, a bowl of fresh berries and a good book. I read. Then I wrote.
When I came to the end of an idea, I cooked. And cooked. And cooked.
I made countless salads and a couple of savory tarts. I went through dozens of eggs and hulled quart after quart of strawberries. I baked five whole fish in kosher salt for a dinner party and fried the first tender zucchini of the season in olive oil, then sprinkled them generously with fresh mint, parsley, new garlic and red wine vinegar. I roasted an awful lot of asparagus and my first chickens, and made an exquisitely good (and hopefully replicable) cold chicken salad the day after. I rolled crust and sliced rhubarb, zested lemons and scraped vanilla beans, and made pie after pie after pie, each better than the last. Like I said, I was really settling in.
For me, cooking, more than anything else, renders tangles of thought manageable. As Jane Kramer wrote in her delightful essay, "The Reporter's Stove", "My stove is where my head clears, my impressions settle, my reporter's life gets folded into my life, and whatever I've just learned, or think I've learned-- whatever it was, out there in the world, that seemed so different and surprising-- bubbles away in the very small pot of what I think I know and, if I'm lucky, produces something like perspective." This past week, I wasn't out reporting, but rather looking inward. Sometimes, our own lives can be the most difficult ones to take stock of. After all, we only have one vantage point from which to examine them. We can't step back from ourselves (though we can, and I would argue should, attempt to play with our perspective from time to time), given the reality that, at the very moment we may be trying to make sense of water already under the bridge, we are, too, always moving. We're slippery things to ourselves.
But, you see, none of that would have emerged if it hadn't been for the serendipity of the Molly's and my meeting, the good timing (I happened to have a week free before a busy, busy summer), and the beautiful light. I happened to feel at ease in that kitchen, with those tools and ingredients, with the other guests. The sun shone all week. Any of those variables altered could have changed the tone of the week, sent things awry. But none did.
So I suppose I'm writing merely to muse on the gift of time offered, and chances taken. And on joy-- on the ways it creeps up on us, and how the people who deeply touch us can swoop out of what seems like nowhere and become a part of the burbling streams of our lives.
So, in gratitude then, for the inexplicable gifts in our lives. And the opportunities sometimes afforded us by perfect timing.
I have just had an extraordinary week. A week that fell into my lap laden with gifts. It was a week of meeting remarkable people-- some lauded by the wider world for their talents and accomplishments, and some not. Some live lives furious and scattered, living all around, both geographically and intellectually. Many, like me, move back and forth from city to country. I loved each of them.
After such an awe-filled week, it's impossible for me not to look back over my shoulder and wonder exactly what conditions aligned to make it so. In this case there are a few immediate answers: good food in great quantities, beautiful scenery, quiet and space. My days were filled with an easy rhythm of cooking, reading, writing, walking, swimming and conversation. I slept deeply each night after long, leisurely reading sessions. But why this particular place, with these particularly people (all of whom I have just recently met) and why exactly now-- in this particular hot, clear week of summer? Those answers elude me. As well they should. Because timing isn't formulaic. If it were, we would surely ruin it with all our fretting and planning, measurements and analyses. Or at least I would.
So what, you may wonder, was this week all about? Rewind. Let's go back to the end of May. That goat roast I wrote about recently? Molly O'Neill-- a tremendously important and well-known food writer, journalist and oral historian-- was a guest of ours there. Along with a videographer. Just a week before the soiree was to commence, I received an email from Molly saying she had heard about the party from our "mutual friend", Kathy, a certain radio producer whom I met exactly once at the IACP conference back in April. Kathy and I talked for no more than five minutes, but I liked her immediately. She had a cackling laugh, wore fabulous boots to go with her wild hair, and she loves cooking, stories and radio. So I invited her to the goat roast.
She passed along the news to Molly. Molly ended up coming, Kathy didn't make it. Molly came, primarily, to film and interview Trouble as he prepared the goat in the tradition of his native Oaxaca. Molly spent much of the day with Trouble, but she and I connected over a love of oral history and interviewing in the field, over our dogs and over green smoothies. Go figure.
A week or so after the party, I got a call from Molly. She had been planning a small retreat for memoirists and cookbook writers needing help finishing their books, and she suddenly had two openings. She wanted to know if I knew anyone who might be interested, and also if I knew someone who might be able to assist her with the cooking in exchange for attending some of the workshops. With no one immediately coming to mind, I forwarded the email along to my agent, and forgot about it.
A week or so later (two weeks ago today) I missed a call. The person on the line left a message. It was Molly. She wanted to know if I was interested in attending the retreat. I emailed her back-- "money is tight right now, I'm about to be traveling for three weeks in Brazil to work on my cookbook", and I didn't think I could afford it. But I thanked her for thinking of me. "Then let's do it as an internship-- no charge for you!" she wrote back promptly. "You can help me cook, shop and menu plan, and in exchange you'll take part in the afternoon workshops and have a couple one-on-one sessions with me."
I couldn't say no. I wasn't even sure I wanted to, but I was immediately nervous. I'm not a tremendous cook. I think of myself as able, indeed, but I cook mostly for myself, sometimes for close friends. I make a lot of grains, greens and eggs. I don't cook much meat. I make a mean pie, but that's about as far as my kitchen confidence extends. Still, I agreed to show up in a week with a car loaded down with rations for the week. And to run the kitchen.On Monday afternoon, I pulled into a tiny hamlet near Albany, New York. Row houses were clustered together on the short strip of Main Street. Mountains climbed up to the right, and I could hear the rush of a creek ricocheting off lush greenery and tumbling stones. I met Molly at her house in town, and then she drove me up to the "manor house" where the other writers and I would be staying (and eating).
The place was strangely familiar to me. It looked like my grandparents' (on my mother's side) house. Sprawling and white, the house was built around an enormous bright kitchen with an extra fridge and chest freezer in the basement. Bedrooms and bathrooms moved away from narrow staircases like wings on the second floor. There was a faint smell of dust, mothballs, and old cotton. The kitchen curtains were the same as my grandparents'. The antique iron used as a doorstop was the same. The dented tin measuring cups I found in the kitchen drawers were the same. I felt immediately at home.
The funny thing is, when you feel at home-- because of the people, the place, the smells whose familiarity creep up on you unexpectedly-- you act as if you're at home. I settled right in. Over the course of a short week, I swam and ran and met a slew of new (and fascinating) people. I played with bearded collies and walked barefoot and swam on the summer solstice. I walked in the woods and visited farms and got a tick bite. But the real meat of the week, for me, was the dual work of my hands and my mind-- the result of meditations on food and memory. Cooking and writing.
I greeted each morning on the back porch with coffee, a bowl of fresh berries and a good book. I read. Then I wrote.When I came to the end of an idea, I cooked. And cooked. And cooked.
I made countless salads and a couple of savory tarts. I went through dozens of eggs and hulled quart after quart of strawberries. I baked five whole fish in kosher salt for a dinner party and fried the first tender zucchini of the season in olive oil, then sprinkled them generously with fresh mint, parsley, new garlic and red wine vinegar. I roasted an awful lot of asparagus and my first chickens, and made an exquisitely good (and hopefully replicable) cold chicken salad the day after. I rolled crust and sliced rhubarb, zested lemons and scraped vanilla beans, and made pie after pie after pie, each better than the last. Like I said, I was really settling in.
The food was simple and good, though some meals trumped others (in a week of contiguous cooking, that's wont to happen). But what surprised me more was the writing-- good writing-- that seemed to emerge from me from someplace beneath the bustle of the kitchen.
Stories came pouring out of me, each memory pulling back the curtain on another that had been hiding in a dark corner somewhere. New insights came swimming in, shedding light on moments of the past that had been bouncing around, unruly and squirrely, tough to pin down on the page with any real sense or context. It was some of the most productive and joyous (if at times painful) writing time I've had in memory.
For me, cooking, more than anything else, renders tangles of thought manageable. As Jane Kramer wrote in her delightful essay, "The Reporter's Stove", "My stove is where my head clears, my impressions settle, my reporter's life gets folded into my life, and whatever I've just learned, or think I've learned-- whatever it was, out there in the world, that seemed so different and surprising-- bubbles away in the very small pot of what I think I know and, if I'm lucky, produces something like perspective." This past week, I wasn't out reporting, but rather looking inward. Sometimes, our own lives can be the most difficult ones to take stock of. After all, we only have one vantage point from which to examine them. We can't step back from ourselves (though we can, and I would argue should, attempt to play with our perspective from time to time), given the reality that, at the very moment we may be trying to make sense of water already under the bridge, we are, too, always moving. We're slippery things to ourselves.
But, you see, none of that would have emerged if it hadn't been for the serendipity of the Molly's and my meeting, the good timing (I happened to have a week free before a busy, busy summer), and the beautiful light. I happened to feel at ease in that kitchen, with those tools and ingredients, with the other guests. The sun shone all week. Any of those variables altered could have changed the tone of the week, sent things awry. But none did.
So I suppose I'm writing merely to muse on the gift of time offered, and chances taken. And on joy-- on the ways it creeps up on us, and how the people who deeply touch us can swoop out of what seems like nowhere and become a part of the burbling streams of our lives.
So, in gratitude then, for the inexplicable gifts in our lives. And the opportunities sometimes afforded us by perfect timing.
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