Recipes to Save a Marriage By

The Leap

2012-01-27T06:48:00.000-08:00

"How did you find the courage?"
I get that question a lot when people find out that my older child is special needs. Fellow parents of all sorts of kids say to me that they never could have had another child if there were issues with their first. Parents of special needs kids tell me they could never have another after all the work and heartbreak of their special needs child.
There are a few of us in this small town alone who had their special kids and then went for it again, another child.
A friend called me for coffee and told me over the phone that she was expecting her second child. I burst into tears of happiness and also felt the deep incisors of worry that I knew were permanently lodged in her heart with her pregnancy. Her first is a special needs child and she and her husband had been trying for another child for a while.
Sitting down together as we only seem to find time for a couple of times a year, our conversation covered housing, mobility, toileting, feeding, medication, allergies, school, and then finally, the baby.
She asked me, "How do you do it? How do you find your way through this gigantic, astonishing, constant fear? I hope, I hope, I just so hope everything is alright with this baby."
As different as my friend and I are, as different a diagnosis as our two special children have, I felt her words to the core of me. I felt like I knew what it was like to be in her skin, in her thoughts, in her urgent prayers on sleepless nights.
And the answer that came out of my mouth at her question was, "Love."
It is love. Love is the only thing big enough, massive enough in your heart and cosmology of how to move through the universe, love is the only way to make it. Love is the only way to silence the deafening and paralyzing fears and doubts about if you made the right decision, what you will do if your second has "issues" as well. Love is the only meditation that feels possible to contain your worry as well as your hope.
The literally endless worry about how you will balance the needs of your children could be an entire identity, could be where you decide to live, the central psychological commitment. And you will never get it right. There is no such thing as a right answer. There will be, no matter what your kids are like, no perfect symmetry of love and attention. If her second child is as healthy and running around as every parent expects their child to be, or if her child is just like her first born, there will be great days and there will be impossibly hard days.
I got my wish, I got the dream of watching a completely healthy child be born and learn and grow. With my second child I got to experience what every parent hopes for and expects. Watching, parenting Coral is the most astonishing, heart lifting miracle I've ever witnessed. And feeling the deep empathy that passes between Colby and I is the most mysterious, profound love and connection I've ever known. There is no point, in fact there is no real ability, to compare these children. It is as if they are distinct and intersecting universes within one house.
That may be how parents feel about their children, special needs or not. I do not know that experience of two (or more) kids, of life parenting without seizures and a dimension of constant, acute medical issues. I only know what I know, and looking at my beautiful, pregnant friend across the table, I knew her heart.
Our conversation ended where it started: You must, you must let yourself love. You must love your children. I hope that she gets to see her second child run across the grass. I hope she gets to hear her child say, "I love you moma." I hope she gets to have a child that she is able to predict and comfort. I hope she gets to feel her heart grow even bigger as she plumbs the depths of love and astonishment at a healthy child, and knows that to love both her kids is not to love one less or more. I hope she finds as I find over and over again, that it is only loving your children that is big enough to guide your heart through the challenges and polarities of a day.
We cannot project onto our children what their experience will be of life in our family. They are brighter, braver, stronger than us. They are innocent and open, brains literally growing before our eyes. Let us help them be brave and bright and strong by showing them that it is possible to live a life directed by love. Let us be the parents whose arms feel big enough to hold all of who our children are. Let us show them that it is not fear that guides our way. Let us show them love.
Isn't that the point of having children anyway? To love them and adore them? When your worries keep you up at night, I told my friend, find instead one moment from the day that you felt happy. Breathe that into your heart and breathe back out. Breathe into the love and beauty and let that be what you feel, what you do with your mind, where you go.
We held hands and cried across the table from each other. Fear, love, hope. We will find our way, we do find our way. Worrying is not going to make anything alright. And you will miss out on all the fun. How do you find the courage? With love.

Gratitude

2011-12-26T06:39:00.000-08:00

Breakfast. Deep sigh, then another deep sigh. As I reached hungrily for the baguette and Humbolt Fog cheese, I stopped, placed my hands palms up on the table and closed my eyes and took several more deep breathes, in, and out, in, and out. From inside my dominant feeling of being rushed and tired, I suddenly fell head long into gratitude. It surprised me, it usually feels like being grateful, taking that moment to say thank you at a meal is something you do and then you feel. This moment came from another direction, it was as if the gratitude was circling around the room and demanded that I pay attention, pushing my hands to stop, my attention to go to my breathing. It felt like a gift, this cosmic invitation to that warmest, most meaningful of feelings: to be present in the moment.
My breakfast was a perfect meal. Canned peaches from the summer, a cheese that tastes of my California roots, a salad of bitter chicory, bread and water.
Through the meal, the sole moment I was likely to find in the day, the presence of gratitude was enveloping. Beauty and gratitude often travel together. It was in part my determination to have a simple but truly beautiful picnic breakfast that invited such a moment of gratitude. Slapping all the ingredients together into a sandwich and eating while I drove was one option for the morning. It would have been delicious, all the same ingredients, and I would have loved it. But I could not have been in the moment, driving, eating, listening to the radio, going over my to do list in my head. Sitting at the table, making the effort to find a functional, contemplative moment proved more nourishing than I could have anticipated.
Later in the week when Coral got pneumonia and Colby needed to go to the hospital for a strong virus that severely dehydrated her, I kept coming back to that still moment, that surprising day I had gratitude for breakfast.

The Gratitude Breakfast is a reminder to savor the quiet moments, to calm and still where and when you can. It provided me a fond and immediate memory to call on when my stress and concern for my children were mounting. Calm and gratitude are there for us, any moment we remembered, and feel.

Independence

2011-12-11T18:35:00.001-08:00

How much of life do we learn at the table? How to eat and chew and swallow solid food. How to use a fork, chopsticks, our fingers, bread and spoon. How to recognize social nuance, the changes in tone, how to elevate and support gaiety and conviviality. How to give thanks, appreciate and be appreciated. We learn how to take our seat, claim our space, walk the balance between being independent, self sufficient and yet part of the collective, the whole.

There is a phase of early toddler hood where the child wants to do everything themselves, even though they can't quite do it yet. And that is why they want to, they must try in order to learn. To master drinking from a glass each human must spill many, many glasses. Part of being a parent is tolerating the time and the mess, the frustration and the exalted satisfaction of learning.

Colby has just entered this phase. I wasn't sure what was happening at first. We sat down to dinner as we always do, the bowl between us, the fork more to my side than hers. We held hands and said thank you and then, her favorite part, our raucous cheers.

I went to feed her the first forkful and she pursed her lips and moved her head away, leaning back in her chair. She is often time consuming to feed, she is never in a hurry, which I enjoy, it keeps us all at the table rather than rushing through a meal. She likes things in a certain order, but you never know what the order will be. She only recently started reaching for her glass when she wants water and that was a huge hallelujah moment, not having to guess, having her tell you what she wants.

I took a forkful of something else and she pursed her lips. Over and over. I was done with my meal by now. Coral then finished. Finally, Colby reached onto her plate, picked up a piece of meat with her whole palm and put it in her mouth. She turned to me with a triumphant gaze and I saw in a lightening bolt of recognition: she wanted to feed herself. She is six and a half. We have never had this moment.

Sometimes she will feed herself but it is more of a "I really want that raisin so I'll pick it up and get it myself" direction of the will. This dinner was the first time she would not eat until she was in control. She had reached a major developmental milestone. Had she been two it would have been immediately recognizable, the turning away, the pursed lips, the refusal until in control.

A very tall child with braids to her waist and missing front teeth, it took quite a while for me to make the connection. My body rushed with adrenaline, my heart filled with pride and the disbelief all parents feel when you actually see your child change before your very eyes.

I put several pieces of food in a row on the table in front of her. She ate quickly, decisively, smiling with her cheeks full of food. She was extremely pleased. Pleased with her ability and I feel like too with her ability to communicate her desire.

That is one of the challenges with a child who is developing outside the time line of a pediatric checklist of milestones. You never know when you are going to see the emergence of a skill, or if you ever will.

At the table I learned something. I learned to always keep my mind open. I learned to look each day at these growing children and say, "Who are you today?" What do you need? What do you want? How do I support you in your path of learning, around this table, in this life we share together? I learned again the beautiful relief in independence, of knowing the child you are raising can in part, or in full, know what they want, and get it.

Aprons and My Beautiful Zene

2011-12-09T09:17:00.001-08:00

photo, Coral wearing an apron from Zene

I wear an apron every day. I have about twenty. And all but two were given to me by The Crazy Apron Lady, aka Zene, my best friend. Our friendship started on an oppressively hot day in kindergarten. The playground was a kidney shaped sandbox with a concrete path around the periphery, a track for riding tricycles. There was a bridge over one section of the track, and under that, the sole rectangle of shade. The mornings were cold and all the kids wore knee socks with their Buster Browns. By mid-morning recess, it was scalding. The sand and concrete and sky all a blinding white. I would take refuge under the bridge where the foggy night and morning dew were still trapped in the sand.

Eventually, Zene and I both claimed the rectangle of shade under the bridge. Our mothers were friends and forced us together, and in what may have been our first parallel rebellion, we insisted on not liking each other. Then one scalding mid-morning recess, Zene and I locked eyes and wordlessly, surreptitiously unbuckled our shoes, peeled off our clam-y socks, and sunk our feet into the cool sand.

It was ecstasy. Childhood is composed of so many sensory memories, perhaps because children can be in the moment to a degree that is so hard for us as adults. Or maybe because childhood is full of first times. I remember my first giant, spiral lollipop, at a market in Mexico, it was larger than my face: the feeling of a burning wish fulfilled. Or the first time riding a bike, the first nightmare, the first fancy dress, the first time you write your name in cursive.

Our ecstasy was extremely short lived. The teachers spotted us in moments and we were in trouble. It was strictly forbidden to take your shoes off in the sandbox, probably for a good reason, like broken glass. We duly bowed our heads as we received our punishment: the rest of recess inside the classroom, playing with Lincoln Logs. But we were smiling. The moment of cool, of exquisite relief, Lincoln Logs were a small price for joy.

And that has been our friendship: the pursuit of beauty, exquisite moments, joy. Even if it meant breaking the rules. In high school, while other girls were ditching class to go home and drink Kahlua and watch soap operas, we ditched on the days that were too beautiful to sit inside all day. We were in Carmel, CA. The beauty on a clear, warm day was almost laughable, absurdly, impossibly gorgeous. To the south, rolling green hills dotted with Oak trees, to the west, the glittering, sapphire blue Pacific Ocean. It was impossible for us not to go be in the day, just as impossible as keeping our socks on in kindergarten.

So we ditched. And we buried our feet in the sand again, and felt the sun relaxing every muscle, browning Zene and freckling me. We studied the horizons of our childhood. How the rocks at Point Lobos looked like a dragon laying his chin in the water. How the Pebble Beach Golf Course buildings, sand traps and trees composed to look like the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. We walked and collected shells. We took long deep breaths and savored the beauty, we loved life. We took a break from the anxiety and horror of adolescence and high school and were free, like the kids we still in part were.

Now, Zene and I are thousands of miles apart. We no longer ditch to go to the beach, though if we were still there I am sure we would. We no longer dance together after school in the ballet studio for hours and hours a day. We no longer know every thing the other is thinking all day every day. We are still best friends. Every time we are together my heart fills with my oldest, longest sense of complicity, joy, mischievousness, connection, love, hope and beauty. With her I feel impervious to heart break. I feel safe.

Even at this distance, Zene fills every day with beauty, in memories of course, but in the physical as well, through the exquisite collection of aprons she has given me and my girls over the years. Every day I put one on and I think of her. Everyday she makes the moment more lovely and fun. Every day our friendship protects me: the humble apron, the full heart.

Crabby Pasta, Happy Bellies

2011-12-09T07:19:00.001-08:00

photo, crab stencil graffiti found in Ithaca, NY

Craig has been traveling for work for several weeks at a time. He is doing awesome work and we are fairing well at home, but it is hard some of the time. Long nights, lots of chores, two kids, holidays: I miss my partner. I miss laughing together, holding hands, sharing the chores, and taking turns getting up in the night. And his cooking, I miss that too. Though when he is gone is practically the only time I get to practice my own dinners, to see what I have learned from all the time observing, freshen up my latent skills, try things.

I also like seeing what the girls need of me in Craig's absence.

Coral is as moody as anyone, but as with most children, her mood can be lifted in an instant. When she is crabby she asks Craig to "shake her crabs out." He lifts her and holds her upside down and shakes, as if she were a bushel of apples being emptied, and exclaims "look at all those crabs shaking out!" He makes the sound of hundreds of little crab legs scuttling across the floor and shouts out where they are going, "down the heater vent, out the front door, hiding under the chairs!" Soon, Coral's crabs and scowls are gone and we are all laughing. When Craig is gone and I ask her if she is feeling crabby, she shoots me a scowl-y smile and I do my best to hoist her up and shake the crabs out.

One night, when I was crabby, Craig shook my crabs out with this pasta. And in his absence, I managed to pull it off myself on a night that was grey, freezing cold and me and the girls were all feeling a little worn out and crabby. It is joyously good, the essence of sea in the economical amount of crab, the land in the pasta, and the sunshine in the scallions. Enjoy!

Crabby Pasta

As we live in Central New York state, it's a luxury to get frozen crab meat from a small company in Maine. No crabs in the lake here! If this dish was being made in California I'd substitute fresh, live Dungeness!

You will need:
A container of crab meat (look for a company harvesting crab sensibly ie, not trawling)

As many scallions as you like. Green part slivered, white parts quartered length-wise, then finely diced

1 garlic clove, smashed and chopped

3 anchovy filets. Rinse if using oil packed. Rinse and filet if using salt packed (better!)

An avocado quartered and sliced into 1/2" chunks

Fresh mint leaves (a light handful) slivered

Some parsley leaves

A lemon

Penne or other Italian dried pasta you love

To make:
Start a large pot of salted water to boil.

Pour a few glugs of olive oil in a large skillet on medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, toss in the anchovies and mash with a fork until they've melted into the oil. Add a few grinds of black pepper. Remove pan from heat and turn the heat down to medium. Put the white parts of the scallions and the garlic clove into the anchovy oil and cook until just softened. Add the crab meat and stir to incorporate the other ingredients. Remove the skillet from heat.

By now the water should be boiling, add the pasta to the water and cook until just al dente. Using a spider, transfer the pasta to the pan with the crab/scallion mix. Add a couple ladles of the hot pasta water and mix with wooden spoons over medium-high heat until the liquid is almost all gone. Toss in the scallion greens, the avocado (save a few pieces to put on top) and the mint. Squeeze a bit of lemon juice and toss the pasta some more. Add the parsley leaves on to for a visual element and serve hot from the pan!

Wood Roasted Chicken

2011-11-30T07:49:00.001-08:00

We are having a manic depressive fall. One day is freezing with mean little pellets of ice flinging down from the sky. The next, it is sixty degrees and the confused insects, lethargic and sleepy, are droning through open doors. It provokes global warming conversation at every turn. And, the grill has still not fully gone into hibernation. The days however are short, so this is a mighty tasty, decadent but simple lunch for a late fall day. Put on your coat and break a baguette into chunks and sop this up outdoors, one more al dente (fresco) meal.

Remove and reserve the back bone from a whole chicken. Cut through breast cartilage to make two halves. Salt generously and put in fridge for a few hours (or overnight). light some hardwood charcoal in a grill. Douse chicken halves with olive oil, salt and pepper and rub into the skin. Roughly chop some garlic. In the pan, under each half of bird place some garlic along with some sprigs of fresh rosemary, thyme and savory. Put a whole head of garlic in the pan. Squeeze juice from a couple of lemons over and pour about 1/2 cup of white wine, or water, in the pan. When the coals are ready, put the pan on the grill and close the top of the grill. The temperature should be around 350-400. Roast, basting continually, till the chicken is nicely browned and the juices run clear, about an hour or so. Cut into pieces and serve! For the back, rub it with olive oil, salt and pepper. Put it directly on the grill while the rest of the chicken is cooking in the pan. Keep turning til it's crispy...chefs' treat! Or, if that is not your idea of a treat, save it for stock.

Having It All

2011-11-30T07:04:00.001-08:00

photo by Coral
The idea of having it all infects our hopes and dreams, our doubts and fears, our books and movies and songs. Is it possible? "Of course!" we say on a good day. "Of course not!" we say on a hard day. This morning I was thinking about my friends who work, who have kids and homes and dishes and laundry, and still get out of the house every day and earn a living. The best I can approximate a work life is to write on the heavenly mornings both girls are in school. I consider it a major act of self care if I sit down to write instead of clean the house.
I saw a friend at the coffee shop the other morning getting her latte before work. Me, seeing her looking sharp and professional for work, she looked like she had it all. Her, seeing me, writing, she looked at me and thought I had it all. Within a minute she said she hungered for an unscheduled moment to walk, breathe, write. I said in the following minute I craved the structure and sense of accomplishment that comes from meaningful work, outside the home. And then we just cracked up. We are struggling to balance the range of our dreams, goals, expectations. Our children, our marriages, our waistlines. And the feeling of always having something that is not getting done, something important that is being left out, is persistent. This morning I left the dishes undone, packed my computer and headed back to the coffee shop after dropping everyone off at school. Leaving the dishes in the sink is as profound a symbol as I know for putting myself first. And that got me thinking, maybe having it all is about putting your self first often enough.
Maybe having it all is not the clean house, the brushed hair, the book deal, the kids with no boogers on their faces, the great job, the thriving marriage. Maybe having it all is having enough of any one of those things, one at a time. In the spirit of "be here now" how many things can be perfect all at once anyway?
Leaving the dishes in the sink is hard for me. I do not suffer from OCD, I swear. But what that says to me is, I think my time, me, is less important than a clean house. What if I say, no, I am more important than a clean house? That sounds fairly obvious, so why is it hard to remember, why is that hard to feel?
Here is my radical redefinition of having it all, as of today: putting myself first often enough, in ways and places that mean the most to me. That will be work, but I know one thing for sure, it will be rewarding, is rewarding, and that sink full of dishes can wait.

Chanterelle Moment

2011-09-21T08:07:00.000-07:00

The post man knocked today and handed over a large but very light box, marked Albion, CA. A box from Grandma Lola! The girls and I opened it and instead of sparkly bracelets and fabulous socks, there were bags and bags of gorgeous, golden Chanterelles! Now, that is a present. The best kind of present in the world is something you cannot provide for yourself. And this one, an epic, earthy and unexpected surprise. Sent from the forest floor in California, arriving in our cozy living room, the two or three pounds of Chanterelles made me feel suddenly rich. Wild harvested mushrooms are a distinct wealth; they are rare, they require knowledge, and they are fleeting. Plans for the day were scrapped as I set out to preserve the bounty. I adapted a recipe for Duxelle from Well Preserved by Eugenia Bone. And we saved a bowlful for supper. Coral was a quick study in mushroom chopping, being as she is at the age of always wanting a job.
Grandma Lola sent this recipe:
"I saute them in olive oil. Slice, saute until golden, add garlic, saute all until toasty. Put aside. You have boiled several potatoes for a few minutes, then chunk or slice and brown the potatoes. Combine when the potatoes are as brown as you like...get ready for delicious! Marvelous with any meat, we love buffalo."
I served it with Bison Meatloaf and the girls ate voraciously. I told them it was fairy food from the forest floor foraged by Grandma Lola, and that might have piqued their enthusiasm. The best part of that explanation? It was true! And it was indeed, delicious.

Raw Tomato Sauce

2011-09-12T20:51:00.000-07:00

I am a cook who likes ease, Craig likes challenge. My imagination tends to stop at the point where I think I have a well balanced meal, a pleasing combination of flavors, textures and colors. Craig is always questing, always digger deeper into his experience to improve and invent. Pasta is a success to me if I have the noodles just the right texture and it is not too salty. Pasta is a success to Craig if he knocks your socks off and elevates his fellow diners to speechless bliss. For example, last night was squid ink pasta with crab meat, lobster mushrooms, bottarga and chives. His cooking is about respecting the ingredients but boldly combining so that each takes on a dimension, a presence it would not have on its own. I am more about letting each ingredient fully be itself. Like the tomato and blue cheese salad from around this time last year, that combination is about the tomato really shining.
There is one pasta where our cooking styles meet, and that is in Raw Tomato Sauce. This is a sauce for now, right this minute. I feel a striking of relief when Craig makes this pasta. It is relieving to have a few things to learn from him that I can easily do, not so much because they are easy but because they relate to my cooking style.
Also, it is relaxing to eat a meal that is simple because there is little demand to appreciate the labor that went into it. Sometimes it is good to let a tomato be a tomato, to let dinner just be dinner. And, there is often a big clean up with an ambitious meal. This meal has a simple clean up, leaving more time to enjoy the falling golden light of these early evenings.

Take freshest possible raw tomatoes. Either paste tomatoes or giant, watery heirlooms. Aroma and texture are key.
Slice them in half and squeeze the seeds out.
Grate on a box grater into a big bowl. Discard skins.
If you are using tomatoes with a lot of water, grate into a bowl and then strain some of the water off. (The tomato water is very yummy as a beverage. We added a little salt, pepper, chiso and shochu for a cocktail.)
Mince or paste garlic to taste. Careful not to overpower the tomato.
Sea salt and pepper to taste.
Your very best olive oil to taste. I had wished for a super fresh extra virgin olive oil, the kind that is so peppery as to be spicy.
Let that sit while you cook your pasta.
Toss and sprinkle with minced basil or other herb and Parmesan.
Variations we've added so far include anchovies and lemon zest.

September 10, 2001

2011-09-11T18:57:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,
On this evening, incomprehensibly 10 years since September 11th, I wrote this essay of my own experience, and wanted to share it.
With love,
Elvina

On September 10, 2001, I rushed home to watch the lightening storm that was collecting in the sky as the evening turned to night. My apartment at 100 Beekman Street was shared by a friend who inherited the very, very rent stabilized two bedroom from his great aunt. It was an awful yet wonderful, musty apartment with terrible furniture and truly great art. And, it had a tiny balcony, barely larger than a yoga mat, with a very high fence around it, which was appropriate given that we were eighteen floors up. Eighteen floors. The fact that it was on the eighteenth floor had given me a feeling of destiny when through a friend I reconnected with an old friend and sublet the apartment, eighteen had always, since early childhood baseball jerseys, been a favorite number.

Leaving work just after five on September 10, I could feel that it was going to be one of the marvelous nights of an electrical storm with lots of lightening. This was a high point of the apartment: our tiny balcony looked out over the World Trade Center buildings, and in electrical storms, when the sky filled with lightening, it was a miracle, a wondrous beauty like the pyramids or the Grand Canyon, to watch all the lightening in the sky collect and travel in unison towards the lightening rod in the South Tower.

I knew exactly the timing, watching the sky go grey and slowly acquire the pregnant green of a real rain storm, I had about 45 minutes from when I stepped of the train til when the lightening storm would start. I ran home. Giant golden and red heirloom tomatoes from the Saturday Union Square Market sat in a bowl. Also, a half bottle of the most expensive wine I had ever to that point bought myself. It was not the very cute, persuasive young man at Battali’s Italian Wine Merchant that had sold me, but the finely detailed lithograph of a bird on a branch. I thought I might save it for fifteen years, but as I bustled to get my pasta cooked and tossed it with basil, Parmesan and the tomatoes, I looked at that bottle and had a full feeling of carpe diem and decided to open it for the show tonight, the storm.

That is my first inkling of some deep and wide intuition about the night, the day we were to face the next morning by nine a.m. That sort of spontaneity and indulgence is unusual in me, I am a more fraught and doubtful personality. To open, on what seemed like a whim, this bottle, made sense only in retrospect. My one fine wine glass, my favorite bowl, my own self, alone, set up dinner on the balcony and in thirty seconds from sitting, a warm wind blew up and signaled the start of the storm. Moments later, the first currents of blue-white lightening cracked the sky and met, in a handshake of sorts, the long spire of the South Tower's lightening rod.

I twirled my pasta and sipped this majestic wine. The taste was so thorough, so elegant and demanding it made me sit up straighter in my chair, it narrowed and focused my thoughts, it punctuated my sense of gratitude and beauty for this moment. A moment at once ordinary: a storm in a city; and yet utterly extraordinary: a storm in a city, watched from an 18th floor balcony, watching the lightening collect in the giant, elegant structures of the World Trade Center.

Craig had long ago started calling Serena, my sister, and I the Twin Towers. Two tall, slender girls always downtown, always side by side, always walking along, heading south, the buildings just over our shoulders, guiding us and orienting us to South as we learned the city together. As we learned the city, but more, as we fell in love with the city. And I do. I love New York City. I love it as I love my very best friends I have grown up with. I know what neighborhoods to go to for comfort the way I know what friend to call when I need to cry and be listened to. I know where to go when I need challenge and exalted inspiration. I know what streets to avoid on garbage night in the summer. I know New York City, and I love it.

September 10th would have been a night I looked back on even if September 11th had never occurred. Even if the towers were still standing. Even if I had not seen, the very next morning, people jumping from so many floors up, taking some sense of emotional and physical control for the end of their lives. Even if my apartment had not filled wit h dust, if the smell of the burning towers for months afterward had not burned itself in my mind and memory forever, I would still hold September 10 dear to my heart. It was a perfect night. It was like the first kiss in a date with the man who becomes your husband, it was a moment crystallized because it was perfect, and provoked because of all that followed.

The lightening filled the sky on September 10th. My favorite part, the part I hoped for as I rushed home to watch storms in the four years I live on Beekman Street, was when the sky filled with lightening bolts and they all collected on the spire of the South Tower, like a scene in an ancient King Kong or Godzilla movie. And on this night, at several points, the lightening radiated into the spire like spines on a fan, coming from points so far that they arrived to the spire in a horizontal line, flat against the horizon.

The wind was warm and in the rough, chaotic clash of the city, the air was like a balm and the world felt like a gentle and sensuous place. The wine slid down my throat and radiated and bloomed in flavor and warmth, I felt like the luckiest girl in the world. Content in my solitude. My simple end of summer meal tasting of earth and season. My strange, excellent home suspended in the sky. And nature, nature in the form of this storm, commingling with the nature of man’s need and ability to conquer the elements, to conquer, with sky scrapers, the sky itself.

The rain thundered down. The sound of tires on wet road filled the air with splashing white noise. The sky filled with fingers of light, all pointing to the Towers. The Towers speckled with lights on and lights off. I wondered who was there, working late, I peered into windows nearer, people eating, children playing, lots of flickering blue TV light.

Alone and in love with the city, the moment, and these beautiful towers I had come to regard as companions, I wondered who else was out there, watching them, enraptured by this beautiful storm, as I was so fully in that moment. I wondered then who else was filled with a beauty that verged on weeping and closed my eyes and sent out a silent kiss, a feeling of great love extended from my chest and emanated like wave, out into the unknown, to be received by anyone who was there in that moment, feeling awe, struck by the beauty.

I think of my unknown friends who watched that beautiful storm that night, watching the storm come and go, watching the bright stars pierce the sky as the thick and heaving rain clouds broke up and were swept by the warm wind out of the sky and on to their next stopping point.

In a way I think I stopped there, thinking of the buildings themselves, during that sensual, spectacular storm. To think of the people, the families, the extent of the individual loss, and the cultural loss of innocence in the violence of the fall of the Towers, that is a wretched heartbreak. These ten years I have contemplated every level of the loss, read essays, watched films, and contemplated and talked. But I always, as perhaps is human, come back to myself. My own ache, my own shock at seeing the buildings, the actual structures, fall, in real time, from my office windows, and think, those Twin Towers, those beautiful girls, they cannot be gone. They cannot be gone. I loved them too much for them to be gone. And yet, I watched them fall, with my own eyes. I watched them fall and realized that I had left my windows open that warm September morning. And I wondered. I wondered if my windows would still be in place, what was happening to all the surrounding buildings in the dense knot of downtown. I wondered what it would smell like, how hard would it be to clean, when I got home.

My wine glass was there, the tiny pool of liquid collected at the belly button over the stem, coated with dust. The memory of the night, I rushed to collect it, to maintain it, I sniffed the glass, the wine that was left and begged to be reminded of the perfect innocent evening, of the Towers standing, of the awesome storm, of the bright stars in the black sky beaming, revealed from behind the clouds as they swept away on the warm September wind.

I washed my glass. I placed it in the dish rack. I got out the vacuum cleaner. I surveyed the half inch of dust over everything: the awful yellow velour couch, the wooden frames on the paintings, the degrading linoleum floor. My mind went to the bright, beaming starts, piercing the sky twelve hours before. The people jumping from the towers, the crushed cars lining Beekman, Fulton, Gold and Pearl Streets. This was my home. I started cleaning up, but it was the stars, the lightening and the storm that I held in my hand with the comfort of a child’s hand in a parents. Ten years later that is still where my mind goes when I think of September 11. An ordinary night became a talisman for the beauty that sustains through the longest of griefs.

Bounty

2011-09-06T19:26:00.000-07:00

All in a Day
Sunday, September 4th
Sliced, cold smoked, panko fried eggplant.
Hard toasted bread with basil pesto, home dried tomatoes, parmesean.
Later, cold smoked, green zebra tomatoes, grated raw into a sauce, and a beverage.
Pear tart with blueberries, pears from our tall, skinny wild pear tree growing between the White Pines.

And then after the tart was assembled, there was Hanger Steak, and a sautee of mushrooms from the forest floor.

Ham and Butter Sandwich

2011-09-06T19:15:00.000-07:00

If you are looking for an ultimately satisfying sandwich, as quickly as possible, to grab one more picnic from the ever shortening and cooling days of summer into fall, grab for one of these.

Baguette,
Shown here, Wide Awake Bakery wood fired oven bread,
Sliced, smoked pork of almost any texture: finely sliced deli ham, prosciutto. Shown here, Piggery Deli Ham.
Fresh Cream Butter

Slather butter as you would mayonnaisse, kind of a lot. Believe me, it's good that way. Also, sliced cornichons or other crisp, not too damp a pickle.

Sun Salad

2011-08-16T06:48:00.001-07:00

This salad was part of the July Feast and is a wonderful example of spontaneity and creativity with food. The guests were due at 5:00 and we had a great menu already planned. The first guests were our farmer friends from Red Tail Farm. They came laden with stew chickens for the chest freezer, already thinking of winter, and Sungold tomatoes from their hoop houses.
By the time I came up from putting the stew chicks away, Craig had this gorgeous, glorious creation on the table. If I am honest I will confess that my astonishment had a tinge of irritation. Looking at this platter of golden and purple, my jaw gaped and I felt awe co-mingle with a feeling of "What? Are you kidding me? He just whips that up?" But my joy coursed over and around this irritated awe, and I was simply amazed, again, by beauty.
Absolute, true creativity: a response to the environment, what is around, in reach, catching your eye, making sense to your unspoken, intuitive senses. This level of spontaneous creativity is where, I believe, you can see the amount of sheer time and work, the discipline that comes before the beauty. The work that is in fact what enables the beauty to ever come to be.
Enabling beauty to come to be. That makes work and passion and discipline sound pretty important.
Sungold Salad. And the blueberries are the sun spots!
Frame a plate with zucchini blossoms torn into wide pieces along petals. Edible Marigold petals would also look nice and have a similarly sweet, fleshy presence.
Halve the sungolds and toss with:
olive oil, lemon, tiny bit of white wine (Chardonnay) vinegar, salt, pepper, all to taste. Not too much dressing, just a sheen.
Add blueberries and lightly toss.
Add very thinly sliced basil, just a bit, and toss.
Mound, in a sun like fashion, into the center of plate, within blossoms.

A July Feast

2011-08-15T19:31:00.000-07:00

A July feast. To celebrate: blueberries, birthdays, new albums, losing baby teeth, friendships, family.

Green Salad

2011-08-15T10:50:00.000-07:00

a green salad

a cucumber peeled and sliced into thin rounds
1/2 pint fresh peas, shelled
fresh mint leaves slivered
parsley leaves roughly chopped
a fresh shallot finely diced
a fennel bulb (or two depending on size) sliced thinly across the bulb. as well chop a bit of the fennel greens as well.
salt/pepper/lemon juice/red wine vinegar/olive oil
an avocado sliced

make a dressing by letting the shallots, lemon juice, red wine vinegar (i do roughly 1-2 lemon juice to vinegar…sometimes 1-1. depends on taste), salt and pepper in a bowl or cup. after the shallots have macerated for about 10 minutes add olive oil, stir to combine. adjust seasoning if needed.

in a mixing bowl combine all (except the avocado) the other ingredients and the dressing. gently mix with your hands. plate, arrange the avocado and serve.

Languid Rabbit

2011-08-15T10:49:00.000-07:00

Languid Rabbit
About the only time a you will find a rabbit looking languid is when you are cooking one. Looking at this little wild creature on the grill I was surprised to notice how graceful the shape of the rabbit body was, what lovely lines to the arching back and tiny yet sumptuous, muscled legs. The famously frenetic animal suddenly looked so relaxed.
These bunnies are pretty wild. The couple that sells these rabbits at the market raises them in a fairly controlled yet natural bunny habitat: they forage for nearly all of their food. Of course we like the taste and idea of this production model, but it is was our older daughter who originally motivated us to eat more wild, or at least not completely un-wild, animal protein.
When Colby was about a year old and we were wide open to any ideas to help her intensely fragile, erratic neurology, I was talking with her acupuncturist. It was she who suggested wild animal protein, animals with real muscles who had roamed and foraged, on land or sea. It made intuitive sense to me when she said it, and then the evidence pored in when we gave Colby her first taste of red meat, very free range Bison. She was ravenous for it and slept solidly for the first time since her seizures started. She had more energy than ever the next day, despite the monster dose of anti-convulsants she was on.
We kept exploring: sardines, wild salmon, rabbit, duck, venison, anything we could find that was raised or grew in relative wildness. The question we asked in making choices was simple: does it, this animal, actually have muscles? And not just from standing. Has it had to run for its life, been rained on, felt the sunshine?
This lovely, languid bunny had certainly felt the sunshine. And in its honor we sat in the sunlight outside, on the grass, feeling half wild ourselves. Colby tore into the sinuous protein with gusto, and slept well that night.
To make:
Line the bottom of a skillet or roasting pan with pancetta (or smoky bacon) sliced about 1'16" thick. Rinse, pat dry a large rabbit (3-4lbs) and put in pan on top of pork. Massage the rabbit with olive oil. Salt liberally. Crack black pepper all over inside and out. Stuff fresh rosemary, thyme, savory and a sprig of oregano in the cavity. Roughly chop 5 cloves of garlic and toss around the rabbit and in the cavity. Throw in a handful or two of green, briny olives. Add some duck fat (if you like) and a generous splash of dry white wine. You may also put a whole head of garlic to roast at the same time, if you like.

Get a roaring wood fire (hardwood, hardwood charcoal or a combination) going in a grill with a top, like a Stoke or Weber. When the fire is about 400 degrees put the pan (open) on the grill and close the top. Periodically baste the beast. Turn it over in the pan every 20 minutes or so. Depending on the size of the rabbit, it should take an hour or so. Don't let it get overcooked. You can also take the rabbit out of the pan before it is too cooked and finish it directly on the grill for a variation.

Serve with green beans and potatoes (tossed in olive oil and lemon juice) with the pan juices and olives. Spread the soft, roasted garlic on country bread.

Fried Young Artichoke Hearts

2011-08-15T07:24:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the curiosity and intelligence of a few local farmers, we have a brief season to tiny artichokes. These are not the huge dinosaur artichokes of my childhood, the ones my parents would surreptitiously pick from the fields along the coast between Moss Landing and Monterey. The prickly, ancient plant spread for as far as the eye could see, hearty in the cold fog and craggy, sandy soil, from the valley floor to the sand dune edge of the bay.
Those were the artichokes you could steam and sit down with, taking an hour to methodically peel and dip in dad's homemade aioli. All but the largest outside leaves had a tiny meaty bump of buttery flesh to scrape savoring-ly between your front teeth. As you got closer to the sacred heart, the meaty bumps got bigger, until finally the softest inner leaves you could eat all but the thorny tip.
Not so these Finger Lakes artichokes, annual output about 100 pounds. These leaves are scrappy and wooden, their sole job seeming to be protecting the tiny heart. Climate, leaves and size all being so different, it is astonishing and beautiful to find that the heart is exactly the same. Well it is also smaller, but the taste, that buttery, incomparable flavor that sits on your breath for several long minutes, is the same and transports me utterly to being a girl, around the table, with my artichoke, the ultimate finger food, lost in thoughts of dinosaurs and how they must have eaten artichokes too.
At the table as a child, we scraped away the choke, the furry part, with tiny silver spoons and then dipped our large disc of heart into the aioli. All these food memories played through my mind as I watched Craig clean, batter and fry our tiny artichoke hearts. He used egg, flour then Panko as the dredge. All else is your typical fry process. Those are a few fried sage leaves on the platter in the top picture, a very nice flavor combination, and another sensory reminder of life on the Central California Coast.

On the Seventh Day, Tortillas

2011-08-13T18:48:00.000-07:00

And on the seventh day of Grandma Vi's Festival of Feasts, Auntie Maria made tortillas. I would like to say it was inspiring to watch her make tortillas and that I learned so much, but the truth is I saw only that I have about one thousand hours of practice ahead of me. In a choice between practicing for Carnegie Hall and practicing for a beautiful tortilla, I will most likely choose the tortilla. Like all insanely skilled people, Maria made it look so easy, seriously deceptively easy. Her directions were literally this:
Put some flour in a bowl.
Add some lard
Put a small palm full of baking soda
And a little salt
Combine

Ummmm....how much, exactly? To which she said, "Oh you know, you can just tell. If you need flour, add flour. Fat, add fat." So off we went. She made this stack of 25 tortillas in 15 minutes. Start, to finish. And did you know tortillas have a top and a bottom? All my life, I never knew that. Good luck. I know I'll need it.

Entertaining Time Warp

2011-08-13T18:31:00.000-07:00

It proves what loving and lovely readers and friends I have when a long, very long, pause in posts inspires concern about what might be going on with the family and are we all alright. We are. There was a rough patch of seizures during a serious heatwave that had Colby seizing for about two weeks solid. But then the heat lifted and she went back to school and camp and it has been fun ever since. So where has the time gone? To entertaining. I can count on one hand the number of nights it has just been the four of us around the table, since June. It has been one raucous, colossal love fest of family, family, and friends. We are so lucky, and so loved. And have had a lot of feasts (and dishes, and laundry) to show for it. Here comes the photographic evidence. Exhibit one, July 1st: Night One of Grandma Vi's Ten Night Feast, in honor of her 80th birthday. Glory be to our elders.

Eating Al Dente, I Mean Fresco

2011-08-13T18:16:00.000-07:00

A fellow writer friend and I were talking about all the "mommy blogs" with their endless talk of being tired, brain dead, feeling fat, blah blah blah. We like to think we write about more interesting things than how tired we are, or how our clothes are always covered with other peoples food and snot. But, I fear, I am guilty on all fronts of dull complaining.
And we find, of course, each others' tales of sagging boobs and misspoken words absolutely, truly hilarious. Like this one: our first night eating outside (back in June), I give a deep exhale and announce, "How glorious it is to finally be eating al dente." Long pause...Craig and babysitter looking at me a little sideways...did that sound right? "I mean, al fresco."
I suppose the infinite supply of writing about all the ways our lives and ourselves change with motherhood speaks to the universality of the experience. Another universal: the sublime feeling of elegance in setting a table with a tablecloth, getting out some silver, and eating outside, under the trees.
So, to eating al dente, or what ever word comes to mind when you are deeply enjoying the moment.

Quesadilla Mom Dinner

2011-06-12T08:58:00.000-07:00

When Craig is gone dinners with Mom are down and dirty. Quesadillas are a favorite because they are soul food for me, and because they are fast and creative. They are also very good vehicles for protein. Colby's neurology thrives on high quality, grass fed protein, and it has taught me to consider my own need for it, how my mood and energy are more stable when I get good quality proteins versus refined carbs. And now, in the glorious summer, we eat outside and let the melted cheese and creme freche melt down our chins and onto the grass.

Getting Stuck and Bread Crumb Pasta

2011-06-04T14:40:00.000-07:00

I have been colossally stuck with writing, the deadly combination of feeling depressed and having very real, massive pressures on my time led to no writing, none, for nearly a month. It is a well worn story, the cumulative effect of not doing what you need to do and that compounding to make you feel worse and worse. Every day you don't go to the gym makes it easier to skip it the next day. I was moping and thinking about this and mentally kicking myself for not making the time, when Craig opened a package of rotten chicken. Finally, something more foul than my mood.
Craig went into an instantaneous brainstorm, what else to make? As I watched him I had a small, eventual epiphany on how having to get something done is often the only reason anything does get done. Opening a spoiled package of chicken at six p.m. on Saturday evening, two hungry kids licking at his ankles, zero takeout options, is dealt with immediately and creatively because it has to be. Kids need dinner, especially after the day they'd had: they had walked a full mile and a half hike on their own two feet. No strollers. No piggy backs or "uppy" carrying. They had done it, one foot in front of the other.
And, that morning at the market, Maryrose nicely but firmly nudged me for having slacked on writing the blog. Maryrose is someone I deeply admire. Her lamb, which I have written about frequently, and cheese, and sheepskins, are the fruits of very hard, intelligent work. And you should see her gorgeous biceps.
As I watched Craig whip up an anchovy and bread crumb pasta, I felt my mopey, myopic self loathing shift. I realized I had been focusing my admonishments on not writing anything to post, but my real problem was that I simply had not been writing. I had jumped ahead to feeling like a loser for not putting anything out there. But what had I given myself? What time had I given, what respect for my work had I given myself? The problem was not a gap in posting to the blog, the problem was the inattentiveness to myslef. It was like putting the kids to bed with no dinner. Sorry, the chicken was rotten, too bad, see you at breakfast! No, you have to give attention to what needs it. Even if the chicken is rotten you have to make dinner. Even if I don't have any ideas to post, I still have to write, because if I don't I am awful and cranky, like a toddler in need of dinner. Get it done because you have to. Get it done so your mood does not reek like rotten chicken. Get it done because someone actually wants to read it.
In fifteen minutes Craig had this meal ready. We sat around the table and slurped it up, greasy chins, our bodies slowly easing, nourished and loved.

Craig was buying pasta at Murray's, years ago now, when he ran into his friend Ignacio Mattos. They were talking about what they were up to, what they were cooking, new music they’d found, when Ignacio related his favorite fast pasta: pasta, bread crumbs, anchovies and chili flakes. It has been a staple ever since. Especially in emergency moments such as this rotten chicken evening.

Even if you think you don't like anchovies, try this out. When used in cooking, and not eaten directly, say off a pizza, they become a wonderful salty essence. Not "fishy," just a really nice saltiness. Chances are if you were once revolted by an anchovy it was oil packed, packed in not so great quality oil. Anchovies packed in salt or high quality olive oil are distinctly better tasting, and have a better texture.

what you will need:
spagetti or fettuchine
anchovies to taste. i prefer salted. a small can of olive oil packed filets will work.
some garlic, minced
the green part of 4 or 5 scallions slivered or some chives (and their flowers) finely diced.
olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
bread crumbs

directions:
heat a large pot of water.

in a large skillet splash some olive oil and over low heat soften the garlic. add a some black pepper to taste. add the anchovies and smash with a fork until they dissolve into the oil. red pepper is nice, if you prefer a bit more kick. toss in the scallions or chives and remove from heat.

when the water is boiling, cook your pasta of choice until barely al dente (it should have a bit of a snap when you bit into it) then, using tongs, put the pasta in the skillet with anchovy oil mixture.
put the skillet back on medium-high heat. add about a ladle of the hot pasta water. toss the pasta and the sauce until the liquid is about gone. remove from heat and add bread crumbs. mix and serve!

variations…try adding the white part of the scallions along with the garlic. parsley if you like at the end.

for the bread crumbs:
save all your bit and pieces of bread in a paper bag. when you need bread crumbs, grab a hunk of the dried bread and grate on a box grater into a large bowl. add salt and pepper to taste and put in a cast iron skillet on low heat. stir periodically with a wooden spoon so the crumbs don't burn. when they are nice and toasty put in a bowl until you need 'em.

Double Stove In Action

2011-06-01T07:09:00.001-07:00

Craig's "Can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find, you get what you need," double stove situation is working out. It is effective to have both gas and electric, depending on what you are cooking. The gas is much hotter and faster when you need that: stove top espresso maker, sauteing greens, boiling water. And the electric is good for slow and steady: stock, frying eggs, warming tortillas, certain meats. On simpler dinner days, or when when only the electric is needed, a huge wooden cutting board over the gas stove top adds much needed counter space.
This summer we might actually get to do a little work on the kitchen. It is rudimentary but effective now. It will never be slick cabinets and marble counters, it will always be open wine crates for cups and glasses, open shelves stuffed with baskets of spices, eggs, bread. But, it could look a little less like a make shift mess kitchen at camp. The ability to cook in any situation is one of the signs of a good, determined cook, like being able to cook a meal when it seems there is absolutely nothing in the house.
What we need to address are simple, affordable changes to reduce the frustration of a place lacking work flow. And I wouldn't mind at all if it was a little more rewarding to clean. Right now the flooring is a strange white underflooring that was under the ancient, decaying, gold flecked linoleum that Craig tore out one day when it just became to ugly to bear. No matter how much work goes into the white mystery material floor, it never looks clean. It is very unsatisfying to have so little gratification for labor.
So, little kitchen, this summer we want to give you some love and attention. We all want it, and need it.

Duck Confit And Lettuce

2011-05-21T12:48:00.001-07:00

If there is one truly instant dinner we make, it is anything involving duck confit. I want to say duck confit is fast food, but the truth is it is very slow food that can then be stored, and when you are ready to feast, it is instantly ready to satisfy. It is a cooked duck leg packed in its own rendered, pearl colored fat. Pre-refrigeration meat storage techniques.
When I was pregnant with Colby, Craig's food craving was duck. Mine was lemon gelato. He cooked duck, mostly duck confit, so often that our small apartment acquired a permanent, not altogether bad, crispy duck smell. At some point when I started to feel a little tired of it, Craig told me that duck fat was high in omegas, which I needed for my growing baby. This did not explain why he was craving it and I was not, but I went with it. Sure enough, when Colby was born she had the most luxuriant, thick black hair, and gorgeous, plump cheeks. Her first nick name was, "The Baby That Duck Fat Built." Kind of a long nick name, but what does a new parent have to do but whisper and coo terms of endearment?
So now we are the family that duck fat built. We love it. And used in moderation it does not break the bank, despite its fancy restaurant associations. It is a simple, delicious, good for you meat that has been a staple probably since our hairier ancestors discovered fire.
Some tips:
For this dinner, put the confit in a pan on a low heat. The fat slowly turns clear, glistening and sizzling. After a few minutes the confit will warm through and fall off the bone. Take this out of the pan and slice the meat completely off the bone and lay it over the lettuce. Dress with simple vinaigrette immediately before serving.
The lettuce pictured here is a sturdy selection of small greens the local grower calls "confetti." The name matches the feelings of those who eat it I think, the celebratory feeling of lettuce season arriving makes me want to have a confetti parade.
When you make this with a lettuce that has strength and structure, like a butter lettuce, escarole, or even a young chicory, you can pour some of the fat off the pan onto the lettuce to wilt it slightly, then splash a little vinegar and salt and pepper and eat immediately.

Spring Pesto

2011-05-20T18:46:00.000-07:00

How gorgeous is this. We had it on lamb chops the first evening. Mixed into scrambled eggs in the morning. Over pasta the second evening, pictured here. And slathered on fresh bread the next morning. Pesto is surprisingly good with a cup of black coffee for breakfast. But that might just mean it is always good, on everything, morning, noon and night. We need to make another batch.

chives (and their flowers) or young garlic greens finely slivered (you can add some minced young garlic bulb too!)
orange mint finely minced
orange thyme leaves
parsley finely minced
salt and pepper to taste
bit of lemon zest and a squeeze or two of lemon juice
a salted anchovy fillet chopped into paste, if you like
olive oil

the proportions are to taste. mix all with enough olive oil to make a good paste. eat it on everything!

Fried Sardine Birthday Dinner

2011-05-17T06:01:00.000-07:00

Sweet, sweet birthdays. Even if I am not always excited about the age I am turning, which happens sometimes, I am always excited to have a birthday party. I may love throwing birthdays for other people even more than having my own. Each of the girls' first birthdays had about as much planning as a royal wedding. No detail is too small to mull and consider.
My favorite parties are the ones I've thrown with my sister. We can obsess over everything with both seriousness and enthusiasm. What paper flower garlands to get from the forty or so choices lining the wall at Pearl River in Chinatown, we can discuss the merits and pros and cons of each for hours. There is fun in the details: for the party planner the party lasts days, weeks.
Serena is also really good at sorting out what kind of cake suits the birthday person, the season, the location. She can also figure out how to make anything, which continues to impress me. As the recipient of her thoughtful, beautifully decorated cakes, you feel the world stop for a moment, and smile upon you.
Then there are presents. Over time one of our favorite gifts to give and receive is a special meal. One of the last we shared with my mom and sister was Serena's birthday, she wanted fried chicken, and she got it. This year for Craig's birthday, he wanted sardines, fried sardines. He wanted to make them, so one of my quiet presents to him was to not complain, not one utterance, about the smell.
Craig wanted a quiet dinner this year, and respecting the wishes of the birthday person a critical point in being a good party participant. But, I did wish for more family at the table that night, mom and Serena among them. I wished there were a few more people to enjoy this fresh, rich, tiny fried fish. I wanted more people besides spoiled me and our spoiled girls to savor and celebrate the beauty Craig's life brings ours, everyday.

Mayo for fried sardines

Finely chop some fresh chives w/flowers. Finely chop about a tablespoon of rinsed, salt packed capers. Finely mince a tiny bit of fresh fennel fronds. Add all to a small bowl of mayonnaise. Add a squeeze of lemon juice and mix.

Fried Sardines

Clean and fillet some sardines. Lightly salt the fillets and let rest. Add a dash of salt, some ground black pepper and some finely minced fresh rosemary to a bowl of corn meal or flour. Mix, then dredge the sardines. Shake off excess. Fry in a mix of olive oil and grape seed oil until golden and the skin begins to blister. Sprinkle a tiny bit of sea salt on top. Serve with mayo and more lemon juice, if you like.

Srping Lamb and Fiddleheads

2011-05-14T15:59:00.001-07:00

Rack of lamb inspires in me a feeling of gratitude. Maybe because it is usually a special occasion meal, or maybe it is the fact of the bones. The little bones curving up, evidence that this was an alive animal, with a tender rib cage. Either way, this particular spring feast was just because. Just because it was a beautiful day, because Grandma was coming over for dinner, because Donn and Maryrose of Northland Sheep Dairy have such exquisite lamb, and because there was another spring treat besides lamb: baby fiddlehead ferns.
Coral likes to hold her little bone and eat it like a lamb lolly pop. Before long, the girls have fat shining off their chins. Such a little bit of meat, each rib just a few mouth fulls, but it satisfies deeply. The layer of fat, the sweet aroma of grassfed animal protein, it is so nourishing that a little goes a long way. One rack is enough for the five of us.
Greasy fingered and smiling, the talk at the table is of summer. All our plans, our hopes, all the things we are looking forward to. We grip our wine glasses and toast again and again to all that we have recently accomplished. To Colby getting over pneumonia. To Coral learning to pump her legs on the swing. To Craig home from another trip. To Grandma soon to celebrate her 80th. To me, to me for not folding the clothes when I could write, and writing. And another toast, just because, we are so happy at this table together, and we are so grateful for the love and for the joy.

Rack of Lamb:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Take the lamb out of the fridge a few hours before cooking. French the bones (if not done already) and score fat with a sharp knife. Rub salt and pepper into the lamb.
Finely dice a few ramp bulbs (or garlic), a few fresh mint leaves and some rosemary. Put into a mortar, add a tiny bit of sea salt and grind into a paste. Add a few salt packed anchovies (rinsed and filleted), some olive oil and continue blending. When done, rub the paste into the lamb.
Put the lamb into a large cast iron skillet or a roasting pan fatty side up and cook until nicely browned and the lamb is rare. about 25 minutes or so.

Fiddlehead and Ramp saute:
Clean a pint of fiddleheads. Trim off tougher ends. Blanch for about a minute or two then plunge into ice water. Drain and reserve. Clean some (to taste) ramps. Finely dice the white part. Cut the leaves cross ways into very fine ribbons. A handful of chives finely chopped.
In olive oil and a over low heat, cook the ramp whites until softened. Add a tiny bit of sea salt and black pepper. Turn up heat to medium, add fiddleheads and saute until just tender. Toss in shredded ramp greens. Remove from heat and add chives. Serve immediately.

Pickled Ramps on Toast

2011-05-12T11:32:00.000-07:00

Things happen all the time to affirm my love for where we live. Being given a jar of pickled ramps by Colby's speech therapist at school was one such moment. The gift filled me with a strong sense of place and community: place because the ramps are a wild harvested plant, seasonal and from the forest floor; and community because this teacher we love and respect is thinking of us beyond the scope of her daily, intelligent work with our precious daughter. I mean, that is pretty awesome. And, I really love ramps, and I really, really love pickled everything.
Craig set them on the counter and we contemplated. First we tasted one straight from the jar, and then we started ruminating. I suggested, more feverishly than lazily, that we could just eat them straight from the jar with an occasional sip of freezing cold white wine while we stared at the blue sky and absorbed the feeling of spring.
Craig took a quieter, longer approach, screwed the lid on tight and shooed me away from the jar. I waited and shouted ideas into the kitchen while playing with the kids. A few in a bowl of ramen. Adorning a plate of grilled hangar steak. A palate cleanser with some fried fish.
Then Craig brought to the table this lovely plate, this sun dial that reads spring. The very necessary, ever present salt packed anchovies. Butter. Pickled ramps. We had fresh ramps so he sliced thin the slender leaves and sprinkled them over the plate. And the bread, the bread, lightly toasted here, is another recent local marvel, Wide Awake Bakery. Crisp, watery radishes are beautifully refreshing with the salty pickles and anchovies. Fresh, easy spring recipes are finally upon us!

Pickled Ramps:

Fresh ramps, cleaned carefully, bulbs and stems separated from the leaves (use the leaves to make a pesto or saute with other veggies.)

Make the brine:
Bring 1 C white wine vinegar, 1 C water, scant 1/2 C sugar to a boil and boil until sugar dissolves.

Blanch ramp bulbs and stems for 15 seconds in boiling water and then plunge them in
an ice water bath until cool. Dry on a towel.

Sterilize small jars and lids and rims as you do for pickles.

To each clean jar add:

1 fresh bay leaf
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1/2 tsp black peppercorns
1/2 tsp coriander seeds
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
a pinch of red pepper flakes

Fill the jar with the blanched ramps. Fill with pickling liquid. Clean rims and lid them. Put them in the canner (boil with jars submerged) for 10 minutes.

Ramps

2011-04-29T19:29:00.001-07:00

Ramps are a tender and beloved spring plant. Part pungent garlic flavor, part sweet leek, they are fresh, green and wild. While the farmers market stalls are still mainly full of crops carried over from winter, or from the green house, the ramps arrive as the first absolute evidence of spring.
The past few winters have been my first east coast winters where I lived in a rural setting. College in Northampton was a quiet town life, and then it was the gorgeous chaos of New York City. These two environments combined with my California upbringing had me always thinking of spring as the season that transpired from the effects of the sun shining down onto the plants and earth.
Living through these Northeast winters has shifted my gaze, my very sense of spring, from the sun and towards the earth itself. Long before it gets warm or the days are any noticeably longer, the earth gets spongy and muddy and does not freeze as readily.
The ramps are a similar evidence of the earth itself shifting in season and toward the sun, before the air is any warmer, before the Robin Redbreast has returned, before we've shed even one layer of winter clothing. And we relish them, we find ways to use the greens and the bulbs and not waste one millimeter.
Coral walked around the house with them today, calling them her bouquet. In the early evening, the sun shone broadly through the windows. Coral asked if she could take off her sweater and socks and before I could say no I realized with a feeling of heavenly relief that yes, it was miraculously warm enough, and she could take off her sweater. I took mine off too and we basked in the sun and smelled the dirt and green of the ramps.

End of Winter Root Roast

2011-04-27T03:49:00.001-07:00

Winter is everlasting. Those pink buds on the apple tree? Still closed up, tight little buds facing each 30 degree night and saying no way is it time to bloom. The rain has been endless. The farmers describe their days as pacing and restless, they need to plant, want to plant, but in this driving rain it is muddy and impossible to proceed. They tend to the seedlings in the green house and hope they do not become to root bound as the rain pounds on and on.
For the market customer this means...more carrots, more parsnips, more potatoes, more winter fair. Punctuated here and there by tender greenhouse greens, arugula, micro greens, confetti's of baby lettuces. And ramps, wild and plentiful ramps.
And out of no where, Craig invents and new, spectacular dish from the very, very familiar, and loved, parsnip. How does he do it? Is it the fact of spring, however suppressed by this rain and cold, driving him to newness and invention? We ate this one with our fingers, straight from the plate, all of us noticing that in the spring light the parsnips look so white. In the candlelight of winter they appear so golden. Parsley root is new to us. We found it at Wegmans. Craig, ever resourceful, thought parsley, plus root, looked like a better deal than just buying a bunch of parsley. Turns out, it is delicious. We like it grated raw in a carrot salad, or roasted, as it is here. And the scallions, as big and juicy as you can find, are essential to this recipe.

What you'll need:
Some parsnips and parsley root peeled and split into relatively equal pieces.
Some large scallions.
Salt, pepper and olive oil.

Pre-heat oven to 250 degrees.
Cut the white part from the scallions and finely sliver the green part.
Put the prepped scallion whites, parsnips and parsley root in a large bowl. Splash in a tiny bit of olive oil, salt and pepper to taste and gently mix with your hands to coat.
Spread out on a heavy baking sheet, roasting pan or a skillet and put in oven and roast until tender and kind of crispy at the edges.
Sprinkle with a little greenery and serve. This photo has ramp greens, the beautiful leaf from above the bulb. Parsley or scallion greens would be great too.

Lemon Pound Cake

2011-04-02T15:11:00.001-07:00

Sometimes just making a cake can make a party. The same way a real party dress can make you feel like a beautiful dancer, so to a party cake can make a dinner party into a party party. We had some good friend with whom we had been trying for about six months to have a dinner, and when the time at long last arrived, no spouses traveling, no kids sick with strep, two birthdays had also recently passed. It was time for a cake.
I, however, am not the most confident or experienced baker. In the realm of flour, I am easily intimidated. But love is a supreme motivator for getting over our fears, or getting over ourselves as the case may be.
There is a line in A HOLE IS TO DIG, by Ruth Krauss, pictures by Maurice Sendak, "A party is to make little children happy." Since having kids we do have more parties and I think it is for that poetic observation, it makes them happy.
Turning off the dining room lights and lighting the cake candles, the mood deepened, the kids gleeful, attentive, and beaming their excited smiles at each other. We all sang and were glad. Glad for the sweet, budding friendships among our children. Glad for the smart and compassionate company of our peers. And I was quietly very glad that when I sliced the cake, it was golden and crumbly, and baked all the way through.
We have the brilliant Edna Lewis to thank for this recipe. If you follow her directions it really does absolutely work. And if there is any left, it is delicious in the morning, with coffee or tea.

for cake:
1 cup cold, unsalted butter
1 2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 large eggs at room temperature
2 1/4 cups sifted flour
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

for the glaze:
1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/8 teaspoon salt
Decorated with lovely, tender Meyer lemons sliced as thin as possible.

To make the cake: Butter and flour the bottom and sides of a 9-inch tube pan. Put the 1 cup of butter into the bowl of an electric mixer and mix on medium-low speed for 5 minutes, until it becomes waxy and shiny. (I do that mixing by hand and it is very laborious but possible.) With mixer running slowly add the sugar and salt, and continue mixing until sugar and butter become light and fluffy, about 5-7 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time and mix well after each addition, making sure that each egg is fully incorporated before adding the next (very important!). After incorporating the third egg, add 2 tablespoons of flour to keep batter from separating. Add remaining eggs, one at a time. On low speed, add remaining sifted flour in four parts, do not overmix, kind of like with pancake batter, you loose the wonderful texture if you overmix here. Once flour is all gently incorporated, gently blend in the vanilla and lemon juice.
And the baking is the key to this recipe: spoon batter into buttered floured tube pan and gently fop pan on kitchen counter to deflate any large air bubbles. Put cake into COLD oven and turn the temp to 225F. Cook for 20 minutes. Increase temp to 300F and bake another 20 minutes. Finally increase temp to 325F and cook 20-30 min, until your cake tester, inserted into center comes out clean. Start testing after 20 min at 325F.
Remove the cake from the over, and cool for 5 minutes. Remove cake from pan and cool on cooling rack. While cake is cooling, make the glaze: Put lemon juice, sugar and butter and salt in a small nonreactive saucepan and simmer over medium heat for 1 minute. Stir until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and spoon the warm glaze over cooled cake.
Pound cake will keep in an airtight container for up to a week.

Pink

2011-03-13T12:30:00.000-07:00

Pink is emerging from the branches and tips of every bare tree on the landscape. Its soft presence is like a balm, a promise, color is coming soon. As we moved along in the freezing March, I kept straining my eyes for buds, then trying to soften my focus to perceive that fist moment when the blush of new life spreads over every surface. And it came. Then, up close on the apple tree, I could touch them. Little leathery buds, inconspicuous with only the tiniest hint of the softness still hidden within.

It got me thinking about pink. Much maligned by the parents tired of the onslaught of gilrie things direct marketed toward their female children, pink has a bad reputation. The pink polyester princess costumes and scratchy ballerina tutus are like a pink on steroids, it is abrassive and synthetic. But before we, feminist moms and tom boy loving dads, try and hide pink in the back of the closet let us revisit this marvelous color.

Pink. Pink champagne. Pink currants. Pink apple blossoms. Pink cheeks after a nap. Holding hands, pink palm to pink palm. These are some pinks that make your heart soften. Pinks that signal the softest most fleeting moments of a life, of a season.

Here’s to a toast to early, early spring and her first pink blush, her slow, modest arrival, before she belts out with her full clear voice, Here I am. Here is to a pink for our girls if they like it, and our boys, that is lovely and imaginative and of their making. Here is to a pink that is far from the mall and closer to an apple blossom. Here is to pink.

The recipe is an idea I have in my pocket and eagerly await: inviting our friends, opening a bottle of Pinot Noir champagne under the flowering apple tree when it blooms, and pausing from our busy lives under the canopy of flowers. I can already hear the bees droning and the children laughing in the pasture, running, grass between their toes.

Blizzard, then Spring, then Duck

2011-03-08T07:42:00.001-08:00

The blizzard on March 6th had neighbors and friends lamenting, “Where is spring?” The day had started out fifty degrees and raining. The snow slowly melted away. The mushy, springy earth was bald mud with patchy bits of green grass. The deers and turkeys were gorging. In a moment, it turned to snow and after fifteen minutes the blanket of white was back, then the temperature started to drop.

Every time I looked out the window another inch had accumulated. Shovel the driveway to go to the store. Shovel the driveway so the babysitter can park. Shovel so she can leave. The snow was steady, wet and heavy. It continued all night. And in the morning, finally the snow stopped falling. The sky was grey and serious, as if glowering, promising it could snow more if it wanted to.

And then spring peeked her head back around the corner: the sky cleared and filled the afternoon with thick black shadows over the eighteen inches of snow. And the light! The light was golden. Gone is the bright, white afternoon light of winter and the long slender shadows of a sun hanging low in the sky.

That is spring in March: a blizzard, and then, when the sky finally clears, a golden light. This too: walking to the back of the land, sinking in deep even with snow shoes on, the creek is a torrent. Between steep banks of snow, the creek has not frozen in the storm, in the night, but has stayed flowing, thawed from the warmth emerging from earth as we angle back toward the sun. The tumbling, churning snow melt, the exuberant gushing creek signal too, the rush of spring has arrived.

A Duck is always an excellent meal, and in this moment of cold, still needing fat, and yearning for warmth and craving more of spring's golden light, a roast duck and golden potatoes is a sumptuously satisfying meal. Craig followed a recipe from the brilliant ladies at Canal House, Canal House Cooking, Volume 2. I won't give away their recipe here, you should get the book, all the books actually. It is basically a good roast duck, good roasted, peeled potatoes, and the magical ingredient: anise seeds.

Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton

2011-03-06T14:49:00.001-08:00

I served sour tomato soup to my friends. I was trying to be hospitable, thoughtful to their long day of travel to see us by offering a comfort food. Unfortunately, upon first bite of soup, it became immediately clear that I had added too much, way too much citric acid to the tomatoes when I canned them last summer. It was sour, terribly sour. But technically edible, I suppose, if you closed your eyes and thought about lemonade. I am pretty sure it was their actual hunger that made the soup edible. Being hungry can really make a meal feel gracious, even a sour one!

Gabrielle Hamilton's book Blood, Bones and Butter is about hunger. The hunger of a poor, young traveler. The emotional hunger of a child abandoned by parents. The hunger to reconnect with perfect meals and moments from our past. Is there any other reason we really cook? To achieve a comfort we imagine and hunger for, to recreate a moment that sustained us when we were in need. To soothe a growling stomach is obviously why we cook, but what we choose to cook, how we meet that hunger, if we look closely at that, we will discern a long, emotional path, a labyrinth of physical memories and hopes.

I ate Gabrielle's cooking once. The angels were smiling upon Craig and I and we got a free spot in an event at the Italian Wine Merchant's secret back kitchen where Gabrielle was cooking. I fell in love with her when she held up the raw heart of a young cow (yes that is a nice way of saying Veal) and told the story of her butcher, who she said had a crush on her and always saved her the best hearts. She told the whole story with the heart in her hand, gesturing with it while the fancy ladies and gentlemen in the room stared, slack jawed and wide eyed. I thought she looked like a rock star shredding at her guitar, standing there with her swagger, her knowledge and her comfort with this ingredient: a heart.

She holds hearts in her hands, and with her writing and her cooking, she'll have yours in her hands too.

One of the other things she made that day was a perfect, truly perfect!, omelette, over which she put finely chopped young spring onions, parsley, olive oil, salt and pepper. Every spring Craig and I make batches of this when the long young onions are in season and we put it on absolutely everything. Eggs, bread with good crust, steak, soft cheeses.

Winter Watermelons

2011-02-23T18:14:00.001-08:00

The Watermelon Radish. I love these radishes so much. How much? So much that I feel like they literally help me to thrive in the winter months. They are crunchy and watery, sweetening as the winter months crawl along, but their most astonishing, uplifting quality must be their color. Their bright magenta purple, outlined by bright white, is like a gem. And they are copious! We've had them all winter at the farmers market, a staple along with cabbage, carrots, potatoes and onions.

Color is hard to come by in this climate this time of year. On the landscape, the wild turkeys gleam if you see them in just the right light. Red Cardinals flit through leafless shrubs. White snow, evergreen trees, ice blue creeks, mud. Canned berries and fruits on the morning toast. And in the evening, a plate of shining, crisp, watermelon radishes in vinaigrette, our eyes as hungry as our bodies for their dense ruby color. And their color could be as easy to miss as a darting Cardinal. They are white, they look just like a turnip. I passed them by in the market until a farmer friend placed one in my hand and said, Try it.

I could not believe the color when I sliced it in half at home. And it makes me wonder, as I come to live and know this climate, what other jewels of the earth are waiting to be discovered?

Here is a sublime winter salad using Watermelon Radishes:

First make dressing in bottom of salad bowl:
Shallots, white wine vinegar (Chardonnay), olive oil, salt

Slice red cabbage into ribbons
Slice Watermelon Rasish into matchsticks
Cut Nori seaweed (comes in sheets) into little ribbons
Chop a handful of flat leaf parsley
Stack them in the bowl as pictured. Toss directly before serving and add black pepper. If you want to bring out a little more of an Asian aspect to the salad with the Nori, add a little sesame oil to dressing, and sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds.

Rice a 'Roni

2011-02-18T07:39:00.001-08:00

This one is directly from Craig, both the writing and, obviously, the recipe. Sadly, there is no picture of this delicious meal. We were too hungry to pause. Instead, a view from out the window earlier the same day.

Improvisation

The windy, winter night was perfect for a risotto but it was too frosty to venture out for a key ingredient...there was not enough arborio! Thinking to make a smaller batch, a stock was made using what was around; left over scraps of beef from trimming beef cheeks and hanger steak, a leek, an onion, a carrot. A duck confit leg added to rice for flavor and to add a bit of heft to so little rice. Then, remembering the Rice-A-Roni that seemed to be a weekly event growing up, the thought to extend the dish with some broken spaghetti. There was a small amount (not enough for a meal on it's own) in an open bag on a shelf. It would cook in less time than the rice, so it was only a matter of timing.
Worked like a charm!

rice a 'roni

1 1/2 cups arborio rice
a small amount of high quality italian spaghetti (semolina or faro) broken into pieces about 1" long
some dried morel mushrooms
a couple of shallots finely chopped
a leg of duck confit
broth (chicken, beef anything!)
about a cup of dry white wine
some chopped fresh parsley
olive oil
Parmesan cheese

Soak the morels in hot water until rehydrated. Brown the confit and shred the meat. Scrape off and save any of the crispy bits on the bottom of the pan! Heat the stock to a slow simmer.
Finely chop the shallots and soften them in a large skillet with a splash of olive oil. Remove the morels from their soaking liquid and slice. Add them to the shallots. Add the rice, stirring to coat them in the oil. Add the wine and continue to stir.
You can use the liquid from the morels (making certain that you do not let the sediment at the bottom get in) followed by the stock, about a cup at a time, stirring occasionally. Keep adding liquid as it becomes absorbed.
When the rice is just losing its hardness, add the spaghetti and continue adding stock. As the rice begins to finish cooking (it should still have some "tooth") toss in the confit.
Before serving let it sit for a few minutes. Toss in the parsley.
Plate, finish by grating a bit of Parmesean on each serving and putting a bit of the crispy confit bits on top.

Roast Chicken, and a Bouquet to Baste

2011-02-17T07:00:00.001-08:00

Roast chicken is my comfort food, more precisely, a home filled with the smell of roasting chicken is my comfort. Like a fire in the fireplace or a thick wool blanket on a cold night, roast chicken is deeply reassuring. When the girls and I all fell sick, the thought of finally being better, being hungry and roasting a chicken sustained me through the aches and pains of a dual bout of Strep throat and the flu.

We ate a lot of chicken in our house growing up. Chicken, pan roasted vegetables, salad and thick cut Sourdough bread was a weekly, or twice weekly meal. My parents were very popular with our friends for many reasons, among them, they let us eat our chicken with our fingers. To this day I rarely order chicken in a restaurant because I want to pick up the drumstick and eat it like a happy little savage.

In the world of farmers markets, there is a resurgence of very fine, well raised chickens of interesting breeds. Here in Ithaca, one of our favorites is the Poulet Rouge, raised by Kingbird Farm. As a parent I am glad to be able to feed the girls the crunchy, fatty skin of the bird and know that it is full of good fat from the bird's foraging based diet.

Roasting a chicken is barely a recipe, but there are two great ideas that Craig uses: one is trussing and the other is a Bouquet Garnis baster. Trussing sounds more fancy and complicated than it is. There are a lot of Youtube videos and long instructions, but I find if you cut yourself a long piece of kitchen string and just think about tucking the bird's legs up into a tight somersault, you can intuit your way. Trussing evens out the timing of your bird cooking, so the legs and larger breast all cook more evenly, resulting in moist meat throughout. No more dry legs and perfectly done breast!

The homemade Bouquet Garnis baster is so beautiful! Even after such frequent use, every time I use one I find them breathtakingly pretty. No more suction basters and their odd plastic-y smell. No more trying to pick off the tiny fibers from the paint brush style basters that always shed. The herbs soften in the heat of the pan juices as you baste and release a steady, delicate aroma.

Whether recovering from massive illness, or just need of a cozy, sustaining meal, find yourself a great chicken and give thanks for its diligent, foraging life. Golden fat and nourishing meat on another cold winter night.

Roast Chicken:

Pre-heat oven to 425.
Wash and pat bird dry. Rub with olive oil. Rub outside with salt and pepper. Inside cavity put a few smashed garlic cloves, a bay leaf, herbs, if you wish, and 1/2-1 onion (quartered). truss the legs (or not)and put in a roasting pan.
Sit the bird on a few strips of bacon.
Put in oven for about 15 minutes, then turn heat down to 350. A 5lb bird should be about an hour to an hour and a half. Juices will run clear and the skin will be brown.
Put any vegetables (carrots, potatoes, onions, brussel sprouts, celery, leeks, parsnips, rutabaga) in about 1/2-3/4 of an hour into the process. Or, you can slightly pre-cook them and throw in the pan near the end. Rub butter into the skin as it starts to brown and the baste the bird in pan juices every 15 minutes or so near the end.

Bouquet Garnis Baster:

In the spring and summer, use any and all fresh herbs: sage, rosemary, thyme, oregano, parsley. This time of year, we buy fresh parsley and wrap that around dried oregano, thyme, and rosemary.
For the stick, get a set of the very large chopsticks that are a basic Asian cooking utensil.
Tie your herbs securely at their base to the stick with kitchen string.

And for extra decadence, Pan Fried Bread:

Cut French or Sourdough bread in thick slices. Dredge through the pan juices. Fry in hot cast iron skillet. Serve immediately.

To Love

2011-02-16T15:45:00.001-08:00

The tiredness that overtakes us continues to surprise us, we comment on it every time. Every time she has a phase like the one right now. My shoulders go into spasm, a deep pain with sharp edges. I can feel now the map of stress, our small, familial post traumatic stress disorder.

We, Craig and I, have this war, these maps, these fears, together. A tiny war for two. The words we use to describe the battle of Colby and her brain: beat up, battered, destroyed, wasted, worn out, zoned, gone. This is our little girl. The list of words, looking at them, not just saying them, our sadness and tiredness makes sense. We use the words in an attempt to acknowledge the severity, not to define her but to define the events, the repercussions: her state, not her being.

I start with a general sadness, quickly riffling through the day’s plans to see what will need changing, modifying. Then, without fail, I turn to smiling, happiness, positive meditations and visualizations. I feel like it might help her, to see the radiant love that I feel for her when she comes through the seizure. Then if they continue, as they have lately, I feel a greater sadness, it arrives slowly. The sadness is like watching a set of headlights appear over the horizon on a straight, flat desert road. They are tiny at first, but they steadily approach, and then suddenly they are upon you, blinding you, filling your vision completely. That is how the sadness is. And it might swerve off and disappear as quickly as it arrived. But while it is here, it is all I can see.

I think because Colby becomes so very remote - we wonder aloud: where does she go? - I let myself also go down, descend or ascend into emotions, reactions, far beyond the initial reaction of expressing and giving love. I don’t think the love goes anywhere, but I do not demand of myself that I stay in the calm, smiling phase. I let the rockier thoughts have a voice.

Today I held her in the bath and I wondered who else in her life might hold her on a day like today. Having a child who will always be defenseless is to always have a child. We will never put her through college and say we did the best we could. She, her body, her seizures, her precious life, will always be our responsibility. I do not try and conceive of a literal plan, in the bath, her passed out against me, long hair curling in the water like a mermaid.

I try and conceive of an emotional path. I send out prayers, urgent notes, tied to arrows that I shoot from my heart and into the heavens, “Let the love of our hearts find a community of care that will always surround and protect Colby Rose.” As I lay there breathing, I shoot these arrows, over and over, enough for every star in the sky. Urgent, vigilant, magical thinking. For our girl is a mystery, so I reason and I hope that there must be magic to help us find our way. Help us find our way from the deep wells of worry, from the evil things people do. Let her life be safety and joy, let it be what every child deserves, forever.

Citrus Salad Sun

2011-01-31T18:35:00.001-08:00

Easing into the snowy, slushy parking lot at Wegmans, the temperature at mid day is 10 degrees. The kids in the their snow suits squeeze into a double wide grocery cart. The store doors slide open at our approach. A blast of forced air hits our cold, pink noses. Rounding the corner, as I take off my gloves and hat, I gasp and involuntarily smile: before me, crate upon crate of every imaginable citrus gleaming, spilling, tumbling, beckoning.

"Orneeeees!" Coral announces. I have yet to correct her pronunciation on that, I love the way she says, or sings, "Oranges!"

In an instant I have a full sensory memory of a salad I had this time last year at Fanny's in Brooklyn, a citrus salad. I had ordered it twice and taken a picture, memorizing it with the goal of recreating it this year, and every year after. In that goal was a hope, hidden in the folds, that we would be home this year, cooking for ourselves. Last year we were eating out almost every night in Brooklyn or Manhattan as we navigated Colby's brain surgery.

From the savored memory of the Fanny's salad I chose two kinds of grapefruit, honey tangerines, mandarins and blood oranges. Also, parsley, red onions, green and black olives, and capers.

I knew from the Fanny's salad that it would be a lot of work removing all the skins and pith from each and every section while keeping the sections somewhat intact. The glorious pile of fruit towered in a bowl on the dining room table for two days while I mentally practiced how I would make and compose the salad. The scent of their skins perfumed the air and elicited fantasies of warmer climates.

I made a small version of the salad to test the recipe. The explosion of water, sugar and the brightness of the colors was a pleasant shock to my senses. Nothing growing here now has that concentration of sun. As I ate, I decided who I would invite to lunch and adjusted the dressing.

One of the fun things about salad is that you can tell almost everything about the balance of flavor and texture by looking at it. It is a visually satisfying way to cook, or compose. On the table, this salad inspires in me, in this climate in January, an absolute sense that Spring is rounding the corner. The earth is warming, from the inside first, slowly reaching the surface as meanwhile the angle of the sun lengthens. But before the golden light of spring fully returns, you can bring it inside your home with a platter of late winter citrus.

Citrus Salad
Ingredients:
Grapefruit, honey tangerines, mandarins and blood oranges. Variety is key, you want a range of color, sweetness and acidity.
Parsley, red onions, green and black olives (I used Cerignola because I like their meaty texture, nice against the citrus,) and salt packed capers.
For dressing:
Red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper

Chop red onion and cover with red wine vinegar to soften.
Rinse salt packed capers and let stand in cold water for a few minutes.
Peel and section citrus.
Pit and cut olives into chunks.
Pinch of parsley leaves, cut only a little, the leaves look pretty on this salad.
And compose!
Dress this salad lightly, and add salt to taste, the capers and olives add most of the salty taste you need. Pepper at last minute so you can really smell the pepper with the citrus.

Winter Farmers Market

2011-01-20T18:32:00.001-08:00

Winter Market: red cabbage, watermelon radish, celeriac, carrots, cold storage pears, honey.

The Ithaca Farmers Market is a dedicated structure on the shore of Cayuga Lake. The last day of market is in December. It is so cold that the meat sits out on the counter and the vegetables are in coolers to keep them from freezing. After the holidays, in the first week of January, the indoor winter market starts up.

It is a small, dedicated group of farmers who do the winter market. They continue to harvest and drive in the icy dark to market in the deep cold. Arriving to market the tales are shared of frozen batteries, impassable driveways and still everyone has arrived.

Eating my dinner, I notice that the red cabbage is significantly sweeter than even the one bought from the same farm in November and December. This plant has been through a lot even in that short time. I think that sensory knowledge of place is central to my gratitude for our farmers.

Even though I live in the country now and walk on the actual dirt every day, I still have a deep and wide gap in my understanding of what it takes to get my food on the table. For me, the food chain begins at the market. I know more now than I did in the city. There too I shook the working hands of the farmers who grew the food I ate. Here I know the farms and I know the people a little more. I might even know the breed of hen whose eggs I scramble up in the morning.

But I have never known this arc of taste of region and climate, the arc of texture and sweetness of a cabbage from fall to deep winter. This knowledge, while a personal epiphany and great pleasure, also feels old, and normal. Normal knowledge of place, and the food that sustains us.

Thank you farmers.

The Fight and The Table

2011-01-07T18:11:00.001-08:00

We had not had our fight for quite a long time. And it arrived suddenly, and completely. Dinner was on the table and despite Colby having had ten seizures, the mood was light as I set out the napkins. Then we heard Colby have another seizure: it was time for Diastat.

The manifestation of our fight is about Colby: when she seizes a lot, status epileptus, we try and take care of it at home rather than taking her to the hospital. Her emergency medications, Valium in two forms, are imperfect and hard to administer. There is a lot of gray area in figuring out how much she has gotten in her body, and how much she needs. And this is where the fight comes from.

We, husband and wife, do not agree on how aggressive to be with the drugs and getting her out of the seizure cluster. I am more panicked about the seizures and willing to take on the burden of the side effects of the drugs. In my heart I feel like getting the seizures to stop is the most pressing fact. And Craig is more able to ride the moment, able to wait and see what happens next, in a way, he is able to be more present and accepting of the seizures and what their affect is on Colby.

Feeling this fight return filled me with adrenaline and fear. It had been so long, I felt like we had come so far in our ability to talk things through and eventually, however eventually, find our way, together. As soon as I felt how right I felt and how wrong I thought he was, I was plunged back through an icy cistern of difficult memories. The early days with Colby when we were going through these seizure clusters together for the first time. They were nearly constant back then, five years ago. The days and weeks and months of seizures and hospital stays bled together. And we fought. Not agreeing about how to care for a child in a chronic medical condition, I saw no way through. I did not expect us to make it.

Five years later, on the bed with Colby, emergency Valium, Diastat, in hand, dinner waiting for us on the table, the fight heaves around us and I feel as sure as I was back then about one thing: this is impossible.

And it is impossible. So, then what? How can you accept that? Coral was quiet. She had never seen this fight before, our real fight. I stood in the hallway. My petulant side wanted to slam a door and sulk. But that is not a true choice here, I thought to myself. Craig is not wrong to think what he does, and it would be strangely childish for me to behave as if there were something to apologize about and act like I wanted to be coaxed out of the bedroom like a pouting teenager.

Dinner is on the table. As I stood there in the hallway, Craig storming, me sulking, I realized it had been a year since this essay series started. And this was it, the choice, again: do I show up at the table, find my kindness and gratitude, and face the person, the people, across the circle from me? Do I show up?

I took a deep breath and walked to the table.

You Can't Always Get What You Want Winter Salad

2010-12-27T07:03:00.001-08:00

...But If You Try Sometime, You Just Might Find, You Get What You Need

The Rolling Stones have been in heavy rotation on the kitchen stereo. The girls absolutely love "Wild Horses," Coral requests it endlessly (literally) and Colby concurs with a beatific smile when it comes on. My favorite lately is "You Can't Always Get What You Want." I think it is a very Buddhist reminder of the way life goes. I was humming it to myself when Craig brought home a new stove.

Craig's dream stove, the one he visits at the local appliance store and rhapsodizes on all the things it would make possible in our modest kitchen, is a six burner, 36" gas cooktop, by Viking. That being far down on our list of priorities with things like insulation ahead of it, he focused on not what he wanted but what he needed. He scoured the resale spots and found a perfect little four burner gas stove, exactly like the standard issue in NYC apartments, to stand side by side with our 1970s electric stove. Eight burners! Gas and electric! Each stove was bought used, each for about $100.- dollars. He was in heaven. Thanksgiving for fifteen guests was what pushed him to action, and it has been a fun and helpful addition to our tiny kitchen-scape.

Every time I look at these modestly handsome siblings, side by side in the kitchen, I start to sing, "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need." There are so many, many places in life this is true, this very moment in fact, trying to write with both girls hanging over me, demanding attention, is not the writing moment I would want, but I need the time, so this will do.`

Not quite having what you want, but what you need, happens all the time in cooking. We had friends over recently and Craig set out to make a celery root salad. Realizing mid way that he did not have enough celery root, he looked around the kitchen for what to add to extend the salad. He decided to try a couple of Gold Rush apples. The sweet, tart and slightly chalky apples were a pleasing counter balance to the earthy nuttiness of the celery root. We had what we needed, and it was great.

A Winter Salad

Celery root
Tart apples (such as Gold Rush)
White (chardonnay or champagne) wine vinegar
Olive oil
Sea salt, powdered cumin & black pepper to taste

Wash and peel celery root and apples. Grate celery root and apples on the largest hole of a box grater. Amounts are about 2/3 celery root to 1/3 apples. Add salt, a small dash of cumin and pepper to taste. Mix well with hands. Splash in a glug or two of vinegar and about the same of olive oil. Mix well. Let rest about half hour, the grated vegetable and fruit absorb the dressing nicely. And serve!

Season of "Yes"

2010-12-23T05:44:00.001-08:00

Coral sat before her gingerbread house. The brown, hard cookies plain and ready. I watched as her chubby finger extended into the cup of frosting, past her knuckle and back out, and straight into her mouth. And so the sugar began. When we arrived I had physically tensed at the huge bowls of every kind of candy, spread like an industrial rainbow on the kitchen counter top. There was enough to recreate any scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It was a child's dreamscape, so bright and colorful, shiny and promising. I, meanwhile, worried about teeth and sugar crashing, about the rest of the day, about Coral's sugar innocence.

Colby has no interest in candy, in anything sweet except yogurt, so this moment with Coral was my first in navigating the addictive, fascinating sugar relationship, parent and child. How much do I let her eat? What if the other mom, my smart, generous friend, and I are on different pages with the volume it is O.K. to eat? Mainly though, I realized, I was thinking of my own self preservation: I was tired, Craig had been gone for nearly two weeks, I knew my patience was already very thin and I worried about how I would deal with a kid bedraggled and bratty from sugar. On a good day Coral and Colby can drive me crazy, what would happen now, after this bonanza, this wild up, and wild down?

And then I looked. I looked at the kids, bewitched by this sumptuous, out of the ordinary spread. I looked around at this home, filled with holiday cheer, Amaryllis bulbs, pine garlands, bright Christmas tree sparkling in the corner, and I decided to just say, "Yes." I did not want to be the aggravated, uptight parent, always full of rules. This was a truly special moment, one that Coral at nearly three years old may very well remember. This was a time for general guidance, how to lay Necco wafers into the frosting to make shingles for instance, but daily rules could relax at the seams a bit.

And my friend and I were on the same page about volume, and both relaxed about it. It was fun for all of us to let go a little. For the kids to have these new tastes and textures: Twizzlers, marshmallows, non pariels, ribbon candy, gum drops. All by 11 a.m. We sat back and gave gentle reminders that the candy was meant to mostly decorate the gingerbread houses. We talked, just a little, about how some sugar is so good and so fun, but if you eat too much it can make you feel pretty yucky and not be fun at all anymore. It is that way with rules too, having rules is good, makes life feel like it makes some kind of sense, but too many can just make you feel, well, yucky, and make you miss out on all the fun of life.

Happy Holidays, may your season of "Yes" be merry and bright.

Gnocchi Courage

2010-11-29T19:17:00.001-08:00

As I watched Craig making gnocchi for the first time, I thought about how the kitchen is a good place to face your fears. Identifying your fears and finding a path through them is an important skill and cooking can be a forgiving and rewarding place to practice.
Craig starts with reading. He reads cookbooks for fun, for inspiration and for knowledge. The new Canal House had a recipe for gnocchi and several ways to serve it. And his long love, Thomas Keller’s French Laundry Cookbook has an extensive recipe for gnocchi. After pouring over these two sources for a few weeks, he was ready.
For me, gnocchi is something to order at a restaurant. Like many things in the dough family, I am too intimidated to explore making it myself. So, I was thrilled that Craig wanted to make at home what I have placed firmly in the “food to have at restaurants” category. And because of my own dough intimidation, I watched Craig especially closely as he took this project on.
There is a stillness to Craig in the kitchen when he is trying something new and particularly ambitious. It is the rare time he is not playing music while he preps and cooks. He organizes his ingredients and finds all the tools. Then, and this is the most interesting part to me, he stands back, in the middle of the kitchen, body facing his work area, and thinks through the whole process. Actually it is much more than thinking it through, he is visualizing it, eyes opening and closing, moving his body, he looks like a conductor going over music in his head.
He has this moment of visualization almost every time he starts to cook. It is the main tool that allows him to overcome the space constraints of our house, and was essential in the tiny kitchen in NYC. However, visualization serves not just a useful but a profound purpose as well, it actually sets the outcome in motion. His ability to visualize the process is probably the reason he has so few real failures in the kitchen.
The gnocchi was delicious. And he learned as he went. Watching the dough come together was magic, and the moment that the gnocchi shapes hit the gently boiling water, and did not fall apart, was triumphant.
As the dark nights of winter envelop us, and the cold pressing in on the windows has us consider our physical fragility, we turn to the kitchen to explore our fears and warm our souls. Find your courage in a gnocchi experiment and ease the grip of the winter cold with a steaming plateful, served with brown butter and sage.
This is a classic recipe that changes little, find one in your favorite source.

Time for CeCe Dove's Cranberries in Zinfandel

2010-11-27T17:58:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving
The day before Thanksgiving, Colby had a seizure while running down the asphalt driveway and landed with all her weight on her face. She scraped along the gravel as she fell. A huge cut and her eyed swelled shut almost instantly. The seizures continued, and so did the falls, until finally, it was time for bed. In the quiet of the night, Craig and I cleaned the house and organized and reorganized all the groceries. We were expecting thirteen people for Thanksgiving dinner. We were more than a little nervous about how to get everything done with Colby seizing and in so much pain from the cuts and swelling.

By the morning, she needed Diastat and Craig and I went into our well oiled triage mindset. We simplified the menu and our vision for how clean and decorated the house would be. Helping the girls find a sense of comfort and peace in the day would be my job, while Craig would orchestrate the feast.

As we negotiated the morning I noticed how grounded in fact we remained, neither of us got emotional, or frustrated about a situation that needed accepting. I thought how this moment, the high expectations of a holiday meal, a house to be filled with thirteen family and friends in a matter of hours, is one where I could easily see a huge fight erupting in the stress. But we did not do that, we stayed on the same team, neither making an enemy of the other.

Coral went to Grandma’s where her endlessly fascinating cousins and uncle were staying, along with her cousin's tiny dog, Cheese. She loves everything about her cousin Cassandra, her long sparkly nails, her Hello Kitty accessories, her voice and vocabulary, but most of all, Coral shines in the attention of this special adult in her life.

Now, for Colby, Diastat, seizures, an injury, only one thing was going to help her find her calm, help her get some distance from the need to cry, and that was a nice long drive. I headed out towards Trumansburg and then Interlaken, taking the high road North. I would drive in one direction until I felt her energy shift, and only then turn around a find a circuitous path home. It took forty five minutes to feel the calm come over her, her body visibly more relaxed, her face, still cut and swollen, but gaining in serenity.

By the time we got home, Colby was fully transitioned to a more peaceful state. She moved from the car, to her stroller where she sat while Craig cooked, enveloped in the smells of butter and sage and Turkey.

I put on the stove my solitary culinary contribution to the meal, CeCe’s Cranberry Sauce. Wine, sugar, cinnamon stick and fresh cranberries. Boiling the sugar and wine down to a syrup I thought about time. Success is often found in giving the time you need to the simplest, most critical ingredients. Today would have been a nightmare without giving Colby the time in a soothing car ride. Without time, this cranberry sauce would be a strange soup. With the time she needed, Colby was able to participate with calm, love and joy in a very fun, and tasty, Thanksgiving feast. With time, this cranberry sauce became a sweet and tart, candied, gleaming red elixir.

CeCe Dove's Cranberries in Zinfandel

1 1/2 c zinfandel wine, any type.
2 c light brown sugar
1 cinnamon stick
4 c cranberries washed

Combine wine, sugar and cinnamon and bring to simmer.
Add cranberries, 1 cup at a time until they pop but are still whole. This does not take very long, just a minute or so, depending on if they are cold or room temp.
remove cranberries with slotted spoon to bowl.
When all are cooked, remove cinnamon stick and boil syrup until it is very thick. Then add syrup to bowl of cranberries and serve. Good warm, cool or cold. Awesome leftover condiment!

Three times this amount is one bottle of wine's worth.

CeCe Dove was one of the first cheese-type stores in the Oakland area and she had a column in the local paper.

Glad To Be Tomato Sauce

2010-11-24T17:33:00.001-08:00

Sometimes I get dark. The words, concepts and feelings that circle through my mind are incredibly negative, overly worrisome. My day dreaming is more like a nightmare. I feel incompetent and unable. I feel like I have no energy. I feel angry about everything, no buoyancy or humor to be found in my thoughts and feelings. I feel like drinking wine, eating chips and watching t.v. And if I do any of those things, then, handily, I feel bad for wasting my time with escapism.

The anger that crops up as a part of this cycle feels like it is there as something to do, something to feel during the day. Something with some adrenaline and drama. Something that is also numbing in its way. The numbing of drama and anger is that it also takes you away from your feelings, like any other compulsive behavior. I do not want to face first thing in the morning that I feel tired, lonely, overwhelmed, scared, concerned for the future or our family and out of touch with my creativity. I’d rather just go hard on myself, tell myself I am a loser, get short and irritated with the constant demands of the kids, get short and irritated with Craig’s clothes piled on the chair or his music playing loudly.

That is endlessly fascinating to me, this trust of anger and of feeling badly. Why this long cycling away from good habits that feel emotionally and spiritually uplifting, and down into long, dark corridors of self loathing and emotional disconnectedness? So here I am, writing in the morning. The house is sort of clean. There are no pressing errands. I think, in part, what brings me back to finding myself and my well feelings again is embarrassment. I feel too embarrassed to keep doing self destructive stuff. I feel some pull again and again to do what is right for myself. I like to think that the cycles get shorter, but I am not sure. I might dwell in these zones of misery for longer than I realize.

What pulls me back upwards again is a desire for the real feeling of happiness, namely creative satisfaction. To feel that an essay really says something, that is much, much more satisfying than numbing myself and dwelling in anger. It is a subtle negotiation, the conversation with oneself. In the last couple of weeks I first noticed the slow return of anxiety, coming over my thoughts and feelings like nightfall. But a nightfall with no stars or moon, no light at all. After the anxiety, anger edged in. I noticed Coral mimicking me saying, “God, stop it!” in a clenched, breathy tone. If she has heard it enough to repeat it exactly like me, and in context, then I was saying, and feeling, that too often. Then I start to feel angry towards Craig. About two weeks of noticing these things, I finally take the time for a walk in the morning. Then, time to write the next day. Slowly I grope my way through the dark place, this cold cistern, and find my way again. Find my breath. Find my ability to put myself first in constructive moments.

Last night Craig asked what I wanted for dinner. On a good day this leads to a fun conversation, a back and forth on what needs to be eaten, what we had the day before, how the girls have been eating and what they might like to have. On a less good day, like recently, it leads to me feeling put on the spot, left to decide for the family, alone. “Pasta,” Craig said.
“Sure, but not too rich, no Carbonara.”
“I could do rice?”
“The girls might like that, but is there time? Pasta is faster.” It was getting dark and Colby already looked tired.
“I could do the shortcut version, since you don’t want pasta.”
Blood starts to boil. “I did not say that, I said pasta is fine, but I do not want anything totally rich.”
“Garlic and anchovy?”
“Yes, that sounds good.”
A few minutes later, “Tomato?”
My body perks up, no analytic moment, “Yes!” That really does sound great.
“That’s the reaction I needed, thank you.”

That long, annoying moment mirrors the way negotiating with self can go too. I bicker back and forth over something important, like taking time to write, there is a not so constructive back and forth. Then suddenly there is an answer. Just in the act of keeping a conversation going, not shutting down, despite boiling blood and deep annoyance, with self as with partner, just keep talking, keep paying attention. And the answer comes. You will find the dinner idea. You will find the creative moment that makes your heart feel once again buoyant and glad. Glad to be.

Crowd Pleasing, Glad To Be Tomato Sauce

1 28 oz can of San Marzano (or other plum) tomatoes
3 cloves garlic finely minced
1 onion finely diced
sprig of thyme
1 bay leaf
1 salted anchovy rinsed and filleted (oil packed work but salt packed have cleaner taste)
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil

In a large stainless steel skillet, sweat the garlic and onions in a glug of olive oil over low heat until soft. Toss in the black pepper, bay leaf, thyme and anchovy. Turn up heat and mash the anchovy with a wooden spoon until it dissolves. Empty the can of tomatoes into the skillet smash each tomato with a fork. turn heat to medium and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the sauce has thickened to a paste-like consistency. Remove from heat and add a splash of olive oil. Serve with you favorite pasta. NOTE: do not use too much sauce, lightly coat the pasta, then put a small amount on top.

Falling

2010-11-17T10:53:00.000-08:00

FALL
Have you ever seen a fallen maple leaf scurry across the road on its curled tips, like a tarantula? Did you know that the peppery smell of freshly mulching, fallen leaves is exactly the smell the stem of a fresh cut tea rose leaves on your fingertips?
I have never been happier than this fall, outside of a classroom, outside of a cubicle, outside of the city, watching the leaves actually fall. The graduated change of the color as the nights grow colder and colder. Their individual and collective descent, by type of tree and exposure to wind. Actually seeing the moment the wind storm takes the last of red maple leaves from their dangling perch and sets them aflight. And then the next day, all the broad, golden hickory leaves are a carpet, a crunchy pool of sunlight, on the amber grass.

Five Year Anniversary

2010-10-29T17:54:00.001-07:00

November 1 marks five years since Colby’s seizures began. As the seizures continue, we lose hope about them ending. We lose hope about a medication working, we lose hope about surgery working. We lose hope about acupuncture, diet, vitamins, and every therapy we’ve tried. But it is only hope for the seizures stopping that is slipping away from us.

Looking with a straightforward openness to the possibility or likelihood that the seizures will always be with us, we now focus our hope on living with them. Hope for life without them now feels unrealistic. Living with constantly disappointed hope is sad and not a useful place to dwell.

I feel full of promise that we can find our way to live with the seizures. I can accept, with at least occasional grace, the constant flexibility and changing plans. I can treat the injuries from another fall with Arnica and ice, kisses and hugs. I can make our home as soft and forgiving and strong as possible. One day, even Colby’s anguished crying may find a resting place in my heart.

We have transmuted our reasons to celebrate, our very sense of what is a victory. Craig came home from a few days of work in the city and while he was gone Colby really seized a lot. Craig’s return, the girls’ and my joy at him being home, a seizure free day, the ravishing fall color out the dining room window, these are the reasons now to open the champagne. Each day is a victory. Each day we are proud of each other, grateful for each other. There is no more special occasion than today.

Recipe of things to always have in the house for instant celebrations. You never know when you will need the cheer, or when your next victory will arrive, be ready!

Cold champagne or favorite wine
Favorite cheeses
Meaty olives
Fine mustard
Crusty bread or elegant crackers
Sardine or tuna packed in olive oil

Finding the Way

2010-10-26T13:03:00.001-07:00

Crying

Colby’s crying returned. I hear her urgent, afraid cry at four in the morning, Craig goes to soothe her. Five thirty a.m. and the crying starts. I want to pull the pillow over my head, I want to curl up and dissappear. Already, I would give anything for the crying to stop. It is not that I do not want to get up, it is not that the crying itself is so overwhelming, though it is; the root of my instant anxiety is that I know the crying continue all day, and that there is nothing I can do to soothe her.

She cries with the intensity of a collicy infant, but she is five and a half years old. There is a huge, long arc to it, there is a depth of anguish that does not match up with the thin girlish body and round, cherubic face. The sound, the tears, the duration do not add up for a child. To look at and to feel, it does not make sense. And to feel impotent to help her, that is the feeling I try to avoid for a moment, pillow over the head.

Untouched eggs, toast, yogurt, banana all on the table in a still life of attempts. Colby won’t eat or drink. We have to hold her to get her meds in her. Craig and I are like broken glass, rough and abrupt, quick to wound. He is tired and breathing in short exasperated sighs. She’s already had four seizures. I feel anger mount about everything. Every way Craig does not ask for help, every little whine from Coral, and every desperate, shouting yell from Colby.

I notice my anger and I see no way out, through or around. This will be a rough day. I start the inventory of things to remember: look out the window at the last of the fall color; pause before responding to Coral, do not snap, find the tender awareness that she is a tiny child, and then help her, hug her; remember Craig and I are on the same team, we are both wanting to find our way together, do not turn him in to the enemy. Pause and make choices before responding and reacting. The choices I feel like I have about how to be with the crying feel large, clunky and basic.

The crying comes with the seizures and the seizures mean that she has lost her motor plan and basically cannot walk. Immobility and her frustration are linked. Managing her anguish becomes the day’s focus. Even though the crying seems to have its own life cycle, of course we try everything to soothe her. We hold her, we carry her, we play her favorite music, we check for splinters, we take her for long drives.

By the end of the day I want the anesthesia of wine, I want another pillow over my head, I want to feel like there is something soft and buoyant and glowing between me and the harsh feelings and needs of the day. I notice the feeling, the desire to dissappear a little into another state, and so I watch that too.

The day ends how it started: watching. Watching my words, watching my wine, watching myself in the endless work of love and motherhood. Craig and I finally catch each others’ eyes. And we acknowledge our work, a sincere congratulation to navigating a hard day. And as Colby quiets and prepares for sleep, the hope for a better tomorrow is palpable in the house.

(Sea) Salt and (Sichuan) Pepper

2010-10-25T20:00:00.001-07:00

"Let's talk about sex, baby..." Salt-N-Peppa, 1990

I have been talking with women friends, both with kids and without, and the absence of sex drive. My friend and I were speaking of the absence of desire itself. We both have handsome, loving husbands. It is not an issue of trust, love or looks. It is more fundamental, more physiological. To hold the initial days, years, of sexual desire and activity level as some sort of relational gold standard is not useful. We are different, new people today. We have a family, we have work, we travel, we are older, and we know each other a lot better. And the things we’ve been through. Trust has been broken and repaired, we have made impossible decisions together, we have stayed together.

Thinking about the desire conversations, I realized there are a lot of things I love that I initially do not want to do. Every time I am getting ready for a dance class, considering a morning walk, or getting ready for a riding lesson, there is a consistent wavering and I think about skipping out. Facing making dinner, having friends over, getting out of the house for a movie; there are many moments of an initial feeling of resistance to things that I really love, this window of feeling like it is all too much bother. I feel like I can do it later, that there will be a more perfect, inspired moment.

Sex and dance class, I am not comparing the activities, but rather the similar feelings of resistance and relief and joy around them both. When I do say yes to sex with my partner, I am always, always glad that I have, that we have connected. But, since having two children together, I would almost always rather do something else, something that requires less of me to show up. Like clean the house, mark things off my to do list, read, take a nap. It is not that I do not want to be with him, it is that most of the time it feels like all the other places in life that need work are more urgent. Of the two needs, the dishes or my partner, why are the dishes more important? Dishes are not more urgent or important; they are easier.

Now, to show up for this person, it is a deeper place. It is not the coy, hopeful seduction of the early days. It is not fantasy and best foot forward. It is not the merging, the becoming one of falling in love. It is not the sublime aphrodisiac of making babies. Now I see the man I have come to know. He is no longer a fantasy person who can do no wrong. It is not that sexual desire is gone, it is that the whole game has changed.

Now we both want to merge with each other, to live united and in love, and we both want to simultaneously find ourselves, explore the terrains of our psychology, our spiritual paths, and our creative lives. Oh, yes, and there are also those kids to love and raise, to clothe and feed and nurture.

I love my partner and I love it when we connect. Just like I love dance class and the euphoric feeling of freedom and endorphin rush I find there too. But I resist because I am not a ball of energy and there are multiple layers of demand in any moment. Now, I have to go deep to gear up my concentration. Arousal and desire take work, effort and concentration.

And once the work is underway, that initial step of committing to the moment, comes the awe of the reward. The spiritual depth of being held and holding another, your beloved partner. The physical hum of nerve endings tantalized by touch. The gleeful triumph of having made the time to indulge in each other, just for you. It is a luxury! How easy this is to forget. That to live with love and the promise of connection is a precious gift.

We do not have forever, that is a fact. Let us savor, even if at first we don’t want to, let us savor the person in front of us, and follow the promise of being together, for the moment.

And a little aphrodisiac to help:
Mousse Au Moka Et Poivre from Raquel Carena
1/4 tsp Sichuan peppercorns
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 tsp ground coffee beans
4 oz 70%-cacao bittersweet chocolate, chopped
3 large egg whites
1 Tbsp sugar

Grind peppercorns with mortar and pestle. Bring coffee and cream and pepper to a simmer in a small pan. Remove from heat and let steep, covered, 30 minutes. Strain cream through fine mesh sieve into a bowl, pressing on solids. Melt chocolate in a large bowl. Stir in cream. Cool slightly. Beat egg whites with sugar until they just hold stiff peaks. Fold into chocolate mixture gently but thoroughly. Spoon mousse into glasses and chill at least 3 hours.
Serve with lightly sweetened whipped cream.

Store Up the Sun

2010-09-27T06:03:00.001-07:00

The pear tree in the back yard is the first to show fall. Sprinkled throughout the green are golden yellow, eyed shaped leaves. We had a cool week, lots of rain and foggy days. One morning, sitting at the outside table with Coral drinking tea, I gazed across the land at the pear tree.

I looked at the light smattering of yellow in an otherwise still solid green landscape. The wind was blowing, but some of the yellow leaves looked like they were actually darting around. Training my eyes over the distance I slowly came to see that in with the yellow leaves were also darting yellow shapes, not leaves but bright yellow Goldfinches. As I watched it slowly came into focus: a cocaphany of thirty, fifty maybe a hundred goldfinches, too fast, too tiny and too many to count, in the tree.

They were elated, eating with their tiny beaks the ripe pears hanging on every branch. The yellow birds flying up and out and all around, eating the pears was beacon to the fast arriving autumn. Before the leaves fall, before the grey, white and earthen brown of winter, before the birds and bugs fly away or go to sleep, the colors dazzle us one final time.

The birds and bugs dance and feast on the sugar and stored up sunshine in the fall fruit. All the while, the leaves change their colors, yellow, pink, red, orange, alerting our eyes, our bodies to that arrival of cooling nights.

Air out the blankets, darn the socks, can the peaches. Learn from these tiny dancing teachers, the crickets and the goldfinches. Store up the sun. Dance one last time barefoot on the grass. Winter is coming. But now, the feast of Autumn.

Here is a recipe from Cooks Illustrated that my friend says is SO good, I will make it soon with the last of the Italian Plums appearing at the market.

Rustic Plum Cake, Published July 1, 2007
Serves 6 to 8

This recipe works best with Italian plums, which are also called prune plums. If substituting regular red or black plums, use an equal weight of plums, cut them into eighths, and stir them a few times while cooking. Arrange slices, slightly overlapped, in two rings over surface of cake. Do not use canned Italian plums. Blanched whole almonds can be used but must be processed 30 seconds longer until finely ground. The brandy can be omitted, but then you will need to melt the jam with 1 tablespoon water before adding the plums. Don’t add the leftover plum cooking liquid to the cake before baking; reserve it and serve with the finished cake or over ice cream. The cake can be served with lightly sweetened whipped cream.

Ingredients
2 tablespoons red currant jelly or seedless raspberry jam
3 tablespoons brandy
1 pound Italian prune plums (about 10 large or 14 small), halved and pitted (see note above)
3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour (3 3/4 ounces), plus additional for dusting pan
3/4 cup sugar (5 1/4 ounces)
1/3 cup slivered almonds (1 1/2 ounces)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon table salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter , cut into 6 pieces, softened but still cool
1 large egg , room temperature
1 large egg yolk , room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract (optional)
Confectioners' sugar for serving

Instructions
1. Cook jam and brandy in 10-inch nonstick skillet over medium heat until reduced to thick syrup, 2 to 3 minutes. Remove skillet from heat and place plums cut-side down in syrup. Return skillet to medium heat and cook until plums shed their juices and thick syrup is again formed, about 5 minutes, shaking pan to prevent plums from sticking. Cool plums in pan, about 20 minutes.

2. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour 9-inch springform pan. Process sugar and almonds in food processor until nuts are finely ground, about 1 minute. Add flour, baking powder, and salt; pulse to combine. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse sand, about ten 1-second pulses. Add eggs, vanilla, and almond extract (if using) and process until smooth, about 5 seconds, scraping bowl once if needed (batter will be very thick and heavy).

3. Transfer batter to prepared pan; using spatula, spread batter evenly to pan edges and smooth surface. Stir plums to coat with syrup. Arrange plum halves, skin-side down, evenly over surface of batter. Bake until cake is golden brown and wooden skewer inserted into center comes out with few crumbs attached, 40 to 50 minutes. Run paring knife around sides of cake to loosen. Cool in pan on wire rack until just warm or to room temperature, at least 30 minutes. Remove cake from pan and dust with confectioners’ sugar. Cut into wedges and serve.

Love and Learn

2010-09-24T21:43:00.001-07:00

I see now that for the first three years of Colby's life, one of an almost constant state of anxiety about her health, I saw being her mother as a severe limitation. I felt like my life was suddenly in a straightjacket of worry that would never end. As it would be in a straightjacket, I could not move my arms to embrace what was happening. I stayed clumped in my closed, afraid state, and worried. Worried about her breathing through the night. Worried about what would happen when I was no longer here to protector her. Worried about rent. Worried about how to ever find myself again within this radical new reality. The episodic and yet near constant state of emergency with the seizures was blinding. Even still, when they start up, it is almost all I can see.

Colby woke up late in the night with a cry and her seizures started up. She would miss school. Craig needed to work, I would pack the girls up and clear out of the house so he could concentrate. It was a hot day so we headed to our friends' house on the lake. As I drove into this unexpected day, Coral narrating every single thing we passed, Colby half asleep in her seat, I felt totally calm, content in the moment.

Out at our friends' Colby continued to seize. They loved her, held her on their laps, made quesadillas, hoped to get a little food in her. Coral played in the water, ate jelly beans and stayed close to my legs. After a few seizures, Colby had one that lasted a little longer than usual, she jerked more, turned blue, and made a distressing, loud gasping sound. Coral got really scared. I turned Colby's head so her airway was clear, and then I focused on Coral during Colby's postictal semi-passed out phase which lasts about a minute.

I hugged Coral and looked her in the eyes. Her worry and fear right there on her face, in her tiny knitted brow, she is just two and a half years old. And we talked. "That scary of me when Colby does that." Translation, "That scared me." "Yes baby, that is scary." "Yea." In for another hug. And then, "Maybe Colby wants a jelly bean." And in that moment, that unlikely, painful, brilliant display of child love and logic, my heart felt as big as the lake before us. I felt so, well, I felt free, emotionally free. The straightjacket, at some point in the last two years, has eased off.

Craig and I talk about the evolution of the straightjacket phase, to now feeling that being Colby and Coral's mom is not only a dream come true, but has actually made dreams come true. Long before Colby and motherhood, I had another sort of straightjacket on, one of shame, fear and self consciousness about being myself. I am and have always been an artist. To admit to that dream and claim that title, artist, writer, was an impossible risk that I did not have the strength to take.

Until I met Colby. Her strength; the child who can keep her spirits buoyant while in a hospital bed; the child who gives over to her crying, her frustration, with open howls and fat, salty tears rolling down her cheeks. She struggles to eat and play and smile even at her most neurologically overwhelmed. She is a warrior, or as our friend Toshi calls her, The Warrior Princess. In learning to care for her, to know her and love her we have all had to, been able to, become warriors ourselves. The courage necessary in mothering has opened a stream of courage into other parts of myself, my life, long repressed.

I walked in to the house, home from our day of friends, lake, jelly beans and seizures and I was actively noticing how happy I felt. I felt so happy to feel able to care for my girls. I felt happy about how Coral and I had communicated, I felt happy that we had such generous, loving friends to visit at the lake, I felt happy that I was able to be strong for Colby and that I knew just how she likes to be held after a seizure. Listening, being present with what is, opening your heart to find, with determination, the beauty and love that is everywhere, this is a deep and personal success. The straightjacket is off, arms are open wide, holding these two girls, and the worlds within them.

At the end of such a day, an instant "fast food" dinner is called for. The Fish Taco Feast is a family favorite. Learned from a doctor friend, this nourished him through medical school. This dinner takes as long as it takes to heat up fish sticks, about 15 minutes.

Fish sticks, we like Natural Sea brand Cod Fish Fillets
Corn or flour tortillas, the smaller size, not burrito size
Shredded cabbage, cilantro, sliced onion
Shriracha Mayo (See May 15 for recipe)
Plain, good quality mayo mixed with anchovies and pickles as an improv tartar sauce for the kids

You Say Soup

2010-09-23T04:47:00.000-07:00

This most recent trip to the hospital was the very first time in the five and a half years of Colby's life that just one of us went with her. Colby and Craig went and Coral and I stayed home. I felt confident in Craig and worried only about his sleep. I arranged for friends to visit and relieve him and provide some variation during the long days in the small hospital room.

However confident I felt at our initial decision that just he would go down, I started to reflect on the fact of that confidence more and more as the days stretched by. I felt amazed, awed by it. I feel truly, absolutely confident in my partner to take our young daughter all the way to NYC to the hospital for testing, medication changes and multiple meetings with the neurology team. I felt totally confident that he would make the right decisions for her and for us, that he would call me, include me, be honest with me and be her absolute protector. That I, her highly involved mother, could surrender with a state of calm, almost no anxiety, was a real revelation to me about the state of trust and communication between Craig and I.

I told him how grateful I felt that such a potentially stressful time and decision felt so clear. For all my episodic fantasies of worry, I had no core, gut anxiety. It felt extraordinary, a large ripe fruit of our work together. I told him I loved him, and that I was grateful for him and for the family we have together.

We did not talk about it again until after our first dinner when they were finally back home. After the kids were asleep and we were recapping all the events of our respective time, he told me how much that meant to him, that I had felt that trust and confidence and that I had communicated my feelings. He said it sustained and nourished him and made him feel so loved.

It would have been easy for me not to communicate my love and confidence. First of all, it seemed obvious, after all, I had stayed home, that surely implied a trust. And I wasn't grilling him and micromanaging, so that also relays trust. And we were both busy, each with a kid and all our work, and there was so much to talk about with just the hospital updates, doctor meetings, Colby's withdrawal off a drug, the seizure reports. Maybe it was because it was so obvious and we talked and shared our love anyway, in such a critical time, that the message meant so much.

At a critical moment, like the hospital trust and communication are necessary. But there are the trillions of daily moments too, surprising, practical places that trust and communication smooth the way, like when we talk about what to have for dinner.

A cool, early fall evening, I am yearning for soup. There is a Kubocha squash that needs to be cooked, some corn and potatoes. Craig asks for ideas for dinner, and I say soup. He listens. And in speaking and listening, the soup comes to be.

Words of love and appreciation combined with his love and appreciation for my love and appreciation, and soon you have an exponential love, an expanding and blooming of love that quickly surpasses the quiet, personal and internal state of love. The love we have when shared grows beyond our imagination. Then as that shared love is witnessed your whole life is bigger, warmer and feels, nestled in your chest, like a nourishing bowl of soup, feeding this hunger and craving for love, to love and be loved.

You Say Soup Recipe

about 2 cups of fresh cranberry beans
corn/corn cream (4 ears)
5 medium small potatoes
onions
1 medium-small Kubocha squash-oven roasted, or any rich, golden squash
chicken stock or water
celery leaves (from the heart) shredded
salt & pepper to taste
bay leaf & fresh thyme
butter
olive oil

Shell the cranberry beans, put in a pot with enough water to cover by a few inches. Add a bay leaf or two, some sprigs of thyme, a medium carrot cut into large pieces, a medium onion halved and a good glug of olive oil. Cook slowly until tender, skimming continually. You could also use chicken stock instead of water.

Cut and seed the squash. Cut into large chunks. Season with salt and pepper. Put on a baking sheet into an oven pre-heated to 425. Bake until browned and done but make sure the flesh is still firm. Remove from the oven and when cool enough to handle, remove the skin and dice about 1/2" cubes and reserve.

Meanwhile cut the potatoes into about 1/2" dice and saute in olive oil until almost done. Remove from pan, cool and reserve.

Remove the kernels from 2 ears of corn and blanch for about a minute in rapidly boiling, lightly salted water. Skim any bit that come to the surface. Cool them in cold water and rinse again. Set aside on a kitchen towel.

When the beans are tender check the broth for seasoning and adjust to taste. Add the potatoes and continue to simmer slowly.

Take the kernels off the other 2 ears of corn and put in a blender with about a tablespoon of water and puree. Strain through a chinois into a bowl, pressing gently (but not forcing) with a wooden spoon. Pour the filtered liquid into a small pot and heat over medium -low heat while whisking. When the starch in the corn begins to thicken add about 4 or 5 tablespoons of butter (in chunks) while continuing to whisk. Add the reserved blanched kernels and remove from heat. (See Thomas Keller's "The French Laundry Cookbook" for exhaustive detail on creamed corn process.)

Stir the reserved "creamed corn" into the soup. Then add the shredded celery leaves to the corn, potato, bean mixture.

To serve, ladle soup into large bowls. top each bowl with some of the roasted squash and serve. you can always add pieces of bacon or pancetta as well!

Market Love and Rabbit In a Pan

2010-09-22T20:17:00.000-07:00

Market Love: a gratitude for the farmers, the customers, the relationship between producer and consumer, the participation in a viable, vibrant economy; a feeling of hope and of connection to place.

Walking through the market today, filled with Market Love, I was thinking about an article I'd read in the New York Times about an episode of provincialism turned violent - between two chefs - in Portland Oregon. The chef who threw the first punch was angry because another chef had not used local meat in a cooking competition. It made me wonder about the extent of my attitudes. Do I share the adamant views of this chef, local being absolutely better? Or was my Market Love pure?

We as a family eat mostly local meat, produce, dairy and grain. Olive oil, salt, pepper and wine are consistently from afar. We are of these consumption habits becasue we like the discipline of it, and because it makes sense to us both physiologically and environmentally. But is it that simple? Do I really keep it that personal? Or, did I secretly want to sock people buying asparagus from Argentina in May at Wegmans, when the fields a few miles away were filled with that very crop? Apples from New Zealand in September? Thinking honestly about it, that does make me clench my jaw. Not throw a punch, but there is some emotion there, I'll admit it.

Here in Ithaca, the Farmers Market is glorious. I love arriving, anticipating what will be fresh from the earth, filling the stalls. I love to know, to thank and acknowledge the people who have raised the food, who have ordered the seed in January, thought out their season's flow of produce from field to market, who work long hours in the elements, raise their families and earn their living in the arduous path of independent farming.

It has been several weeks and many markets of examining my attitudes - how alike this chef was I? - and I keep coming up with the same answer. When I invite a friend to meet us at the market and they say they did their shopping already, at the chain grocery store, I am surprised that they aren't also riveted and curious about the landscape. But rather than yelling into the phone, I invite them to dinner.

My conclusion, I do share some of the ego of this pugalistic chef. Only our touch is different. My love and curiosity of place is genuine, and I want to share that, sweetly. I am motivated not by a feeling of market and local being better than, but by my experience that it tastes, and feels, so, so good. Here, a complete market meal:

Rabbit In a Pan (from the great Ed Giobbi)

a rabbit 3-4 lbs
1 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup or so olive oil
4 cloves garlic chopped
1 tablespoon rosemary
salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
any combination of vegetables, pictured here is escarole, potatoes, lima beans

Cut the rabbit into serving pieces (legs, thighs, saddle...) and put the pieces in a cast iron skillet in one layer. Do not add oil! Start the rabbit on low heat, turning, until the external moisture on them evaporates. Increase heat as moisture is drawn out.

Add the other ingredients and simmer, covered, over medium heat until rabbit is tender, about 45 minutes to an hour. add more wine if pan becomes dry.
NOTE: this process seem truly bizarre, but have faith! there is a magical moment when the rabbit goes from looking dull and grey to a lovely shade of brown very near the end. it is delicious. Try to find a great source for the rabbit (or raise them your self!) Markets are a great place to find well raised rabbits.

Home In Time for Lima Beans

2010-09-08T10:42:00.000-07:00

Colby and Craig got back from the hospital yesterday. It was a long week there for them, and a long week here at home for us without them. The kids were literally ecstatic to see each other again. They stood in front of each other and screamed in high pitched, mono syllabic greetings interspersed with laughter. Their broad open smiles like huge slices of peaches, shiney and sweet. Colby stomped her foot and Coral stomped hers back. Craig and I tried to kiss, but we were laughing so deeply watching the girls that we could just lean on each other in embrace, tears down our cheeks.

At dinner we talked about the hospital, Craig told me about the families they'd met this time. It is a stunning sort of connection you make in the hospital. The families we have connected with over the years are people we have never spoken with again but feel extremely close to, they become part of the fabric of our family's prayers, we send them love and hope when they cross our minds, they enter our mythology of survival, we draw on their stories, the strength of their hearts when we feel weak.

The hallway is where many of these piercing connections with families happen. When you have a break from being "plugged in" to your IV or your EEG, there is only the square track of the hallway, the nurses station in the center, to wander. Craig told us about the little two year old with cancer who loved to run. Every few hours Craig would hear a clamor and see the boy fly by the doorway, gown flapping, IV poles careening behind him, then his grandmother and mother, chasing, alarmed but familiar with the chase.

On Colby's last day, when at last she could run around, there was teenaged girl and her father that they passed several times on the hallway circuit. After the third pass, they stopped and talked. Craig did not go into detail about their conversation, but about the feeling that passed between them. The kids, toddlers to teenagers, in the pediatric wards have a grace and an elegance about them. Maybe it is the studied, measured carriage that physical pain requires, but I think it is also something more internal. Even the youngest seem to have glimpsed at the mortality of self in a way that you simply cannot see without being there yourself.

The parents, they carry the bravery, the bottomless sadness, the awareness of loss, and their hope and faith. Both parent and child are present in a way, and that presence feels different in each. Perhaps that is why the connections go so through the layers of niceties and straight into your heart, there is no tuning out here. You are alive. Tired, bedraggled, overwhelmed, but alive. And you look, you gaze with absolute clarity at how it is that this other family, this other child and parent, are doing it, how is it that they are shouldering their burden, how is it that they are finding beauty. In the stark realism of the hospital, there is grace, elegance, bravery, sadness, awareness of loss, hope and faith. And the beauty of love: when you see it, it shines.

As we talked we ate a succotash and rice. Craig had needed the slow, methodical, simple work of the kitchen. He peeled a mountain of Lima beans, just arriving in season; scraped corn off the cob, and diced the carrots, onions, and leeks; all cooked in the slow, glistening fat of slab bacon cut into cubes. A sprinkle of thinly sliced basil on top before serving. The combination was colorful and textural: the earthy, interior flavor of fresh Lima's, the sweet corn and carrots, salty bacon. Served with simple white rice.

It was the mixture itself, one flavor against, or with, another that made the dinner delicious. The salty and the sweet, the interior and the flowering. As it is in the hospital, and in life, in love with each other, and in love with our kids: the bottomless sadness when faced with loss is born of the enormity of our love; our interior hopes become the grace that carries us through the world.

How Friendship Sweetens Everything

2010-08-21T17:27:00.001-07:00

As we ate the yummy omelette at Janet's, we talked about canning. Janet does all kinds of pickles, olives and her plum jam is legendary. She gave me a jar last year from small yellow plums that I opened in February, and it got me through the hardest part of winter. Serena had taken Janet and I to a roadside stand in Watsonville that had organic stone fruit. The day we went we found peaches and Black Amber plums. We were all very excited to do a batch of peach and basil preserve, the Patience Gray recipe.

One evening shortly after we had all canned our peaches and basil, Janet called with an idea: nectarine and lemon basil preserve. Janet, an exceptional landscape architect, had some lemon basil in her garden, and nectarines were just coming in to season.

Canning day was bright and sunny with a cool wind rising up off the ocean. We washed our jars, rims and lids, stood side by side and cut up the nectarines, measured out the sugar, and left the sugar and fruit to sit. I went into Janet's garden to take photographs in the late afternoon light. The light was caught in little puddles in the wild rose bush, sifting through the large fig leaves, illuminating arranged still lifes of beach rocks and low round bowls of succulents. Janet called through the kitchen window, "Come look at this!"

Inside, she was transferring the nectarines and sugar into a larger bowl. The bowl was upturned in her hands and the sun through the window illuminated a pool of pink, glistening sugar. Her smile, her rapt attention to this color, this moment, the beautiful confluence of ingredients: this is the presence Janet brings to her life that makes knowing her such a joy.

And this time together will be what I think of when I am home again in my new home, New York. I will recall this memory of California, of the place and the people that I miss so steadily. I will feel my love for my friends, family, place, and the love will fill my heart, like so much glistening, pink sugar in the bottom of the bowl.

Janet's Nectarine and Lemon Basil Preserve:
Use a combination of ripe and slightly under ripe (harder) nectarines. Cut into chunks and put in bowl big enough to mix in sugar. Most canning recipes call for about equal parts sugar to fruit, we used less than that. For each cup of fruit, as 1/3-1/2 cup sugar. For each cup fruit, add two tablespoons lemon juice. Stir this mixture together and let sit overnight in fridge. The next day, cook at a simmer. Gently mash with potato masher. Do not boil or overcook. Leave some nectarine texture. Cook until you see it start to glisten and the fruit is starting to dissolve. You will see the "glisten" moment. It is like the difference between water and frozen water, obvious to the eye. It is then that the fruit and sugar have thoroughly united, or jelled. Swirl in lemon basil, one nice stalk for about four cups of fruit. Place a few leaves in bottom of each jar. Ladle fruit into sterile jars and water bath can for 10 minutes.
Good on toast and with yogurt. And very good with cheese, use it as you would a quince or fig jam with cheese.

Lunchtime Omelette by Janet

2010-08-20T11:49:00.000-07:00

Homesick is a word that means more to me as time passes. It is so accurate. Distance from home is an ache, a malady, and in some ways it is also a beautiful gift. I hold my homesickness close to my chest after all these years, I don't cry like I used to at photographs of the ocean and my family. Missing home is something that you have to commune with once in a while, a wound that needs to be acknowledged and cared for, and when you do, there is a great and beautiful reward. The reward is the presence that you then bring when at last, you are home.

When I get home to California, I look forward to the people and places that I love, and I savor my time. All the things that I ache for are suddenly before me and I feel so, so grateful. The Pacific glitters like greatest jewel my eyes know. And my people, friends and family. When I hug my friends and tears rush up, I feel acutely how much I miss home. I miss the tender "ooohh" my friend Janet says when we first embrace. I miss my sister's ability to have a whole conversation while we are still standing in a hug, chins resting on each others shoulders. I miss the way Vanessa likes to hold hands while we walk. I miss the way my mom totally connects with my kids, she knows them as if she sees them everyday. I miss Rosina's laugh, she surrenders to giggle fits and I feel seven again. This is a short list, the people, the web of love and shared history is the gem, the sun at the center of my personal solar system.

The first friend I saw in Santa Cruz was Janet. Coral and I were invited to her house for lunch. She was slicing and stirring while we talked, and we were so happy to see each other again. Her husband Mark came home for lunch and we moved to the little outdoor table just off the kitchen. Janet put on the table an iron skillet containing a beaming, yellow omelette. She cut it into slices and the layers of color and vegetable showed through the edges. In the sun, fig trees and rose bushes draping around the borders of the garden, with my little girl and our friends, I was awash with love for life. And, love for eggs. Eggs are so purely nourishing and satisfying. This was a perfect lunch for kids and adults. And I think that sometimes a great, satisfying meal with only a little clean up and minimal fuss is important because it gives you more time to enjoy each other. An omelette is a great choice for such a time: breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Here is Janet's omelette (or torta) recipe and some omelette philosophy, in her own words:

The omelette or torta it is a great way to use up odds and ends in the fridge.
For this one, I sliced some dense, waxy potatoes thin and sauteed them in olive oil with some sliced red onion and red pepper flakes until everything is nice and soft.
Then I beat 4-5 eggs, added some sliced roasted artichoke hearts and poured the mixture into the skillet (cast iron) making sure there was some olive oil in the bottom.
Then, when eggs are mostly set, I took it off the flame, sprinkled the top with crumbled goat cheese, and put under the broiler a bit till set. I added salt to everything while cooking
Note: After adding the egg mixture to skillet, always turn the heat way down and let it cook slowly! No brown egg bottom for us! And, swizzle some more olive oil around the edges of the pan when the egg is mostly set but still a little runny on top, before placing in broiler.

Very Grown Up Float

2010-07-16T21:46:00.002-07:00

After lunch on an intensely hot, stifling day, there were berries that needed savoring. Berries picked when ripe have a brief window before starting to mold. In this heat, they wouldn’t make it to dinnertime. We could can them, freeze them, or enjoy them immediately.

The combining of flavor, texture, smell and temperature is a simple way to describe the act and art of cooking. A bowl of berries is one experience: room temperature, their color and texture and smell unique, simple and subtle. Sometimes a raspberry is just sweet or sour and leaves a lot of seeds in your teeth. And sometimes there is a quiet, commanding wash of floral taste and smell, a sweetness of concentrated sunlight and sugar.

I asked what did we have in the house that could help fulfill the experience of the berries. First I floated them in a glass of Pellegrino water. That was pretty, and good, but needed something else. Bubbles and fruit led me to remember a small amount of vanilla ice cream left in the fridge.

Ice cream, then the berries, then Pellegrino poured slowly into the glass. This combination fulfilled and then expanded the potential of each ingredient. The popping bubbles and the ice cream in the heat served as a metaphorical backdrop to the fleeting, fresh berries. The float also literally buoyed the berries, letting them float a few at a time into a sip or spoonful enhancing the feeling of their flavor and texture.

At the table watching Coral methodically sop up her float, nose crinkling at the bubbles, naming the colors of the blueberries, red raspberries, Jewel black raspberries, and pink currants, the rare sensation of truly sugary sweet ice cream, I compared this tender, summer moment of her childhood to the life of the berries.

Time, as we all know, does nothing but march forward. Seasons show us that things we love come back. In the ice and sleet and cabbage of January we know that July will come and bring her tender leaf lettuces and berries. But we as people, the phases of our lives, we change absolutely. Coral still has the rotund belly of childhood, but every day I see it thinning out to look more and more like her lanky big sister’s.

The precious seasons of babyhood and toddlerdom, these pass by and do not return. We grow bigger and lose our milky sweet smells. We have dirt under our nails and giggle fits grow less frequent. But tastes and experiences can bring out the feeling of wonder and adventure that is childhood. While we grow big and our bodies change ever so much, we can always combine bubbles, berries and ice cream, and on a hot summer day, feel like kids again.

Blue Cheese and Summer's Tomatoes

2010-07-16T12:29:00.000-07:00

This salad is so simple and so perfect. When I read it in the summer 2010, volume number 4, "Canal House" it seemed so obvious a combination I just couldn't believe I'd never had it. I read the recipe before our first local, giant, delicious, sun ripened tomatoes arrived. I held this recipe in my apron pocket, ready for the tomato, the irrefutable harbinger of summer. As I waited, I contemplated blue cheese.

Blue cheese has a wonderful association with friendship for me: standing in Meredith's Grandma's 1950's, canary yellow linoleum kitchen, staring at a hunk of blue cheese, each of us ready, with daring in our hearts, to cross from the cheddar of childhood to the blue cheese of adulthood. We were only eleven or twelve, but we knew that, for sure, imminently, our life was to be a whirl of glamour and cocktail parties, both of us glittering wits in swishing skirts and smart jackets. And for this, we had to prepare. First, by appreciating blue cheese.

We tasted it. We loved it, sincerely. The sharp creaminess, the crumbly texture, the demanding presence on the tongue. We sliced giant, freezing cold, green grapes into circles and stacked them on Wheat Thins, and topped it with a crumble of blue cheese. The flavor, the smells, the ingenuity of our chic, towering recipe, we knew life was only going to get better and better.

Awaiting the tomatoes, I found a blue cheese from Northland Dairy at the Farmers Market. I told Mary Rose the recipe it laid in wait to be used in and she exclaimed, "I don't have my summer Canal House yet!" And suddenly, we connected a little more, knowing our shared love for Canal House. I told her the issue was a dream, and as if saving the story line of a heavenly movie, restrained myself from telling her anymore.

Finally, tomatoes arrived at Brownie's fruit stand,and the next day at Ludgates. I made the salad. It was like falling in love: life felt more complete. As I ate, as slow as a turtle, savoring, savoring, I wondered if the Canal House Gals as we call them, knew Mary Rose and Northland Dairy. If they do not, I am sure it would be love. Their hearts are the same. The blue cheese is so, so good. The balance of salt, the texture, it is alive in your mouth. To quote the Avett Brothers "I hope I don't sound to insane when I say..." but, I feel like you can taste the reverence Northland Dairy has for its animals, for the process of its supremely hand crafted production. And that is how the Canal House Gals are, they care.

They care and they share their deep knowledge, the beautiful yields of their refined, elegant work. And, they are friends. Which inspired me to serve this salad to my friend, in honor of her thirtieth birthday. Across from a table set for lunch, with tall glasses of champagne beading up in the humidity, I could see her senses pause as she looked at the combination of tomato, anchovy and blue cheese. Then she took a bite and said, "I could eat this everyday." Everyday that the tomatoes are from plants nearby, raised in dirt, in the sun, we will. Eat well, savor the season, enjoy friendships.

Sliced Tomato Salad With Blue Cheese and Anchovies

Big, ripe tomatoes
Blue cheese
Anchovies, salt packed tastes best
the best olive oil you can find
red wine vinegar
garlic
salt
pepper

Mince small garlic clove and combine with one tablespoon vinegar. Season with salt and pepper. Stir in 3-4 tablespoons olive oil.
Arrange two or three fat tomato slices on plate, and spoon dressing over them. Lay blue cheese, then anchovies. Season with more salt or pepper.
Because this is not mixed or blended and the proportions are important, plate each individual serving.

Zucchini, Fava and Goat Cheese Salad

2010-07-15T21:53:00.000-07:00

July 16

Make this salad now with the tiny yellow zucchini squash of early summer. It is a fresh, unique way to experience a tender, precious moment of the season.

We first read of this salad in David Tanis's "a platter of figs." The only thing you really have to do is respect the tenderness of the young zucchini, cut or shave it very thin and handle it gently. After that, it is prime for a myriad of variations.

Favas or fresh peas, basil or mint, mild or slightly stronger crumbly cheeses. Young, sweet red onions, or small, mild white ones.

Fresh favas are worth the effort. Their texture, taste, smell, the brightness of their green, they are a potent and generous bean. You will probably be competing with the local chefs for the fava supply, make a deal with your vendor to at least save you a pint!

Soon the zucchini will all be large, every gardener drumming up ways to use them and people to give them too. Before the larger ones become zucchini bread and the Ratatouille of late summer, early fall, seize this tiny window, of the tiny squash.

Young Yellow Summer Squash Salad, as pictured here

4 or 7 small yellow zucchini
a handful of squash blossoms
about 1/2 cup of fava beans (cleaned, quickly blanched and skin around bean removed)
1 small new sweet red onion, sliced
1 lemon
sea salt and black pepper
some ricotta salata or mild feta or other crumbly goat cheese
a bit of basil or mint sliced into extremely thin ribbons (optional)
some really good olive oil

Wash and wipe the zucchini squash. Cut off the ends. Using a sharp knife, a mandoline or a vegetable peeler, shave each into thin ribbons (lengthwise) and set aside. Prep the favas by removing the beans from their pods, then blanching the beans in boiling water for a few seconds. Dunk the beans in ice water. Remove beans from their skins by pinching a tiny bit of skin off the end and gently (but firmly) squeezing the bright green fava out.
Just before serving season the zucchini with salt and pepper to taste, toss in the favas and, if using, basil and onion. Splash with olive oil and mix. squeeze in the juice from about 1/2 lemon (check for taste) and adjust seasoning to taste.
Heap onto a platter. Tear the petals of the blossoms over the salad and crumble the cheese of your choice on top. If using a harder feta, you can shave ribbons of cheese, using that handy vegetable peeler again, which looks very pretty with the ribbons of squash and blossoms.

Red Oak Leaf, Cucumber, Blueberry Salad

2010-07-15T11:46:00.001-07:00

July 15
When Craig served this salad, I had not been paying attention to the kitchen at all. I was juggling the girls, feeding them little snacks after a long day of school and play, hanging the laundry out to dry instantly in the summer heat, and sipping at a rose wine with "Jewel" black raspberries, floating like deep purple clouds, in the glass.

The Oak Leaf from Red Tail Farm was heaped in the salad bowl. Craig tossed the salad and served it, filling the plates to their outermost edge. I noticed the cucumber, the first we'd had, bought from a table outside a house along the lake, with an honor box, seventy five cents. And then, tucked into the dark green and red edges of the lettuce, blueberries.

The combination of the texture and flavor: crunchy, slightly bitter lettuce; crisp, watery, mild cucumber; bright, sweet blueberry; balanced oil and vinegar dressing with a not too acidic vinegar. The sizes of things mattered too: the slender, elegant lettuce was not chopped, it was torn in half, or thirds so it filled your mouth, the slices of peeled cucumber gave a broad, fresh splash of water, and the whole blueberries a small, delightful pop of sweet in the bite.

It is very fun to be surprised. It does not take much to bring your senses fully in to the moment. A sweet berry hidden in the folds of crisp earthy lettuce brought such a feeling of fun, of playful levity to the table. This combination is not one of the recipes that was an evolution of another recipe. This was all Craig. That is one of the things that saves us, his ability to be present, to look with an open mind at what is before him, which in this case was a the seasonal excitement of the first beautiful cucumber, a handful of berries, our friends' lettuce.

Part of the fun deliciousness of this salad was the surprise of the blueberry. But then we had it the next night, I knew full well what to expect, and it was just as good as the night before.

Red Oak Leaf, Cucumber, Blueberry Salad

from the freshest available...
Oak Leaf lettuce
some blueberries
2 or 3 slender scallions sliced
Japanese cucumber peeled and sliced
juice of 1/2 meyer lemon
splash of champagne or chardonnay vinegar
fine olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients except lettuce in the bottom of a large salad bowl. After a bit of marinating add the lettuce, but do not mix. Just prior to eating, mix well and serve.

Eggs and Pancakes with the Cousins

2010-07-14T21:50:00.000-07:00

July 12
My brother Rich drove down from Vermont with three of the four kids he and his wife Emily have. A house full of kids and cousins is a dream come true for Rich and I. We grew up without knowing our one cousin, and we yearned for the familial, non-sibling bond we saw our friends and their cousins share. It was with real joy that we planned to get all our kids together. We made one whole room into a room of beds in case of rain, and set up a tent under the apple tree in the pasture. I got out the tall stack of enamel plates, all the tiny spoons and forks and unbreakable glasses. Rich brought eggs from their chickens, we stocked up on bread, berries, milk.

Richmond has raised, is raising, a lot of kids. When Jay and Maddie were little they went through the predictable, "I don't like that!" phase for everything you put in front of them, even if they had eaten a mountain of it the day before. Rich is Gandhi like in many ways, very good at finding a path of least resistance and saving himself some aggravation. He decided that it was not going to do any one any good to get into a dynamic of anxiety about food. The kids were toddlers and far from "failure to thrive" so he decided, that they would eat when they were hungry.

He continued on his mealtime routine, presenting the kids with nutritious options at regular intervals throughout the day and left it at that. Sure enough, they would eat like little curly headed birds for a day or two, and then eat everything put before them for a stretch.

Rich's choice was very refreshing to witness. He followed his gut and found a path that worked for him and his kids. It has helped me a lot with my own kids. Colby can be hard to feed, there are textural, sensory issues and resistances to eating that are still a mystery to us. It takes a lot of persistence and patience, but sometimes, she, like all of us, just isn't that hungry.

Rich's wisdom sets a healthy, open field for food in his family: food is for when you are hungry and it is a communal experience. Come sit at the table, be together, eat what your body says it needs.

The cousins together at the table, five plates of fried eggs and a platter of pancakes. They ate their fill, and bounded off, into the yard, into the day, with all the fuel for play they needed.

Craig's Pancakes

Ingredients:
7 or 8 tablespoons butter
1 1/3 cups whole milk
3 large eggs
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tbs plus 1 tsp sugar
1 tbs plus 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

In a sauce pan over low heat combine the butter and milk. Heat until the butter melts and set aside. Beat the eggs in a medium sized bowl. When the milk/butter blend is lukewarm, slowly pour it into the eggs while stirring.

In a large bowl, wisk the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt together. Pour the egg mixture into the flour. go slow barley mixing. the batter should be lumpy with dry patches here and there. Do not over mix.

Heat a cast iron skillet or griddle over medium-low heat. Wipe with a bit of butter, vegetable oil or bacon fat. When hot to touch, ladle in about 1/2 cup batter for each pancake. When they begin to bubble and are a deep, golden brown on the pan side, flip and cook until done. if you wish to add anything...sliced apples (try a sprinkle of sugar and a splash of lemon juice on those slices!), berries...candied bacon (!) do so when the first side is cooking, then flip.

Serve with whatever you like, jam, maple syrup, honey, yogurt. And for sure, an egg on the side.

Kenny Shopsin and Happiness

2010-07-06T06:41:00.000-07:00

July 5

Kenny Shopsin, the strange and brilliant chef, not known for his social graces, gave me one of the most helpful ideas for parenting. He said that to find work that has meaning for you is the best example you can set, and that the best thing you can do for your kids is be happy yourself.

I held Colby, then a tiny newborn, in my lap and listened as he expounded, sitting across the table from us, exhausted from a day of cooking and yelling at his four kids, all at the time working to some degree in the restaurant. When Kenny does anything but rant and curse, you listen. He has an exceedingly rough personae, but under that is a compassion and an intelligence far stronger than his roaring expletives.

Contemplating his words now, from way inside the path of parenting and family life, they look different than when I first heard them. When I first heard, "Be happy yourself," it sounded obvious and easy, as easy as happiness ever is. Now, there is a larger family, work, and the thousand tiny shirts and shorts and socks that need folding. How to find happiness and do good work when you feel life is pulling you in a thousand directions, all of them important?

By making choices, and, the ever famous key to marital bliss, compromise. Make the beds but let the floors go. Write for an hour in the morning and accept the longing for a day. Make a dinner reservation.

What Kenny did not say was how in family life the happiness of the couple, individually and together becomes so linked.

Children are an astonishing amount of work. Their demands are tireless, their needs absolute. Meanwhile the rest of life clamors for attention. And, then there is each other. For us, that is the easiest one to lose track of. We operate for long periods under the illusion that we, the couple, can wait. That we come after kids, dishes, tractors, work.

We must take care of ourselves and our love the way we care for all the other aspects of a full life. To not let the inertia of distance between us become a habit, we need a moment together, to just gaze, and be.

We made plans for dinner out together and as I got ready I thought about all the small fissures between us, major and minor emotional infractions, moments of bad communication. I felt how that was not what I wanted dinner to be about, I did not want to talk, work, process. I wanted to be together, in the moment.

At dinner we laughed, we talked with our neighboring table, we caught up on the funny moments, profound work conversations, all the persistent beauty that occurred in the week. We invested in our happiness, the cornerstone of a loving, functional life, together. Thanks Kenny.

More Kenny wisdom, culinary and philosophical, can be found in his excellent cook book, pictured here. The essay on eggs is a revelation.

Simplicity, Lettuce

2010-06-24T05:28:00.000-07:00

June 23
Colby Rose has been in a seizure cluster for nearly two weeks. Today she went into the bathroom, got Craig's attention, and had her third seizure of the morning. Craig caught her as she fell. Coral put her black dog under Colby's head as she laid on the cool tile floor.
Coral asked, again, "What happen?"
"She had a seizure."
"Why she has them?"
Craig ventured into more detail, "She has epilepsy."
"Epepsy? What's that?"
"It is just the way she is made, honey."
"She has a boo boo, maybe we can go back to New York City and the doctors can take it off, again."
I hear the room go quiet. Craig, like me, absorbing the knowledge and care in Coral's words and suggestions. She completely understands, in her own way, that Colby had brain surgery, and that the doctors were trying to help the seizures. I think again about how to do this, to parent these two girls, together. Coral has been asked to understand, to accept situations beyond her years. Another mom wrote about balancing the needs of a family when one child has "legitimately higher needs." That phrase has brought a feeling of freedom, it is straightforward, and true.
Given the reality of our family, two parents, one high need child, one rapidly developing two and half year old, there are many demands, and simplifying is not so much a choice as a necessity.
Eating dinner, Craig has made a simple green salad. Lettuce, radish, scallion, vinegar, oil, salt, pepper. The summer lettuce has been crisp and nuanced in flavor, growing well in the warm, bright days and cool evenings.
Paring down to the essentials while still achieving the fullest expression of each ingredient; that is the beauty of this salad.
Given that Colby has "legitimately higher needs" I often worry about each of us reaching our potential. Craig and I defer our work to Colby's needs, Coral is asked over and over again to wait. But maybe it is possible to pare down the extraneous activities and expectations in a family and still reach our individual and collective potential, reach our fullest expression.

Simplest of Green Salads

In a bowl place sliced scallions and radishes. Cover lightly with vinegar. Let sit while prepping lettuce. Sprinkle olive oil over lettuce in bowl. Sprinkle salt and pepper. Toss when ready to serve. Coating the radish and scallion with vinegar both softens their texture and infuses the vinegar with their flavor. Olive oil over the lettuce leaves coats it lightly and makes it shinier, and gives a silkier "mouthfeel."

Last Day of Spring Feast

2010-06-21T09:27:00.000-07:00

June 20

Craig and I have been craving lamb, perhaps an ancient craving, in our dna, since lamb has been a part of nearly every Spring Feast food tradition the world over, through the ages. Northland Sheep Dairy in nearby Marathon, NY has beautiful lamb. Actually they have beautiful products from all parts of the lamb to sheep life cycle: sumptuous sheepskins; earthy, soft yarn; aromatic, finely textured cheese; and meat in sensible, refined cuts. One hundred percent grass fed and sustainable farm practices. It seems that nothing is wasted and the animals are fully appreciated.

And, like every food writer before and after me will proclaim, you can taste the difference! Maybe that is why the food movement and what it could mean for environmental evolution holds such promise: the rewards are physically pleasing and immediately obvious. Simply put, this lamb tastes like an animal that lived a life of movement, fresh air and seasons, and ate what it should.

On the last day of spring, June 20, we got to our spring feast. The day was warm, everything green and bursting with life, with a cool breeze coming off the lake. We grilled lamb chops over a hardwood fire. Craig made flageolet beans from David Tanis's "a platter of figs and other recipes." A green salad of Romaine and Oak Leaf lettuces. Bowls of radishes and tiny, new carrots. The fire was going so nicely we rummaged around for more to grill: a single andouille sausage from the Piggery, and a stack of sliced peasant bread. Il Buco olive oil and salt over the grilled, smokey bread.

For the kids, a cold pitcher of water infused with fresh, crushed cherries, thyme, mint and lavender, and for us, a bright, soft red wine. We raised our glasses to Father's Day, to this glorious spring of flowers, baby birds and fruit, to each other, and to our family and friends, always in our hearts. Happy Summer Solstice.

www.northlandsheepdairy.com

Asparagus

2010-06-14T14:31:00.000-07:00

June 14

A particular guilt is sweeping over me: I may have waited too long to post a recipe. Asparagus is a short, glorious season. If the season is already over in your area, put this recipe in your pocket for next year. It is simple and truly beautiful on the plate.

This year an Amish farmer at the market had asparagus with slender purple tips and a sweet, nutty flavor. He told us his plants were happiest, tasted best, when left rather wild in their fields with no chemical fertilizers or pesticides. A half wild, half cultivated crop.

Watching Coral eat asparagus, clutching it by its verdant green stem, olive oil dripping down her fingers to her wrist. I think of the farmer and the asparagus before us and decide that we too are at our best when we are a little wild, and a little cultivated. So the olive oil drips, Coral rubs it into her skin, and grabs for another stalk.

Best with asparagus that is very, very fresh. Preferably local and picked that day or the day before.

Break or cut off the wooden ends. For thicker asparagus, peel the stalks. Heat a large cast iron skillet over high heat. Add a couple glugs of olive oil. Toss in the asparagus and shake pan to coat. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Shake pan again, reduce heat to low, and cover. Occasionally shake the pan. Cook until just barely tender. Arrange on a platter and serve as is, or drizzle with a mix of lemon juice and finely minced shallots. It is good warm, at room temperature or lightly chilled.

Tenderness, Strawberries

2010-06-13T15:28:00.000-07:00

June 12

At the sink with a colander full of fresh picked strawberries, my chest goes soft between my ribs: they are so beautiful. Craig got them from Buried Treasures Organic Farm at the market. They are our favorite because they are the small strawberries, bigger than the tiny, wild strawberries I hunted as a child in Big Sur, but far smaller than the usual grocery store strawberry. They are deep red all the way through, floral, and so sweet they make your whole body pause at the flavor.

Noticing the feeling in my chest, and feeling the small berries between my fingers as I trimmed the green crown of leaves from their base, I contemplated tenderness. It has been a week of a lot of seizures. Craig and I felt ourselves slowly erode in the stress and sleep deprivation. After the first few days of seizures we get into a kind of survival mode that leads to very abrupt conversation and frustration with each other over trivial things. Normally it drives me crazy the way he leaves his clothes draped over the furniture. In a time of higher stress, I react with internal storms of molten lava, I feel really, disproportionately angry. I lose touch with my tenderness.

While I was holding these precious strawberries, old friends were visiting. T. has a way of asking questions that inspires an authentic, present response. She is absolutely listening, she asks because she wants not just to know, but to understand. She asked about Colby's need for care for her whole life, and later at dinner, about her cognition level. To face not the questions but the answers to the questions was to speak words that are largely a silent understanding between Craig, myself and our community. To say, yes she will need care her whole life, to imagine creating safe environments for her once I can no longer fit her on my lap or catch her when she falls having a seizure, is to connect, for a moment, with some of my greatest fears.

To feel that fear, rather than shield against it with an automatic answer, is to connect again with tenderness. As T. and I spoke I felt the tremendous work of life, of being present and honest, of truly sharing your heart and experience, and I felt my love for Craig. As crazy as clothes on the furniture make me feel, I am so, so glad and grateful to be on the road together. As abrupt and bratty as we can get, we also shoulder a burden and find beauty along the way. In conversation with T. I went from feeling so tired and sad to feeling lucky and rich and surrounded by love.

Our anger is understandable: our child suffers, despite medication and radical surgical measures. The work before us is acceptance, and remembering that when we are angry, we are not really angry at each other.

While preparing dinner, I opened champagne. Craig and I looked at each other in the eyes for perhaps the first time all week and toasted everything we could think of, including "to us." We leaned into each other at the fridge door, rather than away. Kissing as we passed in the hallway, holding hands at dinner, saying thank you to each other. A brittle, exhausted day ended with serving strawberries and vanilla ice cream to a house full of friends and kids. Our lips were red, and our hearts, once again, soft.

Perfectly Simple Parfait
Cut strawberries into mixing bowl. Add one teaspoon of brown sugar per quart of strawberries. Toss and chill until ready to serve. To serve: in a small water glass, one layer of strawberries, one layer of vanilla ice cream, another layer of strawberries. Ladle a little of the syrup at bottom of bowl into each glass.

Classics Are Born Every Day

2010-06-13T13:31:00.000-07:00

May 15

This post is about the circuitous ways that new food finds a permanent place at your table. It started with John, Master Roaster, expert in the sacred coffee bean. He is a neighbor of a friend, and one day while we were talking under the giant walnut trees that divide their driveways, I asked where one could learn more about coffee. Something like a wine tasting, a way to taste side by side and get a sense for the regions and the vocabulary used to describe flavors. He said I could come by anytime and we could roast up some beans and make espresso.

I took him up on the offer on a cold winter day when I had a break from the kids. John took from his storage closet a large burlap bag filled with small quantities of single origin, unroasted pistachio colored beans. He set up his home roaster, outside in the winter air, and started speaking.

It is one of life's singular pleasures to listen to someone with deep, calm knowledge talk about their passion. He described what was happening to the bean as the temperature rose, the smells were captivating. He would announce what smell was coming next, what it meant for the progress of the beans, and then it would fill the air. Around us, light brown husks burned off the beans and floated like a storm of tiny, wild moths.

We went inside to join his wife Alice and make expresso. I, despite my coffee tutorial, cannot describe how delicious the espresso was. I could only smile and nod and hope for another shot as John and Alice conversed about what they tasted. The casual way in which John tossed the roasts together to try different blends was the comfort of an expert.

John and Alice told the story of how the love of coffee and roasting was born in San Francisco and honed in Alaska. We talked of our travels and why Coca Cola tastes so much better in Mexico. As we talked and savored espresso, John started to bustle in the kitchen, and I absorbed his every move. He set a cast iron pan over a low flame and cut thick slices from a huge round of sourdough bread. A splash of olive oil in the pan and he pan fried the bread. Then Hellmans Mayonnaise in a bowl, and a few good shots of Sriracha, briskly stirred together to a pretty salmon pink.

He set the bread on a plate, sprinkled it with salt. I watched as he took the first piece of warm, pan toasted sourdough and dipped it deeply in to the Sriracha Mayo. I followed. So simple, so divine! Ingredients that have lived side by side in my fridge for nearly my whole life! On a cold day, it was the most simple, pleasing snack. I could hardly wait to tell Craig. It has been a part of nearly every meal since.

I write about it now because I am looking forward to it on summer foods, namely, slathered on a barely coked, lightly salted corn on the cob; grilled fish; a dip for asparagus; in deviled eggs; on a burger with arugula and roasted Sungold tomatoes. I love it with fried rice, grilled shrimp, any kind of taco, scrambled eggs. It is good on everything. And, it is very pretty.

We use Hellman's mayo or Spectrum Naturals Organic Mayonnaise with Olive Oil, and Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce, also referred to as Rooster Sauce. The Spectrum Mayo has a beautiful texture, it is closer to an aioli that to a typical mayo. Mix together to your preferred spiciness.

Apple Tart

2010-06-08T21:19:00.000-07:00

May 8

So far, Craig makes one dessert, Apple Tart. The simple, country style tart was his first foray into flour and sugar. Seeing Craig do something so different, outside his usual savory realm, I saw anew what a skilled cook he is. By skilled I mean in part the muscle memory and control of someone who has put a lot of time and attention into the act of cutting, paring, slicing; the motions of cooking itself.

In general, Craig's cooking is not overly fussy. The way he cooks feels like the ultimate and inevitable evolution of the ingredients. He does not ascribe to, though he admires, the very high tech cooking that bends the very structure of food to the will and vision of the chef. Craig's cooking has a naturalness to it, and he is a natural, in his element, while cooking.

Watching a "natural" it is so easy to underestimate the work, the level of experience and concentration. Me and the girls, and our guests, experience mainly the end result: dinner on the table. There I notice the symmetrical scallion slices, the perfectly tender and balanced flavors of the meat, how precise an amount he has made for our family. One night at dinner when I commented that the red sauce over polenta was particularly delicious, he described the way he had diced the carrots into tiny pieces rather than puree them with the tomatoes because it gave a more interesting mouth feel and more of a tiny pop of sweetness. It was a portal, a tiny carrot dice sized portal, into the level of care he puts into cooking, and the nuance to which he experiments.

To think of all the unnoticed ways of slicing and combining, the experiments and successes that are just gobbled down! Respect and love and intelligence are a part of any job well done, and it feels so good when good work is acknowledged. That may be part of why the table is and has been such a healing place for the family. We agree and disagree about both major and minor parts of life, and in the specific manageable realm of the table we get to work on our communication. First and most importantly, we get to appreciate each others' work. It is a time to speak kindly and say thank you.

And, we get to work on considering our differences. Craig loves more salt and fat than I do. He would put bacon and goose fat in everything. Over time he has scaled back on salt and our compromise was a bowl of great sea salt on the table, we found some flexibility. In the context of one peaceful environment, for us the table, we can explore. Our insights about our daughters, renovation of the house, conflicts at work, soaring insecurities, all have a place to be shared. With the same level and care that we come to the table, we share at the table. We talk, and we listen. It is the discipline and beauty of time at the table that keeps our ability to communicate also growing.

When he took his first apple tart from the oven, I thought it was the prettiest thing I had ever seen. Looking more closely, beyond the glistening melted sugar sprinkled on top, inside the warm, toasted frame of the dough curled over the edge of the pan, were the apples: each slice was peeled with the quick three angle motion he always peels his apples with. Here, nearly a hundred of them all layered together, I saw not the habit of that motion, but the intelligence.

It is a simple action, peeling an apple. Simple does not mean it is not difficult. Communicating can be so hard. Words become lodged in the space between the ribs and feel to heavy to speak. Bad feelings sit in your stomach and have no shape, no name, just bad. Pick up the apple. Say the words. Cut the slice. Open your feelings. Peel off the skin. Listen. Talking, and keeping on opening up is a habit as much as peeling an apple. And eventually, that habit can have great intelligence.

Craig took Serena's advice and followed a recipe diligently a couple of times, and after that, started to freestyle. His freestyle tart is a blend of two great recipes from, David Tanis's a platter of figs and other recipes, and Richard Olney's Lulu's Provencal Table.

Here is Craig's Apple Tart:
you'll need...
2 cups all-purpose flour (and a bit for dusting)
2 sticks butter diced and very cold (plus extra to taste for topping)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg beaten and enough ice water to make 1/2 cup
5-7 large apples (any combination, crisp and tart like Pink Lady, Fuji)
lemon
sugar
cinnamon

Put the flour, butter and salt in a bowl. Using your fingers work together until sandy with some larger pieces of butter remaining. Don't overwork! Pour in the egg and ice water and quickly knead. It will be sticky and soft. Sprinkle a bit of flour on the dough and form into a rectangle. Wrap in plastic, foil or wax paper and refrigerate for an hour or longer.
Peel the apples, cut in quarters and core. Slice into pieces about 1/8". Put the pieces in a large bowl dust with sugar and squeeze lemon juice on them. Toss to coat and set aside.
Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.
Dust a work surface with flour and roll out the dough into a rectangle large enough to fit a 15 1/2 by 10 1/2 baking sheet. Don't worry if it breaks up or looks funny, just patch bits where needed. Dough should come up over the edge of the baking sheet.
Arrange the apples in rows on the pastry dough. The apple slices should overlap like shingles. Melt some butter over low heat and brush onto apple slices and exposed dough edges. Sprinkle with sugar to taste and, if desired, cinnamon.
Bake for about 45 minutes or until the pastry is golden and crisp. Let cool. Serve as you like...plain or with whipped cream, créme fresh or ice cream.

Hard Times and Peach Preserves

2010-05-21T05:45:00.000-07:00

May 8

Life lately has been such a duality of gorgeous moments and then episodes of intense grief, loss and stress. Some of the things that have gone on: deaths of significant figures in our lives, a roofing job gone wrong, both cars in the shop, a job loss, and seizures. At some point in the string of events, Craig and I started talking about karma.

At first we talked along the vein of, "What must I have done in another life?" Which feels like such a tidy, simple way to try and make sense of what my friend so aptly called "a real shit storm." Our conversation ended with meditating again on this idea: karma is not what happens to you, but how you respond to what happens. What happens is just a moment, how you respond, that is your life.

It is a significant balm in a time of sadness or even real depression to consider that while the events of life may be beyond our control, we have such a deep and wide choice about how to relate to those events. To feel our tiny fulcrums of freedom while enveloped in stress can shift our heart to a calm, soft and resilient place. Nothing is more impossible than feeling truly, absolutely stuck and victim to events.

Craig and I have been giving each other a wide berth through this last spate of events. Being supportive and gentle, or at least not overly reactive. When I get remote in my anxiety, Craig gives me space and put lots of honey in my tea, as if to sweeten me from the inside out. And when he got angry and reactive, he went out to mow on the tractor and go at the invasive Buckthorn with the weed whacker. Eventually, we found our equilibrium again, and set out to work and deal with things one step at at time.

With each other, Craig and I are finding our way through joy and adversity. We help each other get the time we need to be creative, to mope, to be alone, to be together. Colby's seizures have taught us to cull the moments of joy to a depth that is new for us both. The mental habits of staying open even when things are really hard has proved powerful and helpful.

A few days later, the roof job was back on track, the funerals were set, one of the cars was back from the mechanic, and I was going through the fruit Flannery and I had canned last spring and summer. I found a last jar of peach and basil preserve, a recipe from Honey From A Weed: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, The Cyclades and Apulia, by Patience Gray. I thought again about habits and happiness. Good habits are habits that work for you, for your health, for your financial reality, for your deep sense of happiness and resilience.

Setting the last jar of peach and basil preserve on the kitchen table, the deep golden orange of sugar and sunny fruit, a strand of basil curled at the bottom of the jar, I felt a moment of love for this habit too, this long tradition of canning. A tradition to preserve harvest and survive the winter, it brings beauty and sweetness to the stark reality of a barren, winter landscape. Surviving hard times through preserving beauty.

Marmellata Di Pesche - Preserve of Ripe Peaches
from: Honey From A Weed: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, The Cyclades and Apulia, by Patience Gray
(This recipe is best in June or July, depending on your climate)
Pour boiling water over large, ripe, blushing peaches. This makes them easy to peel. Cut in large chunks. Use 1 1/2 lb sugar per 2 1/2 lb peaches. Squeeze 2 or 3 lemons over the sugar and peach slices in a pan and cook on low heat while stirring. The sugar quickly melts and raising the heat you go on stirring, marvelling at the changing colour of the fruit reminding one of Modigliani's paintings. In 10 minutes or so, the jam is an intense gold, the fruit transparent. Put two sprigs of basil. Make sure that the syrup really is at setting point or the marmellata will not keep.

Steak with Ramp Pesto

2010-05-17T18:27:00.000-07:00

May 1

Our family eats well and we are mindful about what exactly we are buying. We eat modest amounts and we waste nothing. Meat protein is an occasional, deeply enjoyed treat. Onion husks, parsley stems and chicken carcasses are saved for broths. Leftover scraps of pork fat are folded into quesadillas to get a little more calorie into Colby. Stale baguette ends become bread crumbs. What cannot be used or reused as food is composted.

As we enter the bountiful glory days of spring and summer, the range of ingredients and creativity for use and reuse expands. Ramps are the first wild crop of spring to arrive at the market. Having lived on cabbage, carrots and potatoes for so many months of winter, the ramps' tender white bulbs and soft green leaves feel so precious. In order to use the entire plant, bulbs and leaves, Craig made a pesto. Such verdant smells! Such a deep green! He spread the pesto, gleaming like tiny emeralds, over a quickly seared piece of hanger steak.

The hanger, most tender when cooked rare, is a lean muscle. The inner core of the meat is a deep red, the moisture is sealed with a quick sear. I had a hard time at first with the level of rare that hanger is at its best. Then I cooked one to medium and it was so tough that it was difficult to eat. So, I gave the rare another try. The difficult thing about rare meat is that it is very apparent you are eating an animal, a creature. The texture, the obviousness of blood and life, is something to accept.

In the local market for food we know the people who raise the animals we eat. When we get a hanger steak from Sabol at the farmers market, we know the land the animal grazed, the husband and wife team who nurtured and cared for the calf, we know they decided when to "lay the animal down" not based on a market schedule, but an optimal life cycle for the animal and the ecosystem of their "moreganic" farm. When we eat their meat, we acknowledge the animal's life, and we also acknowledge the labor and intelligence of Richard and Sue Sabol. McDonald Farm also has strong, vibrantly healthy meat and the much coveted hanger. We have these farmers to thank for meat that is raised with love and dignity, and respect for the environment.

Wasting nothing does not just mean not throwing things away. Wasting nothing, or wasting little, means eating what your body actually needs, not too much or too little. Everyone knows by now that eating a lot of meat is not a very sustainable way to go. Eating more than you need in order not to throw something away is still waste. Depth of knowledge about a food system helps in thinking about waste.

In lean times it is simple to figure out how little you need to live. In bountiful times it is a privileged meditation to sort out needs and wants and limit waste. It feels like how it is in a relationship: in easy times you can coast, smile and enjoy each other; in hard times you get to know who you really are, what your bottom line is, what you require, what is essential to survive so that when a happy, easy time, like spring, arrives again, you may thrive.

Steak with Ramp Pesto
Clean two bunches of ramps. Thinly slice the white parts. Cut the green parts into thin strips and then finely chop. Add finely chopped parsley to taste. I like slightly more ramps than parsley. Add sea salt and black pepper to taste and a tiny bit of preserved lemon (Canal House recipe) if you like. Chop lemon and blend together in a bowl and add a generous splash of olive oil. Let rest for at least half-hour. Bathe your favorite steak in it! Great with (rare, of course) hanger steak.

Unconditional Love

2010-05-07T05:12:00.000-07:00

April 23

The idea of unconditional love has always felt like an ideal not matched by reality. The love from my parents, for example, seemed conditional: if I behaved well I got more love, and if I was troublesome I got less love and more distance. I held out hope that there was some perfect balance between who I was and what they expected which would yield the ultimate prize: unconditional love. To be loved totally, and to know my heart was always safe.

This morning, Craig brought me my tea. A sliver of sun sneaking through the drapes illuminated the milky, pearly surface. I smiled before a single thought of the day arrived, before the list making started, before the girls started grabbing at me. I smiled about the tea, but what was touching me heart and making me smile was the gesture behind the tea.

Craig and I fight and argue and sometimes we do not communicate. We both have whole teams of emotional masons who build stone walls in an instant. The saying about not going to bed mad would never work with us. Our anger is not huge, it does not take up all the room in the house, but it is slow. Sometimes it takes us days or weeks to really move through something difficult together. Especially if it involves one of us acknowledging we are wrong about something. Then it can really take ages. We have found ways of living while in the midst of a hard moment. We still hug and kiss goodbye, we still say "I love you," we still have wonderful suppers together, we still treat each other with kindness.

And that is the tea: kindness. Craig's cup of tea in the morning, and he doesn't even drink tea, is our version of not going to bed mad. We make some small promise to each other over this first exchange of the morning. A promise of civility not born of repressed feelings but born of remembering our love first. And maybe that is unconditional love: in difficult conditions, I still love you.

The Admirable Cabbage, as Salad

2010-05-01T11:45:00.000-07:00

April 12

Spring is here and soon we will not be eating so many cabbage salads. From November to April we eat cabbage salad almost every day. In the long Northeastern winter, the local vegetable selection winnows to cabbage, carrots, potatoes and onions. There is no drudgery to the frequency of our cabbage salads, carrot salads, braised carrots or various potato dishes. Their tastes and textures make sense in the cold. At every meal, I admire the cabbage.

Cabbage is such a sturdy, reliable plant, so competent, such a survivor. All qualities that are good to be reminded of when winter feels interminable. Cabbages and carrots (all winter crops, I think) create sugars to prevent them from freezing; getting sweeter helps them survive the cold. I sure don't do that. When I start to feel cold, I get crabby and complain, a lot. But each night when I eat my cabbage and carrots, I think of their survival in this climate and they inspire me.

Now, the growing season is fast arriving. The spring season this year is warm and rainy. With the days warmer, everyone is more relaxed and everything feels easier. No blizzards obscuring the road. No snow to shovel off the drive. No boots to heave, no black ice.

Soon there will be sun gold tomatoes, radicchio, snap peas, strawberries, blueberries, black raspberries, melons, squash blossoms, fresh rabbit and chickens. Soon the sturdy stance of the cabbage will give way to the fleeting, capricious black raspberry. Sweetness will be easy to come by.

When winter comes again, I know I have the lovely, trusty cabbage to look forward to. I will be nourished by her and perhaps too I may become a little sturdier, a little sweeter in the deep, long winter of our home climate.

Cabbage Salad
One cabbage halved, cored and shredded. A handful of parsley roughly chopped, a few stalks and leaves from the heart of a bunch of celery finely diced. Add a diced a shallot. Mix in a bowl. Shower with sea salt. Sansho and/or black pepper to taste. Dress with a squeeze of lemon juice, some chardonnay vinegar and olive oil. Toss and let sit before serving.
Also try: Add grated ginger and nori strips, a wonderful version if you are having rice and fish. Also, sliced scallions instead of shallots for variation.
If your cabbage is a little tough, chewy or pungent, try salting the cabbage heavily after it is shredded. Mix the salt into the cabbage and let sit in a colander for a half hour. Soak in cold water, rinse thoroughly and dry in a clean kitchen towel. Then make salad as above. The texture will be more fresh and crisp with a slightly milder taste.

Date Night

2010-04-27T10:12:00.000-07:00

April 5

Tonight it would have been really great for Craig and I to have a date night. For many years we resisted the very notion of date nights. But eventually we got it: if you don't plan the time, it does not just magically appear. We have always been good at supporting each other in going out with a friend, even taking a few days to get away to the city to work, see friends and rest. One of the first times we stepped out of the house together, on a date, and strode out to the car holding hands, the thrill was dizzying.

Sometimes though, getting organized to go on a date does not happen, particularly during seizure periods when schedules scatter like confetti in the wind. So we have a date sub genre: the Home Date aka Having a Nice Dinner at Home Together While the Sitter Wrangles the Kids Date. We are fortunate to have a wonderful babysitter who is a participant in our family, a meaningful companion to the girls, and an incredibly loving, skillful and intuitive person. A couple of times now, after a week of lots of work and seizures when it felt like Craig and I had not communicated about anything but logistics, we had a Home Date. Craig made a nice dinner, we opened a bottle of wine and we just sat and talked.

Alice helped feed the kids, we focused on each other through that. We had a glass of wine while we ate. Alice got the kids in the tub, in their pjs and in bed, We stayed at the table together, savoring our conversation, speaking in complete sentences and actually finishing a thought. We finished our dinner, slowly, had another glass of wine. We relaxed and enjoyed each other like on a real date, only we did not have to drive and could split that final little bit of wine at the end of the bottle. I love the feeling after a second glass of wine. It is warm and diffuse, it relaxes muscles and eases concerns.

I told Craig the next morning that I loved getting out on actual dates, but I really liked Home Dates as well because I always knew the food was going to be amazing. It got me thinking about dates. I think they feel so good because it is a moment of promise to put each other first. In a busy life, with children and their literally constant demands, putting yourself and your loved one first is an incredible statement of purpose. A date says: I love you, and I enjoy you.

Craig made a simple, beautiful meal with an easy clean up for our date: scallops, rice and arugula salad. The arugula was a big thrill, the first bunches to appear at the Farmers' Market this spring. Here is the scallops recipe:

Seared Sea Scallops with Preserved Lemon and Parsley Pesto

For pesto, clean and rinse 1/4 of a preserved lemon (check out the Canal House gals for how to make these amazingly useful delicacies!) Julienne and finely dice. Finely dice about 2 tablespoons or so of parsley. Mix the lemon and parsley, add a dash of sansho pepper, a grind of black pepper and mix in a small bowl with really high grade olive oil.
Cut the green part of a couple of scallions into 2" lengths, split open and julienne. Set aside in cold water.
Rinse scallops and pat dry. Season lightly with french (or other mild) sea salt. Drizzle with olive oil (a cooking grade).
Heat a grill pan over medium high heat. When hot, add scallops. Cook until just done (about 2 minutes per side depending on thickness.) They should be a lovely color with dark grill marks and just warm in the center when cut open.
Arrange cooked scallops on a plate. Put a dab of the pesto in the center of each scallop. Shower with scallions.

Tiny Turnips

2010-04-27T05:28:00.000-07:00

March 29

Back in January at the winter (indoor) Farmers Market, Brent and Teresa of Red Tail Farm had the tiniest, greenest little turnips I had ever seen. Brent told us they had sown their hoop house with the Japanese variety, Hakurei. When the starts came in, he went out to thin the rows. He pulled the first one and turning to toss it in to the compost, he decided to see what it tasted like. The tiny white turnip, about half an inch, and tender greens, about four inches long, burst with sweetness. When he told the story at market, his eyes lit up and he pantomimed staggering backwards at the flavor of the tiny turnip, as if the surprise of the sweetness had nearly knocked him off his feet. He harvested them gingerly, bundled them in to fairy sized bunches and brought them to market. I have thought back on this story, recalling the delicious ways we ate them, raw and cooked, and contemplating the heart of the story itself.

Brent and Teresa are farmers. Their land is outside their front door: life and work are one. They are ambitious and deeply educated and always learning. They do all the work; there are no laborers and only the most elemental of industrial tools (tractor, weed whacker.) Their investment is total, their work is their intellect, their hands, their instinct. The story of the tiny Japanese Turnip was told casually, a wonderful fluke; that he happened to taste them and they happened to be amazing. But tasting that turnip at that moment, before tossing, was an act of curiosity, inquiry - what does this tiny plant, the excess of the planting, taste like?

The farmer's attentiveness, the intersection of intellect and instinct, yielded the candy sweet bunches of turnips, which in turn became nutritious meals for others. The intimacy of this interaction, I think, is what has captivated me. To know that a portion of our food, our community's food, is brought to market with this level of care and intelligence brings me a rush of hope for our food system and the survival of botanical diversity. The respect the farmer, our friend, brings his work envelops our work, our cooking for our family. Can a turnip save the world? Perhaps not. But the care and attention around said turnip, that surely can.

BABY JAPANESE TURNIPS TWO WAYS
(regular sized Japanese Turnips can be used, just cut into quarters)

Raw Salad:
a couple bunches of baby Japanese turnips
lemon
sea salt
great olive oil

Rinse the turnips, trim root hairs and carefully half leaving greens attached to root.
Drizzle with lemon juice and and olive oil. Sprinkle a bit of sea salt. Let rest a bit and serve.

Quick Saute
a couple bunches of baby Japanese turnips
2-3 salted anchovies (well rinsed, filleted and chopped)
olive oil
red pepper flakes or a dried red pepper thinly sliced
black pepper

Rinse the turnips, trim root hairs and carefully half, leaving greens attached to root.
Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat and add anchovies. Stir until dissolved. Turn up heat to med-high and toss in turnips and red pepper. Remove from heat when just done, for tiny turnips about a minute, larger turnips two to three minutes. Add a crank of black pepper and serve.

Balthazar

2010-04-23T18:23:00.000-07:00

March 22

One of the hardest things for me in parenting Colby is never knowing if an environment is going to be O.K. for her, and there being no ability to reason with, bribe or cajole her. It feels a little trivial, I will confess anyway, but I have missed not being able to take Colby certain places. In particular, Balthazar. Balthazar is gorgeous. One of my earliest experiences of New York City glamour was at age twenty-two, sitting at the bar on a summer evening after a dance class and having a cold beer in an elegant Pilsner glass. I snacked on the olives and thought how I as a little girl would have found the environment exhilarating. And I looked forward to taking my own kids there as an ultra treat from that moment on.

I tried taking Colby once, we were there for about eight minutes. People were nice, trying to help, but she started to cry and wanted out, and there is really no point trying to force a moment like that with her. When Coral had her first croissant at a local coffee shop and loved it, I knew I had my long awaited date for Balthazar, I knew she would love it: she loves croissants, she loves mirrors, she loves fans, she loves nice, pretty ladies and handsome men. Balthazar is a temple to croissants, it is plastered with French bistro mirrors and every member of the waitstaff, in their crisp black and white outfits, are so gorgeous they look like they are playing waiters in a movie.

We were seated at our table, grinning widely, both fully aware that this was a real treat. Coral looked at the fans, above the outstretched spring bouquets of peonies and cherry blossoms and said, "Fans dancing!" while they twirled above us. She ate her croissant exclaiming, "This mine Moma!" and dipping it in her warm milk with honey. It was bliss. It was the sort of moment I remember savoring as a child, having your parents all to yourself, in a special environment, eating a treat.

I thought of it as a treat for Coral, but actually it was a treat for me. To sit with my daughter, just two years old now, with whom I can easily anticipate moods and needs. I can read her and see things coming in a way that I cannot with Colby. Being with Coral is not a comparison between the girls. This moment together was much simpler than that. It was being with a child, my child, and sharing something we both enjoy: a lovely place, a buttery croissant, and each other. It was nothing short of a dream come true.

Nori Eggs and Happiness

2010-04-23T18:12:00.000-07:00

March 15

A friend told me she was amazed that she never felt like Colby's life was sad. She said, "For everything Colby goes through, it seems like you make her life a happy one." As we spoke, Colby was recovering from brain surgery, still unable to walk, and deeply affected by the experience. Colby does suffer, her seizures are violent, shocking and exhausting. It is sad that she goes through that, but never have I ventured into thinking her life, or our life with her, was sad. It is possible to contemplate suffering and sadness in terms of things that happen to her; her seizures happen to her. But to say, to feel, that her life is sad, inherently, by definition of the seizures, is impossible. I realized, in turning my friend's comment over in my mind, that to see Colby's life as sad would feel like the ultimate failure.

It is not that I cannot say Colby's life is sad, it is that it is not true. It is not true because we, while she is our girl, in our care, focus on the joy. We celebrate and acknowledge who she is, who Coral is, who they, as sisters, are together. We acknowledge our success as a family in finding moments of happiness and focus in the day.

And all the things that happen to Colby, injuries, seizures, hospitalization, that is just the work. It is hard work managing seizures. It is hard work being in the hospital. It is hard work feeling like there is not enough time for both girls. But our life together is more than work.

The daily, moment to moment, focus is to raise these girls well. To give them the love and support they need to reach their potential. This week, around our table, that means feeding Colby by hand, but waiting for her to gesture when she is ready for another bite. This gives her a sense of participation and control. And for Coral, it means helping her learn to say "Please," and not talk with her mouth full: tiny, important steps in learning to navigate the world more smoothly.

Colby smiled as she ate her Nori Egg omelette this morning, Coral was saying, "Please, more Dada," their cheeks were still warm, flushed from sleep. We were present, in the moment, our joy was quiet and sturdy.

Nori Eggs
Using scissors, cut half a sheet of nori in into thin strips about 1/16" wide and an inch long. Put the strips in a small bowl, add sansho pepper to taste and douse in regular soy sauce or usukuchi (light soy sauce). Set aside.
In a bowl beat 2 eggs (the more free range, the better!)
Heat a small cast iron skillet on medium-low heat. Add a splash of olive oil. When the oil shimmers pour in the eggs. Add a grind or two of black pepper. Cook as you would for an omelet. When the egg begins to set, lay a thick line of the marinated nori along the center of the eggs. Roll the egg over the nori mixture. Remove from pan and drizzle remaining soy/sansho mixture over the top.

Panko Before You Go Go

2010-03-08T06:30:00.000-08:00

I have been fantasizing of home. I have been fantasizing of eating at home. I want Panko Shrimp. Craig’s Panko Shrimp are crispy, salty, sweet protein and the whole family adores them. We remain relatively civilized about sharing the platter of perfect, golden shrimp, but it is easy to imagine one or all of us getting covetous and it getting ugly. Soon, as the girls grow and I just get more rotund, Craig will need to increase his volume.

Hospital food smells are metallic, boiled, neither salty nor sweet, not hot or cold. Sometimes when I look at Colby's tray it is a shock. There is no healing in this food, there is not anything alive or delicious in it anywhere.

Bound to this ward for as long as Colby needs to be here, I am sustained by remembering the tastes and smells of home. Panko Shrimp was the last meal Craig made before we left for this epic, long hospital stay. It is so, so delicious. I can't wait til we share it again.

PANKO SHRIMP

1 lb medium-large shrimp. peeled with tails left on.
canola oil
3 large eggs
panko
all purpose flour
a scattering of parsley leaves
salt
black pepper
sansho pepper

While heating about 2 " on Canola oil over medium -high heat in a 12" cast iron skillet, prepare three bowls with the following:
Bowl 1 about 1/3 cup flour seasoned with salt, black pepper and sansho.
Bowl 2 3 eggs, well beaten
Bowl 3 about 1 1/2 cups panko

Holding a shrimp by the tail, dip in the flour and shake of excess. Next dip in the eggs again, shaking off excess. Last roll in the panko, pressing the crumbs into the shrimp. Repeat with all the shrimp letting them sit on a platter as finished.
When oil is 350 degrees (or plunge a chopstick into the hot oil. If champagne-like bubbles immediately form around the chopstick, the oil is ready.
Not crowding skillet fry the shrimp in batches until golden (about 6 or so shrimp at a time for roughly 1 minute). Remove with a wire spider and drain on paper towels.
Scatter parsley leaves and sea salt on top if you like before serving. Serve with Shirachi mayo (see below) or garlic/ginger soy sauce.

SHIRACHI MAYO

mayonnaise
shirachi to taste
1 or 2 salted anchovies, rinsed, filleted and finely chopped (optional)

Mix and use as a dipping sauce for shrimp.

GARLIC/GINGER SOY SAUCE

to taste:
soy sauce
1-3 cloves of garlic finely chopped
about an inch or so of fresh ginger. Peeled and grated to a paste.
Mix ingredients well.

Home Table, Hospital Table

2010-03-07T20:17:00.000-08:00

March 1
Hospital Food
We have been in the hospital for most of February, and the beginning of March. Time drags and inevitably the days pass. Time here is marked by doctors’ rounds, medication schedule, and trays of highly processed room temperature food. The food is industrial, much of it arrives in plastic containers with foil, peel back lids.

Craig and I were relieved when we decided on the doctors in New York City, in part because of the food here. We can compensate, easily, brilliantly, for all that the hospital food lacks. We can ease the sadness and exhaustion of time here at the hospital with bowls of Pho in Chinatown. When Colby starts seizing, we know where to get the black beans and rice that she will always eat, no matter how bad she is feeling. And if we can saddle the kids onto our friends and family for an evening, we know a long dinner at Il Buco will help us connect with each other again, our romantic place that through the beautiful food and environment expands your hearts and focuses our attention. We know that no matter how unsettled two-year-old Coral feels, she will eat a plate of fried eggs from Shopsin’s.

Even on the nights we do have our family picnic dinners at the hospital, it is not anywhere near the conviviality of the table. In the curtained room we celebrate the moment, try to bring some normalcy and beauty in to a very stressful environment, but mostly we are compensating. Compensating for how divided we are physically, and how far we are from our regular, simple, wonderful routines of home, table, and community.

Here we are enduring. Enduring is hard. Enduring is tiredness and sadness and having to keep working, keep caring, keep loving. The food traditions of New York City help us to endure. But nothing compares to lighting the candles, putting your own cloth napkin on your lap and saying, “Cheers,” in the warm comfort of your home, around your table. Here we give thanks for the white containers of La Esquina rice and beans that make Colby shriek with delight, but we yearn for home.

Doubt, and After

2010-03-07T20:01:00.001-08:00

February 23

We came into the recovery room and Colby was on the bed still asleep from anesthesia. She had tubes everywhere: IV’s in both arms, oxygen sensor on her foot, a catheter line, and one coming out of her already stained white bandage, draining blood from her brain and spine. I felt doubt take hold of my mind, felt it sink deep into my chest. Taking on this level of responsibility, making this choice for Colby it is impossible to feel right, to feel free from doubt. I do not know absolutely what is right.

I only know that her seizures are terrible and that when they are happening I feel willing, compelled to extraordinary measures like surgery. Now surgery has happened. She is on her bed recovering and my doubt is deafening.

From within this doubt there is a beacon: I feel thankful for Craig, thankful that we are facing this doubt, fear and worry together. This point of gratitude extends and becomes my more dominant focus as we sit here beside Colby’s bed. We hold hands, we gaze at her. Connecting with our love for eachother helps us feel something besides terror when we see how brutalized Colby looks from our efforts to help her. The soft gaze we have for each other helps us past our fear and look at Colby with the same softness.

We have been intermittently awful to eachother in the weeks leading up to this moment, to today. We were sulky, surly, overly sensitive, lashing out our deep fears and all the anger on each other. There is anger in both of us that we have a child who suffers, anger about all the ways that her suffering affect every choice we make.

But we have become really good at this together. There are hard times of anger and lashing out, and we get better at recovering from them. We find our love more easily every time we make it through a low period. The work we have done, therapy, giving each other breaks from the kids for our work, is evident here, now in this unimaginable moment of brain surgery on a child. Here by the bedside of our darling girl, I see how strong we have become.

Photography

2010-03-07T19:40:00.000-08:00

February 21
In the late night I am looking at photographs of Colby the day before her first brain surgery: she is just out of the car after a five hour drive, she is ecstatic to run. She is running back and forth on the sidewalk, her long curls are bouncing. She is bathed in gold, evening light, she is smiling so broadly that the dimple in her cheek casts a shadow.

Today, this whole week, she is bound, literally, to her hospital bed. Long wires extend from the surface of her brain, through her scalp and into a machine that records her brain waves.

The photographs of Colby running serve as a portal back to that sunny sidewalk. Pictures help me remember those feelings again, the way a stone in your pocket from your favorite beach brings the ocean to you. These photos of an afternoon of simple, physical happiness help me believe, to feel, to know that we will get from here to there. Looking through these photos brings hope, encourages faith that we will again have ideal, golden, running afternoons.

Dinner for Two

2010-03-07T06:57:00.000-08:00

February 14
We returned home to Ithaca from New York City on Valentines day. Champagne, chocolate, roses, the indulgences around romance felt a million miles away. In New York we had a long week in the hospital with Colby. She was hooked up to an EEG, withdrawn from her medications and provoked to seizure. It is so hard to remember, to believe, that we are doing what is best for her. Our hearts feel bruised, and I don’t mean that very metaphorically, it is a real feeling.

We pulled in to the snow covered driveway at 7:00 p.m., and got the kids instantly fed with quesadillas, avocado and yogurt. They were asleep by 8:00. We unpacked the car, then thought about our own dinner. With no consideration towards romance or Valentines day, Craig happened to make one of his dinners for two. This is not only a labor saving device, putting dinner for both of us on one plate makes less dish washing later, but also an invitation to sit a little closer, be a little nearer each other at the table.

He placed two seared steaks with a medley of vegetable in between them on the plate. We poured some wine and lit the candles. Weary and tired we sat down and took a deep breath together. Home again, at the table, together. “Good job this week,” I said. “God, I am glad to be home,” he said. And we leaned over the plate, touched foreheads and felt the love and appreciation for each other pass between us. Eating our steak and vegetables and drinking wine, children asleep in bed, we did not talk much. We did not talk about shoveling the driveway or hoping for a night with no seizures or the hospital or the stack of bills. We sat together and gave each other all of our attention for this moment. This moment over our romantic shared plate, our dinner for two. And with each bite, each sip, each moment, I felt all the bruised corners of my heart repair. Happy Valentines Day.

Chicken Curry Udon

2010-03-07T05:47:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, February 7th Colby Rose was due to be admitted to the hospital for a week of testing related to her upcoming surgery. Sunday was also the day that Tan was in town from Japan. Tan and Craig have a long tradition of cooking together in kitchens from Tokyo to Paris to Berkeley to New York City. Wherever they meet, they cook. Today they were thinking about Nabe, but it depended on what we could find on a Sunday, in an unfamiliar neighborhood. We were in a familiar city, NYC, but staying at our friends' place in Brooklyn.

The shopping took a few hours and led to a minute by minute adjustment of plans as one ingredient was found and another was given up on. Home with parcels in tow, Tan looked at me and said one of my favorite words, “Curry.”

The chopping and searing started up in the kitchen around 11:00. The first bottle of wine was uncorked at noon. By 12:30 the kitchen windows had beaded up with steam, and the air smelled of the magical alchemy of slow cooked onions, easing in Tan’s expert hands from sharp and crisp to sweet and smooth.

At 2:00 a few friends and their kids had arrived, and the first covered pot was carried slowly from the kitchen to the table. Thick, bright, yellow curry barely covering a density of seared chicken and thick, shiny Udon noodles, sprinkled with fresh chopped scallion.

It is a fun mess, serving Udon at the table. The noodles are large and slippery, a highly interactive and giggle inducing endeavor. We paired the curry with very cold, light beer for the grownups, and a dry, sparkling apple juice for the kids.

Everyone ate as much as physically possible and left smiling, kissing Colby Rose and wishing us all the best in the week to come. Tan was the last one to leave. He put on his boots and his parka. He looked me in the eye and said, “It’s o.k.” by which I knew he meant, it is all going to be o.k. In the embrace of his strong hug, the smell of curry trapped in his hair, it did feel like it was all going to be o.k. Our well fed little girl and her well fed parents and her well fed sister were going to all be o.k. So much curry and so much love practically guaranteed it.

I looked at my watch after he walked out the door. We were due at the hospital in an hour. Today could have been spent in a state of anxiety and worry. But it wasn't. Instead, it was a day of happy friends, and their beaming, gorgeous children, gathered around bowls of steaming, golden curry.

Sunshine Soup

2010-01-29T21:57:00.000-08:00

Ithaca is freezing. Ice crystals cover the windows each morning, forming prisms and seaweed like shapes. Nearly every car has snow tires. Where once I loved austere white interiors, I now crave Marimekko. Winter is not only freezing, but there are weeks of gray skies. Days pass without a single beam of sunlight. The house is heated to sixty two during the day and fifty eight at night. We rely heavily on Craig's soups to give us a feeling of radiant warmth, and color.

One of Craig's favorite soups to make is Garlic Broth, Aïgo Boulido, from Lulu’s Provencal Table. As the cookbook brilliantly and forgivingly puts it, this soup is served in Provence to “soothe systems worn thin from enthusiastic celebration of the table.” We like it for those times, but also for its utter simplicity and warming effect.

On a particularly freezing day, the sky a thick gray that no sunlight could pass through, Craig decided to make Garlic Broth. I was engrossed in my task when he handed me my bowl. Afloat in the broth was a shiny fried egg, sprinkled with sea salt and fresh cracked pepper. Holding the warm bowl, the ochre yolk, the light golden broth, it was as if the sun itself had just burst through the window and landed in my hands.

As I ate I thought about how cooking in season, in the winter, in the North East, we are releasing the energy we have stored from the sun. The seasons of sunshine and warm, workable earth are sustaining us through the winter when all is frozen and the sky is a persistent gray.

This local egg is from a chicken who eats local seed, grown in the sun. The garlic, grown in the rich black soil on the other side of the lake, ripens and cures in the warmth of summer, and is saved and coddled in the cool basement.

I never felt the direct link between work and harvest and surviving winter as immediately as I felt it the moment Craig gave me this bowl of soup. We survive the gray and cold both physically and spiritually through our store of the sun’s energy. Fortunately, we have the culinary gifts of Provence, and their wisdom about and reverence for food and sun, to make our survival beautiful, and delicious.

Garlic Broth, adapted from Lulu
Aïgo Boulido

1 quart water
Salt
2 bay leaves
1 head garlic, cloves separated and crushed
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 egg yolks, the traditional recipe
OR
4 whole eggs if you want to serve with fried egg
Garnish with scallions, chives or parsley

To make croutons:
Into a cast iron skillet on low heat pour a large splash of extra virgin olive oil. When it shimmers put in some day old plain baguette cut or torn into 1/2" cubes. Season with sea salt and black pepper to taste (a pinch of thyme or rosemary if you like) toss to coat the bread cubes with the oil and cook until toasted.

In a saucepan, bring the water, salt, bay leaves, garlic, and olive oil to a boil and hold, lid ajar, at a light boil for 15 minutes. For traditional: with wire whisk, whisk the egg yolks briefly in a soup tureen (any large bowl works fine.) Strain the broth, discard the bay leaves and garlic, and slowly pour the broth over the egg yolks, whisking at the same time. To serve, place toasted baguette or croutons in bowl and ladle broth over bread. For fried egg version, simply strain broth, ladle over croutons, and float the softly fried egg. Garnish and season well with salt and pepper.

Candied Bacon

2010-01-16T20:22:00.000-08:00

Craig loves bacon. “Everything is better with bacon,” is one of his motto's. I regularly lean on him not to put bacon in absolutely everything. Canal House Cooking has a recipe for Candied Bacon and that sounded too kinky to resist. Candy is sugar and that is pretty much what it means here: lay bacon between two blankets of brown sugar and cook it til your house smells like the Boardwalk.

Sugar when it cooks behaves a lot like how you feel when you eat it. The grace period is brief and when you’ve gone to far it is totally unforgiving. Craig dutifully followed the directions but before the time was up there was a distinct change in smell, heading towards sugar-fat cinders. With a fast clearing of children from the kitchen, he took the bubbling, smoking tray from the stove. As the smoke cleared there they lay, gorgeous shiny sticks of lacquered bacon. We tasted it, Craig, Serena and I, and decided it was delicious, but a bit much, even for Craig.

At dinner Craig set out a bowl of cooked carrots. We bought a twenty pound bag of carrots from Sacred Seed Farm here in Ithaca on the last freezing day of the outdoor Farmers’ Market, at the end of December. Late fall carrots have had time in the ground as temperatures drop which makes them exceptionally sweet. Craig cooks the carrots with lots of olive oil and butter and there are never any leftovers. I took a bite and the flavor deepened, sweetened beyond what I had expected. Looking closely at my plate, there they were: tiny crumbles of candied bacon.

Used as an ingredient a little goes a long way and adds a dimension of smokey umame, the pleasing combination of salty and sweet. Craig and I talked a few days later about a little going a long way, the candied bacon in the carrots, and the next morning sprinkled into pancakes as they cooked. At the table there are ways that we behave where a little goes a long way as well. In a busy life of work and family much of our communication is abbreviated. Conversations become short, frustrated bursts of information to convey a message, a task. Not much effort is put into the delivery. At the table we can be our best selves again. We can smile. We can say please and thank you, and heap on praise and compliments. We can enjoy our time and each other’s company. We can be kind and generous.

A small portion of the day, at the table, being kind and polite, a little goes a long way. It sweetens and deepens our lives, our family’s relationship one with the other, like so much candied bacon in with your carrots.

Fretting and Fritters

2010-01-13T14:47:00.000-08:00

Colby had twenty seizures between Sunday night and Monday evening. Coral’s hacking cough had kept her up that night, and woken her from her nap, so I took her to the doctor. She and I returned from the doctor and the pharmacy at 6:30 p.m., late for us to be starting dinner. Craig was chopping shrimp in the kitchen with Colby leaning into the corner between the wall and sink, her safe spot, near dad, when she knows more seizures are coming. He looked at me and said, “Fritters.” When Craig gets tired he goes for rich. When he knows sleep is not going to happen there is something in rich, fried foods that sends his body a survival message. We might not be sleeping, but we have oil: we are definitely going to survive. When he filled the giant cast iron pan with oil though, I told him I thought he was crazy. Tall seizing child plus vat of boiling oil seemed like a very dangerous idea. Plus, I hate the smell of hot oil, of frying foods. Especially in the winter, when it is ten degrees outside and the house is shut up tight and breeze-less, I really hate it. Ever trying to be less bitchy and more accommodating, I turned up the heat and opened some doors and windows.

Colby loves the kitchen. She will stand right beside you at the sink, at the cutting board, at the stove. All of it is OK except that her curiosity is not balanced by a memory of pain. She has suffered two serious burns from reaching right up for a pan or the kettle. So we feel the delight of her company commingled with acute anxiety and anticipation of danger, always thinking three steps, three moves ahead in an effort to keep her safe. Keeping her out of the kitchen means to listen to her cry the entire time, until everyone is at the table. And even then, sometimes when she is let back in to the kitchen she will go lay on the floor for a while as if to make up for lost time.

Craig mixed white wine and flour and dredged the chopped shrimp through in fritter sized bunches, sprinkling chopped Nori here and there. I set the table and wrangled the girls and worried and tried not to dwell on the smell. When Craig brought the platter of fritters to the table my thinking this was all a bad idea disappeared. Golden and glowing, they looked like a platter of little sunshine pools. Yes indeed, we were definitely going to make it through another sleepless winter night. Coral bit into one and before even finishing her first mouthful said, “I need more Shrimpy.”

All at the table, danger averted, golden orbs of shrimp, flour, wine and oil before us I let my mood shift. This is one of the things I love about Craig, that he bothers. He bothers to be ambitious and go through the effort even in the least ideal of circumstances. If it were up to me we would have had black bean and rice quesadillas, again. And we would have been fine. But we would not have been brought in to the moment, into our senses the way his effort delivered us. We would not have smiled at each other, the four of us, around the table, our greasy lips gleaming in the candlelight.

Recipe from "Canal House Cooking" volume 1, for Fritto Misto. Buy this book: it is gorgeous, it is self published, and you will see a lot of it here on this blog, we love it!

The Beginning

2010-01-11T08:51:00.000-08:00

Recipes to Save a Marriage By. This title came to me several years ago when I first began to realize dinners at home were saving my life, and saving our relationship. In the fall of 2005 my partner Craig and I received the news that our tiny baby girl had severe epilepsy, as well as microcephaly.

The table has always been central to our relationship. Like many couples, we fell in love eating together, and eating in New York City, what a joy: scrambled eggs and toast at Le Gamin, Huevos Rancheros at Shopsin's, Steak au Poivre at La Luncheonette, Ginger Scallion Lo Mein at Noodle Town, Flounder and Tempura at Omen, Panna Cotta all' Aceto Balsmico at Il Buco.

After our daughter was born and we realized her health problems, we poured all our resources into her care, and eating at home became a necessity. I, while incredibly stressed by new motherhood and the intense worry about Colby, was happy to be eating home, at our tiny table, in our tiny kitchen, in our tiny apartment. For Craig is the most astonishing cook.

These are not recipes to save a marriage. There are no magic spells or even many metaphors. Rather, these are the recipes, the food we are eating and cooking while we work to save our marriage. Save sounds dire, and some days it is. The stress in our house when Colby is not well shatters our patience and our hope. Some days we need saving, and we do that, in part, by sitting down together, eating and talking. Other days our time at the table at the end of the day with our two darling girls is the place that we thrive. We talk about the successes of our day, the beautiful things we noticed. The table is where we savor the good and peaceful moments.