Tenderness, Strawberries

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.