The _____diet, fill in the blank

Now is the time for all good women to come to the aid of the publishing industry.

Diet Industry.

For the last three months the covers of the food magazines have enticed and seduced me and all other red-merlot-blooded women to cook, cook, cook. Shiny versions of sugarplums have nestled in my head next to gleaming Thanksgiving turkeys, rich velvety dark chocolate truffles, and salads with dressing so rich they are not made on the planet. Food stylists go into hyper-space, convincing me that at this time of the year calories in the pursuit of as I say, "culinary research, " do not count. " They lie. The stylists should be impeached. Off with their heads.

I should have my head examined.

Forthwith I am canceling my subscriptions.

Well not really, and I cannot blame the magazines totally. I was a graphic artist and contributed enough ads of my own in the past, working under lights with the food stylist to make sure the ice cream shoot was luscious. But, I gotta blame someone. Certainly not the last nine months when I either did not eat at all, or ate and drank badly. But, the fickle finger of fate and fats must point somewhere, and so I pick the magazines.

I don't even like to bake cookies. There is one damn thing to after another every 15 minutes, a constant, messy interruption. Except for the ones I make of love for the college kid, I don't bake. I would rather cook a goat for 30 than make cookies for 10. I hate Christmas cookie exchanges and this year make baklava, so simple it is embarrassing. One step.

Yet, the Christmas covers make me THINK I SHOULD bake cookies, and fruitcake, and baba rhum, and Turkey, and stuffing....and I am tipping over. For my friends who do not bake, it is the purchased gifts which also roll in our door, the fudge, nut mixes, candies and nuts, rocas, pralines, and yes, a fruitcake. ( I really do love fruitcake, so shoot me.) As a result, I am sabotaged in all directions by holiday ho ho calories, and I do not mean Twinkies.

So now, these turncoat magazines are full of diets! They started it, it is their fault! There is no way a stylist can make a low-cal no-carb low-glycemic salad look as good as a chocolate truffle. They try. And so, the magazines use all the tricks, and I get sucked in again. My current fave is the South Beach Diet. There is the Hamptons apparently, and the Scottsdale, and now the South Beach. All enclaves of the rich and thin. Or the rich who get thin because they have personal trainers, lyposuction, and professional refrigerators with room for all the arugula in the world to eat. The South Beach pulls out the stops, including an appetizing aquamarine color on the cover, which is light, airy, and reminiscent of the waters off of Monaco. Or, the French women Don't Get Fat Diet: drink red wine, walk the tour de France, and look like CoCo Chanel. Eat these foods, it implies and you too will be at villas on the beach, wearing bikinis as light and airy as water!

There is no Kalamazoo diet, the Des Moines or Minot diet, or other hinterlands Middle America named city diet. Thin and rich people only live in the hills or the beaches. I am waiting with Perrier lo-cal breath for the Vail diet, maybe it already exists.

After stuffing ourselves like geese, we will now have the diet of post winter, just in time to get ready for Lent and improve our own livers. Do without, clean out the fridge, eat those greens and by May, no March! we will be ready for the Bikini diet. I have hopes. I am well aware of the discrepancy, that in some countries and cultures a round woman is a symbol of wealth and fertility. But, in a mix of looking for health, being not obsessive, and role models to our daughters, my friends and I want to slim down a little. Plus I need some new clothes.

Even as I do this, and plan for the next three weeks of the purge and penitence, I realize that in every magazine archive there is a file for the next month, and the month after that. i.e.: Valentine's and all its melt-at-body-temperature Chocolate for Sex recipes wait. Easter with lamb, ham, and deviled eggs is on hold. The dialectic of diets, eat purge, eat, fast, has not changed since the Middle Ages. Only now we seem to tie it to the beach, not abstinence, to sex and being sexy not atoning for sins.

Hmmmm, thinking too much. Must go eat some bread, have some juice, and finish off some of the candy. For in 72 hours, the plan begins. I will name it myself, and pick the part of the world I want, like the Mediterranean Wish I Was There Diet. Arugula, soda water, light cheese, tomatoes, and a sliver of chicken. Sounds good to me, and not a piece of chocolate in the house.

Grandma's Spaghetti Recipe

Grandma's Spaghetti...

Anyone in my family who hears, "I am making Grandma's spaghetti", knows exactly what it means, a thick, spicy meat sauce with cinnamon, allspice, chili, sugar, tomatoes, over a base of crumbled ground beef and pork sausage. It is made all day, simmered to an brick red unctuous thickness and stirred into wide egg noodles. I would tell you the full recipe but then I would have to kill you.

Well not really, but not too many people have the recipe outside of our family. "Family" means my mom, and dad, her two sisters, all their children, my two brothers and their wives and children, my daughter, any aunts and uncles; some of those lovely people are no longer here. As of this Christmas, the list includes my former husband as well. It was my Christmas present to him, for he asked for the recipe.

Actually, the recipe has been published. My mom wrote for the Officer's Wives club newspaper in the 1960's, I cannot remember what base. I have a copy of her recipe as it was printed, and somewhere perhaps several other retired military wives have that as part of their repitoire. But I know that not all the recipes will be the same.

I grew up with this, it was a comfort food staple and company dish when Mom needed time. She would make it ahead, and often I had the job to stir it. I was very careful not to ruin it and took the job seriously.

The recipe however, like a treasure map split in half, or a purloined letter stuck inside an old cookbook, has changed depending upon which family and generation wrote it. My Grandma had the recipe in the 1940-50's and gave it to my mom. I have Grandma's version and she calls for a full pound of butter, full fat ground beef and pork sausage, plus some canned mushrooms. Mom's recipe adds a can of tomato soup. My aunt uses chili flakes in place of chili powder. Growing up with the rubber latex texture of canned mushrooms, it was a huge decision for me to begin to use fresh mushrooms when they became easily available. I realize that the canned mushrooms were what was available in the Great Era of Canned Goods, and all houswives eagerly embraced the steel pantry. Amazingly some friends still use canned mushrooms today, but I do not know why for any reason they would.

One year I decided to get a copy from each sister-in-law and found that each woman had a slightly different recipe. Was it a result of what was passed down? Did my mother intentionally give each person something different? I really doubt it because she was a natural archivist, but why were they different? Maybe there was a huge secret which meant only the female descendents but not married-into women relatives had the exact recipe. But no, upon questioning my aunt, she also had a slightly different recipe. Ah Ha! It was my Grandmother who passed on different versions! The mystery continues for only my aunt is left from the second generation.

What I DO know is how I have changed the recipe myself. I buy wide yolk-free "egg" noodles now. Over the years I have included tabasco, reduced the chili powder and fresh grind the nutmeg, allspice and cloves. I use canned fire-roasted tomatoes and not tomato soup. Half the butter; just cannot melt one pound into the meat. Fresh mushrooms, plain old white ones, no fancy-schmancy shitakes or portabellos. Extra lean ground beef. And, in a radical departure about a decade ago, no pork. Many of my dear friends are Moslem, and since this is such a celebratory dish for company I eliminated it for them. I can literally make this in my sleep, and in fact have. One year, we arrived back from a trip to Turkey only about 6 hours before our friends from Turkey arrived by different flight. I bought the food and cooked for them while on sleep-deprived auto-pilot because it was one dish I could count on. It was still damn good.

About four years ago, we went to a great chili cook off between a group of foodies. There was green chili with chicken, full on beef no beans, all beans and no beef and then an epiphany: a chili mac...meat sweet spicy chili in a tomato base served over wide egg noodles with a heavy load of cheese on top. Was THIS the origin of Grandma's spaghetti! My chefs for this dish were from Chicago, and had moved west with their recipe. My Grandma was born in Salt Lake City and maybe, just maybe it came west with some Mormons to Salt Lake where she got the recipe from her mom, moved it to Nevada and the rest is family history. Who knew? Who knows?

So, like a slightly mutated DNA sample, or genetic distribution of a taste gene, everyone in my family has the recipe but does not have the recipe. We should have a family cookoff! I had better win.

I had only been in my home this fall for two weeks and my Nevada aunt and uncle arrived. Surrounded by boxes, I was thrilled to inaugurate my new life with some family here and made of course, Grandma's Spaghetti. Aunt Jeanette was thrilled and Uncle Bob, a former covert photographer for the reserve, pronounced it worthy. Yea me.

And this Christmas, the night we made the Christmas cookies, I cooked up another batch for my daughter and I. About every two months I need to make a batch so this means a party in mid February I think; perhaps another chili spaghetti cook off. And, it was my sincere pleasure to give my former husband a copy for his Christmas present. Perhaps he and my daughter will make it sometime. But, discerning readers, did I give him the whole recipe?

That is between me and the books.

Holiday sweaters

OK, I have been up all night and so this is one topic I have to get off my chest before going back to bed.

Holiday Sweaters.

I teach, and every year at this time the holiday sweaters come out. Like the ducks and bunny sweaters kindergarten teachers wear at Easter, the holiday sweaters proliferate. I pass colleagues wearing Frosty, Rudolph, and other assorted icons in the hallways. The sweaters are embroidered, applique'd, top stitch, sequined, crocheted, quilted, any manner of craftwork. Its as if our hallways were suddenly transformed into a cruise ship to the North Pole and Christmas resort wear is de riqeur. Looking like pincushions with so much spangle, gilt and beading, the sweaters and their occupants make fun of the current vogue for embellishment in clothing. Christmas sweaters have been doing this for years.

And some of the sweaters are years old. Because they never wear out. You only wear them for about two weeks a year, and not daily. So when the ornaments come out, in some atavistic ritual of the closets, so do the sweaters.

I think I want one and then I think again.

I have tried. Strolling in TJMaxx the other day, I glanced at them. No, the snowmen were not placed on my hips where I would want them. Ditto the cut out felt Christmas trees, arranged just at my bra line. I do not need tree bras, however implied. A large reindeer on my back with a red nose over my scapula is not the anatomy I wish to highlight.

But I did want to fit in, to be a pal, to have fun too. Was I too snotty? Have I missed the meaning of this group clubwear? Putting on my Pendleton tweed blazer over my burgandy velvet top, I added some jewelry. I have a large silver Crusader's cross, my Mom's from a trip to Jerusalem. I put that on and looked like an Episcopal minister. I exchanged it for a museum repro of a Sythian stag, thinking it might look like a reindeer. I looked like a game warden. So I gave up, took off the blazer, threw on a sparkly ice blue turtleneck and beaded Turkish scarf. I looked like me.

And, why don't the men wear the sweaters? They have Christmas ties. No comment, for they too are immortal, and I have seen all the vogues over the years. Good for them.

I'm not a fashion Scrooge, I just think too much about them. I chirp, "Cute Sweater!" and God knows, we need some fun in our halls because most of the kids are all in black to be different and lurching around in various stages of Goth or Sport.

Yet I wonder, who is making these? I know, lots of women and children in countries which do not celebrate Christmas as a primary religious holiday. The sweaters are made in Asia and India...and I wonder what these Buddhists or Moslems or Hindus think sewing on felt snowmen in 110 degree heat. Or, the reindeer where cattle may be sacred. Or trees where fuel is scarce. You see, I think too much about it, they are just working for a needed job. And yet, I do think about Chinese painting Christmas ornaments, embroidering angels and holly, sometimes under work conditions which are less than jolly.

And these are only secular images on the sweaters, even if embroidered by non-Christians. I do not live where we have a large Jewish population so I do not know if there are Hanukkah sweaters. But I don't think so. There are no sweaters with Jerusalem on them, the icons of Mohammedism, or Hinduism, no blue Krishnas with appliqued Gopis. And, there are no sequined Jesus or Wise Men either. Frosty and Rudolph reign.

So, there is Christmas, the creche', happy angels and baby Jesus on Advent calendars and ornaments. And there is the Frosty-Rudolph Christmas popularized by the blow-up lawn ornaments, and the sweaters which make even the slimmest look blown up. Everyone is trying to have fun, to bring a bit of ornamental bling to their wardrobes and that is fine. It's just not me, and once again I am the voyeur, watching the bling stroll by.

Until next year when the sweaters rise again like phoenixes.

solo shopping voyeurism

Some people eavesdrop shamelessly...Not hard to do in the age of cel phones. I look at what people are buying when grocery shopping. In Eugene, a person's groceries, let alone where they shop is a snapshot of politics, economic status, sometimes ethnicity and adventurism.

One time I found a shopping list left behind in the cart. It read: "oranges, half and half, 2 chickens, bullets." Were they going to hold up the McDonald's after eating? Was the juice a precursor to a violent act? I have always wondered if bullets were in the hardware or the vitamin section.

I needed lard once when making tamales, and was in our town's main organic grocery. I went to the butcher and asked for it; you would have thought I asked for free range baby veal with personal names. He gasped, "We don't often use it but I will see. " Over the loudspeaker came, "will the person getting the LARD please come to the back loading dock. " One would have thought I had admitted to beating small cats. I went, got the lard, threw it into my cart with my politically approved produce and went to the checkout behind two Deadheads....lard clearly in view. It took me a while to return to that grocer.

However, I am most interested when at the checkout. I construct small imaginary tableaux with a cart's contents, trying not to stand too close. Let's see, the young mom, yes, with baby food, champagne, pop tarts, lots of milk and a Redbook. Over there, tall, lanky, with paint overalls, a man picking up frozen pot pies, lager, carton of cigs and a surprise, a case of mangoes. Or, the attorney with cel phone to his ear, unloading roses, chocolate, salmon steaks, asparagus, and hopefully eggs, waffles, and oj for a morning. After? Now that is a dinner I would like to go have.

There are always the mixes, main stream products like Cheerios mixed with hormone free milk and butter, organic rainforest bird-shaded coffee with coca-cola in a 12 pack, Vogue and Mother Jones, Tom's natural tea tree toothpaste with Comet cleanser. People's homes are a blend of organic, affordable, standard long-time American companies, and flashy upstarts. No one blinks an eye, unlike my lard experience. It all goes into the sack. "Would you want plastic or paper? "

This week my grocery cart is more full than usual, buying for family and Christmas. Organic rice cakes, spelt bread, instant oatmeal, more bacon, more treats than I usually buy for myself to snack on.

Usually though, I shop just for myself. And here is a curious thing, I have conversations in my head with myself. What do I want for dinner? My favorite comfort food is something tofu, or inexplicably Stouffer's frozen spinach souffle. Last year, in the throws of being separated in the same house I ate a lot of spinach souffle. I don't even want to buy it now, associating it with great unhappiness, just as I associate red licorice with plane sickness, and tequila with, well, bad tequila in 1972.

Now my comfort food is what ever I damn well want to buy, if I want carbs, so be it. If I want a case of mangoes myself, well, I don't have to serve mangoes to anyone else so why not? I have always wanted certain vegetables, but not gotten them. My family used to say, but Mom, make it if you like it! My husband used to say, if you like fish then cook it, I will make something else. But I couldn't, I felt like I had to, and wanted to, feed the family. He was right, but I felt that if I only bought for myself, I wouldn't be a good mom/wife/cook....how neurotic. And so I put some of my food desires on hold, never having a problem to fill my cart with chocolate, licorice, rice cakes, what everyone else wanted.

So, if someone were to look in MY cart now, they would see a range of spices, produce, natural, organic, bulk, dry, whatever I want. And, the occasional orchid, chocolate, great magazine, and designer soaps. I never buy in ones, no one potato, one carrot. I can't shop for one person only. My shopping list never says bullets, but it does say:" Come eat here. Here is a good cook. Here is a good mom. And here, for you guys behind me in line, is someone you should take out to dinner, or have cook for you. "Take a look at carts, for like library books held by the person in front of you in line, they reveal a lot about people.

Think I will go cruise a different store tomorrow and see what the trends are.

bacon dreams

The other day while working a breakfast shift at my friend's inn, the young cook described bacon as a "meat candy bar." How apt, for it feels like a great indulgence to grab from the plate a crispy stick of maple glazed meat and fat. Surely, I would rather have a piece of bacon over a candy bar any day.

What is it about bacon? I have been thinking about it for a while it seems, for as I write so many ideas come to mind about this most pedestrian , and elevated of breakfast foods. On first glance, shrink wrapped staggered slices of pork and fat sounds awful, and indeed an uncooked piece of bacon is much less appetizing than a candy bar. Waxy, alabaster white steaked with meat...why in the world would anyone want to eat it?

But, cooked, bacon wraps itself into a blend of smoky aroma, crunchy texture, heavenly sweet flavor, and memory. Why memory? because for me, the smell of bacon reminds me of lying in bed as Dad cooked maple bacon on Sunday. I remember once I moved away, my first day home on any college vacation, I would lie in bed, and awaken to the smell, knowing my Dad was down in the kitchen frying a whole pound for the family. This act ironically centered me, and I knew it was Dad's ritual of welcoming me back home.

As a child in Izmir, I remember my Mom's own unique take on another aspect of bacon. Our maid, a village woman, came into town each day to work for my mother and also care for my little brothers. She was great fun, and would play with us by pulling us around on a towel as she polished our marble floors. Since she was illiterate, Mom would draw pictures for her tasks, including making lunch. However, Minnie loved the American sweet butter we got at the commissary. Mom finally put a slice of bacon around the butter plate, and this devout Moslem would then not touch the butter. Effective, odd, and for me, memorable.

Bacon, Lettuce and tomato sandwiches, quiche, rumaki, the 50's appetizer chicken livers wrapped in bacon...My list goes on. If only bacon weren't so caloric! I try to tell myself that is is culinary research, that calories don't count, but of course they do. And so, I limit myself to the best, just not as often.

I go to a prime cut butcher in town, one of the last. They have been in business for over 60 years, and their bacon is to die for. OK, bad metaphor for arteries, but truly, it is a wonder. The applewood smoked bacon runs out as soon as they offer it, and so this week before Christmas I picked up some for a treat.I made some for my daughter,home from college and sleeping in,
and only now late at night writing about bacon do I get the connection to my Dad.

To heck with calories, this week we will have bacon. South Beach and all other diets start in January, but for now, I think about 7 am tomorrow I will heat up the skillet, throw some smoky slabs of fat and pork in, and let the aroma drift around the kitchen. Wish I had bought a pound.

pantry stepcousins

Never have condiments older than your kids. If you start to give them names, or begin a college fund for them, you have had them way too long.

Over several years, exploring various recipes, ethnic cuisines, and just because I am a sucker for packaging, my pantry has expanded exponentially. This summer, when I divided in half the detritus of my life into "leave it there" to "move it here", I took inventory.

Most listings for pantries include basics for good home cooking. I remember when I first was a young graduate in the 1970's I carefully cut out a list of the Perfect Pantry from a magazine. I checked off what I had, and took care to acquire those items I was told I needed. Thus armed and fortified, I felt I could cook anything. Anything that is if you lived in the center of the United States and did not make anything beyond meatloaf and chicken with noodles. Not knocking meatloaf, I love it. However, at the time I didn't even make meatloaf and was still trying to have my grilled porkchops cooked by the time I heated up cans of green beans.

However, I began to range, and as I did, so did my pantry. I tried German and soon had dried spatzle, sauerbraten mix and Knorr spices. Moving to Italian, I began to collect various vinegars, tomato paste in toothpaste looking tubes, and a menagerie of pasta. I moved to Mars, or Asian food. Inventoring nori, won ton wrappers, three types of soy, tamari, and wasabi, I was running out of room. India created a need for pappadums, candy coated fennel seeds, dal, and chutneys.

Each new cookbook led to new ingredients, and new flavors. I started to sort my pantry by ethnicity, large Tupperware boxes with labels on them reading: Arabic, Italian, Japanese, & Russian. Through the waxy translucent walls, the colors and shapes hinted at the interior. I began to save jars, and soon had a satisfying collection of dried limes, several types of red pepper, biber, Alleppo, and varieties of dried fruits. Apricots, large dried Calmyrna figs, almonds, pistachioes, walnuts, pecans and pinion would have me imagining the pilafs and desserts ahead. Orris root, linden tea, chocolate honey from Italy in an octagonal bottle, I was in love with it all.

The pantry grew to include cold storage, and the top shelf of the fridge. In my freezer I had three types of coffee including the dense distinctive smell of Turkish powdered coffee, masa, cornmeal, buckwheat for blinis, rice flour, lefsa, and phyllo. My fridge had more types of mustard than most stores, several types of peanut sauce, wasabi, horseradish, honeys, and oils in shades of gold, amber, and olive green. More labels, more bottles, more dishes.

Soon, we had a second fridge to hold the overflow of pasta to keep cold, more spices, and packs of Turkish dried spices, soup mixes and kofta seasoning and saffron from Iran purchased in Istanbul. Specialized turntables, dividers, small bottles, boxes, and spice jars became an additional descriptor of my lust to acquire, try new recipes and experiment. It was fun, it was exciting, and it was acquisitive, filling in my pantry with images of dinner parties, friendship, and gatherings, intimate family meals which would be special. We had a special section for Hawaiian foods, red salt, dried plums, and ling hui mui seasoning my husband loved.

However, I had to move, and it was time to divide the pantry. I took most of the ingredients as I was the only one to cook with them. Who else would love a jar of dried camel-colored limes from Tunisia for tea? They had to go to a new home, and here became the problem.

Should I, I wondered, move them? I had grown so used to some of the pantry that they were my friends, in fact several years old. Probably some were still good, but much was over the top. I spent a day going through the goods, discarding, dividing, and repackaging half. Like Siamese twins, some of my division was not successful, and not worth doing. Others left for a new home, leaving behind colleagues on the shelf.

In September, I moved into my own kitchen. I had a pantry space one eighth the size of what I had left. I placed my bottles carefully, admiring the shapes and geometry of the nuts in their containers in my fridge.Repainting my turntables to match the interior of my newly painted cabinets, I arranged my much reduced level of spices. I missed their old holder, and not all had come with me. In my haste to leave behind the life, I also left behind some things I now realized I must restock. I hadn't even considered the vast assortment of normal things, and had to re- purchase flour, sugar, salt, oil. I had been more concerned with the odd balls, the imported cousins , than my traditional American Perfect Pantry.

And so it goes, By acquiring the unusual, I forgot the usual. I had stopped cooking, instead looked only at the concept of cooking in my last home. Much like the concept of a large part of my life, content was not the same as the imagined life, the imagined dinners. And so, it was time to purchase some new daily items for my pantry.

In go the dog bones for their visits. And, "normal " things like tuna, (OK, plus salmon) and chicken broth, and canned beans.( Cannalini, garbanzo, white, kidney, black ) Still, I get it. The pantry should be for things used, not hoarded, admired, and saved past their prime. Pretty obvious metaphor for life. And I find one eighth the space is just fine. As for the canisters I left behind, I have been buying candles in glass jars with lids. Every time I use up a vanilla candle, I have created a new container for my red lentils, wild rice, brown sugar, and so it starts again. And, I still have those dried limes.

Christmas trees and branches and twigs

My daughter and I went out to purchase a Christmas tree two days ago. It it now a temporary plant in my home, set up in the corner of my living room, from the corner window as you drive up the slope. We bought a Noble, not Doug fir, the difference being $45 not $15. Oregon grows Christmas trees, a main export along with mint, cranberries, and hazelnuts. I have wrapped trees in butcher paper, baled them like hay and sent them to Arizona over the years.

I love the pine scent, the colors and the deja vu of oraments resurrected once a year to enjoy. I teach in a school which continually debates the acceptance of Christmas trees. First, the fire Marshall does not allow them. Then, the paganists think they are a religious symbol while the traditionallists and apostolic believe they are a pagan symbol from the Druids. The Victorians ( I am kidding ) are happy that Queen Victoria married a German cousin and imported the gruunenblatt into England, despite Dickens. And the traditionalists are upset that we do not have one for all the above reasons. We do not have a tree, but today my honors students cut circular geometric projects (snowflakes) for dexterity practice.

In Izmir Turkey in 1956, we had a tree, a miracle in a Mediterranean climate. We were living there as NATO dependents and the U.S. Air Force imported trees from Switzerland for the famalies. Our "tree" was three branches wired together with a lead seal from the principality forests of Switzerland. The next year, the Suez crisis hit and tanks rumbled over the cobblestones five stories below our apartments. Oil was embargoed, and we had smelly kerosene heaters in the hall. My family was reduced to keeping warm by living in just the front room, and closing off the rest of the house except the bathroom and the kitchen. The Air Force had purchased trees this year. They were full ones. So my parents kept it on its side closed off behind frosted French doors in the living room until Christmas. In that icebox, it kept as fresh as just cut.

One year in 1963 we traveled up Nevada mountains to cut our own tree. My Dad was in Alaska that year on remote. So, traveling with my aunt and Italian American uncle into the snow zone, we cut him a little bitty one, and attached it to our own tree we picked , sliding down the slope on top of the tree. We celebrated with Tang hot toddys and polenta. We decorated it, included a very green cantaloupe, and mailed it to the end of the Aleutian chain. The tree arrived, the cantaloupe was ripe, and Dad had a tree. As I remember, he sent us King Crab and Russian fishing floats.

So, MY trees are around the world and very important to me. Going out with my daughter to pick a tree was priceless, and fun. I have picked a tree alone with her before, cut them in the hills outside my old home, but this was a new tree for my new home. And so, two women with a saw and vise grip put up the tree. We decorated it, lit and here it stands, a pagan, Dickensian, Victorian, Turkish memory, and family tree. It is ours, it is new, and it inaugurated our home like the trees on top of building projects. My daughter will get to do a tree with her two other dads, each with their own traditon. Christmas eve she and I will have champagne, cheese fondue and chocolate to celebrate. And, I will saw off a bottom ring, label it 2005 to keep the memory.

Popcorn dreams

Popcorn.

Why is it, regardless of the time of day, whenever I go to the theater I must have popcorn? I don't even like it at movie theaters, yet like a pack of driven lemmings we are pushed over the brink of nutritional sense ang get it anyway. It was free. Yeah right, but I signed up for the movie card anyway, thereby getting a "free" bag of popcorn. I was seeing Pride and Prejudice with a friend. We had just had nutritionally fresh organic Mexican food next door, ( it is Eugene) a margarita, and defenses down, got that darn bag.

Jane Austin did not have popcorn. In her day, I think all the women did was drink tea and wander around in ruthlessly rumpled linens, looking slender. They also certainly didn't iron, bathe daily, or perm. The Men, certainly did not eat popcorn, they were too busy swooning over the view of an ankle, a delicate wrist and murmuring, "My dear, you are just too exquisite." After that couples were immediately married.

Yet, my friend and happily munched on popcorn watching Jane's world on the big screen. Really, doesn't it taste like styrofoam? I have never actually eaten styrofoam, but popcorn has that same grating dry crunch when chomped. It sounds like crunching through the top crust of old hard snow. And, the salt used at movie theaters is so fine it powders every crevice, thereby driving a need for another margarita. I used to order the butter, and in the dark would fish for the soggy, oily, butter soaked pieces. We all have our secret in-the-dark-ways to eat at theaters.

Popcorn that way don't get no respect. I made popcorn in class one day while teaching Film History because I realized no one had ever had true popcorn.

Most have only used the blow up pufferfish bags of popcorn you put in the microwave. With threatening sayings like PUT THIS SIDE DOWN, OPEN AWAY FROM YOUR FACE, AND FOOD WILL BE HOT, in 4 minutes you can have a batch of blown up kernels, coated on one side only with coconut oil. At 4 and one half minutes you have a burn event, smoke out the whole classroom/faculty room/kitchen, and the dregs sit outside on the deck until they stop smoking.

Or, last year, my family had a couple of months where we made Whirly Pop Popcorn. We did the whirly pop dance, twirling like dervishes as we held down the top and turned the handle like organ grinders. Our family was devoted to the cinnamon sugar popcorn, but what it really was about was the act of pouring the popcorn into the machine. I love that plinky sound as the hard kernels hit the pan. And then about 3 minutes later,hearing the submerged sonar sound of the corn exploding inside the container. The aroma of popping corn is distinctive, and regressive for me, to childhood. I loved those family Whirly Pop moments.

My childhood was not in the States, and my first real memory of popcorn is actually as packing material. I get it! Popcorn was the original styrofoam!

When I was six, we lived in Turkey at the time hula hoops were the rage. The PX, or base store had no hula hoops. Parents were in line around the block at Christmas time hoping that the latest sea shipment contained some for the Santa gifts. Turkish children gyrated outside on sidewalks with cumbersome wood ones. My grandfather bought hoops, took them apart and wound them smaller to fit into the right size box. He then filled the box with popcorn that he and Grandma had popped as stuffing and padding. What an incredible present to get a hula hoop from the States, put it together and learn how to be cool. I remember standing in the lobby of our apartment, wiggling and shimmying to learn to hula hoop. I also remember eating all the stale, stale, unsalted popcorn that they had been packed in. Heaven, and much better than the theater.

Two summers ago in Istanbul I bought some corn on the street from a vendor. He was in the park outside the Blue Mosque, calling for customers. The corn was impaled upon skewers, and quick boiled then roasted. Corn cobs littered the ground and seating area around him. I bought one, and ate it. It was field corn, starchy and heavy, it would never make good popcorn. But for the Turks it was a novelty and a fun snack, maybe the same as movie popcorn. Not great, but different, and hard to pass up.

So, tonight I am thinking about a Grandpa I love, a country I love, spending an evening with a friend watching a movie about Love, all tied to a bag of exploded starch, good old American movie popcorn.

Kitchen mis-designs

Designer kitchens larger than my current condo, as large as principalities, are the style. For the last several years mini-mansions have maxi-kitchens. Billiard table size countertops wide enough to roll out a gross of baguettes are in style. Side by side coolers, freezers and wine cabinets are as big as my current closets. And by extension, the outdoor grill appears to be designed by demented NASA engineers; cook your steak and blast off at the same time.

I envy, I lust, and then I get real.

I do not have a kitchen that size, in fact, my current kitchen is actually a little larger with counter prep space than my past home. It's main issue is no window other than one placed with little direct light, and is a cul-de-sac for conversation and entertaining. I plan to cut a hole in the wall the next time I have some available money, a hunky carpenter, and guts. My daughter, deep into interior architecture will tell me if this is a load bearing wall; so by spring I will have some air flow and a wine pass through at the same time.

My best friend modified her kitchen in village Turkey with a sledge hammer. Traditional village kitchens do not have windows, and her home had been started prior to her marriage. Every week she would go out and see how to create one bathroom with a modern sensibility, then stand in the kitchen. One day being a wildly resourceful woman, she arrived with a sledgehammer from school. ( I should add we both have taught art and love big heavy and sharp tools, my sculpture mallet pounds schnitzel) Slam, crack, and gee, a hole appeared. "Oops", she cried, "I guess I must have a WINDOW here!" Villagers amazed, and she started a new trend.

So back to mine. No sledge hammer, but if I thought I would be able to do this myself with my trusty jig saw, I would have no problem cutting a large rectangle. However, I am tempted with visions of as I said, a hunky carpenter, wearing plaid shirt and muscles rippling, slammng something against the wall. Cover of a bodice buster, "The Carpenter and the Kitchen Wench."

Truly, the kitchen does not have to be large. Why, I heard of a bar in Manhattan which makes espressos during the day and at night in the same spot creates the foams and other fluffy trendy soups. Large families in the Middle East cook over one burner, stacking food trays, couscousiers, and steamers to save fuel and space.

So, why do I want that acre of granite? Why do I want the surgical stainless (brushed) appliances? Because it looks rich, settled, suburban profitable. It looks "married" which I am not. In my schitzoid way I also want the cosy mission style bungalow with hand pressed tiles, small yet impecably designed cabinetry. And more! The French Provencal...primary colors gone aslant, reds into persimmon, blue into eggplant, yellow into acorn...I want that too! And a Japanese kitchen. Yes! Sliding shoji screens, one perfect iron teakettle over an open fire, and slyphs of shadows through the screen, silhouettes as they whisk green tea. Oh yes, also a Moroccan kitchen with open air cooking area, camels in the back, scents of ginger and mint as the couscous steams. Orientalism AND food.

I want it all. I have kitchen lust, or as my dear friend says in Turkish, "monkey appetite." I want the kitchens of the world, not the suburbs.

So it seems as I write this I have figured out in part my anxiety about my kitchen. It needs company. It needs parties, breakfast cooking, dinners planned, dogs eating in the corner. It needs someone in a bathrobe, coffee mug in hand saying "So, what are we going to do today?" It needs my daughter, home from college for a night staggering in at 1 pm, and making cereal as she wakes up. It needs cupboards filled with dishes that have memories from their old life and building ones now. It needs forgiveness, happiness, holidays, and love. Until it gets that window, it has a mirror in its place. Like Plato's cave, it reflects the window opposite it, a view of the half world, and a bounce back of me in the morning as I make my coffee. And so, I will invite the world to it, and not worry about the design. I will enjoy the company, the solitude, and the opportunity to create love at the stove.

frankenchicken

The last three days I have been covered in chickenfat and olive oil. Not too exciting, I have been teaching a poultry lab at my cuisine class. Chicken is on sale, and I decided the students needed to know about the parts of a chicken, how to prepare a whole one, and to part it out. Their assignment is to create a recipe with sides and garni for their one chicken leg. I taught and demo'ed how to truss, and today made a whole chicken for them to see, and carve.

They had to skin the leg. Holding the leg up and pulling the skin off, it appeared that I had created a wired biology lab with students skinning aliens, treating the discarded skin as a distasteful jelly sample. These are students who hunt and shoot but no hunters here, it was all"oooh, yuk." One adventurous scavenger saved all the skin to make mini crispy skins for his cat to eat. Despite my best goals, the chicken had vestiges of feathers. We live down wind, an unfortunate occurrence, from a chicken plant. When they treat the feathers, well, sucking on a lemon drop helps but not much.

I had purchased enough chicken legs for the students, 17. They come 9-11 to a pack, never an even number. And the two whole chickens had random giblets and necks thrown in. Reassembling these frankenchickens had me imagining bi-polar lopsided birds tottering around the lot. Differently matched legs, like a woman wearing a stiletto and a flat, uneven arm lengths, and the random transplanted heart created a Tim Burton garish landscape in my mind. Edward Scissorchicken, Franken chicken, the curse of the werechicken...

I am now sick of chicken. It tastes like, well, chicken! Where is the venison, succulent and reminding me of hunting in Nevada through the juniper and pinion pine frosty mornings? Where is the carpaccio, thin sliced and layered with extra virgin olive oil and shaved pecorrino? Or, duck! Now duck would be great! Crisp, glazed with soy sauce and baked in rock salt, or basted with pomegranate molasses. I would like duck for a change.

Nope, I am still in chicken hell. We are "doing" chicken next week in tamales, enchiladas, and fajitas. And, chicken soup with all the oddly mis matched bones.


I like the beasts, I admire them, they don't ask too much but I can always count on a chicken. Baking a chicken on Sunday for a lazy afternoon makes my home smell great, I can part it out and pick off it all week by myself and feel nourished. SInce moving into my own home I have made a whole chicken often for economy and a sense of self nourishment. I can do so much with chicken, but in the classroom I can only do so much. MY students, budding epicures, do not go in for pomegranate molasses, or stuffing under the skin with truffle butter, or 40 cloves of garlic. And,if I hear about the beer butt chicken one more time I will throw one in the casserole and baste it with Dr. Pepper.

This Sunday I will make something else to celebrate.

new jeans

I taught a food class tonight after a terrible day.

I started the day with students who could have cared less about Shakespeare and the student teacher and myself, two trained bears were up in front like demented Elizabethean cheerleaders, trying to drum up conversation. After that abortive, petrified class, I lurched from hour to hour with bureacracy for school events. Finally got to the end of the day. I raced to the fish market, bought supplies and other food stuffs for my night class.

I tried, I was charming, deftly managind the velvet asparagus soup with mixed shellfish thermidor, the cream sauce, the cardamom scented mascarpone fruits, and the cunning yet unobtrusive merlot vinaigrette over mesclum. The class raved, I broke a ceramic spoon. They loved the sauces, I cleaned the whisk. It was fun, it brought me out of myself from crankiness, and I was no longer a demented cheerleader, I was cheerleader for "The Romantic Supper".


What about the jeans?

I didn't think the class would go, but it went, and in the fickle finger of fate way that the universe has, I also had plans to attend a trunk showing of clothing at my friend's.She said, just come on over after class! We will have wine and you can try on things. So, reeking of garlic, and hands stained with pomegranee juice, I drove on over, continuing my 12 hour day.
I am glad I did.

It has been a tough year, lubricated with my evenings spent with bad eating and wine to ease the pain. And,this ease has eased out my size. Mid life means all shifts to your middle.I am zaftig, I am eggplant shaped, and I don't think I deserve new clothes until I look like someone else.

But I don't. And I admire women of all sizes who look swelte, rich, groomed and glossy. What am I waiting for?

It was a kick at the food class teaching 5 older women how to make a romantic meal for their friend/husband/partner/ etc. etc. And then, I walked into my friend's home to a room full of women in my age range trying on clothes and urging each other on. I looked at their midriff, their thighs and realized, we all looked similar. Not alike, but not all 20 either, we had bodies which worked, did their job, and were different sizes. And, everyone who tried on something looked great.

So the jeans.

I am a snob about jeans, don't own a pair, figured they are for the proletariat, and haven't the butt for them. My daughter yes, but she looks good in a pillowcase, she is 20 and has a great butt. Pears,eggplants, figs, anything wider at the bottom than the top, that is me.

These instant fashion police and dressing room friends said,"try them on anyway."

DOn't look at the size,how do they fit? I felt fat, I felt wide, and round. But 100% of these classy, smart, beautiful women said, I looked great, to buy them and get them. I need a boost. I need a new bra! I need a new figure. Hey, two out of three ain't bad, and what did I know?

So I bought the jeans, trading my fee for the food class for a pair of jeans which all tell me make my butt look great.I get to have a pair of jeans in my closet which are designer. And, if I manage to have less Souave, Merlot, Riesling....the jeans will be even greater. But now I feel like I have my own Sisterhood of the Traveling Fancy Pants,and something "cool" in my closet. The Universe is now in balance.

And maybe I will wear them for my own romantic supper.

fog

New day, and off to work.

I have a class tonight teaching about shellfish, and am making a lobster thermador, anold fashioned dish. Chef jacket ironed, all is ready, and off I go.

The fog is so thick out my window everything is filtered, my whole world looks like it is in half resolution, like those parchment sheets on top of a photo in very expensive cards. My day may be in half resolution as well, I am half at work, half at the cooking class, and then will climb my way back up this hill in the dark and fog.

must run, and will see how this day of miazma, fair and foul, develops.

midnight

No one should live alone.

This is the winter of my discontent.

Will things look better in the morning? I miss my dogs, my daughter, the life I wanted to have, or thought I was going to have.

All those Christmas movies of happy hallmark families are a sham, and build up expectations which are impossible to meet, and in the dead of night terrible to contemplate. Fiction.

Some people's blogs are relentlessy chirpy, "hey, today I hiked 50 miles, and yeh, tonight will have my personal bottle of Merlot decanted for me by my own butler; having a great time with my brilliant girlfriend," or, "I have this fantabulous book I wrote and you should buy it, hey, have you seen my website.....etc. etc."
More fiction.

Anyone reading this will think I am always in a black mood.And so I worry that someone reading this will turn away. But isn't writing reality, or reality as we create it? And shouldn't we write the truth and not edit for some imaginary audience? What are the "rules of blog?"

But I am not usually in a black mood; it has been a hell of a year, and I just want someone to know I am alive, and wish so much for some contact. I was totally miserable last year, and know this time is better; people have told me I am better.

However, tonight I am tired of saying how great I am doing, I am tired of hearing about a new life, I don't want my old life back, but I wish I knew how to make this one better. Populated. I have taken to writing on a calendar contacts I have daily just to remind me how blessed I really am with family and friends for black nights like this. Pain is amnesic, and so I write to remember good.

Maybe it was splitting up the Christmas ornaments which did it for me, a tailspin tonight.

Whoever you are and reading this, touch someone. If you know me, send good thoughts. Even if you don't know me. Come over, give me a hug, bring me flowers, some physicality. "The night is long ere it sees the day". I need someone to curl around me, hug me, and value me. I need a guardian angel.

And yeah, to hell with it, and if I am blowing my chirpy cover of ennui and retrospection, I am going to post this, off into cyberspace we go.

Coffee mornings

Ok ok it is a cliche, but coffee truly is a gift of the gods.

Or, for those mythical goats in the Middle East who ate coffee beans, thereby telling the bored-out-of-his-mind shepherd that here was something to wake him up, a gift of the goats.

I truly like coffee, and in the Northwest coffee is a culture. I have been told that coffee is so popular due to all the Scandinavians who settled here, bringing coffee and the coffee klatch with them, sharing cardamom scented rolls with syrupy black brew. I don't see it that way. I think it is mass marketing and a cunning plan.

Starbucks may be planning to take over the world, but it is the coffee houses around the campuses here that are the nexus of caffeine culture. When I meet my daughter at yes, Starbucks, the orders are complicated. "I will have a tall single, skinny soy shot with amaretto flavoring." " double tall, non fat" or, "caramel with extra cream, to go with nutmeg." I kid you not, the orders are as complex as any bar drink.

In Ottoman Turkey the official coffee sniffers would walk the neighborhoods sniffing out coffee makers and taxing them. If they refused, the next time the makers were sewn into sacks and thrown into the Bosporus. The sultan tried to ban coffee houses for it was there that students would gather and plot sedition. But eventually, realizing a money maker, and improved business hours, he relented. Maybe Starbucks is a reincarnation. What if the colonists had drunk coffee not tea? Would we have the Boston Latte Party?

My sister in law, visiting this summer, was amazed at the number of drive-throughs in quiet Sisters, eastern Oregon. What in the world do THEY have to hurry about, she asked. I am from San Diego! And so, the drive through proliferate, I have my faves. Cafe Roma, Blues Brothers, Cafe A Latte, and my favorite non sequitur at the beach, a neon sign advertising in one breathless non spaced sign: CrabCocktailEspressos.

My students drag into honors class at 8:15, midnight as far as an eighteen year old can tell. They have flip flops on, no accounting for taste or weather. They wear parkas, and carry lattes. I think I will just give up and have them bring me one.

But back to true coffee. The Turks have a saying, "coffee should be sweet as love, strong as friendship, and black as death." It is a little death each day, waking up and staggering to the French press. Or Melitta. Or, god forbid, Mr. Coffee. If it is "sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care", a latte makes full sweaters. I put on the water, walk the dogs, check the e mail, and then plunge down the press. That plunge is very satisfying, purging the water, a nice little swoosh sound as the disk reaches the bottom, scrapes the glass sides of the carafe, and I can smell my nice thick dark French roast. I walk to my window, overlooking a berm against the forested hill, covered in rhododendrons, ferns, Doug firs and mossy trunks of oaks. My coffee steams, and the foggy landscape clears for a minute like Brigadoon in the musical.

My husband used to make me coffee in the morning, and often hand me one in the shower. Heaven. And a memento that he cared, and noticed. I got used to making my own coffee as things waned, and make my own now. I am independent, I can buy myself perfume, my own jewelry, and my own coffee. But I do miss so much that hand reaching into my steamy foggy shower with a coffee mug. This descriptor must be one of my must haves in my search for a coffee companion.

Off to work, with coffee mug in hand, thank goodness for cup holders!

pomegranates

I have always loved pomegranates, for as long as I can remember. When the Tutankhamun exhibit came to San Francisco, my favorite piece was not all the jaw dropping gold but one little silver fruit, in fact, the only silver piece in the whole exhibit. I love the facets, the overt sexuality of the fruit from the tough outer membrane, leathery and rough to the stiletto blossom end, its crennelated top like a cartoon firecrackerp.

When I break open the fruit and hold it so carefully away from me to avoid stains, the jewels fall like crystals into the bowl. I have frozen them on sheet pans to save for winter to serve over Turkish Asure, the wheat and nut-fruit pudding called Noah's pudding.

I tried to make pomegranate vodka last year, my last year in my home. I bought some middle to fair cheap-o vodka and about 6 fruits. I broke all the fruit open and placed them into a large jar, poured the vodka over and anticipated a great little liqueur like limoncello. I realize now I could have made a syrup first, and then decanted the fruit. However the brew was cloudy, like a show of blood in a pool of water, the fruits themselves dessicated and devoid of color, all leached into the vodka. It didn't taste that great. However, over a few weeks I would try a sip or too, especially nights when I was alone and my soon to be ex husband was out again. Eventually I discarded the pome-vodka as a wanna be.

And this summer we discarded our marriage as a sad wanna be also. I was leached of color, and cloudy as well.

However, it is now pomegranate season again, and ironically this week he sent me over the internet an article on the religous and fertile symbols of these fruits.

We have no symbolism for a break up of a marriage. We break bread, we break cups under a canopy when marrying, and we break up. But we, as a culture do not cut a cake at a divorce. Perhaps this e mail was my own symbol, that my marriage had only been one facet of my life. I was still a jewel inside, and only the outside of my life had become harder and leathery, my stiletto self hiding my own secret self inside, waiting to break open. And just maybe that is why he sent me the e mail, as a peace offering, and a moving on.

And just last week someone else called me a jewel.

sleeping with dogs

In my new status, I get the dogs (two Jack Russells) on Mom week. Dad week, they are, well, at Dads. Kids seem to be adjusting, they know they get leashes at Mom's and the back yard at Dads. I have a new bed with no history, new duvet, and great room which has a long to the floor window we can all gaze out of when in bed. My duvet now has paw prints on it but I don't mind; someone is here...someone fuzzy, white, and warm. My own personal bed warmers, one climbs under to warm, the other on top of the pillow. In absence of a person, I hug them. I had fears that I would be just another middle aged single woman with a house of cats, turgid novellas and red hats. Instead I am a woman in her prime with two dogs, books on the middle east and no red hats. I hope I don't sleep only with dogs the rest of my life, but for now they are my pals, and company in the night every other week. As for the weeks off....well, I can only hope.

ice

It's icy out! I have just moved and am at the top of a hill. Took the dogs out to pee and crytals like pretzel salt all over the railings. I am not a fan of snow, too many years in North Dakota where you die in it, and in Germany where snow at Christmastime is a mania; hearty yodelers, and icing on lebkuken like snowdrifts. It all blends into "you will slip and you will be cold." Note to self, if you live alone and you slip in the snowdrift, does anyone hear you? " What is the sound of one hand freezing? ha. This is not a mantra, it is not cool, and I do not really need a GPS to just walk the dogs, but it sure brings up paranoia. I had thought to run out an grocery shop for entertainment but no, think I will stay right here with cold dogs and be thankful for my nice little 934 square foot warm condo. Working the restaurant tomorrow; hmmm if it snows, will anyone come? How self absorbed is this!

night friday

its night, Friday and I have foraged through pumpkin soup with orzo, and some godawful tofu sausage just because I need some protein. My Russells ate better tonight. But it is dark, and dank, and I just want to crawl into bed and read. I do not know at all how the Inuit do not starve to death in the Arctic, In Oregon when it is the darkest part of the year, I just want to hunker down and do nothing. Hibernation makes sense. Sometimes I feel like I am a sailor, under the icepack in a sub for 6 weeks and only come up for air on the internet. So, I will figure out how to work this blog, and join the 25th century finally, now that all the civilized world has designed, posted, sold books and small countries on this phenomena. Off to sulk.

I hate technology

blogg...what in the hell is it? I am trying to post and as usual cannot figure out how to do this. but I will keep trying, and no, I do not want to capitalize things, just to post. is this worth it?