lezzet...my tastes

waiting for godot and the pie

2007-10-11T18:24:00.000-07:00

I am on hold. I am having a friend for dinner and waiting to hug, to say hi, to display the food, and to serve. And in service of my guest, a great amount of fun. Not late, just waiting. I love to cook for others, and slight myself when eating on the run, on my own, in the morning.

My mornings are spent at the last 5 minutes eating the oatmeal with vanilla on the bed as I sit, dressed for work, scanning the paper. I drink another cup of coffee, fill the commuter mug and head out the door.

I rarely sit down to actual dinner at home; last year I did daily, here or at my lover's home, we always had placemats, candles... My late mother in law always sat to dinner with same. I don't feel slighted, I just don't.

So it is a huge fun to come home early, cook, plan, set the table, set the candles and light them and play music to sing to while cooking. House cleaned up, at least the frontal part, the lobotomy is behind the closed doors.

Tonight I have made a tomato tart, tomatoes are in the last flush of summer, and I have been wanting to make this for some time. He loves cheese; is headed to Asia where cheese is non existant and so the tart. An ungodly amount of butter in the dough, and fat in the Emmentaller and Mozarella. Layered with overlapping coins of tomatoes, drizzled with olive oil and thyme, the tart now sits glistening with oil and oozing aroma into my kitchen. I have portabellos ready to saute, the wine chilled, the baby carrots fresh from the garden ready to nuke with cumin, and a light salad with rice wine vinagrette. No dessert.

so I sit. My usual companion when cooking, Leonard Cohen is on the music and I look out the window at the darkening night.

waiting.

waiting for things to happen, for things to be put on hold due to trips, but waiting and enjoying the anticipation. I wish I could have company every night, in fact, I would cook for my love like this every night. Would he show up?

nothing more to say

vampryic food

2007-09-26T16:57:00.000-07:00

Garlic.

Bulbous, papyrus-skinned, globes of garlie lie in my copper container on my kitchen counter. Vampire non-food.

For years I used to track down vampire literature, reveling in the seductive and repellant themes, especially during Halloween time. I read Dracula the classic by Stoker in college when working in a bookstore. The point was, I worked the night shift. After seven p.m. few came to buy books and my little store was across, dear reader, the alleyway from the main store. At nine when we closed I would shuttle the money bag back to the main store. Sure, I began to read about Vlad Dracul but by the middle of the book you have got to be kidding...now way was I going to finish it and walk across that alleyway. I finished it in the light on weekends.

But still, I love the stories and have collected them over time up to The Historian which had it all: Turkey, the Romanian connection, travel, sex, threat, and the vampires. I like to think of Ottoman Turks terrorized under the shadow of the Hagia Sophia by the bad, evil, vampires. It fits that region.

so back to garlic.

When I use garlic I cannot help but think of its association with DRacul. And, in a strange kitschy way I have a Turkish charm in my kitchen: faux garlic wrapped with blue evil eye beads. I like to think instead of the stake and cross that the evil eye and garlic would repel the undead.

But tonight I am cooking the dead, dead chicken. And for that matter: dead arugula, radishes, corn, and grapes. If you think of it, unless cannabal-like in a vegetarian way we stand in the garden and eat food still planted in the ground, we eat food of the dead. Not for the dead, but of the dead. It lies in its little crypt in my fridge waiting to be eaten. The chicken, chicken no more, is on its way to immortality, for a while, if to transpose Hamlet, " thus a chicken can go through the guts of a beggar to feed a king." All the food is dead before I cook it. Through cooking we have a rebirth, no stake through the chicken to keep it down.

My Tim Burton dinner is approaching garish associations, better stop. But I kind of like the idea anyway, a goth dinner, maybe with candles and black lace.

Back to garlic. I do love garlic and have said I would rather do without chocolate than garlic, onions, tomatoes and coffee. My mirepoix would suffer without garlic. My temper would remain if I could not smash the hell out of a clove of garlic with my chef knife. My home would never smell of baking cakes or cookies, I am not a sweet and comfy cook. But it does smell of garlic, immolated in great olive oil, throw in the onions, and pour on the wine to deglaze. I would rather cook garlic anyway.

There is no better gift to give a chef than food things and very sharp knives. I have in my covetous possession great, large, firm, garlic from Gilroy, the Mecca of garlic. Not this spurious "who raised it" garlic import from China. Not my dessicated and tortured garlic from the old back yard, suffocated by bad soil. No, this garlic is lush, plump, and redolent. Good gifts taste better than those foraged or bought.

So tonight I am making the famed 40 cloves of garlic chicken. Forty, count 'em, fourty cloves, denuded of their skins will rest inside a chicken. And it is no longer a food for the dead. GArlic brings things to life, it ressurects, it will perfume the chicken like frankensense on a mummy and create a great sauce when deglazed with some white Burgandy. I'll use some toasted garlic on the corn, and slivered garlic with French baby radishes in the arugula salad. I won't put essence of garlic on my breasts or pulsepoints but I will know that the home smells great. Opening, inviting, no garlic around the neck to repel some intimacy, and the sheer joy of planning the meal.

vanilla daze

2007-09-25T20:10:00.000-07:00

I love vanilla. It is calming, soothing, and better than a session on the couch to calm down. ( I mean as in Freud, not that kind of couch session, get over it.)

Lately I have been aware of the constant presence of vanilla in my home and cooking. I have vanilla scented candles and light them when I come home. During the summer I use lemon, or a green scent, but now that it is turning to fall, I turn to vanilla. The sweet, calming scent is perfect after a day where I must wear my public face as a teacher. I don't over do it, the scent is not everywhere in my home, just in that candle. Ever since I have moved into my home, I light large candles in the evening to provide a presence, light, and scent. They are my company in a way when dogs and humans are not here. My pantry is filled with former candle jars now serving as cannisters for dried pulses and rices.

I have vanilla lotion and it is a nightly ritual to slather it on before bed, and after showering in the morning. Whether it is my own touch on my skin or someone else's hands on me, I like to think that the scent of vanilla is a relaxing, slightly sensual and at the same time creates memories of childhood as I smooth it on.

There are several types of vanilla in my pantry: Madasgaster, Mexican, and one from Hawaii. I have beans, paste, and extracts. Actually, I didn't realize I had so much or use so much until I began to write. Vanilla goes in my smoothies in the morning, along with yogurt, bananas and some fruit. It flows into my steel cut oats, flavoring their al dente bite instead of sugar. I generally make the coffee, start the oats or the smoothie and then drink and eat as I finish my hair and make up before running out to the car. The smell of vanilla and the light tan it tints my breakfast is a constant. Trivia? Maybe, but this is my posting and I am into it. Vanilla starts and ends my day, whether on my skin or on my tongue.

I could write about nutmeg or cinnamon, other favorites, and in truth will someday. But tonight I want to celebrate vanilla. If we could, as we taste each other, taste like vanilla, it wouldn't be a bad thing. Comfortable without becoming cloying, reminiscent of desserts in the past without nostalgia, and evocative of nights ahead with smooth and perfumed skin, it is truly a gift of orchids. Better than any orchid corsage, I would rather have vanilla in my clevage, my breakfast, and my perfumes.

watched pots

2007-09-25T19:35:00.000-07:00

As the cliche goes, a watched pot doesn't boil. And I would add, over-watered herbs perish, a fridge that is opened too much grows toxic, and a waited for phone never rings. I must keep learning this lesson over and over.

So what is the difference between proactive smash the hell out of a piece of garlic and toss it in the grill compared to lightly bruising the thing and hoping it releases its fragrance? Between Calling first, or initiating the dance verses waiting for the guy to be well, manly, or ask you to dance. Or to do whatever.

Much is made of taking time and letting flavors develop. We marinate, macerate, brine, pickle, make ahead, and slow cook. Daubes, stews, casseroles all depend upon a slow marrying of flavors, bringing the heat up, and letting them simmer in their covered juices. Not much different from how relationships work. In the old days.

Darwin-like we have speeded up many things, we cook with microwaves, at a cosmic speed of light, race through drive through Starbuck's, and pour the smoothie into the travel mug. Two dates, the kiss, the bed. Three dates and it is over. Well, not always, but hold on here! Just slow down, and let the flavors mellow.

But do we have time? Peak oil, peak experiences, past experiences, and the french knife is heading to our lifeline, the thread ready to be cut. AT this point in life, should we wait? Why do we? Can we blend somehow a quick prep and preheat in the microwave of existence so we can then mingle, blend, and season our relationships over what time is left? Can we be both fast food and an eight course dinner delivered over hours with bottles of champagne?

I have no idea. I am just playing, laying, with this idea. I want both. I want it now, the fast food, the quick saute, the immediate thaw, and satiation by the time the oven is cool and the CD is through with its set. And, I want the full on Sunday afternoon tete a tete, oven heating, a great coq au vin simmering, wine chilling, wine breathing, and whip cream ready to layer on the dessert. I want fast hands, slow embraces, quick step dance and langorous stretches.

I want a microwave life in a rustic chateau, dripping with antiquity, cellars, and old world slowness. Taking time to work over an old table preparing food for someone I love, I use my old crystal, hundred year old silver, and new spices.

So you, if you are reading this out there, be both so I can be both. The paradox of modern life is I am not alone in this wish, and pinpoints of light are out there as maybe, someone is reading this. But we are everywhere, Darwin was wrong folks, we want it slow, it is the century which has sped up. And how do we find eath other, writing in our chateaus, our back rooms, our internet illusion?

slow food, slow love, a lifetime in the what may be, fewer years ahead than behind me. Hell. They had best be full on years, I have wasted enough.

salsas

2007-09-19T17:57:00.000-07:00

hot hotter hottest.

the declension of heat. I have been reading about salsas, including those made with chipotles, smoky and elusive, with avocados and corn, smooth and chalky in their formation, with green tomatillos, bitter, grassy with some heat of habineros. All are vibrant cousins, and an over the top flavors compared to the jars and tubs of salsa made some time yesterday.

I understand, in the mythology of food which has run rampant, that salsas are running ahead of ketchup in sales. Ketchup, the puree of tomatoes, with salt and vinegar a red line staple on top of hot dogs is being replaced by chunky tomatoes with chilis in some form on top of a taco, eggs, steak, shrimp, even grilled fish. Paired with fruit, mango salsa is a dynamo over pork, mixed with jalepenos, a puree infusion of salsa was a flavor in a martini I had recently.

Salsa dancing is a new fave, I have tried, not successfully, to learn. But the name! Salsa meaning: hot, choppy, bringing up heat, a condiment to the feet and the music as it were, to dancing. Waltzes, now maybe they are the ketchup of dance. And Tango is the mustard, to extend the spurious metaphor. But salsa implies that I can mix and match what I want for the beat, as long as I follow a recipe in a way: one part heat, one part texture, two parts fruit or acid. Dancing: one part sex, hip to hip, or gyrate in pairs, one part pattern of the feet in unison mirror-like: he goes forward, she goes back; and two parts sweaty bodies moving as fast as you can to the increasingly hot beat of the drums.

No wonder that both are popular. Salsa the condiment adds a topping, a frisson of flavor on top of germane foods. It invokes the other, the non Protestant, non traditional, back street world that is not European, not Anglo, and much, in fact, a hell of a lot more fun. We need more fun in our lives. Live a little. Forget the low salt, non carb, organic ketchup. Toss the environmentally appropriate companion planted mustard seed and dijion jar. Go for the home made, mortar ground tomatoes with hot and hotter chilies and for the hell of it throw in limes, onions, and cilantro. Why not? live a little and for salt content; get over it.

As for the dancing: a slight reversal. I grew up in the 70'80's do what you want on the floor dirty dancing style. Gyrate, move over, around, and through your partner and move in your own space. but Salsa demands working as a team, with the woman responsive to the pressure of a man's hand to move in the direction he wants. It is damn sexy to watch and harder to learn. I can't just go where I want, I have to wait, and follow, and then surrender to the hand. And until I get it, I only get asked once by the men as they figure out I am not really in synch. But I will keep trying as the lure of the paired sexuality is just so great. And the humbling of rejection of only being asked once is a good learning point. Sort of.

I am still the ketchup to their salsa, damn. But my heart is there, my moves are catching up, the heat is, and always has been there for the dance. Just a few more lessons.

Off to grind tomatoes and prep the peppers as I listen to the music.

Orientalism

2007-08-15T18:57:00.000-07:00

I am not an Orientalist. This, according to Bernard Lewis, is a person who fantizes about the Middle East, the exotic Orient, the desert, the Sheik.

Well, then I am an Orientalist. I shimmy when I hear the oud, I writhe and do a subtle shake when I hear the saz and the music of the Mideast.

I would rather have olives, tomatoes, cheese and yogurt than eggs and stupid pastries for breakfast. I would rather hear melodies from a campfire and Bedouin tents than rock music, I would rather have raki than bourbon. I would rather have a sheik in my bed than some pasty faced northerner with freckles.

So there.

I loved Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia, I remember the 50's movie The Egyptian more than other movies of the time, I remember walking the souk of Izmir with my Mom buying shisk kebab over a bbq in the suburbs. My life growing up centered around the dancing bears on the street five floors below, hearing the minaret calls at sunset, knowing that my neighbors were Turks and were lovely, exotic, and life friends. I grew up with trips to Ephesus, pocketing mosaic fragments, learning archaeology, and coming home to foods which 50's kids did not know in middle America military base.

And, I am a proud American at the same time. Proud in the base commissary way, with imported Spam, fishsticks, Russian dressing, cheeze whiz, all the foods of the maligned 50's. I don't think of these foods this way as we lurched into a modern, world view of foods long before Chez Panisse and California rocketed onto the food scene in the eitghties.These foods were home in a world of kofte, domades and izgara. I was a hybrid: cheeze triangles and kofte with fishsticks and chicken pot pies. Imported celery from Italy for my parent's cockatil parties, and pistachioes staining our fingers red as we cracked the seeds and dropped them on the gypsy's bears five stories below.

It this Orientialism, the romantizing of the " other; the "sheik" with kohl-rimmed eyes and the swooning blonde, so be it. This is how I grew up. I grew up with fishsticks and handfulls of nuts on the street. I grew up with a maid from a village who after pulling us on towels to polish the marble would make us pistachio sweets with honey. After the Spam for dinner we would have lokum the sticky delight clinging our fingers. I credit my parents for not making it 'the other' but makinig it our oppoortunity, our chance to try other foods and culture. I ate goat cheese, stuffed mussles, cheese triangles, coconut on the slice, juice and tea on the street and through the gift of my parents' indulgence and openness, an appreciation of the culture.

To the point that I don't feel here. I don't feel anywhere. I feel a tug, a drumbeat of the Orient, and sitting here I am playing Sahara Lounge music. I would rather hear an oud than a drumset. (Except Cowboy music but that is another event. )II wiggle, I think of pistachoes, I want some raki, I remember Turkish delight. And I am thankful that my parents encouraged me to be an Orientalist before it became a non-political apporporiate word.

Put on the Turkish coffee, put out the blue beads for guests. Cook the chicken with yogurt and mint, prepare the lamb with cinnamon and couscous. Play the music, scent the air with cardamon. Use henna on your hands, on your feet, wiggle your hips and be full figured. Toast the almonds and pour the anise liqueur. Think desert tents, indulgence, survival, and yes, seduction. I am thankful for the past, a part which is now part of my being.

shoe shopping

2007-08-04T21:15:00.000-07:00

Cinderella has the glass slipper, and in these days it is probably recycled. Made from a melted Smirnoff bottle, or a 7-up, good for her. Or, it is made from recycled plastic water bottles, with a sustainable cork lining, and a top of ecologically raised, non-poluting, and naturally dyed cotton woven by a women's cooperative in the dark side of the moon. It is stamped in European sizes, ( 30) and U.S. ( 6) and sold in a high end store which reduces its carbon footprint by recycling the boxes printed in soy ink, and planting a tree each time they sell non-leather. Made in China.

I digress, but that was fun. There sre sooo many choices these days when shopping. I considered once having each student read the countries on the labels of their clothing and put up push pins on a world map where things are made. In military exchanges, the signs used to say Buy American but I don't think that would be possible anymore.

I am fascinated with where things are made. And the designs, and potential. I have shoe lust but my feet say, " Be practical, you are all beat up after years on concrete on your feet, and stilettos don't go through the security anymore."

I would love high shoes, red patent and a slinky dress. And,I want more, the thin Italian sandals with jewels on them that scream Firenza. And high boots, cowboy ones tooled and glistening in rich cinnamon leather, just the ones to go with black jeans. And flats with t-straps for the sundress. And lots and lots of clogs to look cheffy in my new chef coat. And topsiders, saying we are so darn rich we don't need socks as we jump onto our yacht. And converse, maybe in tourquoise just because one time I was a studio art major. And spectators, with tan and white when I feel retro. And hurraches, and espadrilles, and Indian slip ons, and velveteen embroidered slides from Venice.

What is it about shoes? I think it is the desire to do something about feet, when other parts of our body just don't cooperate. Too high, too much bust, a thin waist, freckles, sometimes our clothing just has to fit, to be practical etc, etc. I am contradicting myself, but shoes can work. Even with high arches, impossible toes, and
foot gear that makes it look like medieval torture in my shower, I find shoes that are fun.

One must always have red shoes. I have four pair. Each year I cul, I throw away, and move on. But I always have red shoes. And, I have a pair of silly pointed pink slides with embroidery that I got in Panama and love to take out. I like the contrast with jeans, or crops. And for the sandals I can wear, red toenail polish.

Men just don't have any fun with shoes. The daring may try European sandals, and in Eugene just about every other person is schlepping around in outdoor shoes, or rafters, tevas, something that allows them at a stopwatch minute's notice, to run the 20 K.

I refuse to wear my hiking shoes around town, I look like Minnie Mouse on patrol. No big "trainers" for me, I prefer my summer ones of cross strap with white leather that looks like it was painted by Jackson Pollock's sister. And for fall, same in ochre suede with blue dots. It may be lurching to resort wear though, can the spangled sweats be far behind?

I think not, and have the true work shoes. I really do. I have the chef clogs, and the new German version. Not Doc Martins, but they do in the Kitchen. And I have the school shoes, the date shoes, and the walking the dog shoes from Land's End.

And, I try to wear shoes in the kitchen; I dropped a new tart pan on my foot about 11 pm one night trying to finish a dessert. The blood was the color of the plums, I went pale and had to sit down. Then I put on shoes and made the dessert all over again. Now I am shoeless in the kitchen if I am cooking for someone and hope I look fetchingly casual. It doesn't always work, but worth trying.

No glass slipper, no Prince Charming running after me with his hand out holding the Waterford size 6. Shoes at the door, shoe in, walk in someone's shoes, put yourself in other's shoes, shoe-fly come bother me. It is all fun, and lightly sandaled until the cold of winter and boots become the story. Another day for that.

mezzes

2007-08-04T09:27:00.001-07:00

Mezzes, or appetizers, tappas, antipasto, all are introductory dishes. These are to whet the appetite, to build anticipation for the meal, and test creativeness of the chef. They usually accompany a light liqueur, drink, and bowls of nuts. Turkish tradition has mezzes as the raki plate, a meal to accompany the no holds barred hi proof anise liqueur.

I have been making mezze lately. I had a friend over last night and figured that food; protein would be needed after a long day and anticipation of a longer musical viewing night. A little sliced rare beef, toasted almonds, Romano, tomatoes, garden carrots; a support system for hunger with a little grazing and crunching. Work off stress at the end of the day gnashing and noshing. And my way to show hospitality, caring and 'my tent is yours' in my world. I greet, I feed, and I always meet people arriving at my home at the door, and see them to it when they leave. Appetizers are greeting food, they show I choose them now, and care.

Last week I made another platter for houseguests. It included breasola, the air cured beef of Italy. Dried, but pliable sliced parchment thin, it is not jerky. It is dark burgundy, the color of blood, lust and beef. Drizzled with olive oil, a squeeze of lemon and some crystals of Kosher salt, it is visceral on the palate. I had also: radishes with olive oil and roasted cumin, fresh dug carrots with nutmeg, thin-sliced Reggiano with its salty contrast to the bowls of cherry tomatoes, little round worlds of seeds and red flesh. We included firm Kalamata olives, not the wimpy, mushy, cheap ones from the olive bar, but from a glorious can from the Peleponnese. The next day we went back and bought three more cans, a point noted by the purchaser, a Turk. “I guess we can agree that Turks and Greeks make good olives, " he said wryly.

As mezzes go they are a way for the chef to show creativity. Not limited to some signature dish of protein with starch side such as pork chop with mashed potatoes, an appetizer or tappas is creative, free form and a place to try an idea. For Mediterranean cultures it is a culture in itself, one can troll up and down a street in Madrid or Istanbul and graze on small plates. There are specific mezze or tappas dishes.

I am relatively easy I think, although my former loves and husbands might think not. I welcome all into my home and love to feed them. But when I order out I rarely order the entree. I prefer the appetizers, order two for my meal. They are more creative; I am seduced by adjectives: caramelized, glazed, and nouns: ginger, pomegranate, roasted fig, olive....I drool. I anticipate and forget even looking at the entree. I guess then, that I am high maintenance in this respect.

I don't want to be the entree with the same starchy side night after night. I have been twice NOT someone's entree. Perhaps at this point in my life and the lives of friends and loves I have, that entree is not all it is cracked up to be. Or sautéed, or roasted...it is instead about the introduction, the chase, the anticipation, the roll on the tongue mixing of flavors and unusual combinations. Forget waiting for dessert after slogging through the mashed potatoes, have the appetizers, they are dessert with protein. Put muscle, not sugar behind your creativity. As Auntie Mame said, “Life is a banquet and some poor fools are starving to death."

Life is short, pour the Prosecco, plate the olives, slice the cheese and present. Drizzle my stories with rich oil, plate my words in arrangements that are pleasing, savor them with scent and originality, and lick your fingers, suck the olives. Make my, your, own menu and forget entrees. If entrees follow, then they will, but maybe the anticipation will fill the hunger now without pedestrianism.

Campari girl

2007-07-26T13:51:00.000-07:00

I love bitter things, Angostura, Cynar,Pimms Cup, the bitter taste of herbs, astringency of grapefruit in the morning and now Campari. As with all things, too much is too much, and this is the zen karma balance of food. ( Mixing religious metaphors aside) Too sweet and it is cloying. Too sour and pucker up. Too chared and the free radicals of carbon will date you. And, too bitter will deny any nuance.

However, this holds true with my sensibility of things; when wildly sentimental, I am also slightly cryptic, when wearing bright colors I tend to add a neutral, when in a wild no holds barred full on romance there is a part of me which is cynical. So also my perfumes. Not for me the cloying scent of insence, amber, rose or lily. No girly things like that. Black bra under the pink top, Leather with lace, and my perfumes tend to the androgynous. I used to wear 4711, herbaceous, with lime, now a scent developed in the 1920's for the jet set marketed as "worn by Cary Grant AND Ava Gardner". It is tart, herbal, slighly floral, and crisp.

Maybe I protest too much and it will take the right guy to find that inner rose. None have gotton it yet, and tough gal that I try to be, the military kid, I keep a stiff upper lip and put on the scent, the careful balance of clothes and crispness. I put on internal chain mail with the crisp smoke of sandlewood perfume, and go into the kitchen. It would be nice to discover that rose, damask'd and subtle. But, I wait.

So I have discovered Campari. I like Scotch, neat, with the layered flavors of smoke, maple and wood. Campari works in the same way. It is terrifically astringent, tight, bitter, and on the tongue very light. Paired with soda water, or Pelegrino over ice it is much better to me than a cold beer on a hot day. And, it appeals to my snobby food side, just like my perfumes. Mixed with other liqueur it becomes the Negroni, the Italian cocktail. Mixed with grapefruit juice it is a double whammy of sharpness, a two punck kick of tart and tight, just right.

I detest the drinks that have things in them. Small umbrellas, cherries, whole spears of fruit or celery, ice that bangs against my teeth, none of these have a place in my glass. I do not want to collect charms, play with the umbrella or eat the lime. I don't want to circumnavigate my glass following the salt. Although, I do like salt on my wrist, a lime and tequilla. I do like a martini if it is sharp, say made with cucumber or pomegranete. See, again no sugar.

When I was painting murals, in college I had a job creating whole walls in the bar. I would go in during the day, lights up and paint the alpine village. And, raid the olives and martini onions. These are ok, not in drinks but by them, along with Kalmata olives and almonds toasted with rosemary and salt. As for the maraschino cherries, only with stems. I can, with my tongue, tie the stem into a knot in under a minute, less if not laughing. A talent for another time, my whole family can do this, something about genes and tongue rolling.

Campari to me also creates in my imagination a drive down the hills to Monaco, in a Ferrari, red of course, and a light chiffon scarf around my Princess Grace hair, pulling into the casino where James Bond will order his martini before saving the world from thugs. I can dream. It reminds me of horizontal striped black and white fisherman's tops, black crops and espadrilles. It makes me want a scooter to run up to Triest on. I dream of 1935 and want to meet Ava Gardner. We wear the same scent.

So, in the middle age of summer, at the height of the day waiting for friends from the Eastern Mediterranean, I am chilling the glasses and getting ready. The olives are out, the almonds are toasting, and my bitter is on the way to a sweet afternoon.

Sam I am

2007-07-24T23:25:00.000-07:00

I do not like my eggs with ham, I do not like my ham with Sam, I do not like Sam.
I don't like eggs.

I am in egg hell. I work for the summers in a restaurant and eggs rule. I mix eggs with cream, whisk the hell out of the yolks with a blender and scrambled eggs they are. But over easy, sunny side up. poached, all these ova are sightly squishy, gooey, and icky. Coagulated on the spoon, sticking to the pan, shells in the garbage reeking of discarded calcium, I don't like eggs.

Childhood traumas. Humpty Dumpty eggs. According to the rhyme H.D. had a big fall, the fall, and the king's horses ( who must have had thumbs and tools) and the king's men (who were not guarding H.D.) couldn't put him together again.

Sounds like a political strategy. In my day though Humpty Dumpty eggs meant break eggs over toast and let the icky, yellow yolk goo and glue all over the little toast soldiers. We were not fooled. It is icky, it is sticky, and eggs suck; or you can suck eggs.

So I am not a fan, of the ova, the pre-baby bird, the chicken-interuptus, the DNA that wasn't. And salmonella, Caesar's dressing, the whisking into carbonarra, all are not my choice.

It is not about raw. I can gleefully scarf down sashimi tuna, yellow tail, beef carpaccio which still says moo, and beef which ran by the grill. Eggs just remind me as they coagulate of yellow blood, of Elmer's glue gone bad, and cement.

So what am I doing this summer? eggs. That's right, I get to cook them for those who still think that undeveloped chicken proteins are just dandy.

My friend once married to a Russian tells me that his ex-wife and daughter, children of Stalin's privations, would eat the soft boiled eggs, sucking them, and then in a crackling, crunching display of carnivorous delight, crunch the eggshells for the calcium. Here cowboys use eggs to settle the grounds. Stalin to home on the range, but not on my range.

How to close? No eggs, thank you Sam. Not for eggs Sam I am, I will not have them cold, I will not have them boiled, I will not have them scrambled, I will not have them trampled. You go for it, I will rather have a steak. Raw.

Wine tasting in airports

2007-07-24T23:07:00.000-07:00

Ok, this is not about wine. It is about the chance to taste wine in a new setting. It is about eating alone, or drinking alone and feeling ok about it. A recurring theme of my postings is doing things on my own. I would prefer, social and sexual creature that I am, to do things with someone. Eating, sex, shopping, cooking, you name it, all are better to me, with someone else, although each and every activity could be accomplished alone.

But here I was, in a hotel room getting ready to travel the next god-awful early morning to Montana. The room: cheap; the restaurant nearby: with karaoke, and I am sure god awful clams, after all it was names Steamers. The environs: near the airport, not a place to walk.

So I had a bright, no, nifty idea. I would have the hotel take me with their free van to the airport. Why not? Airports are full of shopping, and good food and interesting people to look at. Who in the world travels like this, I would ask, and watch the crowds. The alternative, a granola bar and the hotel TV. No contest.

I called the van and headed over to Portland International Airport. fun. sushi bar, Powell's books, travel store, chi chi stationery stores, and if I only could with a visa, the tempting wish to line up and book a trip to Istanbul. right now, here, with just what I have on. I would love it.

but I didn't.
damn.

What I did to is look at the stores. And because book buying money does not count, got a book at Powell's, the largest independent bookstore in the free world. It was all about the palest rose' and I could vicariously imagine a world where I could roam free for a year looking for a wine. Yeah right.

From there I went to the wine bar. Wine bars are sissy saloons. A woman in a bar bellying up to a Glenlivet looks like a drunk, or a harlot, or out of place. A woman in a wine bar looks like a cognoscenti, a gourmand, or a mini drunk. I asked for the pinot flight, and forgot that it was red. I hate red. I meant pinot blanc. But snobby gal that I am, plus mixed with not admitting a mistake, sipped the four reds for a while. At least since I don't like reds I sipped, I would probably be done with whites in four gulps. I looked at the Wine Spectator and wondered why I couldn't have a column in it l Ike the man I know who does. I showed my Rose' book to the steward.

It was cool, slightly Parisian as far as a Parisian could be in the Portland airport and time for dinner.

New venue, a potato with fixings at Wendy's. Right, just not up to the cost of the restaurant near wine bar guy.

Called the van, home again jiggity jig, and off to bed. The ether of alternative life, the life of an airport is odd, surreal, isolated, and still with potential. Like a time release drug, you can pretend you are traveling before you do, be safe in its federally protected walls, and get your chauffeur to pick you up. Not a bad deal in these Mad Max go to hell Peak Oil days.

company dinners

2007-07-24T22:54:00.000-07:00

I am having company in two days. I love company. I like that I can pull out the dishes, cook all afternoon, which then means I play music of my choosing very loud and sing as I cook, sometimes barefoot Sometimes with fewer clothes, if I can't live alone and decide about clothing why the hell not?

I will play cowboy music. I just came back from Montana and have been playing music about dying cowboys, broke cowboys, starving cowboys and love sick cowboys. Great. The cowboys should suffer, and I like the music with all its Gene Autrey twang, no jails, jilting or joking, just the range, the cows, and the horse. Get along.

I am getting along although as per usual I am slightly cranky, this is a result of trying to line up evenings and here I am here, alone. No music, no people to cook for and I don't like it. Hell, I have to entice my daughter and her handsome boyfriend to come eat. Having the dogs to cook for thanks to Chinese polluted wheat is a poor excuse I gladly gather to my bosom. I get to cook for someone not me.

So, the Turkish man and his wife arrive in two days. My best friends. Turkish man means black tea, bread, cheese and olives. Best girlfriend means lots of coffee, creamer and Riesling. And making grandma's spaghetti, a tradition.

Wat is it about company dinners that I cook better for someone here than by myself? I want to celebrate them, enjoy and think about what they would like best. No pork for the Muslim, no wheat for the intolerant, and less spice. But this is not a discrepancy, it is not an injustice to the recipe. It is for friends, it is for those I love and even in a bad comparison about cooking fresh for my dogs, it is because I love them.

September looms, and I may be living off my freezer, but I don't want my friends to know a thing. When they are here all is for them, and I want to do my best. Someday if they live in town they can have the leftovers, the unmade beds, and the over cooked coffee. Right now, it is a privilege to have them in my home and my tent is theirs.

oysters

2007-07-05T23:47:00.000-07:00

So, last Sunday, I went to an oyster fest.
It was after a packing frenzy of a friend's house, and I didn't want to do, but I did. In otehrwords, I wanted to go home, sweaty and tired after moving boxes, but hating to miss any sort of social event and go back home.

So I went.
And it got me thinking about oysters.

I first found out about oysters in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1962, one year before JFK. As a military kid, I measure my memories in bases, world events, and geography. Rarely personal, few life time friends, little tie in to holidays, mostly where we were and what grade we were in.

I was in 8th grade and Biloxi was segregated, Southern, and in the path of the tornadoes. We were on base, but on a military segregration the officers lived on one side and the enlisted on the other side. We went to school off base, on base we all mixed. Our own segregation was by rank. A bus took us from our school off base to the other. The white bus picked me up at my white school the black kids bus picked then up at theirs. And they dropped the kids off on the right side of the base.
One day, I was not paying attention and got on the bus. When I looked around, all the kids had been dropped off and I realized I had gotten on the enlisted white kids bus and they were all gone. The bus driver said no problem this coming bus will take you to your side of the base. It was all black kids. On base, no problem. BUt as I got off the white kids enlisted bus and got onto the black kids officer bus, the few remaining white kids who were going home off base jeered and chanted. I rode in the front of the bus until I got to my side of the base and got off. I was raised to not discriminate and knew that in Mississippi at 8th grade the integration was year by year, and had only worked to the 3rd grade that year. But this introduction to a glimpse of what it might feel like to be on the other side, the wrong color, the wrong bus was searing and affects me still.

what does this have to do with oysters?

Off base there were clubs and we would pass them with my parents. One officer, a favorite friend, and a southern boy, took my Dad to a club. You could join for $5 which really meant you could join if you were white. There, one could eat all the oysters they wanted for $5. I often felt that the piles of oysters around the tree trunks outside the restaurant were labels of whiteness and somewhat tainted.

From Biloxi we moved to West Germany and then for me, to California and college. Oysters disappeared until 1972 when I went to Seattle to apply to grad school. My future husband met me, took me to interviews and then we went out to eat. I was amazed that it was still light out at 9 pm. We ordered seafood and out came the Oysters Rockerfeller. All gushy, gray, and sliding in their shells, topped with chopped spinach. I gamely downed then and moved on. I moved into grad school, marriage, moving, and motherhood. shells inclucated, I became a pearl, immersed inthe life of my life, absent from any irritants until he wanted a home, child and divorce in that order.

Shells open, he left and I was a mom, a homesteader, an artist, and single in that order. Exposed in the hot sun of divorce, I lost my well, re drilled it, kept the home, kept my friends, raised my baby and moved on. I took care of it all building a nacre of a pearl around me to survive. I finally after one year, and the legal document felt I could date. I did, I have always pushed myself into new arenas as needed: advertising, new home, building, fertility clinics and childbirth, motherhood and well buidling...I am strong and can do it. so, it was time to date. And, that I pushed just like a job. So, here I was in the bar at the athletic club, and having champagne and sliding oysters down my throat and laughing and all of a momemt I realized, " I am having fun. I will survive." I did, the boyfriend ended, but I began to begin again. And I discovered I was good at, and loved cooking.

Oysters, more of them over the years then they dropped off. I must pay attention to these small symbolic gestures. The marriage was waning but I didn't realize it until the cul de sac of living was breached by non-ommittment and slovenly attitudes. My nice tight little shells, my oyster world was drying up, and I didn't realize it, like the shellfish happily in the pot, slowly dying as the water heated up, to burst their shells and die. LIke a knife jamming in the hinge, it pierced my small soft wet oyster heart and twisted upright, opening the shell to the elements. I was sliding off the shell into the heat, unto the mouth, into the gullet of dis-efranchisement. And died.

So, now what? Once again, though not in a bar, one year later, I was in Seattle with foodie friends and gathered around the oyster bar, We were happy, I was happy, we were cheerily slurping oysters into our own gullets and the briny softness was bracing, it was alive, it was food, it was sex. The lips of the oyster shells beckoned with hidden treasures. The folilate edges of the oysters glistened, moist with their own juices and salt, briny, fresh living tastes. They invoked life, sexuality, and freedom, not the death I remembered. They tasted like our own taste, we all came and come, from the sea. They slid down my throat like so many things, and we were happy. Oysters were back.

so, in the back yard of a friend, ex-lover and still friend, we both hid behind the grill making oysters for the non aware friends. He forgot it was the athletic club that we had had oysters 20 years ago. I didn't remind him. We passed oysters until all got thirds. I scavenged the mussles on the outside of the shells, and placing them on the open shells, grilled them also, a by product of the oysters. Once more we slurped and loved the chance to sieze the moment, find food, nurture ourselves and cut into the secret world of the sea.

Oyster like, I am choosing to open my own folliate shell and soft edges to those I would choose myself. No hard knife is needed, but the heat, the steam, to open the inner world. And, sliding down the gullet of life, of temporal love, into another stage of my life. No longer segregated, no price of admission but my own awareness and consent.

can't dance, don't make me

2007-06-30T00:19:00.000-07:00

Well, I can dance, I love it. I loved dancing in the kitchen last year, and when I first married we used to dance. We stopped, or he did, and then I couldn't. Common event. Tonight however, I wanted to go hear some salsa dancing and tried one after another, calls to see if anyone would join me. I felt like the kid on roto dial working his way down the list looking for a prom date. All were busy in one form or another. Then what, stay home because I was alone, thereby reinforcing aloneness? Or go out. And plan safe parking, putting myself in a fun environment so I would not stay home again. I finally did it. I have had conversations the last two days with friends who go to movies alone when they do not have someone to go with and I admired the event. I travel alone, usually on business, and shop alone, but would rather have someone to share the event with. But I have done it, flying alone to India, Turkey, all over the U.S. So what is the big deal about going out alone? My friend last night said, " When the lights are down, you are still alone in the movie theater, who cares?" I do. I want a hand to grab in the dark, someone to laugh with and cringe behind in the scary scenes. And to finger fumble with as we both reach for the popcorn. And tonight, it would have been good to have someone to walk onto the dance floor with to samba. Not that it mattered, because people were dancing alone, but I just can't. I would rather have someone to react to. Yet, I do want to take samba lessons and just may have to, like tonight, go on my own. Years ago, I took myself to rock climbing lessons alone and met my husband. I find that when I start being forthright about myself I do much better and so am glad I went out tonight. I had the chance to not be alone last night but it wasn't the right time, wish it had been tonight. None of this has to do with food, or Turkey, it is not witty, a rant, or swearing, just a record. I went, I listened , I didn't samba. Sort of I smoked, but didn't innhale, I lusted only in my heart, and I danced only inside my shoes. Next time. baby steps, baby dance.

life cartography

2007-06-15T22:31:00.000-07:00

I love maps, I love globes. I have one in my classroom which is archaic, with West and East Germany on it, the Soviet Union is gigantic, and the Middle East is relatively un-partitioned. The colors are wonderful and I spin it off its axis to look at Turkey more closely. A teacher threw it away because the paper had worn off over Nebraska. Personally, I don't think that is too much of a loss.

At the back of my classroom is another map which to some students is 'upside down" Rather than the white guys on top and Europe USA rules, Australia is on top, and Norway is clear down at the bottom of the paper. Kids complain. "That's wrong.!" My Australian math colleague loves it. " Right on , good on you mate, Tasmania rules!" I get all pontific and point out that the Earth is a sphere, there is no top of bottom. But mostly I am pleased it irritates them, which means they notice.

It is interesting, the concept of being on top. Top of the fold, top of the peak, on top, top to bottom, all due to maps.

Yet, much as I love the beauty of maps, old ones, worn out ones, I am terrible at navigating. I have spent part of today printing out mapquest to go with my AAA maps for a trip to the Redwoods next week. I am compuslively writing the road signs in letters large enough to read while driving. And making sure I have fuel along the way. Of course I do, but I fuel up often, it makes me nervous. And, considering a magnifying glass to read the damn thing when driving. North to me is always straight ahead, I get left and right constantly confused, and if a house changes its color my directions to my home are defunct. If told, "Head north turn south two blocks," I do it in reverse and I might as well go to perdition. I tore the map pages out of a guidebook in Boston once and had to literally turn it right to left ad I followed the freedom trail.I was not free, I was lost. Really, it is pathetic.

If I walk on the beach I must make sure I know exactly where I came in over the dunes. When I lived on the edge of the forest, no Hansel, there were no breadcrumbs and I didn't venture far. One of my friends wants me to join her this summer by meeting her at a campsite when she is horsecamping. All I could think of ws, " how do I find the campsite?" I imagine myself lost, dying by the side of the road while the horses are just upstream. I am not kidding.

Really, this must stop. I need an orienteering class. I need to pay more attention at the beginning so I am not lost in the woods. It is holding me back.

And therefore, is the metaphor I am finding each time I write something, although I am not writing about food today. I need to pay more attention at the beginning of a conversation, meeting, relationship, date, sex, to any incipient warnings that I might lose my way. Too often posing a look of attention ON my face, I forget to pay attention IN my head. And then halfway through with many cul de sacs and sideturns and backturning of the conversation, the date, the escapade, I am lost.

There is no compass for the date. There is no prime meridian for the heart. And there is no mapquest for love, life, or travels. But, if I continue to stay on the path who knows what might be off the road. It is not Frost's The Road Not Taken, it is more the road that is off road, unpaved, worth taking, or even unmade. I have stayed on the road of caution much too long. I want a sign that says, " the road to serendipity! turn here. now. " I must remember this while juggling all the many opportunities this summer.

Now,do I pack more water for the trip or coffee? Another story.

translucency

2007-05-28T21:59:00.000-07:00

Translucency means to see slightly through, like wax paper, ice, and frosted glass. I am to saute onions until translucent, make jelly which is translucent, and melt butter until the bottom of the pan slightly shows through. The onions should change a bit, from opaque white or red to a waxy color which shows light through. Ice allows light to pass through, but is not transparent until it is no longer ice, but water. Frosted glass is permanent, harsh action of chemicals or sanding keeps it forever in that state.

We are told to be transparent, to be open with our feelings and emotions in relationships. Financial accountants prove transparency when audits happen. Transparency is needed for glass, for honesty, for emotions, and emotional bonding.Or is it?

I have used parchment paper, and drafting paper to trace lines from logos in my graphic design work. The advantage of parchment is its high quality, ability to erase, and yet reveal the darker lines of the sketch underneath. And, some of my past drawings have layers upon layers of parchment on them, with subtle changes as I worked through my design. I can keep track of my work, rather than erase, I can build upon changes. Pentimento is the term for the regret, which an artist or writer has when one erases too much yet the ghost of the lines are still there. I like layers rather than erasing.

I have found recently that relationships I have been in are layers of parchment. The older have faded certainly, it is only in the flip book of review that I see my first self. And recent loves are fading as potentials, friends, and futures begin to layer my memories. The terrible longing and sadness is being replaced with a wry humor, a sense of melancholy of regret, and a beginning return to some happiness. But I don't think I will be ever truly happy, just as Jane Eyre said, " We will work hard and we will be content." I hope I am wrong, but this is my state right now.

In cooking, translucency is a desired state, and needs little explaining. The onions for example, are either raw; opaque, or translucent, or cooked until browned and caramelilzed. I love sauting onions and don't even think about the term translucent anymore, and must remember to put it into recipes when I write them for the public.

But, is transparency a true state for relationships? Should we reveal everything? At what point? I like translucency, with the ability to peel back a bit at a time to the underpinnings, to the first sketch of myself, at a time I choose. But here's the care, if I try to change too much, or build upon layers of the relationship I might even forget myself in the cause. I may become hidden under several layers of parchment. So, it is a paradox, reveal just enough, keep hidden what is needed, and don't lose your way. I don't want to melt, and I do not want to be so sanded that I stay forever translucent. I just want the choice, and to remember to be my own recipe.

And someone to rip the pages off to the bone.

lawyers no way, I need a mechanic! Mad Max indeed

2007-05-27T12:10:00.000-07:00

In my upcoming,now,not next life, I will again like a little pack of covered wagons gather my friends around me. And I them.

What can I bring to the table, smarts, grace, good cooking, for the right person love and all its not friends with benefits but more, and ability to decorate, improvise, and use tools. For the women, whatever they need as my friends. For the men, I need skills: how to fix things I cannot, how to build fires, provide the more than friends benefits and be stand in brothers as mine are far away. And I need a mechanic. Really. I don't need a lawyer, I may need to know doctors, wait, I have one, but I certainly need a mechanic. Someone who can open the hood and tell me more than what I can figure out which is a reasonable amount.

In the old west or medieval times your horse was either ridden or lame. live or dead. fed or not. Now, I am driving a small computer on wheels and I just do not get what to do. My first car, a Pinto, seems dead simple to me; I could even find all the parts. But the damn check engine light came on again today as I was headed up into the mountains to meet a friend. It did this last week and I spend cash I had saved getting it fixed.

I hate like hell to inconvenience anyone, preferring taxis or leaving my car to pick ups at the airports unless I am convinced they truly want to do that. I try to take care of myself unless as I have said, I truly trust that they don't mind. I would do anything for anyone, but I hate to ask for help. Over the last year I learned to do that, to point out what I couldn't do for what I could. I deeply appreciate friends who come help me with my computer, my video, my plumbing, other things I don't know. And I feed them, and do what I can for pay back from my collective circled wagons of knowledge.

But I have two triggers I cannot control which scare me, one financial, and the other, car engines. I am getting better on the first, and the second trying to remind myself I am not dying, I simply have an engine light on. Years ago traveling in Scotland the BMW light came on and I was terrified for hours; riding with my father in law, and husband until they got to the hotel. My worrying put him over the top and he yelled at me; but really, I was scared we would crash, or catch on fire, it wasn't logical but there it was. They apologized later, but no one really knew why I was so upset. And a breach of sorts was created.

But it brings up all the fear; not logical but fear isn't. What it brings up is being alone, not having someone to call to help, not having someone to look under the hood. So, I called, cancelled the gathering, or at least my part, turned around and headed home. A day which loomed full of promise is now dark, soggy, and dreary. This is not fun. I am a prisoner of my self imposed retreat, feeling on top of htis hill adrift, and alone. Maybe in a few hours I will feel better, but I am not comfortable.

Now, everyone else, to my mind is having a blithe and happy day, somewhere, Casey, there is sun shining, hot dogs are grilling, and happy families cavort this Memorial Day weekend. Here is Mudville there is no mirth, some caffiene and one glass of wine left. I am going to sulk for a bit and then try to get involved in a project to keep busy. Bur darn it, that check engine light has reached huge proportions in my mind and like a karmic slap in the face, feels like I have been yanked back from fun.

So, I do need a mechanic, anyone out there?

farmer's markets

2007-05-26T20:59:00.000-07:00

Today I went with a girlfriend to the farmer's markets. It is side by side with the local artisenal hippie fair; a sort of Brigadoon of life which has fossilized from the 1960's Tie dye, glass bong jewelry, wretched jewelry in wire cages sits next to some spetacular artists who must crochet, stick, carve, whittle, and torch all winter in some yurt up in the mountains. I admire them and at the same time am somwehat tired of the stuff. But it is, like most codified ways of life, the Quakers, the Mennonites, the Krishnas, there; a part of the fabric of our society.

So, hopping across the street to the market. Most are direct farmers, and I support their coming into town to put up their stalls. I wish I could afford the luxuriant boquets of dephninnium, sturdy brilliant blue heads next to iris, lilies and foxglove and nicotia. ( always buy your poisons and pharmeceuticals with your bouquets)And, I don't have enough sun to be seduced by the tomato plants.

It was the wiry, stringy tap roots of the carrots and beets that caught my attention. I love fresh young carrots, these were displayed like a thicket, their roots all pointed out in a haphazard thatch, next to the striped beets and traditoinal beets with the two-tone leaves. The spring onions, morrels, and lush flagrantly sexy leaves of the red lettuce were a site.

I love vegetable shopping, it is so anticipatory. What can I make with them? I munch quietly on the beet greens as I walk around. I get vegetable lust and have written about it before. And, we were all there with our little baskets, totes, Kenyan water carriers, whole foods saved totes; I had my California grape tote bag from the lastcocnference. A little girl strawberry basket high was standing there eating them in front of her oblivious mother. My friend swooned over the goat cheese, bought pork and lamb from the butcher with a display case in his truck, and new eggs. We admired the various stands of farmers who sold script from their family farm where you could buy ahead, food for the summer. Wholesome lovely kids,happy home schooled Christian families with their farms, and thin emaciated rockers, older yuppie baby boomers, and driven runners were all clustered in a small block. We reeked of summer hopes and visions of picnics, balcony dinners and indolent lives.

I picked up some French radishes thin as a cigarello , a bunch of carrots only as big as my little fingers. I figured with the beets I got two dishes in one, including the greens. And the same with the Walla Walla new onions, salad tops and roasting bottoms. They look and smell heavenly in my fridge. The grape bag is hanging by my front door.

Yes it is a little expensive, but worth it. I was happy, it was a collective support, and the vegetables were right this minute from the farms nearby. I know the lamb producer, the pork producer, and the local baker. It was great. ANd so, I am out of budget the last week for the next two weeks, eating out, buying gas for myself and daughter, picking up a bit of music, and some wine.( well eating out lunch too, so I must watch this seduction.) But that is ok, I am fulfilled, I don't really need a stitch of food for 2 weeks, nor wine.

Tonight I had a plate of thin sliced white and pink radishes mixed with thin ovals of carrots. I dressed them with olive oil, salt and lemon pepper and ate them with my fingers, licking my fingertips. I sipped some Pinot Gris and now am having yogurt with vanilla on it. I had planned some beef breasolla, the air cured raw beef, sliced as thin as tissue paper for my protein. But I gobbled it up right off the butcher's paper when I came home. And finished the bittersweet chocolate bar as well. So, the peppery radishes, the sweet earthy carrots were a perfect entree.

Monday I plan to have a friend for dinner. I think I will roast the beets with a dash of rosemary, and have them with their tops and balsamic. I will plate up some more carrots and radishes with the lettuce greens, dressed with some sesame oil and onion slivers and fresh lemon thyme. I think I will go for eggs as the entree, either a simple omlette or slightly scrambled with a bit of cheese. No chicken, the two carcasses from last week are now stock made with ginger and parsnips.

This is fun, making up what I want and enjoying what my friend will think of it. No rules, just what I like, and how I like to eat.

And, I think I am on the way back to takikng care of myself. Summer looms and I am hopeful.

girl's night out

2007-05-25T21:04:00.000-07:00

So, it is Friday and I am most definitely not attached. I planned to meet a woman friend at the local restaurant for drinks , some nosh, and visit after work. Then, we were planning to walk to another wine bar for a gathering of an outdoor club.

I love my friend. She is impossibly cute, one of those women who will look perky at 70 and the men will always love. And she is. And she is a good friend. I have been told I am attractive, I dress up well, and look good. But, when I am by her, in a gathering when all are trawling for dates, or checking out the ring finger, I feel like a porpoise. And, eventually it shows. In a room of single and some not single folks we all are competition and the coyotes or hyenas are circling for the kill.

I have always had a good time visiting with her and she me. We confide and share, and both have high standards for ourself, our loves, and our children.

Here's the deal. More than once, sitting there, men come to say hi and look right through me. I become anonymous, and invisible when I am next to her. She knows it is all in her words, "crap' and talk, but it still gets to me. Not so much hurt, but the old men don't make passes at women who wear glasses thing. I have had this imprinted since I was 14. Even if they are Italian designers frames, I am a reasonable size 12, and look 'good for my age'. They . see. through. me. We went to the gathering, I was saying hi and meeting a few folks I recognized. And one man came over started to tell us about his potluck for the group the next evening and quoted the price. And to her, "well you can pay the lower price because you are cute."

What the hell? I quipped, "well, we both should get a lower price because we are new." What I wanted to say was, " Well, you rude son of a bitch, that is not flirting, that is damned objectionable, you are easily 65 with a grey pony tail and a bit pauncy yourself. What the fuck is this discount for cute? Am I ugly. What am I according to you?"

Don't men realize that this type of flirting is antiquated, damned insulting, and demeans? And my friend cannot help it, she just laughs and is sweet and flirtatious but just herself. But it has happened more than once with her and I do shut down. Where are the days of Venice when we all would wear masks at carnivale and then people whould think they knew us? Sunglasses have replaced it, but a size 2 is not a size 12, damn it, blondes have more fun and I just don't get it.

Last year I was appreciated, told I was a woman's beauty and began to appreciate myself. LIke a pawn tipped over, I then move to checkmate muyself with these awkward ploys by idiots. I know it. And it still hurts. It takes courage and adventure and plain grit to get out there, to not sit home to make an attempt to get out. And I know that the men do too. But four men patently ignored me when I tried to say hi. When I go to my food conventions all the men, gay or straight, say hi, I get hugs and give them back. Where are manners? Where is the well-turned phrase? Where indeed, are the gentlemen? I miss Pride and Prejudice, I miss Heathcliff.

Throw me over the sofa and kiss me firmly. Grasp my wrist, put your hand on the small of my back in public and steer me to the table when we meet. Open doors, buy me a glass of wine, be attentive. I hate this damned post liberation you are on your own bit. And walking in with other middle aged women with good clothing, good jewelry, make up, we are all in a cattle call and the bulls are all steers, but they don't know it. If they would just look more than once they would see the room. But no, give a discount to 'cute' and discount her, and me.

to hell with it.

coffee dates

2007-05-23T18:12:00.000-07:00

oh my God, it is not the meet for wine, the wine tasting, the after hours social but the coffee date which has emerged. "I will meet you for coffee. Let's meet for coffee. Where do you want to meet for coffee?"

Does no one meet for wine anymore? What is this? I love coffee and am totally over thinking this , these, invitations.

Does this mean I shouldn't indicate I like wine? Does this make me look like a wineo? It the price point too high of wine markup and this is a revolt? Should we have a drink instead? Do we want to keep our heads and just burst with caffeine over jitters compared to the narcolepsy of two glasses of wine? Or, is it economics, coffee for two: $5.00 unless one orders a tripple latte double shot espresso carmel with non fat soy.....ye gods. And wine, could be say, almost $15.00 for two decent glasses, maybe $6.00 if we order the equivalent of two buck chuck or the house wine. (yellow, pink, and red.) (think pee, blush and blood ) So, coffee it is.

Or wait! Maybe it is because we are in the Northwest; I don't think that in Boston they say, " let's meet for our first date over coffee. " I am sure they mean a drink. And In LA I am sure it means a drink and something with a small plastic animal or umbrella in the drink. By the way, why umbrellas? Why not small rickshaws, surfboards or Ferraris? I don't get it.

I think that coffee houses are considered safe, cheap and one can get in and out in 45 minutes to an hour. DOn't linger my girlfriends tell me. There seems to be a magic time to linger over coffee, one cannot say to the barrista, "fill er up," or to the waitress, "hey babe, we will have another. " the coffee cools and the coffee date is over.

Never mind that the coffee houses were sources of sedition in the late Renaissance or even the Regency era. Young blades, romantics, and political students would meet in Vienna, Istanbul, London, Boston, and talk over endless cups of coffee. Fueled by intellect-driven caffeine they would change the world. And later, the beats would thump their bongos and wear black and make wierd geometric shapes of their bodies and order espresso in the 50's.

So, coffee dates. Somewhat cheap, somewhat safe (what if they don't drink? How do I order wine? What to do, what to do?" and with an exit strategy when the latte skims over.

What to wear? Do your manicure, all will be above the waist anyway. Is there huge suginficance in ordering a double shot skinny? Is there political environmental symbolism in ordering soy over milk? Over non-hormone milk? Is the coffee shade grown? Free trade? Or, just hacked off the bush by overwhelmed and disfranchised poor Columbians with a small donkey? And the cup! There is more danger. Is the cup re-usable? If it is take-a-way, is the paper recyclable, not bleached? And what of the ambiance? Starbucks "you feel good chain driven bistro coolness", with jazz mix in the background. Or, local support your local coffee heads and business with no mix in the background. And, why is it usually women there? The coffee houses in Turkey are for men, and the coffee houses in Germany are frou frous of lace, coffee mit schlag and women who do lunch.

I give up.
I like coffee.
And I would rather meet on a first date over champagne or a stiff Scotch.
But I still anticpate.
Off to do my manicure.

noshing

2007-05-22T23:04:00.001-07:00

I really don't know where the term nosh came from but in my family it leads back to Germany. About sixteen years ago I took my daughter to Trier to stay with family. My sister in law is German American and the main meal is at lunch; with a sausage platter and cheeses often for dinner during the summer. I now know that as a charchuterie plate, with liverwurst, head cheese, lots of mortadella, salami, and kaiseri, jarlsburg, havarti, gouda, whatever is rolling around in the cold tray in the fridge. And cornichons, lots of stone ground mustard, and whatever else we can rustle up.
This turned into what we would call over the years, 'the nosh plate." In some homes, stir-fry is an euphanism for," I only have one of each of these vegetables and so this is a good way to use all these wilted things up for dinner. "

But a nosh plate conveys more to me.

It means: we have such a wonderful array of condiments, pickles, meats and cheeses we cannot possibly focus on one. We should plate them all up in pretty ways and with our fingers we can build our own plates and combinations. yum.

There is a reason I have in my fridge right now: three types of chicken leftovers, liverwurst,kalmata olives, peanut butter, endive, green olives, capers, celery, spinach, artichoke hearts, ricotta, cottage, string cheese, harissa sauce, and arugula.This array is the result of over 2 weeks of cooking, company, take out and fiddling. This doesn't even count what is in my pantry, last night I used up my chick peas, artichoke hearts, and fridge spinach in a olive oil side with spices. I figure if no one else likes my flavor combinations, at least I like my leftovers.

so: a nosh evening is in store. Bits of this and that, mustards, and spices. Pick and choose, mix and match flavors and it will be fun.

Let's see, should I invite someone over or nosh all to myself when I can be a little piglet?

Today I met two women for lunch, playing hookey from work. I had the charchuterie plate with mini radishes, three types of pate', smooth and buttery; country style with texture, and some with outright fat and gristle. My arteries are dying and will need to have massive infusions of citrus, arugula and veggies for 2 days.

But, as I write this there is a wierd parallel. I nosh on friends and on men. A bit here and there, some are to put it mildly, daily mustard, and some are stone ground to be served up in bed with champagne. A few plate up, and some I can nibble with my fingers, others need chilling, and some have a shelf life of eons. Some I really should have discarded long ago, but like some of my fridge contents keep long past their expiration date simply because I am used to cleaning around them on the shelf.
Corny metaphor but it is in how you do the small things, as well as the large.

My nosh plate of men or food is a mixture of frugality: generic cottage cheese, and expense: imported harissa. It is a mix of low cal: skim mozzarella and high end: cornichons. My men have been the same, daily bread and tempting in their comfyness, and some new ones on the horizon, tempting, somewhat moving in on my territory before I define the boundaries, and apparently expensive. I want to be the expensive condiment. Not as in money but as in worth, to draw them in, to nurture myself and also them so we both are toppings for each other. I am most definitely not low cal or low class. But I do want to have a chance to hang around and be tried out in differing combinations.

And I want someone to be on my nosh plate, comfy again, when I come home too tired to cook they, he is there in just the right combination of mix and match flavors. Noshing, as Groucho Marz said, 'You can eat crackers in my bed anytime,". And, I would add, kalmatas, and capers, and caviar, and cornichons, and lick the peanut butter off the endive.

foraging on one's own

2007-05-18T21:54:00.000-07:00

So, this week I have taught a class for eleven women at a night school, and then made a dinner at home for a friend.
The first, chicken stuffed with duxelles, and unctious mix of mushrooms and cream. Also, a gratin, with an ungodly amount of shredded gruyere with a custard base on potatoes with thyme, roasted asparagus and a variety of salts, and finally a lovely, rich and creamy buttermilk sorbet with strawberries, blackberries and melon on the side.
Last night I made one of my favorites, sauteed chicken with mangoes, green olives, onions and turmeric, cinnamon, biber, cumin and black pepper spice, steamed broccoli and brown rice. Lovely.
I was stressed cooking the class, quite a feat to turn out food for eleven in two hours plus one hour prep, teaching and talking at the same time.
Last night, anticipation of a great revisit with a good long-lost, now re-found friend, old lover, and ?, and great mind. I was content,even happy, cleaned up the house, spruced up, shaved my legs ( who knows), played Leonard Cohen very loud, and sang while cooking. I love cooking for friends and family. I love putting myself into food for that chance to gather at the table, light the candles and just be with someone. BE.
And later, in an exhausting pas de deux of repartee, riposte, innuendo, and overt comments, we discussed any and all things. As I wrote later, a Pandora's box; he reconnecting with the declining known world after a solitude a la John the Baptist spiritual quiet of the desert; Me, reconnecting with friendship after a day with kids whose minds are younger than most of my jewelry.
I had a good time, the night ended much too early, it would have been good to curl up and just BE, in a muddle huddle of warmth together. But we were both being smart, and I tucked into bed with a book and pjs.

note and sidebar, wearing flannel pjs on flannel sheets is becoming your own velcro, I was my own flannel board, trying to toss and turn in ennui dreams all night but remaining stuck.

tonight, I am home, and trying to remember that Friday is just a day, there is no constitution or rule that says I must be out. I leave tomorrow am for a night trip to Portland, my car is loaded with Japanese ingredients for a friend.

So, after the excesses and fun of the week what do I eat?
I forage.

Let's see, before the coat comes off, a large class of sparkling water tangerine flavored. One half of a melted chocolate bar which I chilled back in the fridge.
Then, a bowl of Japanese salted and vinegared cucumber pickles, picked up when shopping for my friend. Then, several stuff-them-in-your-mouthwhen no one is looking:six to eight small sheets of toasted, salty nori, seaweed wraps for snacking.
Here I am eating seaweed and cucumbers, then a little chicken from Sunday's carcass still in the fridge. Standing at the fridge nibbling on bones. No
candles, mostly standing up, and in between shifts to the laundry.

Why the difference? In part, this is all I want, too much last night,and two glasses of wine went to my head but I didn't know it until I woke. Salt and caffiene all day.
And second, because I can. I can sit here at the computer, flirting on
line and slowly not wear clothing, just my black bra and pants...with seaweed in a bowl. Who knows, who cares, and does it matter?

My last lover said to take care for one good meal a day. I get that. And I applaud that, just because I am sitting here basically nude with a seaweed wrap doesn't mean I don't matter. To myself.

But in a way I am lying. I put it on for friends and lovers, but to sit down alone at the table, light the candle, means I am alone. And, I don't like that. I don't like eating alone traveling, and I admire those who can.

So, I fill the space, eating what I want while multitasking with the tv in the background, laundry running, im and e mails going, and the generalized noise of electricity around me.

My late mother in law always sat down to dinner with candles and a little glass of wine. I can't seem to do a little glass of wine, so right now none is around. And, in my view of the future dimly, see myself aging here sitting down alone to food and wine. I really really don't think we should be alone. I can get into a commune, shared spaces and times, someone to cook for and cook with, and someone who points out to me the absurdity of foraging while wandering around in Victoria's secret.
Off to bed sans the velcro.

limbic brains and boredom

2007-05-14T17:01:00.000-07:00

We have tiny little limbic brains inside our massive nifty advanced ones. Little lizard selves, overliad with chicken brains, overlaid with fishy ones, and finally the mastadons and cro-magnons of thinking. And today I was thinking of drawing one on the board and labeling the one in the interior, that vast undiscovered non-neutron firing wilderness, The Senior Brain.

I teach, among other things, and sometimes I fear for our nation. I really really mean it. I know, I know, Plato and Socrates said 'the elders' said the same about their generation and look where that got 'em. Greek revival and decline. But really, I truly have seen a decline in 20 years, most especially since the advent of techno-speak.

I write, I blog, I have a cel phone, and I understand what passes for conversation is not the same as face to face, or instead of pixels, ink to paper. Sure, but that is because I am PRE the cel age. These kids are a scary version of the Ray Bradbury story where one would save to buy one wall at a time, eventually being able to step into a room and live the scene. Precursor of the holo-deck on Star Trek which I have always wanted. Only , in this story, "The Veldt": the evil children send their parents in and the lions eat them. I am the gladiator of education and they are the lions. And they are winning.

I think that my students are too lazy to even conceptualize this idea. They do not take a chance, and I am bored with them. I have an afternoon class of high energy Latino boys who could give a shit about what I have to teach but at least in my frustration I am not bored; I am just trying to herd iguanas until 3:08 p.m. But the morning class is for honors! I am not alone when I write, and vent, that they are fucking boring. These kids to not interact, do not talk to me, and do not apparently, think. Or, they are smimply ( pick one" a. tooo sleepy b. to ininvolved c. could give a shit d. intellectually dormant. e. need caffiene. ( who doesn't?)

They are not venal, lasvicious, criminal, they are just dull. I have just spent my year examing my physical, dancing, sexual, out-there try-anything side. And, at the same time I have given 3 keynote lectures, traveled to three countries and talked, written three articles, taught 36 night food classes, cheffed at a restuarant and read at least 30 books. I realize I need both very much. The limbic and the cro- magnon.

This with an indolent life to mainstream tv, and lots of magazines. I am not a super woman, I just don't get how these kids think. And, by extension, how they will raise engaged citizens of the world, have interesting lives, and conduct interesting conversations. Yeah, yeah, a value judgement but I am entitled to my pissy little values. Maybe they will all indeed pump gas, come home to the Barbie, and bbq, raise sweet little newts, and go to bed without homework, books, or reflection. I may have escaped successfully this possible existence, of not thinking in my recent relationship, limbic like, but not really the magnon of the magnums I want. .

So, we are the Alphas and I think sometimes, I am teaching the Zeds. (But the Christian Zeds are taking over the world.) Thank goodness these kids want to just pump gas and I don't. I know, in Zen, all jobs are noble and equal, but you know, unless you are the best gas pumper you know and go home to an enlightened life, these kids are just not, Victoria, making any chlorophyl at all. No cost there, going back into the ether. Just etherized.

god, I need to retire.

likes candles and walking on the beach

2007-05-13T16:23:00.000-07:00

Interesting, over the last year I have read a lot of personals, and we all want the same thing: thunderstorms, a fun person, someone to cuddle with, lilkes music, likes to dance, every sport under the sun, travel, movies, being nice, intelligent...etc, etc. yeah, yeah, knee jerk Hallmark descriptors, culturally relevant.

Are we supposed to write that we are misanthropes? That candles make us sneeze, and warm beaches in Oregon are a myth? Of course not. But really, doesn't it become familiar, and old? Of course we all love to travel, ride our bikes, hang glide, go to wine tastings, music, concerts, dancing, and fine dining.

But folks what we all really want is someone to sleep next to, who brings us soup when sick, and is willing to eat simple food and just watch tv if need be. Why don't we just say that? Everyone who posts personals is really looking for the same thing, to appreciate and to be appreciated. Sex...the candles are just a set up. And music, ditto. Fine dining, well would we really want to eat in a dive? ( I do, but it has to be in another country on small chairs in the middle of a souk).

There are so MANY people out there who want a" slightly slender, fit, toned, average, all signs, multi religious tolerant, smart, loving, person to have fun with. " While walking on the beach in a thunderstorm hugging another slightly slender fit, toned person who has a 6 figure income and is, "easy on the eyes.". Of course.

So, I don't blame them and have crafted something similer.

But in the DNA of what clicks and what morphs, what goes mutant and what goes dormant in relationships, it still comes down to who you want to wake up next to in the morning, hair looking like hell, before you brush your teeth, lying on their back snoring...and you still like them, Love them over time, and willing to do so when sick, snotty, tired, hung over, and needing a haircut, or without make up. Get real.

We all have what I call a front door, back door style of life. Front door, nice, clean, shaved, waxed, depilitory, deodorant, and clean clothes of frontal landscaping. Backdoor, what you show more than company, the garbage that needs taking out, the lawn that needs mowing, and the stuff in the attic, or for people, the times you do not shave your legs, the quirks, oddities, flaws and snivvly noise you make when you sleep. Wearing the clothes more than once, maybe not changing your socks.

And this is the door to advertise folks, like a realtor who makes an offer but the house must pass inspection that the plumbing is not too bad, there is no dry rot, or that it can be repaired, the schmutzy paint job can indeed be cleaned up, new roof, new plants in the foyer, and cinnamon on the stove. In the midst of relationships we tend to forget, to turn to dry rot, and promise that next week we will clean out the attic. And, once we are listed again like a house on the market, whoops, out comes the new razors, the hair streaking, the new underwear if not new sheets, and a few extra pounds get worked on.

I tried very hard to keep that new house look, to continue to be groomed and landscaped. So the rehab isn't too significant. But there are a few remodelings that took place, some good, some to be returned to the original state. And a few layers of paint went on that I should burn off, like a refinished floor to be me. But not too bad all in all.

Now what do I write on that "be your own yenta" place? How true to the core? And how true to the core is everyone else? SO, I intend to ask to see the backyard first, not the landscaping. Strip search, check the laundry, look at the books behind the ones in front, and kick the tires.

meaner mini mes

2007-05-13T00:22:00.000-07:00

gosh, I am a nice person.really, more than I sometimes post.

My friends say I take the high road, provide largesse when thwarted. I do my best and so many love me. I thank them.

But who is this harpie who swears all over the blog? Where does SHE come from?

I have been told that people who talk out loud to themselves do because they do not have enough external stimulation. Hit your food, shout ouch and go on. Or, damn, and go on. but in writing, why do I use the word fuck so much? Because I live alone so much?

I think it is in part the good girl, bad girl syndrome. Be good, but underneath it all is red underwear, black bras and really, an invisible set of tatoos. ( too bored to really get one, hell, I get tired of my glasses) No whips thank you mamm, but a firm grip does wonders for me, alternating with caresses. Shit, it comes back to sex. There I go again, another obscenity.

But wait! there's more! What if these aren't really obscenities but truly Schwartzenegger words? Pumped up on steroid words that I cannot, in polite company, or as a public employee say in public? Linen shirt outsides, haircloth and sack ashes inside. Hmmm, "Honey I love you", and inside, "Who in the Hell do you think you are?"

Is it duplicitous or a release? I think the latter.

I AM nice. And, I have a naughty, highly critical, dyseptic, misanthropic side that I generally try to keep to myself. Unless; reading murder mysteries, which are really happily cathartic, kill the son of a bitch. Or, forget the cuisinart, just wack the hell out of the garlic, and throw it in the hot oil like a cannibal cooking in a chef coat.

I have two women friends who swear. One, a blue blood Eastern Jewess, Sarah Lawrence hippie of indeterminate age ;except she was driving her kids in the van across Afghanistan when I was just starting college. "Fuck this and that", I love her for her forthrightness and what I imagine Katherine Hepburn to be if she had not had Spence but a wok instead. The other, a true brilliantly neurotic woman; now running a B and B in Eastern Oregon. A Berkley graduate in comparative literature who taught in Ethiopia. I see a similarity here. And, they both speak their mind, sometimes uncomfortably so. And they love me, I can count on them to speak truth.

So, maybe I am not a crank, but similar in a way, I would sooner take you out than feed you if you crossed me about my daughter. I would defend you to the death, truly, if you loved me and needed help. And, muzzled in the daily world of my teaching, I can express myself in words which sometimes surprise me in intensity, and obscenity. The chipotle of words, obscenities, but if overused they flood the palate and ear with too much. So I will go sotto voice darn it, because truly I am not that cranky at all. Just a veneer, a charcoaled marshmallow over the fire and sweet gooey insides to suck out. gosh darn it, gee whiz, and pretty please, just read through to the soft bits.

chicken little

2007-05-12T22:37:00.000-07:00

ok, a weak title. Until you consider how we use the word chicken.
"You chicken", a taunt for the faint of heart, those who are cowardly, who" turn tail and run". who call to cancel, to end it, not do it face to face. But that is a few blog postings back. Still chicken. White feathered, weak of spirit and spine.

But the chicken endurs, he, or she, (who can tell), lives all over the world. No Victoria, pigeons are not chickens, and penguins think they are, but not.

back to chickens.

They stink, they are noisy, and really, not much room up there to be smart. They are just smart enough to be, well, a chicken! Birdbrained is just dandy for them. But they don't make wars, they don't want to take over the world, they just are.

And a darn efficient little food machine they are too. If you are Vietnamese, or from the American south, you can eat the whole bird. Little fried chicken feet to nibble on, Tom Hanks in Big-like nibbling on the corncob, eat the gristle and spit out the toenails. Suck on the vertebrae, bite and suck out the marrow, fry the gizzard, saute the liver in soy sauce and ginger, and eat all the meat, white or dark. Render the fat to fry something else, baste the skin until it is crunchy, strip it off, douse with salt and pepper and eat it standing over the stove. Rip it apart with your hands, or use a knife to eat the meat. Don't be squeamish now, the whole darn bird is a gift.

Victorians, respressed souls in public, but ragingly, neurotically sexual in the boudoir, decried the use of the word leg or breast. Don't even consider that women, moving like automatons gliding without showing their feet fro perambulation ( Victorian word) might have legs. limbs. SO, all their furniture was draped, no swaddled in fabric down to the carpet to cover the table LEG, the piano LEG. And, at the table Sherlock, one ordered a drumstick, not a chicken leg. And, after the excess nonchallance of the Napoleonic era when bodices dropped to the sternum and women powdered their breasts with powder, Mrs Darcy in the manor house of 1860 would order 'white meat'not chicken breasts.

Good thing that the chicken's genetalia wasn't in evidence, ( was it ever?) or heaven's knows what we would be ordering down there. anyway....

Once you eat the bird and make soup of the bones, and suck out the marrow, strain and deglaze the stock of those nasty fats, you can always turn the bones into costume jewelry. And the feathers can be used for stuffing for pillows. Great thing, a chicken.

And eggs! They make eggs! Well, all birds do, and alligators, but that is another topic. I spent today shelling, halving, rinsing, and piping pureed egg yolks with an ungodly amount of mayonaise and hot sauce into the bottoms for a restaurant gig. Four dozen halved, and rinsed egg whites looked like a pile of squid suckers sans the squid. But eggs are a good thing, they are sculptural, you can use the egg shells to filter coffee if you are, pardner, home on the range; add calcium to your dog's food, paint them and make mosaics with glue if you have no other ideas for Sunday School projects.

Yep, the chicken is a noble little bird. Productive, not too smart, but does what God intended he do as a chicken. No resume, no what to do, no chicken angst that he should be more than a chicken, and until you kill the beast, can produce a nifty best example of natural design for food that I can think of.

So, why do we say someone is "chicken"? Why do we have a campaign that says what we cannot identify, ' tastes like chicken" Why, when we are upset, do we say, ' now, dear, don't get your feathers ruffled," or, " running like a chicken without his head.? Poor thing, just a little bird. The sky is falling. Sometimes I have been chicken, I have been without my head.

Yet, tomorrow, I will massage the beast, rub olive oil over its whole body, slowly, plunge inside lots and lots of garlic, insert under the skin some dijion, and minced onion, dill, thyme, and bake it off in the oven. I will lovingly heat it to 500 while I make some coffee. Five minutes later , I will reduce the heat and cook it slowly for about 90 minutes while I deglaze the pan around it with some wine and olive oil again. I'll make some broccoli on the side, some roast onions carmelizing in its pan juices, and some sliced nectarines drizzled with vanilla and brown sugar. The house will smell not like a ditzy little beast, or a scared little bird, it will smell like home, like love, like memories, a warm fragrance sweet as Mother's love.

My daughter is coming for Mother's day, we will share dinner together in the few hours we will have together before she goes back to work on classes.

I would rather have dinner with her at home than go out to have someone else's chicken, drumsticks, white meat, and all.

time spent

2007-05-12T21:48:00.000-07:00

Time. I have had several conversations about time lately, from wasting my time...or not, in a try-on relationship, to lying on the sofa in a wallow of inertia during the week waiting for The Call. It came. and so, no, it wasn't a wasted year, but gee, if I could shift time, would I get a do over? Can we take our finger of the match picture and still move the checker back?

Or maybe, just maybe, my twin in the other universe has thin thighs, several lovers, and...no wait! A Third universe, one with a 30 year old marriage, happy children, still those thin thighs, and loving husband who gives her the walks on the beach, the fierceness during sex she wants, and at the same time a Room to Herself when needed.

Love of books, love of people, A house full of kids running in and out, with family and friends dropping by whenever they want, and the coffee is always hot.

Nope, this is the universe and I can look at it several ways. One, that I spend my day in an environment hwich I think is broken, with some kids who are great, others who are limpets, are lichens on society and I don't, Alice, think they will ever get out of the worm hole. And that I spend my evenings with myself in a home that somedays I love, because each and every thing in my home is loved, has history and a story. No compromises where and what I have it is all mine.

And, that I have many many friends who do love me, called when I was upset, took my many many compulsive death throws of the relationship calls.

And a daughter whom I love more than God, sometimes self absorbed, ( after all she is in college) but sweet, caring, and all I could want. I have family that I adore, brothers that I think walk on icebergs, and a sense of style that won't quit. The other way I can look at my time is, I am on the cliff and cannot see through the fog. If I could only go forward, say just a year, would it be worth it? Would I become more disillusioned, or encouraged. I don't know the future, I cannot change my past, and I am in the matrix of right now. Seeing through a mirror, seeing through a plate glass window out my computer, talking to the ether on the blog. I have been lucky, no, it isn't luck, it is personal contact, to re-connect with two friends this week.

One, a man who knows me from the past, a brilliant eccentric intellect, somewhat certifiable, but a fey nature that I just love to visit with. Some heat. In fact, a disturbing amount of heat. Interesting that, since it appears I have a lot of thermals stored up. Cannot I live in a commune, or feminine harem with the bits and pieces, Frankenstein like, of all the men I have loved?

The other, is a call today from my Turkish 'baba', a man my folks knew when we lived there in the 50's. It is tradition, maybe a remembered past that keeps us talking to each other long after my parents have died.

( Sidebar:I hate that term "passed", just as I hate, "partner", "significant other", "pleasure" and " interact with". ) They are dead. He/she is your mate, your lover, or your husband/wife. A partner is Donald Trump. Are there others who are NOT significant? Turn on, be sexual, to pleasure implies a Twinkie for Christ's sake. I interact with my tv, not humans.)

So, back to time. Time shift by connecting with an old lover, with family friends from almost 50 years ago. Scare time by not knowing the future, in fact, I may not have a future. I just might like the Ray Bradbury story just go to bed and not wake up, the end of the Earth. I just may be in a snowglobe and someone is shaking me up. I want time, I want to bend it and bring someone here tonight to lie next to and not worry what it means. If I had known it was the last time, would I have kissed more, loved more, touched more? Is there a memory bank I am supposed to live off of now, bear like now that I am in a new hibernation. fuck it, I am not ready to do the dance again, and yet I don't want the ice cave.

I want time to look ahead and feel like I matter. I want those thin thighs but since I never had them to begin with, I will tell myself, hell, if someone sees me undressed now, again, revealing myself anew, well, this body serves me well. It is mine, it is me, and I am not a 20 something. It has taken me around the world, works and moves. My daughter bought shoes when little, and each time I would get a kick asking her, "Do they work? " She would jump up and down and run and say, " Yes, they work!" I jump and down, and run, and I work. The parts that need to, work very well thank you very much. Really well. In fact, I have just had a lube job and tune up, so the mechanics are good. I just want time again to use them.

Finally, I hate the time from 5 until I go to bed. It is long, it is quiet, and I find it slows down. Minutes are hell, and I don't know what to do with myself. Time does not, fly, it drags. That has nothing to to with what I need to do, with the constant slings and arrows and stockade of "have to's." There is not enough time, there is too much time, I wait on time, time has passed, I want time to shift, to not put a value on moving forward "too fast" and I want time to if I don't get a re-do, to get at least a re-done.

I tried

2007-05-10T23:59:00.000-07:00

Well, I have had a glorious year, discovered that I Liked fishing, basketball, and having fun, dancing, pool etc. etc. etc.
but it is ended.
I tried on someone's life and learned. He tried on mine. It didn't fit. Incompatability of politics, of cultural groups, of music. But who the hell cares. That isn't the real reason. And the hell of it, I don't know what. Did I look sideways; maybe. I ignored two years of inattention as my marriage died, did I do the same?

I tried to be honest as I rejuvinated, rediscovered my sexual self, that at 56 I don't look bad and had fun. This is a great guy. but it didn't work.

But, I have never quit on a person. Is it, limpet like, clinging on? Or is it hope? Or is it belief that it will all work out?

but nooooooooo.......I dont' get the Druid's answer, it is just four days of angst and crying and sucking at teaching and he calls. No go. Why not? But for Christ's sake, I have heard this before, "it is not you it is me." That should be a fucking bumper sticker of the unenlightened. This phrase is a cop-out. And if I hear once more how fabulous I am, I will take a god damu uzi to them, I am tired of being fabulous, smart, beautuful...I want someone who loves me, snoring in the morning.
So fucking there.

I will be nicer to students who cry in my room. And, I will quit teaching in a year. I hate being under-used, under-sexed, under-apprecated, under-educated and under no one. fuck it, I will assert myself. I loved this man, I spoke up, and I ried to be me. not fit. darn. But he is still a good person, and I appreciate his attention after a fucking bad years of drought. But damn,I was just coming into my own.

So, they are out there, the friends, the ex-lovers, the former husbands, the unknowns. And, I hope my daughter doesn't think her mom is a slut. I want happiness, I want to be honest, and I want a warm person next me. It is too bad that it isn't him after I opened my heart

what was I thinking?

2007-05-07T16:05:00.000-07:00

I was on a rant the other night and truly it was more about me than a lovely man I know. We all have lives, and business, and for god's sake I was mad I couldn't have more time. This persoh is generous, kind, honest, forthright, and a hell of a lot of fun. So why was I ranting and cranky?
I truly think it is because I get scared and this drives much of my life. Must not be scared. Live life. If you see someone do. If they are busy, get busy yourself. I will try to remember this. Good people, good men, are gifts and I don't want this to become encumbered with my own angst. Take a nap. thank those you love. and don't over talk or think, just be. I will try to follow my own advice.

I'm not cranky, I'm just too busy

2007-02-19T22:46:00.000-08:00

October. Now it is February after Valentine's...and boy I have been busy. Stay tuned.

about time to write

2006-10-04T20:09:00.000-07:00

It is fall, it is October. I haven't written all summer, because I have been too darn busy. Happily so sometimes, not so, others. And I still cannot figure out how to paragraph this blog. so run on, read on. Anyway, it has been a summer, and independently I will deal with events, food, fun, and sun. And, the god damn problem when you forget your password which has been the problem the last 3 weeks. You are not supposed to have the same password, but since I don't have enough money for a Swiss bank account, and could care less if the FBI, CIA,or Interpol accesses my records, I have decided to use the same password all around. So I am back to school and cooking, and avoiding grading, and drinking a hell of a lot of wine because the first day back I called my retirement fund to figure out WHEN I can leave the bureaucracy of schools. Schools are a dying organization, I don't believe in the system anymore, but am too wedded Siamese-like at the hip, heart, and bank account to leave them without a transfusion. But soon. So, what the topic tonight/ so many as I drove, and fished, loved, and lived this summer. I am now entering the anniversary of my first year divorced, in my condo, living alone and making my way. Some events, most, are greatly better, and yet, the financial remains crushingly so even though I have three jobs, and am working so hard to save. But I am a procrastinator in checking facts and accounts, and have blown in fees, and head gaskets what I worked so hard for this summer. damn. double damn. yep, yep, I am happy I have the skills with my Masters to turn out waffles and eggs for inn guests for the money. I work my ass off, but until I re-fi I am really working for the $65 or so a week I make in extra classes. Divorce sucks, but living in a relationship which has gangrene is worse; in many ways I am SO better off. It is only money; my friend tomorrow has a kidney operation, one has a sister in intensive, and I am not dying. But the rubber band of stress is crushing, I am taking sleeping pills to sleep and wake up at 4 with carpal tunnel. I have loves, and friends, and family, and great great support, but cannot tell them just how tense I am; if I tell, will they leave? Will they cut out? Should I have told my worries last year, lst marriage, second marriage, last life, last child? Is everyone else in the same Ark and we are all headed downstream to the rapids of old age in small rooms smelling of cats? God, I hope someone loves me and stays with it, and wants me to cook for them, and hug them and they back. I want someone's love to last, I want to be worthy, and what if they find out my flaws? Because, between me and this blog, sitting here working off a pantry telling myself I don't need anything is crap, it is a lie. I need a hug, I need to feel that I can cook and shop, not be resourceful, and I need my daughter not to know just how tense I am. More wine, more Merlot, hug the dogs, lie in the warm bed made by love, and wait, wait until I feel better to write. I am back, and there is more to say. food later, finances now. No, I lie, tv and murder, mindless drivel, climb into my bed made by newness and try to sleep until 4 when I get up to work. I'm back.

submission

2006-07-27T16:52:00.000-07:00

Give in, to submit, does not mean giving up. Rumi has a poem about the chick pea and cooking which I have used as so much as a metaphor for life. The chick pea climbs to the top of the boiling pot, and the chef beats it down again and again with a spoon. Finally the chick pea's nature is revealed, its basic form is transformed into something edible and it thanks the chef for helping it reveal its mystery. This is life, this is the transforming power of love and even of anger, of sorrow. It transforms us into another form, an edible form, more palatable, more accessible. If love does not transform, and its cousin anger, does not activate, we lie there, a hard seed. And so this has been my challenge throughout life, to be strong, and to be willing to transform for love, for sorrow, and yes, for anger. I have and do, hold back out of fear. And yet, to grow, to be palatable, for my vegetable love to become edible to my lover, for my anger to transform it into the ashes of a fertile soil, for my sorrow to rain upon the future, I have to let go. And it is hard. Wine transforms, with a price. Music helps the transition, but lamaze like, I breathe through the hard times, and the transformation sometimes needs help. Yelling, loving, sighing, whispers of the past espressed help to move all of us forward into new love and yes, anger, and sorrow. You cannot only have one, it is a sacred trinity of emotion that I struggle with. In the confessional, in the last suppers and first mornings of our communion of souls I want to be that chick pea, expertly managed, submitted into my new self. And, I too, am a chef, I also have that transforming power for someone else. This is the great mystery, we all submit, we all give into the hope that, despite the fear, we can move ourself into the next realm.

chocolate

2006-07-27T15:41:00.000-07:00

What the hell, chocolate melts at body temperature. And that, dear readers, is interesting in its possibilities. Put chocolate on your pulse points as a perfume. Put chocolate on parts of the body to lick off. Nope, too hard on the sheets. Why not a chocolate liqueur perfume? Not everyone likes chocolate, which is interesting, I do not consider it a part of the basic food groups, but it sure is nice when I want it. I would rather not do without onions, tomatoes and garlic, but they are not chocolate. Of course, there are so many tidbits, dweeby facts, about chocolate. The Aztecs drank it as a sacred drink, and over 30 cups a day would boost anyone's attenuated enhanced caffiene level, which may explain their penchant for ripping hearts out in sacrifice, too much chocolate. I find it interesting too, that the Catholic countries of Spain adopted this drink from the Americas, whereas the Protestant group, those dour Lutherans, the tight Anglicans, went for caffeine. Islam prohibited Caffeine for a time until the Sultan "got it" that the most productive folks drank coffee. So the Spaniards weren't productive? And the Swiss, with their regimented society, the clocks, the lack of women's rights, just might keep everyone in place with chocolate. Or the French with large soup bowls of chocolate for breakfast with croissants. For such a overtly formal society, I find it interesting that they feed kids bowls of chocolate for breakfast with a roll that representa Vienna crushing the Ottomans. I find it quite interesting, that an old bunny, made about October in a mold, wrapped in foil, is sold as an Easter spring confection. I eat the ears first and work down from there. I have a kilo of chcocolate beans from a producer to show my students. They think I am showing them Hershey bits, until they eat them and find, as the bits melt on their body temperature tongue, that it is bitter. Chocolate is love, so the candy czars say, and so, is love bitter? Is Valentine's a ruse, a bitter future balanced with lots of sugar and knee-jerk "I don't know what else to buy so so here is chocolate?" Who is driving who? chocolate nibs were sold once, and we bought them as mulch for the yard, wafting a Hershey smell over the blueberries. But it got wet, and stank, and revelaed it's swampy nature, much like love may when hidden in the dark to turn into a moldy mess when not appreciated. Chocolate is the new neutral to wear, it is overcoming black with its dark softness, it goes with bright colors and still breathes sophistication. The new chocolatiers are messing with chocolate, fancy-dancy bars mixed with lavender, sea salt, curry, chilies, all to mix up our enhanced palletes. Maybe someday the foil old chocolate Easter bunney would be a mix of chocolate and say, coconut. Heresy. Candies for holidays should be made a year ago, when you did not even know the man or woman, wait on the shelf until that holiday approaches and then are selected to show spontaneous love. I would rather have a basket of chilies and garlic and cook for the man. I won't turn down chocolate, I eat it all. But, bring me the herbs, the spices, and I may, with a mortar, grind them with chocolate to make a mole, the crowning glory of Aztec culture mixed with the Spanish Arabs, the sauce with nuance, spice, and chocolate to cook with. That is love, a mix, a blend, personalized, not old foil wrapped candy. Bring it on, let's get blending and grinding, and cooking.

other god damn people

2006-07-27T14:59:00.000-07:00

Ok, I have been busy, happily so, with friends, activities, new life, travel, and many, many people I love. But this is a rant. I will get it off my bosom, breasts, chest, and forceable, shaky anger before I can write about the good stuff. condos suck. I have no yard work, just negligent weedeaters, true. I have no water bill, but share a laundry, ok, I can get that, and quarters are worth more than gold. But what really pisses me off is neighbors, and having to worry about them as I live my life. I know, I know, they need to live their life, and are entitled to not worry about mine, my space, my noise, and my dogs. But, God Damn it, when a neighbor comes to the window to check if I put the noise collar on my dog, I am glad my dog barks. I have Russells, two of them and they bark.I know it, in my old home, the wicked witch of the west next door would dictate that we put them inside when she had a garden party. Never mind her steonorian voice, hearing every syllable on her cel phone as she tanned, she hated our dogs. And, so, in this place, I have them about every other week, the doggy dad and I have reached a state of friendship, where I take them, or drop them off when I leave at 5 am for the restaurant, great. Great arrangement, I help with them when dog dad is out of town. But for god's sake, today I left for 4 hours, I forgot to put on the collar or close the blinds, I raced out, Home 30 seconds and the call the threat, and I realize that not all is good in condo-town. I have to behave, to be neighborly, and realize in this high grade ant hill I am nothing. Americans are independent so it figures that she calls me when upset, and I am upset that I cannot be me, or have my dog kids in this cooperative setting. And, this rams home the many many changes I have made this year, what I have gained, so much of myself back, and what I have lost, some independence, some quality of privacy by moving here. I couldn't afford a house, this is a good place, but there is some accommodation: I don't need more stuff, the size is right. Translate, it is small. I save money I won't put in a laundry. Translate: 30 steps outside in the rain is still outside in the rain. I don't have yardwork. Translate: I have to put up with other's sense of yard, and I miss my flowers. And, the god damn noise of dogs I love, I hug in bed at night, my pals, my kids, are in jeopardy. I am too independent for this, but this is what I have, this is what I must accommodate to, it is not about food, friends, loves, not any of the reasons I started this blog. And it sucks. But it in my face again how much I have tried to make it work, to go forward this year, and here it is, someone is challenging my trying to move forward with pets I love. I may have to give up more of them to survive here, on the good graces, not a problem, with their dad. He has been great letting me drop them off way early for him. And for that, I am lucky. But I am well and truly pissed, and mad, and don't know what to do to calm down. Yeah yeah, I know, the world is at war, and there are many many more things than a barking dog, but that is my point, why does she upstairs get so upset? Because she can. That's all I have to say, life is good, it is fun this summer, and many, many happy things on the horizon. They come with a shock collar, and I don't mean on the dogs.

kitchen sub cultures

2006-07-15T09:01:00.000-07:00

The mark of a kitchen is what type of music is played at 6 am while you 're prepping. Bakers play loud rock, at least the ones I know, at 4 am to stay awake. Four is their midnight. Over the lase few years I have dropped in, for financial and entertainment gain, to work in kitchens. Usually I am the oldest one there, unless the owner is there or the full on chef. I have discovered a new culture, the kitchen groupies, those who work from kitchen to kitchen, migratory cooks within the city. Morning folks tend to be young women, thinking of going into the profession, and full of light and happiness. The evening shift varies with the restaurant. For the upscale, they tend to be culinary students, with an eye on the prize, the skillet, the future restaurant. For the upscale vegetarian one I worked at last year, it was a whole new set of values. Talk was of the discordant political view, the sideways slant of militant vegetarians who were convinced the government is out to screw us with pesticides, and bunnies in cages. Militant vegetarians seems an oxymoron, you would think if you were not ripping meat with your canines you might be a happy muncher of greens and smooth out. However, not to be, I learned a whole lot about anarchists, the dope scene among cooks from midnight to four to come down from being amped up after cooking, the floater bands they followed, and the incestous sexcapades between all their casual trading-dating. I just hung in there with the conversations, kept my mouth shut about being a teacher which felt like I was a narc-o-plant, or I would not have learned a thing. And, I had fun. I morphed back to my college days with my own sexcapades, harley riding boyfriend and vegetation. As we chopped, diced, pureed and whipped, so did the stories, coming out in bursts like: "Hey, remember the band last week that...wait, is the sauce done, no thicken it, anyway, the band was really radical about their...is that your timer?" Somehow I followed it all. Now the breakfast girls are something else instead, they all are about 20.5, and keep telling me I do not look 55. Yeah right, but gotta love them. Their talk instead is always what they are going to do when off, and how they catch up on their sleep. One is engaged, and truly has saved herself until marriage, so we talk about this in quiet voices to not carry out into the dining room. These young women are experienced in ways I never was at 20, I had other experiences, I had lived abroad, knew Leningrad, London, Frankfurt. These women have live in boyfriends, are taking snorkling classes, maintaining their gardens, one left school at 17 to travel South America with her guy. They set up, I cook, we nibble the food and lift over and over, heavy racks of hot dishes to put away. It is physical work. At ten the housekeepers come in with cigarettes, stories of hard lives with men, the bikers, the landlords, the kids, the stepkids. They grab some cookies and go into the basement to fold and stack heavy loads of linens. They take a smoke break at 11 and I realize I have bene full on working since 6 without a break so step outside for 5 minutes in the cool air. I haven't sat down, I have gone up and down the basement steps to the pantry many times, I have lifted racks of dishes, fielded three cups of cold coffee and chatted with the gals. And yet I have been more myself, turning out food that is a tangible product compared to education where you don't know if anything takes, than I am in my English classroom. I like the anarchists, the road weary cleaners, the young women with their lovers, the rock music, and the chatter. I am a voyeur, and I am only passing through.

Asking for directions

2006-07-14T10:27:00.000-07:00

The joke goes that men don't ask for directions because they don't want to admit they are lost. Following that vein, I have taken, in the last several years, to trying to do it on my own fix things on my own, asking for help when it absolutely was no other way. Feminism, do it on your own, don't need men, had mutated into don't ask for help in any way. But that construct's old &outmoded and I began, and now realize, that asking help is a gift. It is a gift to ask someone else about their area of knowledge, to receive it. In fact, receiving is a big part of the lesson. Gracefully. In the last few weeks I have had to ask for advice on small appliances, where to get things, and computers which were beginning to develop a mind of their own, cyborg wise. My Pinocchio life, wanting to be a "real girl" was changing into knowing when to ask for help and accepting it. So, I fixed the dishwasher, with e mail discussions about it, and finally on line with a help it site complete with pictures. If only we could solve all our problems on line, the on line shrink, the on line whatever; in fact it is probably more true than not that most questions can be solved on line. But I am not on a desert island or under the pole in a submarine, where all contact is through cyber space. So, some help is face to face, or actual voice on the phone. How far to drive my over heating car? Should I call AAA? Offerc to come up and follow to the garage, check ins it I got there, offers to pick up the dogs since they couldn't ride in my rental car, all this is help. And I try to help back, again checking on the dogs, offering to buy my daughter lunch on her break, offering to go across town to save driving to an event..help. We all need each other, there is no room for animosity or distance except if someone wants you to continue so they can be vicariously part of an argument. Not me, I am learning to ask for directions, from the dishwasher, to the car, to my big big one, finances. I don't know it all, and I am tired of pretending that I do. Most of the people I ask are men, because in a wierd way, when I talk to women and they to me, we don't really ask for help, we chat and learn by comparison. Men don't do that, they get in and get out with how tos, and move on. It is not Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, it is Men are from the Hardward Store, and Women are from the self-help section. That's ok. I was proud to fix some of my own things, I want to be resourceful, but no longer so damned independent. I like being treated like a worthwhile woman, and accepting offers to help, or grace is a way to pay it forward for the many kindnesses I have received.

cowgirls

2006-06-23T23:27:00.000-07:00

My ears are ringing, I have a sunburn, and I just came back from my first country western concert. My girlfriend and I went to a local vineyard, and sat in the hot sun until dusk waiting for the concert. I now have a list of things to take the next time, and it reads in my head: binoculars, some beef jerky, chapstick and small chairs with backs. I did have a good time, even though I don't drive a pick up or even own boots. And here's the gig, I have an irrational desire now to go shopping for some cowgirl things. I mean really, I should get over myself, and have more fun. It is apparent that I need to get out more, and I am looking forward to this summer with a promise of fishing, more music and having a larger life than cleaning, grading, and being solitary. I definitely want to re examine any sentence that I place myself into : " I don't do that, never tried, it, etc, etc, "These people were having fun! En route to the vineyard, we stopped at Target, I needed a shirt that was going to be cooler, and also got some sunglasses...but we mosied along and got there in time to wait one hour in line. I was fascinated with the folks, the young kid in front of us with a folder labeled "concert tickets" was going into the Air Force in six weeks. I began to watch the women, and realize I need a bustier,which ties in the front, some more jeans, and not to worry the size, I was right in there, some fancier sandals or cowboy boots, and more dangly jewelry, sequins and shiny things. Push up bra and a pointy hat that looks like it has been tortured. These gals were having fun too. And the men weren't bad either. Long drinks of bourbon to admire, with tight ass jeans, tight shirts, some with the sleeves ripped off and again the tortured hats. My goodness, not a school marm in sight, and where had I been all these years? There is a particularly mincing walk you get when trying to walk with wedge sandals or boots on gravel or over grass, and the gals swayed by me followed by pec boys. when the music started some of the girls, for better or worse, hopped up on the men's shoulders and began waving. A few tank tops came off. One bra, apparently, as the lead guitarist speared it with the end of his mike. Belt buckles the sixe of small salad plates, clevage to tuck a wanted poster into, and lots and lots of eyeliner. I was there, and it was a lot of fun. Felt dull. However by the time three hours had gone along, was having a good time swaying and dancing a bit; longing for a dance partner. The wine was awful, one glass and that was it, the glass was the size of a tasting glass. Lots of these gals were underage, but in the dark and in the crowd, all were drinking...good reason for me not to. Yet, they were living large, cowgirls up, one woman had a shirt that read, "save a horse, ride a tractor. " It was a complete scene from the Willie Nelson warm up on the sound system up to the Johnny Cash homage closing. We all wandered off to the cars, I passed one woman sitting on the tailgate of the Ford, waiting for the guy. My little Subaru was tucked in between a few trucks with serious chrome and bumpers. Not about food, not about the music even, but a slice of life I was not used to and had fun dropping in on. Must certainly wear more bling. Jazz will be another story for sure. Off to bed, ears are still ringing.

steak

2006-06-22T22:29:00.000-07:00

Steak. Manly food. But, let's get real, it is great for women. I have a lot of associations with steak all of them good. In a hypocritical way, if I had had a personal name basis relationship with the steers outside my classroom window, that would not be true. I wouldn't want to eat Tom, Dick, or Harry. However, I have no problem with a piece of Texas prime, slabbed across my plate. Especially in the morning when I need to regain my strength. None of this frou-frou lightweight breakfast stuff. I am not, and never have been, one to swoon over a cinnamon bun, brioche, or puffy thing for breakfast. Nix the sticky jam, the butter which has to be disrobed of the aluminum wrapper, and for sure the eggs. I really do not like eggs and have had to make them all week. As a child, I was reduced to tears watching my 'Humpty Dumpty eggs" congeal on the plate, I could not leave until I ate them. ruined eggs for life. This week I have been cooking breakfast at an inn, and it is a cultural take on breakfast foods. Yeah, yeah, I know that it is a combination of English beef-busting nutrition to fuel the workers plus a sense of home economics that convinced Americans to eat eggs, sausage, and pastry for breakfast in the last century. I have made scones, passed out jams and several fluffy omlettes, frittatas, and other multi syllable breakfast items that are like their names, fluffy, not stuffy. Steak, now there is a one syllable event. However, I often feel in many events that I am a changling, not only not of this country, an ex-pat in my own world, but also switched at birth with someone from the Middle East. For me, a plate of tomatoes and olives would do much better than limpid soggy cornflakes, an egg that looks back at me, and sappy waffles. But I still lie. I want meat. I want a plate of bacon but would drop dead with a coronary. I love corn beef hash and usually get it when out at a Sunday breakfast. I used to order grilled chicken livers with green onions, ginger, and lots of soy sauce in Ashland when traveling. But steak does it all. It is exactly what I need, flavor, protein, and sexy. Yes, sexy. Steak is a morning pick me up after the pick up. It is a reminder of flesh, of strength and muscle, of Texas cowboys with rippling pecs, of American know-how. Get on little dogies, ride them cowboy. Slap them on the grill, slap them on the bed, same thing. Truly, I could by extension, gague the degree of a relationship by the breakfast food. In the same inn where I am cooking those waffles, sunny side up eyes, and flaccid bacon, the chef was bemoning that one of his past girlfriends didn't like steak. I made my observation that they probably hadn't , you know, had, you know....either. He looked at me with a bemused expression and said, "you got it. " So vegetarians...think they get off on a slab of tofu? Or, tempeh...yeah, tempeh is sexy indeed, and not. Or, portobellos, surely a large irradiated fungus that takes over Chicago is the equivalent of a t-bone. I think not. So steak it is, run through the range, rode hard, put down wet, and waiting on the plate to replenish corpuscles and muscle, salt and sinew, a direct transfusion of energy. Woman food. Tabasco, lots of coffee, and starched white tablecloth underneath the sheets of this breakfast....sooooo much better than a cinnabon.

love me tender

2006-06-20T22:13:00.000-07:00

So, this is not about food, Turkey, or moving in.

I have been thinking a lot recently, in an amorphous way about men and women. Not huge archetypal images, no Mars, no Venus. But, can men be tender, and If I don't think so, what does that say about my views of men? Or how have I allowed myself to be taught? Images of dad, conflicting, raging, and at the same time one of the most sentimental man I knew.
As a species, I expect that the female is tougher. I would absolutely kill to preserve my child, and think every woman feels the same way. In nature documentaries, the arbiter of maternal instinct, no males of the pride surround the female giving birth. Nope, in our culture in America it was only the early sixties perhaps when men were allowed in the delivery room, and to hear some tell it, that was just dandy for them.
What is this resurgence of male tenderness? I want to believe it is true, and I want to believe that men are protectors, they do the tough stuff.
But sometimes, I think that it is all a culturally learned behavior, generations of chick flicks have taught men that a hand to a face, a gesture of simplicity in all its earnestness, will win the gal over. Can they be truly tender to their children, to their partner? Often I think not. I wonder why. Because I was not shown it, and actually I often would not let it in. I think really, this is my own issue, one of trust and being able to relinquish those walls which I have so carefully built around me for protection. And, I wonder what was learned behavior as a kid. However, this is not the place for Freud, Colette, or even the Kinsey report.
Nope, is is the post feminist-rule-of-guy review. I just spent some time with a huge variety of men, professional and personal. Gay, straight, lots of experience, and very little. Worldly, and more straight common sense than some of the twits I have worked with. And, I am beginning to challenge my carefully held beliefs. There is no question that men, as Dads, can care for their children and defend to the death. But what I am talking about here is just what constitutes tenderness in this culture in a way, in mine. Is it chocolate or fixing something? It is the willingness to really listen and attend, and be gentlemanly? This last effect is a diminishing capacity in our culture. My emphasis is on the Middle East and I have friends who rail about the isolation of women, the pedestal aspect of the veil, the seclusion and the harem. I am beginning to think that we sometimes have lost by chipping away not at a pedestal but at the virtues that do indeed make us different. I have had to do it so much alone, that last year when finally driven by so much heart-stopping stress, it was so evident to my family that they needed to come help all of us. We were at a Rubicon and needed to move forth. It wasn't the women at this time who stepped in, it was the men. And they helped but I had to be "guy like" to get through it. Afterwards, I was absolutely, flat out spent and exhausted and it has taken the better part of the year to get better. I still am learning to slow down, because inaction led to introspection. I wanted a hug, some tenderness. My Turkish friends are appalled that so many people live alone in America, especially women. My daughter "should have moved home". It is unacceptable that I live alone. "Who will find me if I fall down? " That is sometimes certainly the question, who will? I imagine myself alone, with no one to know, no one to help when a wrenching headache hits. Of course that isn't true, I have experienced it every day, but it is the awareness, and the recognition that has to come from me not the outside. Back to tenderness. Tenderness is the right soap, the holding of a hand for balance, and the chance to say "just sit, let me take care of you." I won't let you down. I realise that tenderness is not weak, it is strength and I have confused the two. I applaud women's rights. I would not live in a culture without them, and at the same time I think we as a culture are often diminished by this forceful need to do it on our own, to be strong, to be tough, to fix things ourselves. I love to cook for someone, to nourish them when I think they have had a rough time, and when I think we both would like some company. I also joke that I am post feminist, that a guy can do this, do that, are stronger, know more in some areas, and for God's sake know to hold my hand, to clasp my head when a kiss, and to shut me up. Forceful tenderness drops me to my knees. I have put my back out carrying things too heavy, wrenched my wrist in repairs, and cannot, cannot do it all. I am confronted by this daily, that doing it all myself is isolating, people want to help. And maybe Hollywood is right, men can be tender, they want to do the soft thing, the respectful chivalric code and value the woman. And maybe it is not only right, it is about time. Maybe girls, women, by valuing men, and allowing ourselves to BE valued, we allow the men gain their own sense of place in the universe, the tool box, the seat at the table, and the place in the bed. My gay men friends do not have this discussion, there is no "girl's role" boy's roll..there just is. I cannot speak to the women. But of my men friends who are gay, I trust them implicitly, would travel with them anywhere, and there is no charge to be or not be "girly." I can ask for help without a sense of repayment or reprisal. So what does that mean then? It means for me to let the defenses down, to come back to my picture of the woman supported and enfolded because it takes a duality to ascend. And while living alone keeps us in this culture apart, it need not divide us in half. Love me tender, love me true indeed, water wears down rocks and the desert winds soften any sandstone bluff. I need lots of things fixed around here that I need help on, and first I must fix my stubborn self to let tenderness in.

clothes optional with mirrors

2006-06-19T15:34:00.000-07:00

Summer is officially in session, but you wouldn't know that up here in the clouds. I finished work mid June and the intervening days have been jam packed. I have had business meetings, conference calls, dinners, a movie, visits from my daughter and an old long-lost now retrived friend, and several Encounters of the Close Kind in all venues. Since then I have also had a lot of calls with girlfriends, a sister in law with California women in tow, my daughter and her friends up to visit, and visits from a best friend and her mom. Girl time, women time. One of our conversations revolved around dress. Whatto where, when to wear it, and how to wear it. City clothes, camping clothes, walking around the town clothes, and just how dressed up to be. Eugene is particularly casual, and after the country fair, the dress is even more un-scale. I am packing to leave in 3 days for a high class city, Toronto, and so have washed everything, and figuring out how to upclass myself. So, this may be why I am sitting here not wearing any clothes, it is too much trouble right now. I am washing everything, and with the execption of carrying my basket outside to my condo laundry, I am figuring what the hell, who is going to see me? Or, if the did it certainly would not be in the context of doing laundry, and that dear readers is another topic. I am at the top of a hill, windows face a hill and although at night unless I pull the drapes you can see right in, I really don't care. This is a hidden advantage of living alone, or being alone some time:" Clothes are NOT NEEDED." No tight bra, no panty lines, no why don't I lose some weight pants, no wrinkles, spots, ironing, plackets, pleats, buttons or buttonholes, belts....nothing. What to wear? only when cooking, frying bacon in the nude is not recommended. Martha Graham said one time that she would not choreograph nude dancing, like the musical Hair because, ".. parts of the human anatomy do not stop moving when I desire them to." I get that. But I am not choreographing myself, I just am enjoying not getting dressed. Of course, in a partnership clothing optional is also nice, but when children are around, or they might burst into the house as young adults, one needs must wear clothes. So it is with a certain amount of enjoying "being bad" that I am finding I just don't bother often. And, when using tanning lotion which must dry before wearing clothing, it just makes sense. And, it means getting used to seeing yourslef, a revelation...a good idea. I have full on mirrors on my closets, and while somewhat startling, I think that this feedback I have been getting is sinking in, and I no longer avert my eyes at myself...another revelation. Mirror mirror on the wall, I even have some which face the wall; traditional Turkish ones which are wedding mirrors, and meant to face the wall until used to avoid vanity. It makes sense in a former veiled culture if you are un veiled, then the mirrors are put away. Not for Translylvania where no image in a mirror is vampyric, or for cheap movies when they are on the ceiling, but for here, mirrors bounce light, open space, and give me my own reflecting pond. Narcissus like, I look, and check, and appreciate, so it is worth it.

Glass ceilings

2006-06-16T11:34:00.000-07:00

I have an upstairs neighbor, a new concept: actuality and sometimes a despair. Nice person, but walks with a heavy tread; or the condo is lightly built with skimpy structure and widely spaced stringers. I have not had upstairs neighbors for over 30 years, and sometimes feel that I have moved back into an apartment. I love my place, it is easy access and in the forest improbably in the middle of the settled hills in my city. It has light, trees, deer, and is 6 minutes from dining.

But it has an upstairs, and there she goes again, walking, sliding the doors, flushing, bathing, showering.... Tromp, tromp, I can see her walking overhead in the glass ceiling of my mind. Whenever I see her in public, she is wearing Dansk clogs, and I don't think she takes them off. Clomp clomp, right now she is walking into the kitchen.

I don't know if she hears me walk. When she complained about the dogs two weeks ago, I slammed, and walked and played music loud. Maybe she does. Maybe she hears me in my bedroom also. Thumps, slides, radio, shower and everything else.

But this is about my glass ceiling. Hitchcock pioneered the stage where in one scene, the protagonist of the suspense movie imagines he hears the murderer overhead. The glass ceiling he contrived had the character look up and actually seem to SEE the man walking, pacing, contemplating homicide. Heavy oxfords, the bottom of furniture legs, he showed it as a literal metaphor of the character's increasing paranoia of his homicidal neighbor.

I sometimes feel that way, and then think in reverse. What if there was a glass floor? What if she could look down on me? Not wearing clothes as I check my mail at 3 am for insomnia reasons? In the shower. Eating, trudging around the vacuum, entertaining publicly and privately? How would that be?

This leads me to think of other glass ceilings and floors. The bottom of a glass boat, showing in the increasing depths, the inhabitants of the ocean. Dark shapes, the deeper the more mysterious, and devoid of color. How am I a floor in a glass boat? I am one sometimes, in my mind, or my past, as I skim over the surface of my placid day today. My own denizens lie below, with distance and time the colors fade. Or, the reverse, under the water, looking up at the boat of my last year, lures dangling over for me to grab. Lines thrown out by competitors as a feint for friendship, shiny attractive bait for engagement which I ignored. Fish like, I swam through and under that lake, and came back onto land, my terra of choice; I really do not like water.

Glass, I have been told, is actually a non-solid state in physics. Measurements of the thickness of cathedral glass several hundred years old shows a thickening at the bottom as the glass molecules ooze to the bottom of the window. I kind of like that, imagining the cathedral windows subtly shifting as theology and culture moves along. Or, the great pyramid of light by architect IM Pei smack in the center of the Louvre courtyard. Perched like a beached pyramid, its transparency hints at social currents, art, and the whole history of French art under the revolutionary bloodstained cobblestones of it's doomed palace.

In the 60's or 70's, I don't know when it was forged, the term glass ceiling meant the transparent barrier that stopped women from moving up into being masculine success figures, the CEO's and leaders of industry. The implication was it was only a ceiling, glass is breakable, and women were to burst forward through that ceiling to success, like the pyramid in the Louvre. Impaled upon some of those shards as they tried, many women sank back below those depths under the ceiling, under the boat.

I have melted glass, fused it in kilns, slumped it into molds, and cut it to make stained glass windows. I am more anxious around glass than I am my chef knives, plasma torches, or welding. I have cast bronze, done blacksmithing, and many things with fire melting and forming metal. But glass is an amoeba, a dangerous shape-shifter of my past and certainly future. I am more careful around something that will hurt me when it is not made to, shards are of something broken, my knives are supposed to cut. Shark-like, spears of glass in my ceiling, in my floor, and on my walls have no conscience, they hover in my consciousness just out of sight like the sharks circling in the aquarium at the beach. And those also swim under a glass floor that gives me the creeps to walk upon. Give me sand, give me ice, but not glass to walk on.

So, at night the world can look into the large windows where I sit at my keyboard. Unless I pull the drapes, which is not often, approachers, strangers and friends alike, can see into my home. My life is not that transparent, or is it? I keep some things close to my heart, but there are a few recently who have pointed out what parts of my life I wear on my sleeve, on my ceiling, and on my floor. As the saying goes, people who live in glass houses shouldn't cast stones, so I don't to my walls. But, I wish that some sort of net, some curtain, could shield me from the overhead noise and feeling that Hitchcock was on to something.

My own glass ceiling of recticence, of holding back, is breaking. This is good, it is dangerous, and it is shape-shifting. But, it is not transparent.

belly dancing and raki

2006-06-08T20:51:00.000-07:00

I was quite focused on anger and irritation on my last post. (see on your own) and so here tonight, I am sitting with Turkish music, a glass of raki, and the sunset. Flowers are throughout the house, some from my old yard, picked when I picked up my dog kids. Some are from friend, some I bought myself, and two dozen yellow ones are from a young woman student. I am blessed.

It is dusk and I am completely enjoying the Turkish music, It is current Euro pop and I find myself moving in tune to the music, hearing snippets of Turkish I understand, and longing for another trip to Turkey. I was there three years ago, and came home to incipient disintegration of my marriage. The last week I was in Istanbul was not good, I was isolated in Sulthanamet on my own, the EU congress was going on and the city was blockaded. I was not able to visit the bazaar, closed by NATO so Bush and all the EU leaders could shop. So I visited the pudding person each day, bought figs and tomatoes to eat in my room at night and found an English used bookstore to buy whatever I could; reading a book a night.

Fast forward three years, my daughter is graduated, I am on my own, and longing to revisit Turkey and have a much better time. I have learned more about traveling on my own, and not worrying in a pr- cognizant way what is happening back home. It all happened while I was gone...and this time I wouldn't have to have that sense in the middle of the night, the gut dropping paranoia that something was ending.

Nope, this time it is belly dancing, lots of raki, shores of the Med, and enjoying looking at the waiters with my dear friend. When I get there; for first my daughter will graduate, and I want to take her someplace exotic and a trip with her. Istanbul is not on her radar, perhaps Paris...assuming I am a little more solvent.

But right now, I know all these songs and am enjoying them. They sing of love, of eyes soulful, hips gyrating, shoulders shaking and a sway unique to belly dancing.

When we were in Pamukale, at a spa, I was wandering around exploring. Out the window we could see the endless pool, and on the postcard racks were the pictures of the tiered white cotton castle, (the name Pamuk is cotton, kale is castle) encropments of natural limestone and azure pools. Two little girls werre playing to the music, and where American little kids might do the twist, these sloe eyed children, were shymmying, arms raised like little gypsies. Fingers snapping, heads dipping, they were kicking in the belly dancing instinct at age five.

My dear Turkish male friend can do the top shake as he dances, very sexy. Moving only from the waist, bottom feet almost still, the men dance in the villages with arm and shoulder shakes. Only the men dance at the weddings, women dance separately in these still almost medieval towns.

At the resorts though, the city kids practically strip down. There is no Islamic modesty here, skin tight jeans and tight tops, mimicking the Russian tourists and British shop girls catching the early rates. Black black hair, the men are gorgeous, the women Turkish sirens, gold jewelry against tan skin and hennaed hair. The discoes blare and hyps gyrate, women neck outside with a date; the prostitutes lurked, speaking in sybalant East European accents. I was stunned at the difference and felt matronly, threatened, and dying to go dance.

So now, here I am, typing in my own hip dance, moving from the waist up, sipping raki as I recal and project my last, and next, trip.

Belly dancing pictures are in my past; a favorite was in LIFE magazine. My parents were featured in an article about troops overseas. The dancer is sliding up to my dad, he is natty in two tone bucks, and a great fifties modern bowling shirt. Mom, with pursed lips, ( I have them too, darn it) is looking askance, body language leaning back as this hefty woman sidles up to my dad. My lips do not match my spirit.

My favorite Turkish doll was a belly dancer, with a large round tummy. A pencil line emphasized the circular mound. And they are, none of those too-thin women, they are zaftig, they have weight, movement, and bellies. Good for them, and I am thinking about taking a class just to move to this music. Not the fake gypsy stuff that all the shiksas take, not the cartoon borrow-a-culture class, I really feel drawn to the music.

And the eyebrows. The women on this CD have eyebrows to die for, in a culture that used to be veiled the eye was all. A flick of the eyebrow, an arch of the look, a drop of the eyelid conveyed for Islamic men what a glimpse of a wrist did for the Victorians. I will take the eyebrow, the Orientalist sheik and the nuanced eye.

So, as my school year winds down, I am drawn to a re-do of a trip. I felt incomplete when I left last time, I have lost touch with my Turkish family. I have friends arriving soon from Turkey and I want one big huge party with them. I want raki, lamb, Turkish music, soul shimmying hip grinding music, and fun. I want to go back, I want to evoke Istanbul here, and it is time to have a dance. You do not get do overs in life, but I would like to try.

sturm und drang fire and ice

2006-06-07T18:07:00.000-07:00

I have been working my ass off for about two weeks straight, with 18 hour days, night classes and grading. I had a student tell me to my face in class that he didn;t like me and I had to take it and not tell him what a sorry spoiled brat he was. I am ready for summer. I am ready to sleep in and at the same time have taken on a job three or so days a week cheffing from 6 am to noon. I need the company, the experience, and the money. And right now this blog is not helping, it doesn't format into paragraphs, so this will be one full-on vent. I like fire, I really do, even though I am challenged to make one. I have been so wrought up lately over work, over life good and bad that fire is very appealing. To that end, I have also taken to playing Leonard Cohen's music of anger and aggression very loud. I have a thin ceiling and my upstairs neighbor walks with a heavy tread. My two Russells are barkers, and I am trying ot get them civilized; they are here every other week. So last night, when I came home dragging papers, and prepared to cook 70 crepes for a self-created Senior Girl's tea there was a note telling me to "please address your dogs." Hell. double damn, I am working and I am sorry she is home all day and I do want to be a responsible neighbor, pet owner, world citizen and cure ill. But God Damn it, I was tired, and this was all I needed. I felt alone, I was pissed off that I was living in a condo where I must keep in mind neighbors and be good. I am tired of being good. I want fire, I want smoke, I want to rage, to rave, and to throw small things off my balcony. Lots of them. So, I played Leonard VERY LOUD, banged around lots of pots, slammed the cupboards and generally made a nuisance of myself. And, I called my last husband who offered to get the dogs for a night as I had to leave so early with the crepes and god forbid I have them bark. It was a great offer, and he came, they went, and I cried. I played the music louder, to the song of Bernadette and felt like an isolate saint, who sees visions no one believes. From frustration, from irritation, from lonlieness. And played music again, with company as I cooked. Back to fire, new paragraph. Fire is cleansing, and immolating, and I want to be immolated. I want the flesh off my bones of irritation, I want to step like Joan of Arc into the embrace of purity and anger. I need to get this off my chest, and I want to be surrounded with actions that destroy me, that destroy the quiet part, and release the openness and anger, and from that the creativity that has been locked up on the pyre of my good girlness. To hell with that sometime; I have always been the good wife, the good mother, none of those things I regret. I am both, and do it well. I try very hard to be good, to do right, and right now the meek do not inherit the earth, they get the goddamn condo, not the man. But, good girls don't ride harleys, get tattoes, and enjoy flesh stripping sex for the sheer creativity of it. I used to do those things as an art student, but as Thoreau said, " the greatest tragedy is what dies within a man while he lives." I have died, and Joan is right. Leonard sings about her stepping into fire's fiery embrace, and I want those wings of smoke around me. Anf if those who read this blog worry, not to, I am not suicidal, but my life is and was and needs to change, and be changed. Throw it out there, be a bad chapter in a Nora Roberts bodice buster, a good line in a song, an isolate in a sea of idiots. I am tired of being careful, I am tired. This sound and fury and sturm und drang will pass, but I still like fire. I want to melt the steel into the furnice like I did in welding. I want hot spices, rich wine, red meat, to be taken charge of with hands and authority upon me, the ability to speak my mind and not worry about my job, my relationships, my acceptability. I want it all, and in 24 hours another part of me will die until I get angry again.

chicken pot pies

2006-05-28T18:33:00.000-07:00

I have just spent the last hour making a full-on chicken pot pie. Why? Because I foolishly decided to teach a pastry class in two days, and because I think, my picture was in the paper last month in an article about cooking classes, all my classes have sold. Great. And not great, because it is the end of the term and the next night I have a charity dinner for 20.

However, despite it being the end of May, Oregon has decided to ignore the warm Pacific currents and it has been raining torrents. I was at a wine tasting yesterday outside besides a choppy lake trying to enjoy the tastings. The lake was supposed to be sparkling and our conversation likewise, but we sipped and tried our best.

So, today, I am reviewing the recipe and trying it out before cooking for a crowd. I have a small small kitchen, and stack things upon all available surfaces. I pre poached the chicken as the wind came up outside. I cut the lovely spring veg, small carrots, baby green beans, grass like asparagus into diagonal same length pieces as the rain began. And, as the smoke alarm went off AGAIN I roasted the red pepper for lovely geramium colored dice. I mumble to myself, imagine teaching it to a group. I imagine the kitchen at the store and what pans I need. I sip some wine from yesterday.

After I assembled the veg and held them as I made the bechamel, I chilled the dough. It sat in my fridge patiently chilling like the weather outside. The phone rang and I took a break...and another sip of wine.

My brother...great news, nice visit, and a chat as I stood looking outside at the retreating rain and mist, considering if I remembered how to open the damper and make a fire.

Back to the chicken pot pie.

I rolled out the dough on my thirty year old tupperware pastry sheet with concentric circles for pie sizes printed on it. I have dragged this beat up tool around for all these years, and I think I need a new one. But it, like so many of my kitchen things has memories no one knows and ever will, but while I have it they live on each time I put my rolling pin to the dough. This is the sheet my daughter made her first tarte tatin. It is the one I cooled cookies on for years.

Why chicken pot pie? This sure was not any kind of chicken pot pie I knew or remembered and despite their paltry filling today I still liked what I remembered of them! Hence the importance of memory over substance because they are still awful now. When the three of us, my two brothers and I were younger, pot pies indicated: Mom And Dad Are Going Out. If not pot pies, then fish sticks also meant the baby sitter was coming over.

We loved pot pies, little saucers with a crust and the glint of crimped aluminum around the outside. I liked the bouncy over-done carrots, the few peas and some cubes of chicken, and the copius gravy. There was a satisfying aroma when we broke the top with our forks. The box promised a luscious picture, and to a six year old, it delivered.

However, in my first marriage, I tried to replicate the pies, and even bought the little pie pans to make my own. I tried, and failed at the bechamel, and so pumped it up with lots of Worscheshire sauce in the congealed gravy. I had made eight of them, happily regressing in the kitchen. Not successful, but not wanting to throw them away, I ate them all week for lunch.

I left those same pans behind last year in my last pantry. Today, I actually borrowed a large porcelain pie pan from my second husband, in fact it was a wedding present to us. I brought it home and now it sits in the oven, a lovely crust piled over a delectable mix with just the right amount of bechamel over perfect vegetables and poached chicken. Or so I hope.

No babysitters, no Mom's night out, the daughter is in college and the dog kids are at Dad's. I hope it tastes good; I have called several people to share it with, but no one is home this soggy, soggy Memorial weekend. The rain has now stopped and as it grows darker I see some sunlight in the city below.

In a way, this is my memorial to all the baby sitters, our nights while Mom and Dad were out being grown ups, and to my two marriages. I have promised to share a piece with the last husband, who knows when I may be driven to make a pie again? Oh yeah, there IS still the class in two days.

Tomorrow, I practice the pastry for and make an apple pie. To be continued.

Victoria's Secret is out

2006-05-03T17:20:00.000-07:00

Ok, there has been a theme with some of my postings, that of lingerie. This has nothing to do with food, unless you consider what to wear for certain dinners.

There is mom lingerie, dating lingerie, virginal, bridal, and trainer.

For several years it seemed that it didn't matter what in the hell I wore, it would not make any positive difference, as interests were lateral. However, there is a personal side, and a self awareness side that all women understand.

We put ourselves, especially if mothers, last. My daughter recognized this, and often, as she grew older, would say, "treat yourself Mom." But I was carrying the house, would write most of the food checks, and there was Costco with the pack of mom-ness underwear. What the hell, worked for me, 'cause who was looking? Wrong attitude, and I get that now. She however, is a forthright young woman whose come home from college luggage last year was stuffed Vicky's bags.

When I first got into lingerie, as every teenage girl does, it was a break FROM mom. I didn't know what my mom wore; I wanted my own style, from shampoo, (no Prell thank you), to my first cologne, (Chanel 59) and then lingerie. We lived in Germany. I could shop in the base, with all the made in America white stuff, or, I could saunter downtown to Herties, the local department store and shop with my girlfriends.

This was the era of beginning panty hose, with wierd cuts that looked like stockings and garter belts all in one, with bra slips, and tiny tiny bottoms. German is a very pragmatic and descriptive language. Bustenhalters, "bust-holders" were bras, abbreviated to b-h, or "bey-hah. We wanted bey-has.

A stolid shopwoman, of Wagnerian size looked at us, gangly junior-sized American women and sniffed. "Null," she intoned. The bras were piled into large waist high bins, all colors and mechanations. Some were leopard, others red and see through, many virginal lace, cross strap, strapless, add-a strap, etc. They were grouped very pragmaatically, like the language, into four sizes; 1-eins, 2-zewi, 3-drei, and 4-fier. Larger sizes, awe-inspiring 5, 6, or the 00mm-pah-pah 7 were in the Wagner section. We cowered, we were not large enough for these bra bins, we were , Null, zero. We crept away to the junior, and even child section for our bras. I loved my bra slip, with mini skirts only 9-10 inches long, a bra slip was perfect; it lifted when you reached up, and never showed the slip! What else we may have showed was another issue.

Later in college, no bras. Bandaids were the issue, when shopping in the frozen food section. I remember sleeping on campus away from home and realizing I had no bra the next day. I was terrified, and walked like Quasimoto the rest of the day, shoulders hunched. I got over it, and wore halters, no bra, backless, and long bell bottoms I embroidered. My dad had a fit and said not daughter of his was wearing that, but I did. so there.

Later on, the cascade of bras continued, shopping in London, with all sorts of exotic styles for fun. What color to wear under what. Front, back, closure, pull on...pull off! It was the late 60's and who needed them?

Motherhood, maternity bras, enough said. Ditched them as soon as I could, and back to fancy stuff for dating. Single mom, single lingerie.

In India, my friend's houseboy ironed her bras, and every week after laundry they were lined up like little Frederick's of Hollywood pyramids, folded into triangles and IRONED. I don't know what bothered me more, that someone saw the lingerie, or that this man ironed them. Shoppping in the market, a chain link fence was festooned with bras, all lurid colors. "Russian bras!" the man said, and I wasn't sure if it was because of their impressive peasant size, or where they were made.

My bra quest continued. Recently in Turkey, I got a kick out of the contrast between publidc and private, all in public. One store had wedding dresses, confections with yards of tuille. And also, the conservative wedding outfit for the traditional, with headscarf and full- on covered jacket. Across the street was the bra shop. Points, crennelations, pyramids, all facing east, the bras enticed and mocked the store across the street. For good measure, some of the mannequins were even of statuesque nature so all would see themselves in the window.

Which brings me to Vicky's. I know it is a cunning marketing plan, to call this Victoria's. THis implies virginal, Victorian, under-the-sheets enthusiasm topped with virginal faux-reluctance. "For that special occasion, " intoned a woman showing me samples, " these are for every day. " WHAT special occasion, the nuptials, the tryst, the post maternity? What in the hell were they marketing?

Front of the house: dessert. Confectionary, fluff, lace, tuille, leopard, see through, and bondage. Back of the house: main course: every day, cotton, swimsuit, 24/7 wearing, fatigue, and camoflauge. And, no one was a 4, 5,6, or 7. I asked to see several types, "We don't usually have your size on display, but they are below." I am a 38 for God's sake, not a 60. Nope, like size 6 shoes on display, only the teeny ones with lots of push up were on the impossibly thin manequins, with pelvic bones that would cut butter. The women selling things wear formal black suits and get discounts apparently, tanning. They were lovely. I shopped, I took in trays of samples from the 38 drawer, and spent my gift certificate. It was great. No more "null" , or Russian bras, " or dance of the seven veils. It is truly interesting though how women have been convinced to buy from this place named after one of the most repressed Victorians...but she had 12 kids. Think about it.

buying your own flowers, or....

2006-04-30T17:53:00.000-07:00

O.K. when I was a kid in the 50's, and thank you very much I don't really look like I am 55 at least from the neck up...below is none of your business, women did not buy themselves flowers.

Or so I thought.

Or perfume, or jewelry, or anything that a man should, and would, buy them.
As Marilyn sang, "diamonds are a girl's best friend " and Anita Loos made sure she never bought them, her lovers did. And Coco Chanel. She was liberated, introduced pants, and you can be sure others bought her diamonds and flowers and perfume.

So this is a wierd post feminist diatribe. I wanted my husband to bring me flowers. He would bring me chocolate, and cookies, and in the death throws of duplicity, would bring me cookies from a bakery where he had just come from hanging out with his syncophants, and girl hanger's on, and more. A tuille for a kiss. A shortbread for his hugs. And I, the fool thanked him for his crumbs. He meant well, and I was at the same time decieved, as was he. Move on.

I need to buy my own flowers, and chocolate, and perfume, and diamonds. I really hate to, I want men I know to be able to read my mind, bring me flowers and regress to the 50's. I don't think I should buy my own luxuries, and therein is the paradox. If I don't, who will? Treat yourself, and indulge yourself. Sleep in, indulge yourself as a friend said. Who else will tell you that?

Do men buy themselves flowers? I think, from recent postings that they have no trouble buying themselves toys, jewelry tools, golf clubs, sportboats, good for them. Women buy mom things, and house things. I left behind a washer and dryer for God's sake, an entire yard full of flowers I helped plant, and bricks I bought, and statues I was given. It hurts to see the yard. I did not get myself toys, I bought for the house. I bought for the family.

I had a fantasy that if I put money down at a florist, I could go every Friday and pick up $5 of flowers throughout the year and treat myself. I would love flowers in the home, and recently bought myself some. I had a friend coming over, flew to the store, bought wine, flowers, and threw all the clothes in the hamper. My daughter later in the week brought me flowers, and I adored them. But generally, I am on the shelf, waiting for them. Waiting for the call, the e-mail, the invitation to the movie, the implication and symbolism is large and clear.

So what if no one brings them? Will I never have them? Do I live a life without flowers?

Really, flowers in this context mean love. I have the love of my daughter. I rarely got flowers from anyone else, and they mean so much. I should tell people more, and they should get it. I got flowers from my husband during courting but then very few afterwards. If love to me is making a meal, and caring for the home, why can he not get that love is not big presents but flowers for $5 every Friday, not shortbread from the loose skirt doxy? I will promise to be more deliberate and hope the man gets it.

On to chocolate, lingerie, and diamonds.

Ditto diamonds, when I finally got that tennis bracelet, it was already tainted. I had wanted one in the worst way. I packed it up and will never wear it again. enough said.

I bought my own gold for my birthday, and love it. Do I wish that someone else would buy it for me? You bet I do, and I would want it purchased with fun, and love, and sex, and no strings, and not taint. But it ain't happening yet, and I needed new earrings. If I want my daughter to be a self actualizer, I should model the same thing; indeed, I have learned from her. She waits for no one for her shopping and taking care of herself.

Chocolate is over-rated in my mind as a gift. Touted in year old packages with a bloom of over- heating on it at Valentine's, it is not what I want. But, chocolate in home made packages from artisinal producers, from Mexico, from Africa, will fit the bill, I work in food. I don't want a mass produced bar, or tacky heart box. I want chocolate dripped, licked, rolled, dusted, and liquored. Get it. Or, I get my own, and that is the shift.

I buy my own flowers, I buy my own chocolate, and I buy my own lingerie. No more Costco brands for me, yes, I crossed the threshold of the famous Victorian and went for it. Always be prepared, the Girl Scout of lingerie, and waiting. Or not, but no longer a six-pac underwear gal.

Perfume falls into a shadow quality, if someone else buys it for you, it may not be likeable. And, it is impossible to wear perfume that is upsetting. However, luxurious lotion, and oils, are gifts to enjoy. Give me more. I do buy my own perfume, because I hated telling what I like, then they got it, then I was "surprised" with the gift. Learn me better, and get it right. I worked very hard especially when called upon that I was not attentive, to pick things that worked.

Yet, I got my "list'. It is hard to make a list that says, "notice me, pick me, choose me."

choose cookies, choose chocolate, choose tennis bracelets, choose......

So, I have a great perfume, it is arcane, it is multi-sexual, and designed in the 20's. Cary Grant and Ava Gardner both liked it, it is Italian, and reeks of the Riveria, Kathering Hepburn, Coco, and the Cote d'Azure. I have gone through three bottles since July. And, it is the last thing I charged; I am paying things off.

So, I buy myself flowers.

Take note, if you start to buy me some, be prepared for their significance, and don't take it lightly. Otherwise, I will reduce you to cookie crumbs, and pack away your gift, it is too painful to not be worthwhile. Sometime moving on means to face it, and take responsibility for mixed signals.

barbeque

2006-04-29T22:33:00.000-07:00

Smoke, fire, and big slabs of something from an animal...barbeque. I have begun to think about it as the weather warms up. I only have a small deck at my new home, and so am beginning to think that one of the cantilevered ones like those hung over an outboard might not be a bad idea. Until I flip with a spatula the t-bone over the deck to the wildlife waiting far below. Must re- think this.

We have always barbeque'd, as I grew up I have a mental photo shoot of shish kebabs on our fifth floor balcony in Izmir, Turkey. Mom had purchased the three foot skewers in the market, and Dad would make the shish kebabs to grill. I have those skewers yet, in a vase on my mantle, and use them often.

Americans grill. If Chinese set up restaurants all over the world, and they do...I have had egg rolls in Frankfurt, New Delhi, and Panama...Americans take their grills.

In Germany we lived on the fourth floor, and no balcony. The apartments were divided into three stairwells, with eight homes to a stairwell. And, in the front of the homes were line ups of grills. Dad would run down the flights to do the steaks and bring them all the way back up for dinner parties. The smell of coals on the base evoked America, and fourth of July and fun.

Later, when my brother was a young Air Force officer, he was stationed in a base in England. They did not have enough rank to be on base, so he and his young wife found a place in a small village. The taciturn villagers, British to their crumpet soul, did not really come forth with open arms. What to do? Walt and Ingrid decided to have a good old fashioned Texas barbeque, complete with potato salad, the works, and invited all the neighbors. It was a huge success, slabs of commissary beef on the grill, and these grizzled WWII vets took them to their collective hearts and made Walt an honorary Rotary member. Wins them over all the time.

Over the last few years in my marriage we had collected barbeques, to no success in using them though, we would always forget to start the coals. We didn't start a lot of coals it seems. It became a joke, from the very lovely cast iron Lodge cookware one, to a small Webber, electric, and antique hibachi. Never got used, like so many presents, they were appreciated but not accessed. Wonder why. Concept over performance, like so many things, plans which rolled from year to year with no sense of time. I loved that Lodge grill, but was the only one who used it, although grilling is supposed to be a guy thing. Macho. And yet, there I was, using it, de rusting it, and now it is rusted.

That too is a metaphor, I tend to be forthright, and take charge, and do the "guy" things, maybe because I am a military kid, or the first, or in a post feminist angst not wanting to look like a girly girl.

To hell with that now, I want to be more of a girly girl, I want someone else to open the wine, buy my dinner, take care of me. but not too much. I can start my own coals, thread my own kebabs, in fact I took a BBQ class from the CIA. Big, Big, men with whole cows on the grill. Me, feeling petite, something I do not feel often, and still having to work with whole cows on the grill.

Where was I? Oh yes, feeling petite AND assertive at the same time. I want a grill on my deck. I want a party, I want people to come and go in my home and grill, and the sound of men's laughter as smoke drifts over the trees. I want elegant appetizers, champagne glasses on the deck and plates of food for the summer as we look over the valley. I want my own grill, not one that was seldom used, or enjoyed. I want my grill to make its own history. And, I want someone else to help me with it when needed, and to stand back when I damn well want to do it on my own

There is a book out by a friend called "Girls who Grill" and I get it. And, the grill is not Barbie pink, in fact, I don't think Barbie ever had a grill. Only Ken, but then again it took him 20 years to get hair.

This does not mean in any way that I plan to tune my own car, change my own tires or drive a stick. It does not mean that I will swill beer and bait my own hooks. It does mean that I like fire, I can invite men over to eat, and turn out something that was not immolated in the coals. And, tired metaphor that it is Phoenix like it will, and I will rise again. I am looking forward to the summer.

uberthinking

2006-04-26T23:08:00.000-07:00

I think too damn much. Lately, I cannot turn off my head, and boy have I tried. I think on the way to work, listen to the radio and think at the same time. I teach and also check e-mail, visualize what the next class will be doing and project a mental map of activities for the rest of the day. I am doing five things at once, six classes a day, too many projects, and behind in anything. I avoid thinking by watching TV or reading, but I am not relaxed. I think at the end of a massage, what I will be doing in 15 minutes. And I over think my actions with friends, new friends, and midlife friends.

This is exhausting me. I am sleepwalking. I have tried meditation but I begin to think. What is the sound of a quiet mind? Beats me, I have a skitzo conversation with myself constantly.I have tried yoga, but by the time I get into position watching the limber gal on my DVD, I cannot focus through my narrow cool bifocals, and then begin to think if I am doing the pose right. The TV is on in the background, and like a personal ad where the visual news channel is also running a line item along the bottom: "man eats hot dog and dies" " government statistics are overrated", I have this blog typing going on while I listen to the inner city news in my background, across the room to the TV. I hear myself constructing sentences, and even have sentences, floating like a ghostly script through my consciousness, in my dreams. I can construct whole storylines, and not turn them off. I even see the letters, the layout, and hear the voice over. I am in a video movie and the enemy is me.

At three am the computer calls me because, well, I was thinking and woke up. Shivering in my pink p's, glasses off, one eye shielded from the glare after the dark, I check my mail. I type a little, check my spelling and typos and stumble back to bed, clutching the dogs like teddy bears. I begin to think again. It makes my shoulders hurt, and teeth, I now wear a mouth guard. I think about that too.

There are times I don't think but it is rare. Wine is no good, I am trying to not drink it and lose weight. I did for a while, but really, this is a habit I broke, and I do not want to start again. If wine is in the house, it calls as a siren relief from stress when I come home from work. But, I am trying to resist. If I could only stop up my mind with wax like Ulysses and his Siren sail-by, bind myself to the mast of relaxation and let the thoughts float away.

A new friend helped the other night, sensing my tenseness, my filling the space with words. And, now I worry that I was still thinking too much, lost in the silence of my mind and not acting out or expressing just what good time I was having. I was too worried what they would , THINK of me! This is truly neurotic. Or a throwback to middle school. I am an adult, I can act and not continue to debrief myself again and again about actions. But, I do not want to have lost an opportunity to grow because I think too much before, during, and after any event in my life.

Food metaphor, after all, it is a blog for food. Watched pots don't boil. More than that, over fiddling seizes the chocolate, dashes the souffle to sodden bits, and scources the sauce. Too much plating ruins a perfectly lovely dish, too much spice leaves no nuance. God, could I only apply that to my life at the moment instead of after the event.I am a delayed reaction, a sonic boom of my own mind. I want another chance. I want my mind to quiet, to relax, and to be in the moment, not in the synapse. Any suggestions, ship them there, but don't think too much, just send them.

PInot noir

2006-04-25T21:14:00.000-07:00

I had a boyfriend who named his dog, a big black standard poodle, Pinot. As in noir, as in black. cute. nice dog, nice man. That was my first introduction to Pinots. I moved to Oregon in the silly glory years of winemaking, when everyone with a slope thought they could, and would, make wine.

We had fruit wines that would rival Maneshevitz, apple wines ,rhubharb wines, and finally everyone thought we should make wines like California. Cabernets flowed in the gulleys and we were wrong. Ours was not an Italian wanna-be climate, we were the Rhine with salmon. We had finally figured out that we should grow Gewurtztraminner, Riesling and other om-pah-pah wines, suitable for small sausages and German style Spatlaleze sweet wines. Our microclimates, deep valleys with mists, rain and south facing slopes lead themselves to the type of wines that the Romans figured out would work in the Mosel, Saar, and Ruhr valleys, let alone the Rhine with the Loreli, Wagner, and lederhosen.

Topless dancers, folk music, bell bottoms, hippie beads, and organic grapes, and the lure of counter-culture music led in the 70's. The wine followed the same path. I now have diners with mega mansion owners who planted the first Rieslings and were the old hippies. Cabernets eat our dust.

I could trade my weight, up and down, in Pinots in Calistoga. Actually, I could drive to Napa with my Subabru, the Pinot car equivalent in Oregon, loaded to the roof rack with Pinots. I could return with the Mercedes, the Lexus and the Volvos of wine.

Twenty years ago, I traveled with boyfriend post divorce guy to Calistoga. We had broken up, o.k, I found that out in the MIDDLE of the trip, but he still wanted the free trip, to search for cabernets. We survived, and drank a hell of a lot of Cabernet in our post-coital denial search for vino. Cabernet bottles lined the dresser, not lingerie. But, we still had a good time, after I verbally beat him up.

However, in a Freudian wine sort of way, I don't like cabs anymore. Cabs. That also means in jewelry the faceted, rounded ready-to-set gemstones. Cabernet is the same way, faceted, and full of terroir, the ready-to -set flavor from the earth. Cabs must breathe, and they have gravity, weight, and nuance. I don't want to drink gemstones, I want stones. And they make me flush with a blush...so I stopped drinking them.

On to Chardonnays, the darling of the post-Cab era in Oregon. After lots of blondes, ( who can say that with a straight face) oak planks floating in a sea of butter, cabs have finally settled down and I tried them. But, personally, I prefer the lightweights, the trainers, the Vouvray, Souave and white Rojoas. No cabs. No blood red wines, less nuance, less pairing problems, more shift to light, and God forbid easier to get out of the carpet. A metaphor for my relationships certainly.

On to Pinots. After twenty years drinking only whites including champagne and Aste, I think I have grown into Pinots. Oregon wines have grown up. No strawberries hovering over the cork. In fact, many corks have never seen a God-given tree, most are like test tube kids, grown in the lab. Wines are in aseptic boxes God love them, and not amphore. No Greek gods of wine here, but the gods of the viniculture and wine degree.

But Pinot IS the wine of Oregon. Everyone likes them, in fact, they have priced themselves out of the state. I was in Panama this winter, and found a wineshop with Oregon wines differentiated like California, and ( oh my God) Washington wines. Pinots were out of sight in price, even my friends down the valley with theirs. My neighbors in Panama! Guess I had better pay attention to the neighbors.

Like always, my metaphors and life lessons are home grown, even found in Panama. Pinots are home grown. They too, have nuance, complexity, gravity. They beg to be discovered, and I have followed Barbie instead of her darker cousin. I need a little red in my color, a little blush in my cheeks, a little blood in my sex-starved veins. Maybe I should look at the men in the same way; complex, not duplicitous, with focus and locality. I do not need to travel to Calistoga, they are at my own back door. Pinots are a locality, a myth, a national article in Wine Spectator, and time to re-discover. Put the Chardonnays on the back shelf. Pop the cork, forget the cellaring, and move on.

pyjamas

2006-04-11T20:38:00.000-07:00

ok, ok, it has been a month since my last posting. mea culpa. I will work on it, my initial goal was to post very other day, but then, life got in the way. Conferences, meeting new friends, and housecleaning, the occasional wine binge, and family. That's all.

So, pyjamas. p.j.'s.

I turned 55 at my conference and decided to have a pj party in my room. I didn't want a pity party, it has been a rough year, but I would like to think it is a successful year. One of moving on, liberation, not worrying about "the other" and decorating/eating/reading/watching for myself. So, I decided to have a champagne and pj party in my hotel room.

I had a blast.

And, next year, I will do it better.

I did not take my pjs, which are and alternatively have been, an assorted set of long sleeve tee shirts from the mid east council and knit lightweight sweats. I have gone to bed with Alexander the Great on the silk road, a casbah from the Moorish world, and Turkik designs. All with black sweats marked with paint from my walls, as they doubled with paint pants from the summer. And godawful wool socks. I hate cold feet, ( now there's a metaphor) and sleep with socks no matter how hot the summer.

Nope, I got my own new pjs, and alternative pjs. I went with a friend to get some vintage and old clothing, and found a great set from the 40's which are brushed flannel, and outside shiny striped pink, silk pjs that Katherine Hepburn wou have loved. But, no bra. Lots of folks. So, I also took my Syrian silk caftan, red, and lots of embroidery. If I had a turban it would be retro 50's, but it is really from Syria. I selected that for my guests. Barefoot, new red toenail polish.

Lots of champagne, small cupcakes, the new thing, and trays of baklava.

I loved the friends who came. One packed his embroirdered smoking jacket from France to wear. Another, a silk ensemble, ivory, with pjs and wrap. A fave: a flannel set with sushi on it. And, an eccentric brilliant friend in red flannels. It was great.

For those who said, " I don't sleep in anything, ". Too much information! Wear street clothes! come anyway. And they did.

So, what is is about pjs? Not nightgowns, not negliges, but pjs. They seem to be from the great 30's like Gatsby, feminine and not, and appropriate in public. Two days later, friends who missed the party called at 1 am. They still had a present to deliver, would I come get it? I put on my tourquoise wrap, kept on the pink silks and went downstiars in the hotel elevator. I figured if I was found out I oculd always plead lock out.

So, I had a birthday and folks got behind it. I was not pitied, I got presents, (unasked for) and had fun. A new year. And next year, new party, and new pjs.

commuter cups

2006-03-06T22:41:00.000-08:00

Well, the last week has been devoted to much serious events, and I don't want to trivialize them, the family, or my feelings by posting them here. Suffice to say that hospital food, funerals, and family buffets afterwards are awful, and truly comfort food works, thank goodness for family, and familiarity.

Commuter cups.
I saw a commercial one time where the whold point of the sale was the placement of the coffee cup holder. Despite the incredible price of the car, a small country cost, it was specifically the commuter cup holder which sold the piece.

Not really a bad idea. I expect my engine to work, to be able to see through the windows, tires inflate, radio to function, and seats to protect me. So, yes, it IS about the small stuff that will bug the hell out of you when it doesn't work.

I am putting up with a lot in my car right now. Valentine's day I worked a dinner shift for fun (what else was I going to do?) and came home with shrimp and curry sauce from the chef. Tried to. It spilled, and so my car smells a bit like fish curry, coffee, and a LOT of febreze until I can get to it. There is more.

Last fall, it was broken into and the stupid and poor quality stereo was ripped out. The sound was not that good, I am not a connisseur of car music, I just want NPR and the news. So, despite the violation and generally pissed off attitude I had to the evil kids who did it, the lack of the music system did not shut me down. I needed the insurance money for tangible things like food. Yet, driving in a quiet car is like being in a straitjacket on wheels, I didn't like hearing the wheels in my own head obsessing. I needed sound. I went to Radio Shack and got for the amazing price of $14.95 a transistor radio...complete with pull out antenna. It fits just in the slot of the stolen radio. I pull it out, put it on the seat by me, and turn in NPR on my way to work. In a wierd way, I get a kick out of the idiocy of the scene. I feel like Annette Funicello in a beach blanket subaru movie....playing retro music when NPR is not warning me about the idiocy of our government.

Back to the commuter cups, after all my original thesis. I digress a lot. tough.

If the commuter cup holder had been ripped out however, I would probably have to get a new car. almost. I need that cup of coffee, and I am quite good at driving with one cup in my hand and navigating with one hand. Don't tell anyone. Yet, when I have slippery gloves on, or just need to put it down, I do need that slot. And here's the problem.

One is never enough. I need at least one cup for each day of the week, like those underwear you give kids who are pre school. I need a set, marked Monday , Tuesday, etc. Ultimately it would not matter which day I grabbed, in fact in a time warp way I would enjoy having a Friday cup on Monday.

The problem is, I take them to work, and carry them into my classroom, and then I forget them. My desk currently has three commuter cups on it, one a freebie from a bank, one from a food conference years ago in Minneapolis, and a red one I love which is now broken on the little thingy which keeps the lid closed. When all the cups are at work I then drive with good china, my favorite yellow mug, or something else for a few days until the clanking of my cups under the passenger seat reminds me to round all the little dogies up and bring them back to the range.

I think my commuter cup slot should have a voice. "Good morning Terrie, are you going to need me all day? Will you be leaving the cup here?" A nice, Italian voice, suitable for espresso. At the end of the day, the holder should say, "hi there, I know it was a long day, good to see you!" Absurd I know, but why not? If they can put talking cards with chips in them, why not my cup?
And while I am fantisizing about it, how about a cute little Frenchman in the back seat plying me with croissants and palmiers in the a.m., and a little cornichon and cheese to go with my French roast on the way home.

ah well, French press at the ready, coffee cup du jour for the a.m. on the counter. You are what you drink, and what you put your drink in. Tomorrow, my yellow mug, the rest are at work.

massage and olive oil

2006-02-24T20:21:00.001-08:00

I have no idea where I am going with this. I have not had body work or touch for over a year, and recently had two massages courtesy of the student clinic in town and my ex-husband calling me to say there was a slot. Granted, it was odd to go to a site where I had had some decorating input, but I pride myself on our post ex-relationship, amiable and somewhat bittersweet. And I NEEDED a massage.

I cannot afford one on a weekly basis and have always thought, with mixed chagrin and total envy,o.k. say hatred, of Jackie Onassis who, it is said, had a nap and a massage every day. I would look damn good if I had a massage every day. Cellulite would disappear. I would not have lines. I would walk like a slyph.

but I don't.

And so, the lovely chance to have some students work on me, without cost thanks to generosity, was appealing. I creak, I ache every movement, my forearms are numb and wake me up at night. I tried really hard to be charming, nice and the "ex wife" "but knows her way around a massage "client. My hurts and aches and problems intake sheet is short, "stress" and I have no other complaints. Get on with it. They were great, especially the man who did tuning forks on my back and a diggery doo (how in the world to spell it) over my aura before beginning. I felt better, I creaked less, less hurt and I could feel my arms.

Of course, I wanted touch. I crave it. I miss it, I hug my dogs, wear warm and coomfy sweaters and get hugs whenever I can. It has been over, none of your business, how long since touch. ( read sex, fools) I think of the widows and people who do not get it and I swear to God if I am ever incapacitated, I don;'t want money, I want touch.

Sideways, I was in the elevator at a hospital today and two much elderly women came in. Both were on top of fashion, small camisoles, lace, cleavage, beads, embellishments, not the little old lady type. Works? I was noticing and noticing that I noticed. Should they have looked like grandmas? Should they show cleavage at 80? Or, damn it, should they get an applause for still liking fashion? If Mick Jagger can gyrate at over 60...why not show cleavage and an Abercrombie and Fitch sense at 80.

Back to me.

I want more than touch, I want you know what I want, and it is hard to be polite. But, a massage was great, and needed and necessary. At the end, I had to dress. darn. But, there I was, with the admonition, "take your time and get up slowly and I will meet you out front. " yeah, sure. I cannot sit more than a nanosecond on the table, sit up quickly and begin to get dressed. I have trouble turning off my mind. I need drugs with massage, I need a glass of wine, I need oblivion. But, I almost hyrdoplane off the table, I have so much oil on my legs.

It is enough to sit there and try not to worry as my glutes are massaged. I have been on a diet and am WORKING on being thinner, and so visualize cellulite pounded into submission. But, the oil! and, I have not shaved my legs! I cannot cross my legs while dressing, I slip off of myself in oily substance. I loved the massages, and my only comment, are "need a wipedown." Like a racehorse after a race, I need wiping down. Now, covered in sweat, well, as Paul Simon says, "slip sliding away...." Perhaps in the future.

Olive oil would be my choice for massage. In Turkey, the wrestlers oil themselves with olive oil before wrestling, grappling in eel-like fashion to gain purchase. Olive oil is wonderful, grassy, green to yellow, and can smell like a salad or nothing at all but the winds of the Mediterranean. I would love to be massaged in olive oil. Olive oil in the hair is lustrous, as a soap it is luxurious, as a lotion I want to have a dish of pesto and Alfredo. I love the leaves, the fruit, the wood, the smell.

So, cover me in olive oil. Knock out the knots, the fatigue, the accumulated lack of touch, rendering me as intractable as a piece of dry strata. Once hydrated, not in water of life, but the oil of forgiviness, of light, of life, of flavor, of color, I rise from the depths of the year and emerge.
More massages indeed, there is hope.

ginger karma

2006-02-22T20:49:00.000-08:00

Besides figs, I am crazy about ginger. This branched, lumpy beige spice has always has an attraction to me. I have grown it, dried, pickled, marinated, saute'd and fried it. I like it crushed, diced, sugared, preserved and in Chinese liqueur. My first memories of ginger are my mom's teriyaki chicken. She used to make it when we lived on the SAC base in North Dakota. Military wives are often ahead of culinary trends, as they travel so much and exchange recipes. I think she got this from Mrs. Kim, a German war bride married to a Hawaiian Korean American. typical descriptor of base housing. Anyway, she would slice the ginger, bash it with the back of her knife and make a sweet soy sauce and sugar marinade with oil , green onions, and minced bits of yellow ginger in it. I loved the chicken, it was exotic for 1962. But, I craved the ginger and would fish it out of the marinade and eat it, my fingers dripping with oil and soy. In recent years I have used ginger in many dishes, it lifts the recipe above the mundane, the crisp bright notes liven the worst wilted-bottom-of-the-fridge veg drawer stir fry when desperate. I have tried to sprout ginger, finding a sweet new bunch in the market, scraping its thin beige skin to show the younger pink ginger underneath. I cut it, and planted it in sand to sprout. Sometimes I am successful. Sometimes not, and the moral I keep learning over and over is not to fuss, not to worry, and for heaven's sake let it be. Gee, if I had learned that lesson in many aspects of my life I would also be elevated and lifted. So, I continue to learn my ginger lesson. When pickled with shiso leaves, the ginger turns a carnation pink and is perfect with sushi. Paired with light green wasabi, it masquerades as a spring combo, cherry blossoms and green leaves. But that pack in the mouth punch of ginger and wasabi knocks your sinuses open, and the the top of your head off if you have been over eager with the two. Again, a ginger lesson: not too much, and don't be a show off. I also like it candied, especially the large slabs which have been steeped in a sugar syrup, lightly candied and then are covered in large sugar crystals. You are supposed to dice them up for cakes and confections, I just eat the whole slice. I like the peppery burn aftertaste, the crunchy sandpaper extreme of the sugar and the fibrous bits of ginger as I chew. Extreme, hidden in sugar, a lion under the candy. Me? Am I a lion hiding in sugar? Have I hidden my favorite part of myself under a marinade, only waiting for someone else to fish out my bits? Something to think about. And then, there is more to my ginger lesson, the chewy Indonesian candy, dusted in cornstarch, and individually wrapped in wax paper. And, the Altoids ginger mouth mints. I crave both, can eat three chews by the time I get to my car en route to work in the morning. I always travel with them for upset traveler's stomach. Ginger is my pal. The altoids are eccentric, dime size disks which pack that familiar almost endorphin-inducing punch of pain and flavor. Few people like them, the contrast with heat and sugar is not for the faint of heart. Except in matters IN the heart, when I was breaking, I am not faint OF heart and happily crunch these when lesser women eat mints. Too dainty. Yep, I am a ginger snob. I break the branches with abandon, checking the insides before I buy them. I save them in sherry when costs are high, but ginger is now cheap enough to buy often. Two years, my dear mother in law bought Chinese ginger liqueur when it was imported. Fabulous, alcohol, syrup and ginger all in one...heaven. It is hard, if not impossible to find this liqueur now, but I can taste its syrup and warming effects still. Who will find that liqueur for me now? She is gone and I miss her dearly, that she noticed I loved ginger. Not the least of my pantheon is ginger ale, perfect in drinks and punches, and guzzled when ill. Last year I went through gallons of ginger ale for upset stomachs which were nightly. It was my wake-up juice, my hangover remedy, and general hydration. I haven't had it for a few weeks now on a diet, and just writing about this makes me want to figure out how to make a concoction of ginger tea just to warm myself. So, ginger has been a companion, a snobby friend of spices, a kick in the head karma of over-indulgence, a constant flavor throughout my life. And, those IN my life, past and future must get used to its presence in my food, and sensibility. Heat and passion, syrup and pain, hidden extremes of nature, a great metaphor for my being.

airplane food

2006-02-15T17:14:00.000-08:00

Many have written about, and most have survived. I mean airplane food. I travel fairly often, never as much as I would like. However, I am always bemused by airplane food.

In the 1950's, (late I might add) when my family and I traveled overseas, we always had full meals with real silverware. What I remember most however, is that the stewardresses would come down the aisle with trays of individually wrapped Chicklets gum, so we could alleviate air problems with our ears. No one passes gum anymore, or much else either.

Much much later, I am traveling with my husband from Vancouver to London. This will be known as the liqueur-all-over-me flight. Just before we landed, the stewardress, not carrying Chicklets this time but small glasses of liqueur on a tray, collided with me, spilling Glenlivit, sherry, Creme de menthe, Creme de cacao, and God knows what else all over my black slacks. Now, of course black is the travel color, it does not show dirt. But the aroma! As I lurched through customs in Gatwick, I was amazed I was not sent back to AA or into solitary.

I particularly like leaving FROM a country back to the United States. I can count on caterers who have prepared the food in that country. I love the new labels, and where food is packaged. I have hopes that it just might be more interesting, or at least indicative of where I just was.

When we were leaving Turkey on Turkish Air a few years ago I had dolmas, lovely pilaf, some grilled lamb, thick slabs of white cheese, Turkish coffee, raki, and a tiny bit of baklava. There was a hideous returning tour group seated around us. They were making fun of "real" toilets on the plane, "we are going back to civilization" and generally embarrassing us as true Ugly Americans. The woman across the aisle said, "I am having I don't know, I don't know, and I don't know. " A damn shame after three weeks in Turkey and she doesn't know what she was eating. Tried to tell her but realize I may have looked like one of those particularly irritating women who frequent British mystery cozys with advice given to total strangers and small dogs.

There was the Kosher Incident. Hearing that asking for vegetarian would be best, and freshest I tried it one time. A sad time. I was on Lufthansa traveling with my six year old daughter to Trier to see family. Time for lunch. Out came my daughter's personally ordered special kid's happy meal. happy kid.

Mine arrived. It was an all purpose, one size fits all dinner. It was rabbinical, Kosher, no salt, low fat, and damn near inedible. Canned oranges, canned prunes, some canned salmon and a little salad. I especially liked the packaging. Way before security replaced those metal knives and forks with plastic ones, mine were plastic. Several sets, just to keep things Kosher. Wrapped in plastic also was a prayer in Hebrew, and rabbinical certification. I am sure now that the meal would also be acceptable to Muslims in a spirit of all inclusivity. I dropped plastic wrap everywhere, had three forks, spoons and knives. I ordered red wine, to wash everything down.

Dinner five hours later...it was a long flight. More of the same. prayers, wrappers, forks and knives everywhere, only now it was also vegan! My heathen daughter continued happily with her kids meal. By the time breakfast came around I was desperate, grabbing the stewardress by the wrist, I pleaded with her for any other meal. There was one left, a sodden lasagne, and creepy orange jello. I fell upon it like a woman starved, and drank more red wine. Moral of the story, take your own, or just go with the herd; do not order special.

Lately though, those meals are a fond memory. One three hour flight, I actually, like Pavlov's little poodle, looked forward to my twelve, twelve count 'em, fish shaped crackers. I am ashamed to admit I actually licked my finger and ate the rest of the salt. I was really hungry, and on my way home with no cash left. (A common occurrence, thank God for Starbuck's cards in airports. ) Rummaging in my purse, I ate the rest of the Altoids.

And now, people carry on food. Wolfgang has a take-out in some airports, and I am sure that Emeril, Rachel, and my other friends in food will soon follow if they have not already. Order a huge Cony dog, load it up with sauerkraut and mustard, grab a latte and lumber onto the plane reeking of oil, vinegar, and caffeine. Ask the person next to you to please hold your food while you put away your luggage twelve seats away. The space overhead, a product of eminent domain which should be yours, but no, earlier lazy folks have taken your space! Return, seat, and then begin to break all taboos, eating in front of others, and don't share.

Where are those stewardresses with Chicklets? Where are my liqueurs? Where is elegance, fine dining, good food, clever little bento boxes and real silverware? Probably in first class, but then I would never know, at least not yet.

Still love the pretzels, order a plain bloody Mary mix, and no ice please.

computer guys

2006-02-15T00:32:00.000-08:00

I have been off line for about three weeks and using others' computers, a new form of itinerants. Like a homeless tecchie, I have used my breaks, and lunch hours at work to keep in touch electronically. A sort of transitional lobotomy from my other life. Thankfully, though, my computer was in a self-induced coma and I had a former student come and fix it with a brain transplant this weekend. It was as if the circuits had been restored not only to my business but my communication with others. And, at the same time I was appalled that I used so much of my time on the net. However, during that time I had some interesting experiences with the tecchies I worked with. Usually the computer aneurism happened at the very end of my day; of course the last thing I would do would be to check my mail before going to bed. You never know, right? E- harmony might have the perfect guy and if I did not reply THAT INSTANT I would have my life irrevocably changed. However, not the case, but often the computer would break. I had on little post-it notes scattered throughout my desk 800 numbers of 24/7 call signs for help. During this time, I spoke to people not in my hemisphere, my culture, my knowledge, or even my astrological sign. After a while I would call them with resignation, and one time almost in tears, " I cannot do this, I hate this, my husband used to do this, can you help me?" And they would, in their wierd follow-the-flow-chart way, try. Sometimes I would try very hard not to be bitchy about their accent and thank them. Sometimes I would invoke the whole U.S. Congress, the Nafta act, the whole balance of powers, the Communist fear, the Asian world is taking over our U.S. school system belief, because these people who are probably brialliant are willing to take my call because I am an idiot. And so we would wait while arcane and obtuse computer programs would be transfused into my computer. I would sit there, trying not to cry and feeling stupid and so would ask, " So, where are you?" Given the answer, I would craft a question, " What are you cooking today? " " Do you have any special dishes you like to eat?" Thrown by a question outside of their provenance, the tecchies would begin to be human;" I am eating dosas, I like adobo, "etc. Usually the foods were Asian, Indian, and Phillapino. One particularly horrible download lasted twenty minutes, so I discussed food with this man somewhere in the Goan region. I'm sitting in sweats at my computer, with tea and trying to keep warm and knowing in 3 hours I would have to get up and go to work! And so, as my computer finally died, and I finally had a local tecchie visit a home care update, I thought about the people thoroughout the world who had tried very hard to help me. They were not successful, but humored my food requests in the down time. And that is what it is about, not the synapse, not the programs, the firewalls, the spywares, the downloads, but what you have to eat at lunch. Maybe I helped their dull day, overeducated working at a dumb down flow chart job; they helped my angst doing it alone evenings trying to help me with my technology. Let's do lunch indeed.

this little piggy

2006-01-15T23:40:00.000-08:00

I have a dear friend who wants me to write about pork. Apparently there is a big event in Italy and it concerns a saint (when doesn't it) and pigs. Sure, why not? I love her, I like pigs, and it will put me in a good mood after a cranky expletive of writing earlier.

so here goes.

Pigs!

Pigs are as smart or smarter than dogs, and they taste good. Maybe dogs do, but I come from a culture which doesn't eat dog nor will I ever, even in the interests of culinary research. Pigs however, are another matter. Over the years I have enjoyed pigs and began to think about them in the context of food and symbolism with this writing.

There are no pigs in Turkey, no Muslims eat pig. I totally respect that; I have adapted family recipes, as I wrote earlier for Turkish friends, taking out sausage. when I was growing up, we did have pork, and bacon, in the US commissary. It was shipped in from Europe for the Americans, and so I felt no lack of bacon or porkchops in my growning up.

In a curious parallel, dog treats are often pork rind and piggy snouts and ears. It is a little creepy to see them in the pet store: circles with two holes in them, pointy hoofs, and large as your hand triangles of piggy hide in sacks. Improbably, Porky Pig as trademark, happily hawking parts of his anatomy.

I do know two Turkish dogs, lovely large congols. Their tails curl in in a complete circle, they are as tall as a man when they stand up, and they have beautiful kohl rimmed eyes. My friend buys sacks of pig ears for treats for them when she comes to the States. I am bemused about these sacks of pig paraphanalia crossing the border to feed these "Muslim dogs." I wonder what her husband thinks.

Germany is porcine heaven. At the butcher, wursts, brats, porkchops, roasts, hash, more and more pig parts to braise, stew, steam, grill. I never saw fields full of pigs, but sure could smell them when traveling in the villages. At Fashing, the equivalent of the mania of Carnival or Mardi Grass, I loved the marzipan pigs sold for good luck. Dyed bright pepto bismol pink, they line the cases snout to snout waiting for someone to purchase them. I usually kept mine until they were almond dust, and would shatter when I bit into them. I had a little pink blown glass piggy from Dusseldorf as a charm for years.

I didn't think too much about pigs, after returning to the states to college. Porkchops were my first cooking attempts. As a grad student in Seattle, I planned for my date. I managed to brown the porkchops, add paprika and drain the sauerkraut. I would carefully put the kraut in all its briny smell and tangled mass in my glass brownie pan. I"d put the porkchops point to t-bone to fit, and pour a can of beer over it. By the time it heated in the oven I would manage to have the salad made and heat up the can of green beans. Viola! a meal!

We've come a long way baby, yet I remember those first attempts.

For many years I have taught over a shop and by a barn for the Future Farmers of America class. One year kids raised money for the class with a "kiss the pig " contest. We had a brand new teacher, a doll, a young girl that the boys would follow all over campus. Of course she was voted the reacher rep, and of course the vote was rigged. All the classes got the money and none to the teacher. That Friday, at 8 am she gamely went to the front of the school to "kiss the pig". A large Ford truck backed up, with a sow in the truckbed. Snuffling and snorting, she was huge her bristles brushing up against the side of the truck she was black and pink. Kids gathered, and the Ag teacher lowered the gate. Just as the young woman was getting ready to kiss that vibrating moist nose, a cute, cute, pink little piglet was pulled with a flourish out of the cab for her to kiss.

How can I eat something so cute? Well, it all is cute, and although I hate to eat a sentient being, I do love pork, and ham, and bacon. I just advocate for humane raising and butchering.

But gentle readers, there are just some pieces I cannot eat! I was in Baltimore at a famed market, and was amazed at the pieces on display. At a Korean butcher, case after case were lined with pig feet, smoked, glazed, brined and pickled. But it was the TAILS which threw me! Complete circles, like awful bracelets, they were for sale by the bag. I am a meat hypocrite, I prefer to have most things butchered beyond identification. What do you do with a tail? I just couldn't, and because I was in a hotel, didn't.

Porky Pig, Three Little Pigs, Piggly Wiggly, eat like a Pig, piggish eyes, oinkers, bring home the bacon, .....our language is full of homage to the pig. Whether from cartoon characters to beginning cooks, the noble, smart pig is a delight. Darling when little, they are imposing, and devoted good parents when older. Great food, good luck charms, material for brushes for artists....what a marvelous animal.

Happy St. day, pig lovers.

smart girls

2006-01-15T23:15:00.000-08:00

I am smart. My girlfriends are smart. And at my age, it still feels sometimes like a punishment. Smart girls don't get the boy, the cuties who are dumb do. Or, at least at from my less than pollitically correct survey show. OK, maybe not dumb, but what IS it? That I am too particular?

I spent yesterday with three women whom I have known in various incarnations, for over twenty years. All are truly accomplished, brilliant in their fields, and interesting women, Between us we have six marriages and several long term relationships. Eight degrees, five children, and untold houses. World travels throughout Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, international publishing, activism, community support, multitudes of languages, musically talented, well read, the list goes on. I had a blast with them.

And tonight I am thinking why I know so many smart women but fewer it seems, smart men. I mean smart in that wide-ranging open-to-try-anything intelligence I felt over lunch yesterday with these women.

This is not a polemic about doing without men. It is not a commentary about why women can do just as well as men, or even manage and not miss them. What I am curious about is why so many of my smart friends have gone through so much. One is in a marriage more of convenience. One is in a long term one, but although adoring, both have thriving careers in differing directions. One has had dramatic upheavals and forges on, not at all interested in men in a relationship issue.Yet men flock around her, and right now she could care less. Too much burn. In my corner, am trying to figure out rejection, even at the early stages of pre-dating, when it does not happen. When that moment to meet, just does not get out of the block because I am "too smart, too urbane, too sophisticated....yada yada. I am told, "it is not me, good luck wish me the best, etc." What in the hell am I supposed to do? Dye my hair blonde? I don't give a rip if that is not correct, I just feel sometimes that I am Barbie's smart older sister, and she is Bianca, I am Katherine,but I do not get the guy first. Taming of the Shrew indeed. How about "You are too sophisticated," is a crap out from men who just don't match up.

Gee, should I not talk about my background? Should I pretend to not know something? I put out what I want, and guess what responded? " You are too urbane for me. " I think that is a cop out. One of my friends wrote me, "don't worry, all will fall into place." I give up, I think men say one thing, but you know what? They really want Barbie. Oh Yeah, Barbie who has never done anything but look adoringly at him.

And so, yesterday, over Greek lunch, after a fun morning at Nordstroms; we discussed politics, travel, education, make up, sex, children, the decline of American institutions, how to cook dolmas, but not once men. Not once did we worry what they were thinking; the woman who had a husband to go home to waiting dinner, the woman waiting for a call to work in East Europe, the woman whose husband was stranded at the airport back east, and me, the woman whose ex was on vacation. We all had mental push pins on our internal maps where they were but that did not stop us from having a great time.

So, right now, tonight, I say to heck with trying to meet someone in this town, this state. Let them all eat cake, I think that my banquet has some men starving to death and that is their own damn fault. They are missing out, that is not sour grapes, it is the truth. And I will not try to hard to mine an expired vein of gold. They can find me, and work for it. Someone will get it, but I sure hope I am around when they come around.

Off to bed. with dogs, and book, and to hell with it.

color wheel vegetable shopping

2006-01-11T21:29:00.000-08:00

Lush colors, shapes that would make Miro happy, arrangements to irritate Cezanne, I adore vegetable stands.

I am seduced by them, each vegetable tempts me to buy and plan what to do to it. Him or her? If vegetables had gender, would they want one? Beyone the obvious, (ie; banana, male), what would they be? How to tell? Or personalilty, do they have one? Kohlrabi: irritable with all the points. Asparagus: placid with thoughts all in their head. Figs, tidy outside, a sensual delight inside. If they were women, they would wear suits, and wear bustiers underneath. Or, what about tomatoes? The schitzo of the group, one day a fruit, one day a vegetable...separated from its fruity cousins by unappreciative stockboys. I really am talking about fruits too, sorry veggies.
I enjoy vegetables, and shopping for vegetables in other countries are some of my best memories. In Izmir, I went with a dear friend for artichokes. Buckets of the ivory yellow hearts, were sold already prepared, cleaned and ready for cooking. The seller was up to his ankles in artichoke leaves, almost as if a huge artichoke tree overhead had suddenly dropped its leaves. I was amazed at the work. And, I mourned in a tiny way not seeing this majestic vegetable piled up in all its thorny sweet sculpture.

I didn't have a kitchen in Istanbul when I lived there alone in the Sulthanamet area for a week. It was torture to pass the stands and not buy vegetables. I bought a few tomatoes, and eight gorgeous Izmir figs, mottled brown and purple from the vendor. I placed them on my windowsill to keep warm and continue to ripen, they were my snacks at night. But I couldn't buy as much as I wanted, only look, smile, and move through the market.

In New Delhi I was amazed at the impossibly high pyramids created by arrangements of deep red carrots, okra, and peppers. How did they sell them? Were they re-arranged after every purchase, making pyramids anew? I never found out.

In summers in Eugene we have a farmer's market stand somewhere in town every day of the week. I literally have to stay away from them, because I cannot resist the colors, textures, and choices. The quantity of carrots I can cook never matches what I buy. I end up becoming short term best friends with my food, watch it age, and unfortunately have to throw it out.

I think it is the sculptural quality that seduces me first. Nicely round, ovoid, clustered, cylindrical, I play geometry with them. And then color coordination. If I were stocking these veggies, I would be tempted to group them by colors, not fruits and vegetables. Hmmm, should I pair all the reds together? Red peppers, tomatoes, strawberries,, then in a rainbow of chakra colors, move to the purples: eggplant, grapes, turnip tops facing out, on to the oranges: butternut, tangelos, chanterrelles...It would be beautiful. It is easy to imagine the array of produce fanned across like a spectrum. I organize my closet by color so this would be easy to me, just go to the color of the produce. Sometmes I can survey for several minutes until I find the food I want in large grocers. This way, it would be easy!

Or, what about complimentary pairing? Eggplant by bananas and lemons. Jonathan apples by green peppers. Blueberries by Navel oranges and apricots. What fun. And for special occasions when I would really like to confound the shoppers, group by shape. Play Seseme Street and think "one of these things is not like the other...." and resort all the sticks together: daikon, asparagus, burdock, the rounds: tomato, grapefruit, melons, and so forth.

Its and old joke to meet people in the frozen food section. But I think it is much more interesting to be in the produce. Its tactile, I can smell things, and watch others make their selection. Carefully, one bean at a time? Or with a devil may care attitude toss six pounds without looking into the plastic bag? My produce man is a friend, and the first part of the store I walk into . I ask what is good, he often brings me something from in back that is not set yet.

In my new home I have no room for a garden. But I do have a small balcony and plan to grow some cherry tomatoes this summer. And a basil bush. And bring Mona, my Italian bay laurel over from her old home. Adam and Eve, the fig trees can't move ( I named all my produce) but surely some more herbs can join Mona so she isn't lonely. I imagine myself this summer, sitting at a bistro table I will find somewhere, by my veggie friends and sharing a glass of sauterne with a new dear friend. Life goes on. Produce always is happy to see you. Like a good bookstore, the produce stand always is personal, fits, and is not judgemental.

I can hardly wait for the farmer's markets to open.

Baklava archaeology

2006-01-03T22:17:00.000-08:00

I love baklava, the layered, flaky, teeth-chatteringly sweet dessert filled with a strata of ground nuts. If I could get away with it, or if I had a lobotomy and did not care about girth, I would have a piece each day. But I cannot, so I do not.

However, it is a show-stopper, and so darn easy I wonder why so many of my friends do not make it. I looked into the history of baklava once, and was consulted as to its origins. There are no clear rules, but I can say that the use of the thin filo dough is a hallmark of desserts in the Eastern Mediterranean, whether in Greece, Turkey, Syria. Filo has even migrated with Ottoman chefs to Eastern Europe and is the foundation of strudle and other layered, flaky, delights.

But back to baklava. Right now I am dieting, preparations for a culinary trip where chefs will try to stuff us silly with delights. And, filo dough is definitely off my list. So I will be a dessert voyeur, writing about it.

I first had it as a child in Izmir, but my mother had to make it, not buy. At the time, we most definitely did not eat out, fearing hepatitis...and so food was home cooked in those days. We had large marble counters in the kitchen; marble was cheaper than linoleum. "Moderns" were ripping out the marble and putting in lino, but my Mom was thrilled to have a cold surface for many cooking adventures: taffy, bread making, and baklava. She would lay the sheets out and cover them with a tea towel, unveiling one at a time as the dessert was layered. Dance of the balkava veils.

Much later, in California, in Armenian descendent homes I had baklava, but it was not the same. Nuts were larger, and more lemon used. I moved to Oregon, and made my own, with varying success depending upon my use of ground nuts. I grew weary of baking and stopped making it.

Then I married a Greek grandson. He told me of his grandma who would make her own filo, pulling and stretching it so thin the wood grain would show under the dough as she made it on the walnut table. I learned from him to cut the baklava into diamonds, and put the lemon sugar syrup over the hot dessert halfway through cooking.

It is a favorite for my cooking classes. Kids will eat anything sweet, and I have figured out a way to have an assembly line. "keep it covered!" "faster, your turn next" "remember the corners"...they approach the dough, one on each side of a large pot of melted butter. Dip brush into butter, sweep across pan, lay the sheet of filo in, scatter the perfectly process-cut nuts and sugar, and get out of the way for the next kid. We can make two trays in 30 minutes with 30 kids. Then cooking, tantalizing aromas of honey, lemon, and pastry drift through the air ducts to the music room and drive kids nuts. Great dessert, everyone is happy and they beg for the sugar soaked and crunchy corners.

It is far, far, better than the soggy, honey dripping squares sold in the local market. It is fresher by far than the trays of mindless baklava and kaydiff desserts sold at the huge national markets. Few people have had really, really, good baklava.

I made bakalva this winter for Christmas. I make really, really, good baklava. I love making Christmas cookies with my daughter, but our cookies are really about the frosting and designs we make up on the cookies. Cookies require you to do something every 11 minutes whether you want to or not. Baklava once made, is a gentle companion, baking nicely in the oven while you have a cup of tea. I felt very settled layering filo, scattering nuts, basting butter, and repeating. I really get off on making precise diamond cuts, perfectly parallel lines and crisp points. As the knife cuts through the layers, I love the sharpness of my tool, the feel as it cuts through dough and nuts, reaching the glassy bottom of the pan.

The smell is fulfilling, the layers, like layers of my baklava memories, hint at treasures underneath the flaky ivory top. Bottom layer, Izmir. Middle layers, California and college. Upper layer, marriage, Greek dreams. Top layer, my life now, no topsoil laid down, but excavations possible. I am a composite of it all. And as I cut, and arranged diamond points of baklava patterns on plates I gave away, wrapped in rose saran, I re-discovered my love of this dessert.

The _____diet, fill in the blank

2005-12-29T21:13:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-26T20:11:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-22T07:22:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-22T00:31:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-21T21:58:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-17T22:33:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-14T19:38:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-13T23:30:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-12T12:20:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-08T19:35:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-05T23:55:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-05T07:24:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-04T23:09:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-04T08:10:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-03T22:43:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-03T07:58:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-02T20:50:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-02T20:16:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-02T20:10:00.000-08:00

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?