Figs, lavender, and cheese

What Santa Brought

2011-12-25T09:30:00.000-08:00

Well, not really Santa, but George, who sometimes is almost as hard to believe as Santa. My father is following a progression to which I can only aspire. At seventy, he learned to ski. At seventy-five, he decided he wanted to ski MORE. And since my mom was unamused by being left at home last year for over a month while he took off on a ski odyssey, dragging an air mattress around so he could crash wherever, she declared that he needed to buy a place where she could relax in comfort while he skied day in and day out.

So he bought a Tahoe condo. Yay! And a mountain bike. And then an all-wheel drive Subaru. Does he rock, or what??

And with it all he gets . . . my family. And me as his cheerful housekeeper and personal chef. But that's not all!

He also get his handy son-in-law as his personal ski tuner using this custom ski tuning bench recently installed in his garage,

along with bike and kayak hooks, shelving, and a custom-built ski rack. (Those are my new impossibly fat rockered skis five from the left.)

We also blinged out his condo in winter decor. We don't celebrate Christmas in the religious sense, and considering it winter decor allows us to keep it up at least through the end of January with no remorse.

The only things are are missing are George and Ruby themselves (they'll be up after Christmas) and SOME SNOW.

Squaw has killed themselves making snow, opening three lifts on the lower mountain. Still, parts of Red Dog look like a tiny Christmas tree farm.

We are concerned all these investments (condo, car, skis, season passes) have jinxed the season.

An upside has been a nearly empty mountain. I don't miss the crowds at all, and I can get a front-row seat at the fire pit on KT deck at lunch.

In the meantime, we'll keep skiing the scratchy machine-made junk while we wait for the real stuff. After all, we're outside, in the mountain, and on skis. We're grateful for digs in the mountains, family, and good friends.

2011-12-02T08:43:00.000-08:00

So I updated my reading list. And bought a new camera. Camera is still in box.

On my mind at this minute

2011-04-29T15:23:00.000-07:00

A friend recently asked me on Facebook when I was planning on coming back to the blogosphere to play. Good question—how pathetic is it when I cannot even remember my own account password to log on??

But the answer is that I don't know. Posting was beginning to seem like more of a chore than a creative outlet, my job became more demanding (current budget woes, layoffs on the horizon, fantasies of bagging it and becoming a detective), and all the digital cameras in our household went on the fritz. I'm just not sure where I want to go with the whole thing, but I'm thinking of a departure from mostly food most of the time (aren't there enough food blogs out there featuring food by people who can actually operate a camera??) and returning to a more personal sort of digital journal. You know, what's on my mind as well as what's on my plate or in my mouth.

And what's on my mind this very minute is this:

WTF????

This royal nonsense has undoubtedly received way more attention than reasonable (I loved ~~Mr. Darcy's~~ Colin Firth's remark concerning the monarchy that he "really likes to vote"), but I cannot turn away. What the 'eff is going on here?? Two possibilities come to mind:

1. This is some kind of protest (remember I live in Berkeley), and the princesses are merely expressing family discord: "I hate you so much that I'm going to look as ridiculous as humanly possible at your wedding."

2. "Gaga wears shit like this all the time, and people love her."

The queen, on the other hand, looked absolutely adorable. She is a wonderful reminder of why I had my kitchen painted yellow. Yellow is a wonderful color.

So that's what's on my mind, although my recipe for seriously perfect brownies is edging in there. Two words there: browned butter. Maybe I'll steal someone else's picture and tell you about it.

I comment on fashion: An apparently annual event

2011-02-28T10:06:00.000-08:00

I'm afraid it's that time of year again. You know, where I sit in my office in bike shorts and a sweatshirt and comment on people who mostly know how to dress. Or can at least hire people to figure it out for them. Or not.

So here goes this year's Academy Awards fashion round up but the person probably least qualified to offer it.

It's sort of like Battenburg lace, which I was totally into in the eighties, over gold foil. I keep squinting, but I cannot be sure. It really reminds me of this terrible linoleum in my laundry room.

No. It's wrong in all the wrong places.

The jewelry is a mistake.

The bottom of this dress makes me want to sneeze.

He so does not do it for me, and her dress is weird.

He totally does do it for me.
Didn't she used to date Tom Cruise once? Nice upgrade here.

OK, so she has no waist, but she does have Warren Beatty.
Who needs a waist anyway?

So it's great that she lost that weight and all, but those boobs are all wrong.

Her first name is Busy. Really. Why didn't I think of that?

Think she smokes? Cause according to Wikipedia, she's only 49. Ouch.

OK, but how does she walk?

Who is this person? I mean, seriously.

Could she possibly look more bored? "Yeah, it's got a lot of, like, fabric." She should have stayed home.

Three things here:
1. Sharon is wearing waaaayyyyy too much eyeliner.
2. Never fail: Every year someone shows up in my 86-year-old MIL's hair.
3. I don't think she has made a movie in several decades.
Why does she keep getting to come to these things?

Who needs jewelry when you can look like this?
Kind of reminds me the Farrah Fawcett bathing suit poster,
which she is probably too young to even know about.

I know everyone liked Halle Berry's dress,
but I think Helen Mirren killed it in this.

Sooooo, who did you like? Hate? Laugh at?

Stay tuned for a tour of my freshly painted kitchen, which will feature a . . .

NEW STOVE!!!!!!!

Smelling it up

2011-02-04T07:23:00.000-08:00

The other day I received the following email from my neighbor across the street:

Recently someone has been cooking something outside that smells wonderful, is it you? [Husband Across the Street] has been very envious.

Why, yes! As you know, I have been COOKING IN MY GARAGE. Want to see how this is working out? Look:

Here's the stove. I'm making chicken piccata, which is probably what was smelling up the neighborhood.

Here's the sink and prep area.

Here's the coffee station and dish rack. (Do you like my Murphy's bed–style fold-down ironing board in the background? I do. Not that I iron much.)

Did I mention that I also DO LAUNDRY IN HERE? I do! Although I have to move the dish rack depending on whether I want to access the washer or the dryer. It's INCONVENIENT, but that's how we roll these days.

Burritos are nice, but picking them up does not scratch my creative itch in the way preparing dinner does. So the night after the chicken piccata, I made Thai chili beef Thai chile beef, and then last night we had chicken chili verde that I made in the crockpot. And tonight? Oh, hell. Probably burritos.

Thanks to those who offered their condolences. After pictures coming . . . at some point.

No, I'm not dead

2011-02-01T09:11:00.000-08:00

My kitchen used to look like this.

It was the happiest, busiest place in my house—the locale of homework, violin practice, conversation, cocktails, and dinner preparation. Coming home to start dinner was one of my favorite parts of the day.

Then it looked like this, which wasn't the absolute worst thing in the world because activities like California mission model building could still take place, and Sophie and I could chat with Husband through the plastic as he ripped apart wallboard (see him back there—the guy in the plaid?).

Now it is an empty echoing shell of a room as it waits to be painted. My camera is on the fritz, so you will have to imagine the top picture without the accouterments of daily life much less cabinet doors or drawers. There are new windows (fancy double-paned ones!), but they're not much to look at just yet without their trim.

All this has, of course, put me in quite a state, resulting in

radio silence on the blog

difficulty reading anyone else's blog if they talk about food
excessive crabbiness
general malaise bordering on an outright funk

Most people would either (a) move out of their house or (b) eat take-out food. But NO. We are not most people. We have less brains and less money than most people who take on this kind of work. We have simply done a little rearranging:

But before you think "oh, this might work," consider the three miles I walk to prepare nearly every dinner. I'm at the stove, I need butter. I walk out the garage door, through the front gate, under the tarps, and over the sandbags—what sandbags??

These ones!

The ones we have had across the front of our house since this clown, my husband, decided that while we were at it we might as well replace the ENTIRE FOUNDATION across the front of the kitchen (it had some problems).

So back to dinner preparation: I traipse through this mess, retrieve the butter from the refrigerator WHICH IS NOT VERY CONVENIENTLY LOCATED IN THE LIVING ROOM, and return to the stove, which you'll recall is IN THE GARAGE. Then I realize I need a spatula, which is IN THE DINING ROOM, which is where most but not all the contents of my kitchen are in boxes (some of this stuff is in the office, one of the bedrooms, or the hallway). So BACK OUT UNDER THE TARP AND THROUGH THE SANDBAGS. At this point, take-out burritos sound like a good idea. Thank goodness the car is still located in the front of the house so I can DRIVE AWAY.

The good news in all this? I have been driving way. A lot! In selfless support of my daughter's ski racing career, I have spent numerous weekends in the mountains with her, while Husband toils feverishly at home. This has so far resulted in the following ski day count:

Me: 18
Husband: 11
Sophie: 21

Not bad for the beginning of February, no? Especially for folks like us who live down the hill. So maybe I should stop my bitching. Nah. It's what I do best.

The advent of crabs

2010-12-13T13:00:00.000-08:00

Pictures are coming soon of the enormous catastrophe that happens to the homes of many people married to general contractors. For a while, the cobbler's children have no shoes, and then one day the cobbler says "Dang! Let's make some SHOES!!" But instead of just making one simple pair, he decides to turn the house into a SHOE FACTORY. So that's sort of where I live.

How would you feel about imposing holiday decorations on a construction site? I could easily skip the whole shebang, but the ten-year-old in my house hangs her heart on tree this time of year. So off to buy the tree we went. And the construction site I live in is now somewhat appropriately decorated.

To give myself a break and to celebrate the winter season, I indulged the other weekend in a local delicacy: fresh Dungeness crab. The season has officially opened to rave reviews of this year's crabs: large and plentiful. It's nice to see the local fishermen catching a break after being deprived of much of their salmon income the past few years. But did I catch at break in procuring said crabs? Hell, no. Because I wanted them on Sunday, when my local fish monger is closed, I was forced to brave

The Market from Hell

Some people really like this Asian market chain. Not me. It is always crowded, and people push a lot. Look where I was in line to buy my live crab:

Fuuuuuuuuck . . . . . . .

And mind you that most orders take at least five to ten minutes each because many people want things done to their fish.

Violent and bloody things.

My order is quick: Four crabs. Live, all the claws. Don't do a damn thing to them. I'll kill them myself.

They don't look happy here, do they? I'm really doing them a service.

In the meantime, I wander around the store looking at all the interesting things you do not normally see at a grocery store.

Would you eat these? I'm one of those people who stranded

on a desert island would surely starve.

How about these? I thought Hello Kitty only made stuff out of plastic.

Maybe I'm right.

I had one of these dolls when I was a kid. Cute! Sort of?

Look—a fish for me!

I am such a giver. Anything for my family. Well, almost.

On weekends we are home, we have the MIL over for Sunday dinner. She often shows up with a game—dominoes, Scrabble, cards—that she, Husband, and Sophie play over cocktails while I finish preparing dinner (I hate games). This Sunday she showed up with something different:

Religious indoctrination material provided by the MIL's church,

which Sophie has attended about four times

The MIL has always been active in her church, but since the death of her husband, who was openly hostile to anything that diverted her attention from him, it's sort of like she's making up for lost church activity. She sings in the choir, goes to meetings, plans meetings, hosts meetings, writes biographies of church members. And she wants to share. Fine, but not this with us. I do not know what part of "We are atheists" she has not heard. We have made a concerted effort to be respectful and supportive of her choice in this area, but I'm not feeling the reciprocation here.

It's not like our choice is one borne from disinterest or apathy. My journey has been a long one from a childhood and youth of regular Congregational church attendance to where I am confident of my ability to raise my child to be a compassionate and ethical person without belief in a deity. So whereas it's nice that my MIL's church thought of Sophie, giving her a handbook that includes, among other things, prayers to a god we have taught her does not exist gets up my hackles. And it's not that I think we need to shelter her from things we do not believe; on the contrary, I think it's useful to talk about different beliefs. This, however, looked too much like my MIL attempting to take on Sophie's religious education, probably with the opinion that I'm not doing too good a job of that myself. And who knows? Some day she may choose Christianity as her belief. But while she's my kid, I'm going to teach her what I believe to be true. We talk, we think, we do. We don't pray.

A couple of weeks later, the advent book has been mostly abandoned, although the chocolate from the accompanying advent calendar has been consumed with something resembling religious fervor. In our house, it's the not the season of divine birth but merely regular birth of a probably remarkable man. It's the season to forgive, although not to forget.

And the season to break crab.

Happy merry.

What we want: Underwear, scotch, chicken, peace, potatoes

2010-11-23T09:14:00.000-08:00

Sophie and I had a lot of time to talk this past weekend as we toured the local attraction Playland Not-at-the-Beach. It's a museum of sorts dedicated to preserving memories of ways and places where people used to have fun, in particular the old Playland at the Beach that once stood out near the Cliff House and Sutro Baths in San Francisco.

They have tons of killer dioramas, which is timely given that Sophie is working on her California history unit mission diorama (how cool do you think royal icing will work as adobe plaster???). It was fun to talk about how if you lived before computers and television in a small town or the country the circus—really a traveling small town—visiting was a really important event. Did you know the circus they depict had a staff of over 100 just to prepare food?

We also enjoyed the glittering Santa's Village display, although I was at a total loss to explain how it had anything to do with amusement parks or circuses. Someone just really likes to make dioramas, I guess.

Our absolute favorite park though was Pinball Alley. Forty pinball machines all set on free play!!!! We played, laughed, gabbed, and I tried to explain the story of Tommy ("That deaf, dumb, blind kid sure plays a mean pinball!"). The pinball crown for the afternoon was Sophie's given that she beat me soundly on almost every game.

We left feeling all giddy and holiday-like since we had just had a wonderful time and were heading home to roast a pre-Thanksgiving turkey. And so we got in some good work on the Christmas lists. Sophie thinks Husband should receive:

new underwear
the cream he likes to put on his face after shaving
a bottle of Scotch

Done! We can totally handle that. Sophie would like:

ski race training shorts
a Nerf gun
new skinny jeans
a roast chicken she can have all to herself to pick on at her leisure

I can do that. Although Husband's not going to be happy about the chicken. My list was harder. I want for little. I'm signing up for:

world peace
lots of snow
good mashed potatoes

World peace is not looking good. Lots of snow is. We're playing hooky tomorrow and heading up to the mountains for a pre-Thanksgiving ski, a rarity in our neck of the Sierras.

And I've had mashed potatoes on the brain lately. It's one of Sophie's favorite foods ever. She would have them as a side dish for nearly every meal if she could, and I indulge her a lot. They just make you feel good. I think if more people ate mashed potatoes, they would be happier, nicer to people, and we might have a better shot at world peace.

So for Christmas I would like (my sub-wish list):

No one to buy frozen mashed potatoes at Trader Joe's. The packaging is wasteful, and they're just not that hard to make.
No one to use an electric mixer to make them. Just makes them all gooey.
Everyone who does not have a food mill to run out and buy one.

They are inexpensive, work when there's no electricity, and make perfect mashed potatoes.

Buttermilk and melted butter, both at room temperature before they are combined and added are a secret of this recipe, modified from a Cooks Illustrated issue of a few years ago. And stirring in a little cheese (we like chevre or paremesan) doesn't hurt a bit.

BUTTERMILK MASHED POTATOES

2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes , peeled and cubed
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2/3 cup buttermilk, room temperature
salt

Place potatoes in large saucepan; add cold water to cover by 1 inch and 1 tablespoon salt. Bring to boil over high heat, then reduce heat to medium and simmer until potatoes break apart when paring knife is inserted, about 20 minutes.

Set food mill in sink and pour through to drain. Set mill over medium bowl and turn to process potatoes.

Gently mix melted butter and buttermilk in small bowl until combined. Fold mixture into potatoes using rubber spatula until just incorporated. Adjust seasoning with salt. Serve immediately or cover tightly and then warm in microwave and refold before serving later.

Fruitcake: I swear you will like it

2010-11-15T09:57:00.000-08:00

You know, the joke about the same fruitcake being continually regifted contains an element of truth: Fruitcake lasts nearly forever. I do not understand, however, why when you're talking about single malt scotch longevity is considered a virtue; with fruitcake, it only contributes to the endless and cruel jokes. The truth is that fruitcake also improves with age.

Just look at last year's fruitcake that has been hiding in our second refrigerator. The deep rich fragrance alone is worth digging it out. And it worked well to buy me a reprieve from what Husband had planned for me this weekend:

Staining cedar shingles for our house exterior.

It was not fun.

I agreed with Husband that it was easier to stain shingles before going up rather than after, but still. The stain smelled horrible and after a few hours, my ass hurt from sitting on the little stool I was allowed. I received only occasional breaks to help Husband run electrical cables through walls and up and down from the attic to the basement. (I love rewiring. I get to point and say "Give me an outlet here, here, and here. With a switch there.")

But feeding Husband a little aged fruitcake gave me the best break of all. With the thought that we could run out of fruitcake in his head, he was happy to have me retreat into my kitchen for a little holiday baking. Yes, that holiday. Fruitcake needs a little time to soak in its juices, so it's time to do this now.

What makes this a great fruitcake recipe is that it contains none of what people hate about fruitcake, namely that weird candied fruit that no one can identify. This recipe (clipped years ago from Sunset Magazine) includes only dried fruit: apricots, pineapple, cherries, and cranberries.

The chopping is a little laborious (my food processor doesn't do a good job on gummy apricots) but beats the hell out of staining shingles.

The batter is little else than sugar, butter, eggs, molasses, flour, and a panoply of spices.

It barely holds together the mountain of fruit and nuts folded in before baking.

These slowly baking loaves will scent your house better than any candle, without risking the anyone becoming upset that there really isn't anything being made to eat.

The last step to this fruitcake before it is put to rest for a few weeks before holiday eating or gifting is a soak in a mixture of orange liqueur and apricot preserves. When taken out to slice and eat, it is a gooey delicious mess—quite different from that fruitcake that has been circling the globe the past century.

FRUIT CAKE

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
6 large eggs
1/4 cup molasses

1 1/4 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground clove
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 pound (2 cups) pecan halves, chopped
1 pound dried apricots, chopped
1/2 pound dried lightly sweetened pineapple, chopped
1/2 pound dried cranberries
1/2 pound dried cherries

1 cup apricot preserves
1 cup orange liqueur

Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Spray loaf pans with canola spray. This recipe makes about six small loaves.

Beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each. Beat in molasses.

In a separate bowl, whisk together flour and spices. Add to egg mixture and beat until just blended. Fold in pecans and dried fruit.

Spoon mixture into loaf pans, pressing down to eliminate air bubbles. Smooth each top level with a knife.

Bake for about 1 1/2 hours. Cool for 2 hours.

Combine preserves and liqueur in small pan and heat until preserves has melted and mixture is reduced slightly. Allow to cool a little. Place loaves in an air proof container and spoon mixture over to cover loaf and leave a slight puddle beneath. Seal and refrigerate for several weeks—the longer, the better.

Seriously, you will like it. Served with a little vanilla ice cream, you may love it.

About a million years ago when we were debating wedding cake selection, Husband ventured: "Maybe fruitcake?" We compromised with a small cake and many pies (the man just does not like regular cake), and I like to think that compromise set the stage for a great partnership: I love to make what he loves to eat. And I get all the outlets and switches I want.

What's shaking: My house

2010-11-12T09:07:00.000-08:00

You'd probably have to have spent a little time at the House of Figs to understand why I think this is a beautiful site:

For year—yes, I said years—this part of the front of our house was covered with tarps. Sophie grew up playing under them, creating an installation filled with toys and tiny outdoor furniture that she called Fun Land. We had to pay admission to enter it.

But today it's a glorious construction site. We (I use that term loosely—I really mean Husband) have repaired the faulty foundation, wrapped it in copper sheeting, and a concrete company is now building forms for a raised garden bed and some brick steps. As a general contractor, it's hard for Husband to cede control of the homestead to other professionals. He's fussy and exacting, but he has paying work right now, so it's our only way of moving forward. I quizzed him as to how he selected the specific concrete contractor. He is the cheapest? No, not really. The very best? Hmmm . . . maybe. I wasn't buying it. There had to be something else.

When this parked itself in front of my house, it all became clear. They have their own bathroom. Which means they do not need to use our bathroom, which is hugely important. They're lovely men, and it's not that I have a problem with them in my home, but there is nothing my fastidious husband loves more than a clean bathroom. It's a little-known secret that I married him because he pees sitting down. Does that rock or what? And lest you consider this sissy behavior, know that my husband is the manliest of men—all 6'4" flannel plaid clad of him. Very sexy, actually.

The inside of the house, not so pretty. With the jackhamming of concurrent foundation repair, Husband was concerned that the contents of my cabinets could come bouncing out onto the floor, so everything from the front of my kitchen now resides on and under the dining room table. Not very convenient. Husband suggested some "simple dinners" for the next week or two.

Would you imagine that chicken breast stuffed with goat cheese and wrapped in prosciutto qualifies as such?

It does! It's one of the easiest things I make and a weeknight favorite at our house.

Bing
bang

boom.

You do it like this:

CHICKEN BREAST WITH GOAT CHEESE AND PROSCIUTTO

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Trim chicken breast, removing tenderloin. Slice open a pocket in each breast and fill with crumbled goat cheese. Close up the breast and wrap with a slice of prosciutto.

Heat a tablespoon or so of olive oil in an ovenproof pan. My old cast iron work perfectly for this. Saute chicken for a few minutes, flip each piece, and place pan in the oven to finish for about 15 minutes.

Rice, a green vegetable, and a salad completes the meal.

A little concrete, some brick, and some stone will complete the front of my house for now, later followed by some more shingles and new windows. It's all pretty exciting—work we've been saving and waiting for for years. But recent reports of snow in the Sierras and viewing of this season's Warren Miller movie have caused us to utter the unthinkable: "Screw the house. Time to ski." Almost.

Sophie and I make some choices

2010-11-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

The other weekend I took Sophie to the Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay exhibit at the De Young. We went all the way across the Bay Bridge to the exotic city of San Francisco. Given how close we are in Berkeley, it's amazing how infrequently we go. But then I add up the bridge and cross-town traffic and the $16 parking garage fee (for this trip add on the exhibit tickets, the audio tour, a small visit to the gift shop, and lunch) and it all becomes clear.

But some things you've just got to do. How often can you drive your car to see a painting like this?

The Musée d'Orsay is doing a little remodeling and so thoughtfully sent some of their art to San Francisco (the only city in North America to host this collection) for a vacation.

My brief foray into art history via undergraduate general ed. requirements leaves me in questionable position to guide Sophie through a meaningful art experience, but this one was pretty easy: These guys got sick of painting what everyone wanted to see and buy and went off the rails to paint what they wanted to, limiting themselves not only to what they saw but what they felt. And not only wealthy people who could afford to commission paintings but ordinary people doing ordinary things. They messed with light, time, theory, and—as we saw in the optics of Pointillism—science.

We felt we were in on the joke a few days later watching Ferris Bueller's friend Cameron experience La Grande Jatte at the Chicago Institute of Art on their day out. We had done the same thing—stand close, move farther back. As your eyes go in, the picture fades into a field of dots. Cameron gets lost in the painting. I like to imagine this is where the switch was tripped that allowed him to eventually take his stand.

Sophie and I both appreciated many of the same paintings, but our favorites were vastly different. I liked some of the Monet landscapes, with dappled soft light playing off a snowy field or a wandering river. And of course Van Gough's self-portrait and room at Arles.

Sophie's favorite was The Snake Charmer by Rousseau. I'm not crazy about the stylized vegetation, but she loved the cool calm sense of nature it evoked. And of course snakes are always cool. We bought a small print of this on our way out ("You sure you wouldn't like one of Starry Night??"), and it's hanging in her room's new reading corner.

Her choice of lunch was equally adventurous in my eyes.

In keeping with the exhibit, the cafe featured a French theme. While I chose a more pedestrian sandwich, Sophie selected and enjoyed an open-faced hot mushroom sandwich topped with a warm poached egg.

Our tastes agreed in neither painting nor sandwich, but I love her all the more for appreciating my favorites but choosing her own. I choose her.

What's up: Two sauces and five thoughts

2010-10-25T13:53:00.000-07:00

So real quick here, I made two sauces for my ravioli.

The spinach, feta, pine nut ravs got a hastily improvised lemon cream sauce that went something like this: I heated a tablespoon or so of butter, stirred in a wee bit of flour, added some cream or half-and-half (we always have this in the house but not always cream) and then some lemon zest and juice. I sprinkled with a little chopped basil and viola.

This picture of the basil cream sauce the smoked salmon ravs got looks like crap, but boy did it taste good! Here's a real recipe:

Basil Cream Sauce

2 cups fresh basil leaves
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup olive oil
2 ounces pine nuts, toasted
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste
1 pint cream

In a food processor, combine basil and garlic. Begin processing, and pour in olive oil in a thin stream. Process for about 40 seconds, or until mixture begins to emulsify. Add pine nuts and Parmesan, then blend for 1 minute.

Heat cream in a saucepan over low heat until simmering. Pour half of the hot cream into the processor with basil pesto, and pulse for 20 seconds to incorporate. Pour mixture back into cream, and simmer for 5 minutes, or until thickened.

So sauce-schmauce. Do you what's really on my mind?

My daughter reports that she has invented a new religion. We're atheists. I'm horrified.

I recently took a Lebanese cooking class. It was fun, and I learned to make some really good stuff.

My house has a door you can lock, open, and walk through. The front of the house almost is not partly covered with tarps. We have way less money than we used to.

I have a brilliant new idea for political campaigns. Ok, it's really a pretty stupid idea, but so are a lot of people running for office.

Ten percent of the way through (on the Kindle we read in percents, not pages) and I have officially called "uncle" on David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. I'm not proud. I don't hate it or anything, but I just cannot take it any longer. Life is too short. At least mine is—I guess he thought his was too long.

That's what's up.

Still there? Back to ravioli

2010-10-16T11:29:00.000-07:00

You know, the ravioli post series was not meant to drag on for three months. And it hasn't been three months yet, but still.

~~To roll out the excuses~~Just to bring you up to speed, here's what's been up since I made pasta dough for the first time:

I went camping with Sophie's class at the Presidio—sort of like camping in Golden Gate Park but not quite. Last year she did not want me to attend, but this year she really wanted to sleep in our teensy backpacking tent instead of a large group tent, and children were required to have an adult in their tent, so she decided I might be useful for this purpose. It required me to camp with a whole bunch of people (I think upwards of forty at times), which is not really my thing. And not Sophie's either it turns out. She opined more than once "I wish it were just us, camping by ourselves." Our little tent was good for crawling away and pretending we were doing just that.

But then if we had been doing just that we would have missed a mandolin around the camp fire, catching up with people we really like and don't see much of in hectic everyday life,

and hiking to here, which you'll note is not in the mountains. Camping in the city's not all bad.

But it's not like we went camping for weeks. I also

Had my first migraine. Disco balls started floating across my vision field and I became so dizzy I could hardly stand yet look up signs of a stroke or aneurysm on my computer. Since I had never experienced anything like this and wasn't exhibiting quite the textbook migraine symptoms, off to the emergency room I went, where received a scan of my head (so much easier than an MRI!) and was told I was having a retinal migraine, probably due in part to STRESS.

Received an annual performance review at work where my boss advised to "make friends with" and treat in a "gentle, motherly way" a coworker I may be working on projects in the coming year. You can imagine how my head nearly exploded at that suggestion. I said no. Will. Not. Do. That. No way. I will be professional and cordial, and that's all that should ever be required of anyone in the workplace. Ever. Period. I think she gets it.

Survived Husband's two surgeries, ankle and knee, realizing how much he really does do around the house now that I've had to do most of it for the past three weeks. It's how people over fifty get ready for the ski season you know. And no, I did not treat him in a gentle, motherly way.

So don't you think a person who survived all that deserves one of these?

Me too, but they're really expensive and we're forging ahead on our ten-year house remodel plan, Husband's job may be evaporating, and . . . well, that's another post. So I pulled one of these out of the back of a cupboard and found that this low-tech method worked fairly well.

It's important to make sure the pasta dough is thick enough to hold the filing. The setting one in from the thinnest worked best for me.

A good dusting of flour ensured that the finished raviolis did not stick to the plate (your opportunity to learn from my mistake).

But now to the fun part. You almost cannot go wrong with ravioli filling—almost anything that sounds good is. A quick trip through the food processor, and you're good to go.

I made two:

Feta spinach pine nut

Smoked salmon

Both delicious and easy.

Feta Spinach Pine Nut Ravioli Filling

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 (10 ounce) bag fresh spinach
1 cup feta cheese
1/2 cup pine nuts, toasted

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook the spinach until fully wilted, about 2 minutes. Let cool, then squeeze the spinach to remove as much liquid as possible.

Combine the cooked spinach, feta, and pine nuts in a food processor and pulse until mixture is the consistency of a fine paste.

Smoked Salmon Ravioli Filling

6 ounces smoked salmon
4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
lemon juice to taste

Combine ingredients food processor and pulse until mixture is the consistency of a fine paste.

These instructions for using a ravioli mold give a clear step-by-step illustrated explanation.

To cook, fill a large pot with lightly salted water and bring to a rolling boil over high heat. Once the water is boiling, add the ravioli, stir gently, and return to a boil. Cook uncovered until the ravioli float to the top and the filling is hot, about 3 to 5 minutes.

Up next—any minute now—a quick sauce recipe. Seriously.

Homemade ravioli: The dough

2010-10-01T21:00:00.000-07:00

Very busy garden spiders setting up shop all over my yard the past few days have drawn my attention to the fact that it is fall. Not spring.

Do you have these at your house? They are everywhere here.

Which means I'm a total loser when it comes to completing my spring kitchen to-do list. But wait—did I actually say I would complete the list in spring? Or did I just propose the list in spring? Fact is, I've been a little disappointed with myself for technically only completing half the list (fried anchovy-stuffed olives and pate de fruit). Part of it is Trevor's fault because I wanted to make picture-perfect macarons with him when I was in his neighborhood this summer, but he had to go eat rice with his Persian in-laws that day.

And I really haven't been a loser when it comes to the homemade ravioli. On the contrary, I've been a positively industrious ravioli maker, but it's taken up so much of time, I haven't had time to post it all. It's been so much more involved than I thought and has, in fact, spun off it's own list:

1. Learn to make homemade pasta dough.
2. Master the mechanics of ravioli making.
3. Come up with a few fillings.
4. Discover the perfect sauce.

See what I mean? But as my favorite co-worker will say when I ask if he has completed the next step in a project "I dood it!" But it's too much for one day, so here comes the ravioli post series.

Today is the pasta. Or the noodles. When I was growing up we seriously did not ever use the word pasta. It was all noodles. Pasta was just a fancy word for the same thing, and we were an unpretentious family.

I only have one food processor (can you believe it??), and it was busy making something else, so I was happy to find that a bowl and a fork work perfectly well to blend this dough.

As far as ingredient proportions, Lisagh correctly observed that it's about the feel.

You want to add enough water that you can pinch the dough together. Sort of how pie crust dough feels.

I pushed it around with the heel of my hand on a floured board until it was slightly elastic and had lost its stickiness.

Then came the fun part.

Remember this? It was called the Fun Factory, and when your Playdough was new and springy and your machine was not clogged up with dried crusty dough what fun it was!

My hand crank pasta machine was almost as fun. I divided the dough into pieces about the size of a fist (mine as small) and ran them through a couple times each on successively tighter rollers, folding the dough in two each time before feeding through.

Lots of flour at the end was important so the dough didn't stick together

Basic Pasta

1 egg, beaten
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons water

In a medium-sized bowl, combine flour and salt. Make a well in the flour, add the slightly beaten egg, and mix with a fork. Stir in 2 tablespoons water.

On a lightly floured surface, knead dough for about 3 to 4 minutes. With a pasta machine or by hand roll dough out to desired thinness.

I'll be back (promise!) to make the ravs. Two kinds! Just guess.

What we eat in the land of plenty

2010-09-22T08:30:00.000-07:00

Right after college I moved to the Boston area (Somerville, pronounced by the locals Sumaville) sheerly for lack of better options. While it might have been better to be armed with a little more purpose and direction, it turned out well. As a California beach girl (you'd never know it now) who graduated from Beach High only to attend Beach University, recently dubbed one of the sexiest colleges in the country, a New England urban environment was instructive.

I went from here

to here. It was really weird.

I rode a subway. Took taxis to the dentist. Learned that you don't have to be in the Middle East for people to be very concerned about your religion. Realized that California really is the Land of Food. Especially when it comes to produce. Not that other parts of the country do not have good produce some of the time (relatives in Utah grew the best summer corn ever in their garden), but we have really good produce almost all of the time.

Imagine my shock then when fresh off the plane in the late fall (why waste a perfectly good summer of southern California beach weather to grow up?) I marched up to the produce manager at the local Star Market (pronounced to my delight Stah Mahket) and demanded the location of the zucchini. What zucchini, he wanted to know. It was the wrong season. Huh? I knew peaches had a season, but zucchini? That was sort of like hearing that lettuce was not available. In California, you can have zucchini from not too far away all year round. And so I eat it all year round.

Usually I eat it like this: roasted. I toss it with things like pine nuts, capers, fresh herb, grated cheese. It's like tofu—good with just about anything. Sometimes I shred it up and pretend I'm making hash browns, except they're green.

But now I'm also eating it like this, which you can do without cooking a thing. For all the hot weather the rest of the country's been getting and I am expecting now that it's officially fall, that can be a good thing.

A plain old vegetable peeler makes nice long strips. I toss the core because it's mostly just seeds and water.

Tossed with a lemony dressing and then topped with pine nuts, cheese, and fresh herbs, this tasty and pretty side to almost anything.

Shaved Zucchini Salad with Parmesan and Pine Nuts
Adapted from Bon Appetit, August 2010

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 pounds medium zucchini, trimmed
1/2 cup coarsely chopped fresh basil
1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted
Small wedge of Parmesan cheese

Whisk oil, lemon juice, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon black pepper in small bowl to blend. Set dressing aside.

Using vegetable peeler, slice zucchini into ribbons, turning the squash as you go. Discard the core of each squash.

Place ribbons in large bowl. Add dressing; toss to coat. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Using vegetable peeler, shave strips from Parmesan wedge over salad. Top with basil and nuts.

A lot of people have tastes associated with places. I have a lack of taste associated with New England: standing in that market, wanting zucchini, and being told there was none. Don't tell my family I came back to California for the squash. Don't tell the avocados either.

The perfect fall dessert: A fresh fig tart

2010-09-11T13:01:00.000-07:00

Sophie recently started school, and as part of the reconnecting with school families, we often faced the question "How was your summer?" I always answered with two words: short and cold. Short enough to leave many home-improvement projects planned for our stay-cation summer incomplete on our list and cold enough to stifle motivation to garden, grill, and swim in lakes.

And, sadly, much to cold to ripen the figs on our either of our two trees. We're now moving into fall coolness—taking stock of firewood and ski equipment—and our figs are still tiny hard babies. We'll most likely prune them back in a month or so and call it a fruitless season. I may have enjoyed our blustery summer fog, but this Mediterranean fruit did not.

But I did not have the heart to let Husband go without one of his favorite seasonal desserts. I know . . . in spite of my spectacular pie defeat, I'm baking again and back into using seasonal ingredients. Oh, well. I've said I was or was not going to do lots of things before. I think at one point I said I was going to take on a household organizing project every weekend. Ha ha. Besides, several people have asked for the recipe.

Besides, who can resist this combination of flavors?

Especially when put together like this? Thank goodness for a good produce market and the fact that when it's cold and foggy here, it's blazing hot somewhere inland.

A few things to note:

The recipe is serious when it specifies cornmeal that is not stone ground. In other words, you cannot get away with using what you have on hand for polenta. I tried that once, and the crust was too gritty.

A little limoncello really gooses up the filling flavor: A tablespoon mixed in, a few more over ice for the cook.

Fresh Fig Tart with Rosemary Cornmeal Crust and Lemon Mascarpone Cream
Adapted from Gourmet July 2003

For crust

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal (not stone-ground)
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick (1/2 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 1/2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh rosemary
4 to 5 tablespoons ice water

For filling

1/3 cup sour cream
1 cup mascarpone cheese, room temperature (8 oz)
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons finely grated fresh lemon zest
1/8 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons red-currant jelly
1 tablespoon honey
1 1/2 lb fresh figs

Make crust:

Pulse together flour, cornmeal, sugar, and salt in a food processor. Add butter and rosemary and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal with some small (roughly pea-size) butter lumps. Drizzle evenly with 4 tablespoons ice water and pulse until just incorporated.

Gently squeeze a small handful: If it doesn't hold together, add more water, 1/2 tablespoon at a time, pulsing after each addition and continuing to test.

Press dough evenly onto bottom and up sides of a 10-inch round fluted tart pan with a removable bottom with floured fingers. Smooth dough with a small offset metal spatula or back of a spoon (floured if necessary), then roll a rolling pin over top of pan to trim dough flush with rim. Chill crust until firm, about 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Bake crust in middle of oven until center and edges are golden, 25 to 30 minutes (don't worry if bottom of crust cracks), then cool in pan on a rack.

Prepare filling and assemble tart:

Whisk together sour cream, mascarpone, sugar, zest, and salt in a bowl.

Heat jelly and honey in a small saucepan over moderately low heat, whisking, until jelly is melted, about 4 minutes, then cool glaze slightly.

Remove side of tart pan and spread mascarpone cream in shell. Cut figs lengthwise into 1/4-inch-thick slices and arrange decoratively over cream. Brush figs with honey glaze.

Crust can be made 1 day ahead and kept, covered, at room temperature. Mascarpone mixture can be made 1 day ahead and chilled, covered. Tart can be assembled 1 hour ahead and kept, loosely covered, at room temperature.

So while we didn't have a summer of sitting beneath our fig trees sipping a glass of chilled white wine and feeding each other what some consider the sexiest fruit on earth, this tart of luscious oozy figs made the evening breeze feel if not Mediterranean just a little warmer.

An afterthought: If the summer was cold and short, do you think the winter will be warm and long? I'd like to put in my request for cold and long and wet. We've got some skiing to do.

I may bake no more forever

2010-09-03T10:18:00.000-07:00

Jeez. Do I ever know how Chief Joseph felt. I am demoralized, beaten down. I had my ass kicked almost a month ago, and I can only now discuss it. What happened is this.

I was DEFEATED at our annual company picnic dessert baking contest for the SECOND TIME IN A ROW. I walked away with second prize both times, but I DID NOT WIN. That's right. DID NOT WIN.

Here's how it went down. Both times I made this absolutely kick-ass mixed berry pie (organic blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries) with an all-butter lattice crust. The first year I was beat out by a mixed fruit pinwheel type of tart. I have to admit, it was lovely, although several people told me later that my pie actually tasted better. Humphf.

This year I was the only fruit dessert. Surely, I thought, I have it in the bag. The only threat I saw were chocolate desserts, because some people are just that way about chocolate. And I was slightly worried when I saw this.

It did not win.

You will never believe this. I was beat out by a CARROT SHEET CAKE. In a pan. Seriously. It may have been a good carrot cake, but CARROT CAKE IS NOT A SEASONAL DESSERT. And the pan? Really?

Maybe I lost because I am just such a catty bitch. There were several consolations though. Both times announcement of my second-place win was greeted by audible groans of disappointment. You'd think I would have felt badly for the winners, especially when people threw up their hands in disbelief and came over the hug me. And maybe I did. Just a little bit. They are both nice people, and I'm sure their desserts were adequate. But this year Mailroom Mike told me I had nailed it though. That's meant a lot.

But moving on. You heard it here. I no longer bake. I make ice cream. And enough already with the seasonal business. I'm doing chocolate and vanilla.

But that does not mean I need throw in the creative towel. I wanted to make flavors that were different from those offered in the supermarket freezer case. Last Sunday's dinner had a Mexican theme, featuring my fried cheese salsa appetizer, green chicken enchiladas, cilantro rice, and grilled corn salad. Dessert needed to be light, and ice cream sounded like just the ticket.

I dug out a recipe snipped years ago from a newspaper for Mexican chocolate ice cream and modified it slightly.

If this isn't thumbing my nose at seasonal flavor, I don't know what is. This Mexican chocolate (bought several times over when I forget we already had some) has been in my cupboard for over a year. Packaged in plastic, it seems to have fared just fine.

For the vanilla, I took inspiration from the famous Bi-Rite Creamery in San Francisco, which features two flavors of ice cream a day—all fancy things like balsamic strawberry, salted caramel (which we know I can make), and . . . malted vanilla. Ever since my grandmother chose to decorate her living room coffee table with an endlessly refilling cut glass bowl of Whopper's Malt Balls, I've been a sucker for malt. You could have licked the chocolate off one, handed me the naked ball, and I would have been happy.

But these flavors together prove that it's possible to have it all.

These two recipes have different techniques: The chocolate doesn't require cooking a custard; the vanilla does. Both turned out insanely good.

VANILLA MALT ICE CREAM

1 1/2 cups whole milk
1/3 cup malt drink powder

4 egg yolks
3/4 cup sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup whipping cream

In a large saucepan, heat milk and malt powder until the malt powder is dissolved and the mix simmers. Remove from heat.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk egg yolks and sugar until pale and smooth.

Pour the milk into the yolk and sugar mix, whisking constantly. Return the entire mix to the saucepan over the lowest heat setting.

Whisk constantly and do not let mixture boil. Cook until mixture coats the back of a spoon.

Strain the mixture into a large bowl and let it cool for about 10 minutes.

Whisk in cream and vanilla extract. Cool and chill overnight. Process according to your ice cream maker.

MEXICAN CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM

2 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar

4 ounces Mexican chocolate, chopped
2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped

1 1/2 cup whipping cream
1 cup whole milk

In a large mixing bowl, whisk egg yolks and sugar until pale and smooth.

Melt chocolate in a double boiler over simmering water. Add to egg mixture and mix thoroughly. Whisk in cream, then stir in milk a little at a time.

Cool and chill overnight. Process according to your ice cream maker.

Cheater alter: If you're too impatient or not sufficiently ahead on your dessert plans, a few hours in the freezer rather than overnight in the fridge will to do chill the mixture.

So next year my office will probably have this competition again. And I will NOT enter a pie. Husband, who howled with despair when he saw his favorite dessert heading out the door, has decreed that every pie I make for him will be declared a winner but only at the comfort of our kitchen table. And anyway, how pathetic would it be to show up for a third year with a losing dessert? I have this really great recipe for a fresh fig tart, with a cornmeal rosemary crust, lemon-scented marscapone cream filling, and a lavender glaze . . . but. Never mind.

Important cheese alert

2010-08-31T13:27:00.000-07:00

I love to grill cheese. What is better than cheese seared to a crisp on the outside and oozy on the inside? Which is why I've been a fan for ages of the Cypriot cheese halloumi.

Grilled quickly in a hot cast iron skillet and topped with a cilantro mojo or, as Sophie and I enjoyed at a Greek festival this spring, a vinaigrette with sliced tomatoes, capers, and fresh mint, it's a great appetizer or small side dish.

The only drawback is that the brand I usually buy is sort of expensive—almost $10 a container.

But check out what I found at Trader Joe's last week:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's not exactly the same—not as soft, perhaps a little rubbery; not quite as briny—as traditional halloumi. But at a fraction of the cost and with a good topping, I can live with this. Halloumi can go right into the heated pan; I found a light coating of olive oil on the pan surface helped this detach a little better.

Tossed with several colors of miniature tomatoes, cilantro, a little olive oil, and a few squeezes of fresh lime, this mixture was a nice alternative with chips to a traditional salsa as an appetizer for our Mexican-themed Sunday dinner.

Grilled cheese AND saved money. Does it get any better than that?

A productive illness

2010-08-26T15:12:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it's nice to be sick. Not terribly sick, just a little sick. Sick enough that I feel compelled to stay home near the tissue box and use a day or so of the massive amount of paid sick days I have amassed. Not so sick that I cannot get a few things done around the house. So far I have

Read for a couple of hours in bed. I'm smack in the middle of Salman Rushie's Midnight's Children (a friend and I agreed it was sort of embarrassing that we consider ourselves literary sorts but have never read anything by Rushdie) but stopped to read the next book for the mother-daughter book group Sophie and I are in. She and I agreed we would cheat and that she would explain the plot and a few main characters and set me up with a few comments so I wouldn't have to read it, but my conscience got the better of me.

Done a couple loads of laundry, mopped the kitchen floor, cleaned a bathroom. My house cleaner is out of town for a couple of weeks.

Finished one batch of crème de mûre, started another.

Bottled some limoncello. Finally. It's a lengthy process. I'm looking very forward to trying Jen's limon sunrise cocktail (and you thought she was all about butter).

Practiced the piano for half an hour. I've been playing on my parents' piano during visits and have overcome my horror at how much worse I am than when I was fourteen enough to be enjoying it again. I brought back a bunch of music home from my parents and have been playing on the little electric keyboard (a toy, basically) that I use to play with Sophie's violin practice.

Watched All My Children while eating lunch. Or maybe it was One Life to Live. I can't tell the difference. Anyway, Dorian Lord is not looking good.

Installed these nice little holders in my laundry room for mops. You're probably wondering why a general contractor's wife would have to do something like this herself. But if you're a general contractor's wife you already know. Something about cobblers and children and shoes. Seriously, I bought these holders about six years ago.

I couldn't get the screws in all the way, but I know of no better way to send Husband into a blind panic than to call him at work to ask where he has hid the electric screwdriver. General contractors have this bizarre notion that they alone can safely operate power tools.

This is all in the way of saying that I'm well on my way to doing everything except what I should be doing today:

Completing my on-line traffic school course

which needs to be done by the end of the month. Seems I was in just a little too much of a hurry to get to the mountains last spring and was driving a wee bit too fast. Did the officer not notice the full rack of skis on top and the impatient little ripper in the backseat? He might have, but the asshole bagged me for going eight miles over the speed limit about fifty yards from the speed limit sign ahead where I would have been within the limit. I hope he dies of hemorrhoids.

The truth is I really really really do not want to waste my valuable convalescence doing on-line traffic school. I just do not think I am well enough. Instead, I'm moving on to

Mexican chocolate ice cream. I'll let you know how it turns out.

A pumpkin seed sauce for the enchiladas I'm planning for Sunday dinner.

Sorting through recipes and moving them into a new folder box. The old one is falling apart.

Or maybe it's time for a nap? Another chapter of Rushdie? A blog post on the best grilling sauce I've discovered this summer? A nap.

Sophie needed a torte

2010-08-18T16:00:00.000-07:00

She's suffering a strange kind of vertigo that the doctor says is probably a result of a head cold she had this past weekend and will resolve in a few days. Still, I'm worried. She swam in a pond on Saturday. What if she a brain-eating amoeba swam up her nose? A couple of years ago at her school, one of her friends dropped on the play ground and died before the next morning of a brain aneurysm. What if it's something like that? And so not only is she home from camp, but I'm home with her, asking every fifteen minutes if the dizziness is better or worse. Her headache: better or worse? Stomach?

Nothing wrong with the stomach or the appetite, so I'm loving her the way I do best: with food.

For lunch, she enjoyed a chicken salad with red grapes and pine nuts and shaved zucchini in tossed in fresh lemon and olive oil.

For an afternoon treat, I piled on some of my favorite blog boys and their plum torte.

Trevor started it. He clipped the original recipe from the the New York Times and adapted it by substituting cardamom for the cinnamon. Then Greg made it, doubling the recipe and adding a brilliant cardamom whipped cream. Greg also included a dissection of the terms cake, gateau, and torte. I call bullshit on his final theory, but it's an entertaining discussion nonetheless.

My contribution is minor: I added vanilla (I couldn't help it) and whisked together the dry ingredients before adding to the creamed butter and sugar. (Ever get a caked bit of baking powder in your bite? Not good.)

The original recipe provides instructions for freezing, defrosting, and reheating. Now tell me why anyone do something like that.

This is a great way to use summer plums and is just about the easiest dessert ever.

Plum Torte

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
2 eggs

1 cup unbleached flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
pinch of cardamom (just shy of 1/4 teaspoon)

6 ripe plums, halved and pitted
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
sugar for topping

Cream sugar and butter.

Whisk in a bowl flour, baking powder, cardamom, and salt. Add to butter mixture, followed by eggs. Beat well. Spoon the batter into a spring form of 8, 9 or 10 inches. Place the plum halves skin side up on top of the batter. Sprinkle lightly with sugar and lemon juice, depending on the sweetness of the fruit.

Bake one hour, approximately. Cool before removing from pan. Serve with whipped sweetened whipped cream (see Greg's recipe for the cardamom version) or vanilla ice cream.

It's not bad for breakfast either. Or so Sophie tells me.

One weekend, three weeds

2010-08-18T13:47:00.000-07:00

Weed 1.

Is there anything more lovely than a thistle?

Camping this weekend in a friend's meadow up in Mendocino, we minced around plenty of these. So pretty, but definitely look don't touch.

We have been attending this annual multigenerational weekend party for over a decade and are usually one of the tents. This year, though, we decided to skip the set-up-break-down biz and "camp" in our restored VW Vanagon (it has a transplanted Subura engine, so it's technically called a Vanaroo).

Sleeping on a full-sized futon with our down comforter and flannel sheets hardly qualifies as roughing it, but when a thick fog rolled in during the wee hours of the morning and we heard all our tent neighbors waking up to put flies on the tents, we thought we were pretty clever.

You never know what our host will have on the spit—lamb, pig, or goat. This year it was a particularly handsome pig.

The host adds rice and green salad, and the guest potluck the rest.

At night it's music, chat, and marshmallows around a campfire. Here, Husband gets a chance to catch up with the host, my first landlord in Berkeley and the person who introduced Husband and me.

In the morning everyone is treated to amazing berry crepe. Which brings me to the next weed. So a friend and I are sitting at one of the tables set up outside chatting over coffee and crepes. We're talking about the past year, during which she has struggled with her teenager daughter's use of drugs and alcohol and the issues that naturally accompany those substances in hands controlled by developing brains. Hard stuff, particularly scary given that this girl has two parents I really consider to have their shit together. Clearly, this can happen to anyone. They're handling it though with compassion and intelligence, getting their daughter professional help and maintaining a house completely free of problem substances—the liquor cabinet is gone, and prescription drugs are under lock and key.

And so in the middle of this conversation, what do the sixty- and seventy-somethings at the other end of the table do?

Weed 2.

Why light a huge spliff, of course. I believe the technical term for this is Wake-and-Bake. It's ten o'clock in the goddamn morning. And kids are everywhere. Fortunately most of them were playing in the orchard when this occurred, but a few years ago they lit up in the living room while the kids were playing cards at the other end of the room. Boundaries, anyone? Whoever thought would come the day when the biggest stoners I know are the seniors?? Not that I really do think it is an evil weed, but a good glass of wine or well-mixed martini sounds so much better to me. I'm not totally sure how I'm going to handle the pot issue. I won't lie about past and occasionally present inhaling, but I'm planning on emphasizing that using it with good judgment (which I'm not sure many kids can do) is critical. And I'll probably need to point out that lighting up at ten in the morning is not good judgment. If she questions me, I'll instruct her to move down the table and have a conversation with one of the stoned seniors.

Weed 3.

The blackberries edging the road and surrounding the property were in full fruit.

I followed behind a pack of kids. They picked low, I picked high.

After an hour, with a few bloody fingers, I had enough for another batch of homemade Crème de mûre and some more of Jen's blackberry ice cream.

But even the blackberry has its drawbacks. The blackberry thickets have become more aggressive than the our friend who owns the property. She'll be eighty at the end of the month and admits that she no longer has the energy to work eight hours a day beating them back, tending the garden and orchard, and maintaining the house, meadow, and pond. She wants to work for maybe three hours and then rest in the shade, read a book. She's thinking of putting the property on the market. She is not an old lady. Doesn't dress like one, act like one, or look like one. When we talk, we're the same age; she's just wiser. She's not slowing down; the berries are speeding up. Goddamn weed.

Just asking

2010-08-13T15:56:00.000-07:00

So I've been gone on a little vacation. I didn't want to put it out on the internet because some bad person might read about it and break into my house and steal some expensive cheese or one of my spotted cats. I don't think there's anything else of real value there except the house itself.

Although we're supposed to be not going anywhere this summer so we can stay home and work on our house, we slunk out of town for a few days at Berkeley Tuolumne Camp, up toward Yosemite on the south fork of the Tuolumne River. It's sort of like camping for really lazy people.

An organized camp is a funny place for someone like me to go to because I like to cook on a camp stove, love my tent, and particularly abhor activities. But that's just me. Husband and Sophie are delighted to scurry off to archery, tie- dye, and basket making. What I love about this camp is that there is no pressure whatsoever to participate in any reindeer games. It is just fine that showing up to three meals a day is all the group activity they get out of me.

But that doesn't mean I am idle at camp. I'm really very busy.

I spend a lot of time reading by the river. Sometimes I sit by the swimming hole and watch people jump off a big rock, but these days I'm more inclined to take my chair down to the less-populated Lower Beach for a little quality me time: Beach, book, and beer.

I also spend a little quality time with the Husband. We took a nice long hike up to an old quarry area above camp one morning.

After lunch is quiet time, when you need to be in your tent cabin or out of camp. (This is when they clean the bathrooms.) We usually beat it up to Small Falls, up the river. No pictures past this evidence of civilization because it's where we leave clothes and swim up the rest of the way. The water was really cold.

But by far my favorite thing to do at camp is TAKE A SHOWER. For several reasons. I get really hot, sweaty, and dusty. But really, it's all about the showers themselves. We call them "the stone showers."

They're all crafted from local river rocks. I love the irregular shapes and gently tumbled edges

And the ceiling cannot be beat.

I have long been a fan of open-air showers. We have one on our back patio so we can rinse off before getting in our hot tub and can avoid steaming up our bathroom when the weather is warm. What I wondered this year is whether there is any reason I cannot have a stone shower at home. Husband is a general contractor and can build, design, or fix just about anything. He has already plumbed a hot water shower out to the back. Why can he not add a stone surround to a couple sides of it?

Can you think of

a single

just one single

reason why not?

Well, fine. So can I. In the meantime my memories will have to serve.

One time, at Camp Toulemne . . .

We now return to our regularly scheduled program

2010-08-03T13:47:00.000-07:00

That's right: I'm back in my kitchen, freed at last from the social anxiety of preparing for and attending my high school reunion. Seriously. The stress from a big event like this reminds me of what a natural mole I am. Most social events I attend I could probably show up to in pajama bottoms, and while this wouldn't go unnoticed, people would probably be more interested in what I brought to eat than in why I forgot to get dressed.

But the reunion? OK, I'll tell you. It was . . . weird. But not in an entirely bad way. It was at first confusing and disorienting. Who on earth were these people?? Slowly, they started coming into focus, as my date and I recognized first one person and then another. But after thirty years, it was sort of like seeing ghosts. Ghosts of high school people—doesn't that sound scary? But they were friendly ghosts, extending a hand and sometimes even a hug, acknowledging that it was nice to see if you even if they had absolutely no idea who you were. And I was very happy to see some old childhood friends, some of whom I had known from third grade.

People generally looked great, the women faring on the whole better than the men. As my date, who looked seriously better than anyone there, pointed out, women and gay men work harder at it. Funny thing about other men who looked particularly good: Not the necessarily the ones considered the major gods in their day. Strike one for karma.

Thank goodness for my kick-ass date. Every woman should attend these events with a gorgeous, stylish, charming, and witty gay man. I was immensely flattered that several people thought he might be my husband. (My husband, who has heard just enough by now about my fabulous date, asked "So did you tell them that you have a very handsome and charming husband at home??" I did, didn't I? No? Well, I guess I forgot, just for the evening.)

There are already rumors afloat of a 35-year reunion, to which Fabulous Date and I say, "Thank you, but no." I truly would not mind seeing more of some of the people there and would like to catch up with a few I never did see that night, but anything like that needs to be at a smaller gathering for me. But I'm glad I went to this one. No regrets, aside from chickening out on photographing a pair of hotpants. We'll be kicking ourselves forever over that.

And so, really. Back to what I know.

I love a recipe with a sneaker ingredient, as in something that really enhances flavor but you would not know is there just by taste. For example, my favorite recipe for Daube Provencal (a French beef stew). Anchovies add a deep earthiness, and no one would ever guess their presence.

My favorite summer fruit salad gets its kick from cardamom, which I love but always think of as a baking spice.

The pods are crushed with a mortar and pestle and then steeped, along with lemon zest, in a reduced white wine syrup to make a gastrique, a sweet tart dressing. The natural flavors of the fruit are enhanced, and the citric acid in the lemon keeps the fruit from browning.

The recipe, originally from Cook's Illustrated, specifies adding the warm reduction to the fruit, but I usually make this in a triple batch well ahead of when I want to serve the salad and chill it, adding one portion to my salad about an hour beforehand.

The rest goes in the fridge for the next time I see fruit at my produce market that needs to be made into a salad. Fruit salad is one of our favorite summer desserts, so this doesn't last long.

My adaptation uses white wine instead of champagne (any white wine will do—especially bottles you open and do not like). I omit their raspberries from this combination. I add tiny mint leaves from my garden (not chopped mint because the edges can darken if the salad has to travel or wait a while).

White nectarine and blueberry salad with wine-cardamom reduction
Adapted from Cook's Illustrated, July 2001

1 cup white wine
1/2 cup sugar
pinch table salt
1 tablespoon lemon zest
1 tablespoon lemon juice
5 cardamom pods, crushed
5 medium white nectarines, pitted and chopped
1 1/2 pint blueberries
1/4 cup small mint leaves

Simmer wine, sugar, and salt in small saucepan over medium heat until syrupy, honey-colored, and reduced to 1/4 cup, about 25 minutes.

Remove from heat and add lemon zest and juice and cardamom. Steep 5 minutes to blend flavors, and strain. Allow to cool or chill if making ahead of time.

Combine dressing, fruit, and mint. Toss gently and serve at room temperature or chill up to four hours ahead of time.

My high school reunion: Let's go

2010-07-29T10:17:00.000-07:00

I've established that I love a list. My spring kitchen to-do list has been a huge success, ignoring the fact that it is no longer spring and I still haven't finished it. I've officially ticked off the fried anchovy-stuffed olives and the pate de fruit, and I've made the stuffed ravioli, although I haven't yet posted it. I have left only the improved French macarons, which I put aside because I became obsessed with salted caramel ice cream, which then sent me on a bender of various fruit flavored ice creams.

But aside from recreation, I think lists can serve a valuable therapeutic function. I've always maintained that when faced with great anxiety or adversity, the thing to do is MAKE A LIST.

You want anxiety? How's this for you: On Saturday I will be attending my 30 year high school reunion. 30! There was a 20 year reunion, but I wasn't ready to come back. A considerable stoner (although a studious one) in high school, I survived my senior year only through obsessive visualization of my life the following year at college, where I went as much for an education as for a ticket out. I rode a long way on that ticket, from Santa Barbara to Boston, then Penn State, Washington DC, and finally back to California in Berkeley. A long, strange trip it's been. I'm ready now. It's taken me thirty years to accept that I didn't fit in then, don't fit in now and that that's just fine (queue up Stuart Smalley here).

But could this reunion be in a normal place, say somewhere in the mid West? Hell, no. We're going back to the ridiculously glamorous Newport Beach, a place where I feel consistently overweight and underdressed. Bring on that list!

1. Assemble an outfit. Whee! I did this without spending any money. Dress and shoes right out of the closet. I save money throughout the year by not accessorizing.

2. Lose fifteen pounds. I lost two. But I was greatly relieved when one of the organizers advised us by way of a Facebook post that fat and happy are the new rich and skinny. I'm good to go!

3. Learn to apply makeup like a grown up. I'm not talking about my standard tinted sunscreen and chapstick here. Probably too late on this one. I put on a little eye makeup the other day, just to see if I could, and Sophie tactfully observed "Mama, you look . . . sort of . . . tired. I like you just normal." Point well taken. But I don't know it's a given that because your kid thinks you look good, you really do look good. This is, after all, the kid who used to draw giant purple eyebrows on my dad as she "beautied him up" with her play makeup.

4. Figure out what to do with my hair. It's not the same smooth, blonde hair I sported in high school. It's post-cancer hair, which is a wild, wavy, often frizzy mess of a thing. And while I've conceded that my hair is neither blonde nor straight and I have neither the time nor the inclination to beat it into submission with endless treatments, products, and electrical devices, some attention to it is probably advised. But I still haven't figured out what that is.

5. Find a purse. I'm so lame about purses. Although I admire them, I really do not understand people who use a different purse every day. It's great in theory that the bag match the outfit or the shoes, but I'm just not convinced that anyone looks at my purse much on a daily basis. I ride to work, enter my office, put it on my corner chair, and it sits there until it's time to go home. Am I missing something? In the winter I use this giant black Coach bag that I bought nearly twenty years ago. It's so large I can fit in a change of gym clothes and lunch in addition to my regular equipment. Very practical. In the summer I have a cute straw bag (the only reason I own a cute bag is because a cute girlfriend gave it to me), but edges of it are a little worse for the wear because I've been cramming it in the clamshell of my motor scooter all summer while Sophie's backpack hangs on the purse hook (it's too big to fit in the clamshell). I have other purses somewhere in the back of my closet. I think.

6. Secure a date. DONE. Husband would rather die than attend my reunion, and I would rather die than take him. He is a handsome man who cleans up nicely, if reluctantly, but he just does not do well in southern California, whining that "It's all cement down here!!" and bemoaning things like the access of architectural detail on the faux Craftman style McMansions in my parents' neighborhood. Better to leave him home in his flannel shirt in the redwoods. Thankfully a friend I have reconnected with (we went to our senior year homecoming dance; see fig. 1) also has a husband who would rather die than attend. Stylish and just generally adorable, my date probably does not even own a flannel shirt. I have complete confidence that he will arrive to pick me up in the perfect outfit, with immaculately coiffed hair. His company alone is reason to go. If all else goes wrong, we can sit in a corner, talk about food, or bemoan the blahness of my blog as of late and the increasing fabulousness of his (seriously—go take a look).

Figure 1. The bloggers now known as authors of FigsLavenderCheese.blogspot.com

and SisBoomBlog.com attend homecoming dance a really long time ago.

A friend who has attended a reunion a while ago observed that everyone, regardless of success or pretense of it, has likely survived some loss that has given them an amount of perspective on life that renders them infinitely nicer and more interesting than they were in high school. One can only hope that the deaths, divorces, illnesses, drug addictions, and grand jury investigations have taught us something and left us wiser and gentler people. You think? I do. In thirty years we've grown up.

Cheater cheater, tortilla soup eater

2010-07-27T13:23:00.000-07:00

This time of year I'm usually all about chilled soups. Berkeley is usually basking in a radiant sunshine that we enjoy while looking smugly across the bay at the blanket of fog covering San Francisco. But not this year. We're lucky of the fog breaks for half an hour in the afternoon before it blows back in.

What this means is that I'm all confused about what to cook. If I want to grill, I need to put on a jacket. And no one wants chilled soup. What I've been craving is hot soup—for some reason, tortilla soup. But when I say "hot," I mean temperature. Very spicy foods make me want to cry. I think it's genetic. A college friend once tested on me the theory that it was because I grew up eating mildly flavored food. The plan was to start me out on mild salsa with my chips and gradually ratchet up the intensity. We progressed safely from mild to medium and declared the experiment a failure when I called uncle and begged to return to mild.

And so most tortilla soup recipes are a problem for me. You can use milder chilies, like Anaheims or even some jalapenos, but you just do not know. It could be too spicy; it could have not enough flavor. Chilies can be so confusing.

But enchilada sauce is not. You can buy it in a can that says "hot," "medium," or "mild." And it comes with all the spices you would want in a tortilla soup. Call me a hack, but it's easy and good.

CHEATER TORTILLA SOUP

1 10-ounce can red enchilada sauce
4 cups chicken broth
1 small onion, diced
1 chicken breast, bone-in, skinned

2 cups baby spinach
1 medium avocado, peeled and diced
1/2 cup queso fresco Mexican cheese (jack will also do)

6 corn tortillas, cut into strips
canola oil to spray

salt, to taste
lime, to taste
cilantro

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Combine enchilada sauce, broth, onion, and chicken in a large pan and bring to boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook until chicken is done. Remove chicken and allow to cool. Continue cooking soup, which will reduce a little. When chicken is cooled enough to handle, shred and return to pan. Add salt and lime to taste.

Spread tortilla strips over a baking sheet, spray with canola spray, and toss to coat. Bake until crisped.

In individual soup bowls, place spinach, avocado, cheese, and tortilla strips. Ladle soup over.

Serve with lime slices and cilantro.

I also serve with something like this to people who would otherwise feel cheated out of their heat.

We actually leave the house

2010-07-26T08:45:00.000-07:00

In light of furloughs from both of our jobs (at least I keep my paid holidays and vacation—he didn't), we've been keeping close to home, working on our never-ending construction project of a house. I understand it's called a "stay-cation." Haha—like you're laying around your own house relaxing. We seem to have missed the "-cation" part of it.

But I thought at least Sophie and I, who are not permitted to use power tools anyway and are sick of reorganizing closets, might benefit from an outing. So we grabbed the MIL, her rolling walker, and handicapped parking pass and set out . . . for Oakland.

Although I'd heard rave reviews of the newly reopened Oakland Museum of California, I was a little skeptical. The museum was designed to facilitate people experiencing the exhibits—interacting with them! Christalmighty, I thought. The museum was fine the way it was. Can I not just go and look at shit??

Who knew how much I would like it? And how interactive I got??

Here's Sophie finding out what the Spaniards who first came to California brought with them. All kinds of stuff, apparently. The theme of the California history section is on coming to California, starting with the native Americans and progressing through various waves of invasion, immigration, and migration. I tried to explain how California is different that way and when I lived in Massachusetts for a while many people I met had entire families going back generations who still lived right there. Weird. My boyfriend's mother would exclaim, after a few cocktails, "But people in California don't know who their people are!!!" To which I would reply now "Of course we do. We've got a whole goddamned museum about them." At the time, of course, I was too shocked by the fact that the grownups seemed to get more wasted at parties than the kids to say anything at all.

At the end of the California history section was one of my favorite parts: The exhibit where they pile all the stuff they couldn't figure out what to do with. Categories included fun things like "What doesn't belong in this group?" (we were really good at that) and "Stuff kids collected" (the MIL and I had a good laugh over explaining the Blue Chip Stamp booklets to Sophie: "You get stamps at gas stations, paste them in books when it's raining, fight with your siblings over what to order out of the catalog, and don't ever get around to ordering anything!").

Here, Sophie got to select among a variety of labels for including herself as an exhibit. She chose "Strangest thing in the museum. Who brought this here?" She wanted to have the MIL hold one that read "Oldest thing in the museum." I pointed out the MIL not might think that was funny, and besides she had wandered off to the next section and we had to chase her down.

In the portrait gallery, Sophie used a lightboard to create a portrait of herself. You choose a color at the top and sort of fingerpaint with it. When you're done, it goes into a bank of portraits by other visitors that you can access on the screen on the left. But first it goes for a few seconds into a frame on a wall with other real portraits.

Look—I'm an artist featured at the Oakland Museum! The museum is supposed to email us our pictures, but they haven't shown up yet. They're not nearly as efficient as Disneyland, which always has my BuzzLightYear ride picture waiting for me when I get home.

Here we are enjoying jazzy art while listening to jazzy music (Dave Brubeck's Blue Rondo) and looking through funny glasses.

It was a nice way to demonstrate that art need not be a solemn and quiet experience.

But just when I think Sophie and I are really in a groove, she cycles back to take a picture of her favorite exhibit:

WTF???

Looking for the warm

2010-07-22T07:56:00.000-07:00

In the midst of an unseasonably cool July in Berkeley, I enjoyed hearing one of my authors grumble about the oppressive heat he was enduring as he dispatched map corrections from his temporary Istanbul "office," the Abracadabra Cafe. No doubt over a glass over iced mint tea. Hmpf.

I can do nothing but feel sorry for myself and Sophie as we blast through the fog on our motorscooter to summer camp on what would otherwise be an enjoyable and scenic ride through Tilden Park, over Grizzly Peak, and down Strawberry Canyon. At least I can fantasize after dropping her off about opening my thermos of steaming coffee in my office as I buzz past the crawling lines of minivans. But I'm further chilled when I think of Sophie, whose first activity of the day is water polo. Brrr.

But when it's cold and foggy in the coastal bay area, it's usually hot as Hades inland, which means, among other things, one of my favorite summer foods makes its appearance:

Padron peppers!

Tossed in a little olive oil, charred in a cast iron skillet, and sprinkled with a course salt, they are positively addictive.

What I particularly love about them is that they have slightly smoky pepper taste, usually without the heat. I emphasize usually: A friend and I shared a plate of these at a local tapas bar, and half way through I got one that . . . was . . . not . . . mild . . . at all. I was in tears for several minutes, waving my hands frantically at my mouth, saved only by the tequila gimlet I had thankfully also ordered. The chance of getting a sneaky hot padon increases as they are harvested later in the summer, so if you're a heat wimp like me, eat up now!

And stay warm. Or cool. Wherever you are.

It depends on who you ask

2010-07-19T11:42:00.001-07:00

Mama said she bought the new chair in Sophie's room for me,

but Lillian says no, that's not right.

OMG: Salted caramel ice cream

2010-07-14T08:49:00.000-07:00

I get so cross with Sophie for punctuating far too many assertions with "Oh, my God!" as in "Oh, my God, Mama . . . " I point out that first of all, we don't believe in god, and second of all, if one overuses an individual locution, it ceases to have meaning. But in this case, we are in complete agreement.

OMG! My salted caramel ice cream is simply AMAZING!

It was amazing the first day

and the second as well. There's probably only one other day's worth, so we'll be making it again soon. We want MORE!

I was inspired after overpaying for a scoop of this flavor at a local gourmet chocolate shop following a painful visit to Sophie's orthodontist. Something cold and sweet was in order, and we had only a limited amount of time before her violin lesson. I sucked up the $4.00 charge and posed the question I always do when enjoying something delicious and expensive: "Could I make this??" Turns out I can.

My standard obsessive internet recipe research yielded this recipe from David Lebovitz, an apparently charming man currently living in Paris after cutting his chops at our local Berkeley pride, Chez Panisse. It is always so much fun to discover when searching for a specific recipe a site containing a treasure trove of other recipes you cannot wait to try.

Levovitz's recipe is well worth referencing. His instructions are clear and easy to follow and his illustrations helpful, which is good because I've always found melting sugar scary.

Husband wasn't paying attention, so I filched his laptop for a use I've always envisioned: Referencing on-line recipes while cooking. Having open two windows, one for the ingredient list and another for the illustrated procedures, was sublime. And even though Husband kicked up quite a fuss when he caught me in the act ("You will get FOOD on it!!!"), he agreed once he tasted the result that this was worth the risk to his favorite toy.

I wish I had followed David's (I think we should be on a first-name basis) recipe to the tee, but I made a couple of adjustments.

His recipe calls for salted butter, but whoever buys that anymore? I grew up in a household with only that, kept in the pantry rather than the refrigerator so it would maintain a spreadable texture, but converted to unsalted once I understood salt is used only as a preservative and can always be added to a recipe but never subtracted from butter when a baking recipe calls for unsalted. I increased the salt amount to compensate for my unsalted butter.

Second, the custard from his version did not taste quite sweet enough (remember that I was attempting to recreate Sophie's $4.00 scoop). I increased the sweetness by adding a couple teaspoons of light corn syrup, an ingredient I've noticed in other ice cream recipes and one I suspected would only enhance texture.

Third, I omitted his praline. I'm funny that way: I often do not like stuff in my stuff. Hence, nothing crunchy in ice cream, no ice cream with my pie, and nothing added to my coffee.

Here is my adaptation:

SALTED CARAMEL ICE CREAM
2 cups whole milk, divided
1½ cups sugar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon fleur de sel or sea salt (not table salt!!)
1 cups eavy cream
5 large egg yolks
¾ teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoon light corn syrup

Get ready
Make an ice bath by filling a large bowl about a third full with ice cubes and setting in it a smaller bowl, at least 2 quarts. Pour about 1 cup of water around the smaller bowl into the larger one. Pour 1 cup of the milk into the inner bowl, and rest a mesh strainer on top of the bowl.
Make the caramel
Spread the sugar in a heavy saucepan.
Heat the sugar over moderate heat until the edges begin to melt. Use a wooden spoon to gently stir the liquefied sugar until it is mostly dissolved. (It's ok if there are still some lumps—they'll melt later.) Continue to cook stirring infrequently until the caramel starts smoking and begins to smell like it's just about to burn. Don't go anywhere! It won't take long.

Remove from heat.
Make the custard
Stir butter and salt into the caramel until butter is melted. Gradually whisk in the cream. The caramel may harden and seize, but that's ok.
Return mixture to the heat and continue to stir over low heat until any hardened caramel is melted. Stir in remaining 1 cup of milk.
Whisk the yolks in a small bowl and gradually pour some of the warm caramel mixture over the yolks, stirring constantly. Scrape the warmed yolks back into the saucepan and cook the custard, stirring constantly (scraping the bottom as you stir) with a wooden spoon until the mixture thickens. If using an instant-read thermometer, it should read 160–170 F.

Pour the custard through the strainer into the milk set over the ice bath. Add the vanilla and corn syrup, stirring frequently until the mixture is cooled. Refrigerate at least 8 hours or until thoroughly chilled.
Churn and freeze

Process the mixture in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions. I churn for about 30 minutes in my Braun electric model. But with any model, you should churn until the ice cream is starting to set up and freeze—sort of the texture of soft-serve ice cream.

Chill in the freezer until firm—overnight is good.
A note about the timing: Start well ahead of when you want to serve this. The bowl to your ice cream maker should chill overnight (mine lives in the freezer when not in use). The custard mixture needs to be completely chilled before churning. And the finished ice cream is best frozen overnight.

I have been out of the ice cream business since losing the blade to my ice cream machine (surely it's in the house somewhere). I recently replaced it and am excited to be back. Next up may well be another of David Lebovitz's ice cream flavors, although I think I'll pass on absinthe

or candied bacon.

The English cosmoplitan: Served up in Berkeley

2010-07-12T10:43:00.000-07:00

This summer I was enchanted (I love that word—the MIL used it recently to describe her reaction to a University of California alumni magazine. And all this time they've probably thought no one reads it.) by a New York Times Style Magazine article on the bramble cocktail, described by the author as English's cosmopolitan.

Isn't it pretty? And of course I could use a new summer cocktail. I mean, how many gin and tonics can a person drink? Don't answer that.

But I was stopped in my tracks by the ingredient crème de mûre, a blackberry liqueur. Sounded expensive. So in my best chin-up recession spirit, I set off in search of a recipe to make it myself.

Most of the recipes I found were for a blackberry wine, not liqueur. I finally settled on a recipe for crème de cassis, substituting blackberries for the recipe's currants.

Don't make this wearing a white t-shirt.

This recipe yielded a little over two bottles, which should (but probably won't) last for quite a while.

Crème de mûre

1 pound blackberries, mashed lightly
2 1/2 cups fruity red wine (Zinfandel works well)
4–5 cups sugar, depending on the sweetness of the berries
1 to 2 1/2 cups vodka

Combine blackberries and wine in a ceramic or glass bowl for at least 24 and up to 48 hours.

Puree mixture in a food processor or blender and then strain through a cheesecloth-lined sieve into a large bowl.

Measure into a heavy saucepan. For every cup of liquid, add 1 cup of sugar.

Heat gently, stirring frequently, until the sugar has dissolved. Do not let the liquid come to a simmer, as you don't want to boil off the alcohol. Reduce heat to lowest level and simmer for an hour or more, stirring occasionally, until the liquid has reduced a little and become slightly syrupy.

Allow to cool.

Mix together 1 part vodka with 3 parts of the cooled syrup and funnel into clean, dry bottles. Store in a cool place for at least 2 weeks before drinking.

Here is my bramble cocktail, served last night before Sunday dinner to rave reviews from adult Scrabble players.

It's not quite as pink as the NY Times', but why should it be? Blackberries are black, not pink. And I have neither a fancy glass, shiny straws, nor extra blackberries for garnish. But I have an amazing collection of jelly jars that are just the right size for summer cocktail over ice, some silver cocktail picks, and a few leftover blueberries.

The Bramble
Adapted from the New York Times Style Magazine

2 ounces gin
1 ounce fresh lemon juice
1/2 ounce simple syrup (see note)
1/2 ounce crème de mûre

In a cocktail shaker filled with ice, shake together the first three ingredients and strain into a glass over ice. Drizzle crème de mûre over the top and garnish with a slice of lemon and two blackberries.

Note: To make simple syrup, combine equal measures of water and sugar and heat until sugar has dissolved. Cool to room temperature and store in refrigerator until ready to use.

As festive as a cosmopolitan but infinitely more seasonal. Enjoy.

Never too late, right?

2010-07-11T10:35:00.000-07:00

Actually, I'm not sure. Is there a moratorium on posting Fourth of July pictures? Or is it never too late to note that

our friend Matt did a lovely job of cleaning out his pool for us?

So the kids could have a great time swimming until fingers and toes were completely pruned?

And that we had (thankfully, among other things) barbecued oysters? I will not will not will not eat them because their texture places them in the category of "yucky," but everyone else enjoyed them very much.

And that I brought a blueberry pie?

And our hand-crank ice cream maker? The rule is that you have to turn to eat. I always get in my licks early when the turning is easy.

And that Chris purchased and supervised our very own fireworks? Safe and sane! He even hosed down the roof before starting.

I can't remember the last time I twirled a sparkler.

And it certainly beat watching professional fireworks through the San Francisco fog.

But it can certainly never be too late to tell you about our holiday drinks. The red ones were a champagne berry cocktail with strawberry Pop Rocks dropped in at the last minute. Ka-bing!

Have you heard of Hpnotiq? Well then obviously you are not hanging out in the cool clubs where this is apparently all the rage. And neither are we, which is why it was completely new to us. It's a blend of blue vodka (what the hell makes it blue???), tropical fruit juices, and cognac.

It was pretty tasty, but we found most interesting the fact that it looked an awful lot like pool water in a glass. Which we agreed is not entirely a bad thing.

Fathers' Day meal: I spend and I save

2010-06-22T13:38:00.000-07:00

So the Fathers' Day steak.

I could not but help admire this image in my recent Williams-Sonoma catalog:

Fathers' Day was upon me, Husband clearly wanted a steak, and this looked appealing. So I coughed up a crazy sum for filet mignon (rarely seen in our house—we're more of a tri-tip family), but I saved the $80 for the fancy skillet the recipe was slyly contrived to make me purchase.

Haha! My plain old cast-iron skillet worked just fine set on my gas grill worked just fine for this bacon-wrapped beef tenderloin.

You can see why a dear friend (one of a group known as The Usual Suspects) gifted me the day before with this excellent apron and matching oven mitt.

Seriously, this technique will most likely replace forever my traditional Steak au Poivre method (I make it without the sauce). Moving this outside eliminates the stove top mess and inevitable smoke alarm going off, the searing on the steak was perfect, and it was easier to keep an eye on things as they progressed. Heaven forbid I overcook a steak that costs this much.

I matched up the steak with these potatoes from The Pioneer Woman Cooks, which I goosed up with a little fresh tarragon and Parmesan cheese, Romano beans steamed and then sauteed in brown butter, and the grilled tomatoes and onions from the steak recipe.

So I can easily do without the griddle, but what do you think about this, a few pages later?

Meatball on a grill? Can I live the rest of my life without THAT?

My birthday: Let's survey the loot

2010-06-21T08:16:00.000-07:00

I know I promised to post what Mr. Gift got me, but first a word from Sophie:

The illustrated border is all made of fingerprints. And "baby" is the name only I am allowed to call her (Daddy's little girl, Mama's baby). She also complied with my wish that she be nice to me all day.

I went to fix it to one of my kitchen cabinets and almost removed an old faded piece of art when I realized I was looking at a pair of tiny sparkly paint handprints, so old they were almost faded away. It's getting harder all the time to see the baby in the moody pre-teen who lives in my house. Is sometimes put my mouth to her stomach and call "Where's my baby?? Is she anywhere in there???" And she usually answers "Right here, Mama."

Husband is sweet too but clearly operates with a agenda. He surprised me once again, this time with a cornucopia of barbecue equipment.

First up, a gauge for my barbecue propane tank. Who even knew such a thing existed?? But it's a great idea. I have on more than one occasion been reduced to tears by an empty tank, wailing "If only I had known, we could have had pasta!!!!" Never again.

Next up, a scrubby brush for my grill. I totally needed one of these: My old one is completely bald. And finally two sets (for a total of eight) Henckles steak knives to replace old ones that are falling apart. It was at this point in gift opening that his agenda became clear: PLEASE MAKE ME A STEAK!

And do you think Fathers' Day coming up had anything to do with this? I don't believe in coincidences; I'm really a conspiracy theorist at heart. So yesterday I made him a steak. Even though he is not my father, he is a great father to our child and therefore deserves a steak on Fathers' Day.

Tune in tomorrow to see how I adapted this recipe from Williams-Sonoma and avoided buying the $80 barbecue griddle they designed the recipe to illustrate.

Detox, retox. Repeat?

2010-06-17T13:02:00.000-07:00

Once a year the girls and I day trip it to Indian Springs in Calistoga, located just north of us in the Napa Valley. It's luxurious, indulgent, and (for me) expensive, but Husband (you know, the guy we call Mr. Gift) presented me last year with a gift certificate after returning from a mountain biking excursion in the area, so I got to enjoy my day without stressing over the cost. Thank you, Husband!

Calistoga is traditionally known for mineral water and mud baths, but I needed something new given that in the middle of my last mud bath I made a note to self: NEVER AGAIN. I'm just too wiggley to stay still in all that heavy hot mud and find it sort of claustrophobic. I opted instead for a body polish, thinking that their description sounded appealing:

Relax in our steam room before your treatment to warm your skin. Our skilled therapists combine the skin-smoothing qualities of a body scrub with the soothing elements of massage to remove dry skin, increase circulation, and aid detoxification.

It was very nice, and I felt all de-scaled and slippery afterward.

The treatments are lovely, but perhaps the best part is the naturally heated mineral water pool, where we always spend the rest of the day floating, picnicking, and gabbing.

The water is always clean and not overly chlorinated.

Thank goodness Sophie and I celebrated the last day of school with lunch and peddies.

The woman our children refer to as Aunt Boo works the pool.

My contributions for lunch included one of my picnic favorites, pickled shrimp. It's easy to throw together the night before so it can marinate overnight to be enjoyed chilled the next day. I served with slice baguette, which is perfect for sopping up the marinade.

PICKLED SHRIMP

3/4 cup white wine or champagne vinegar

1 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
3/4 teaspoons English-style dry mustard
1/4 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon mustard seeds, crushed
1/4 teaspoon coriander seeds, crushed

1 cup olive oil

3 large garlic cloves, crushed
2 by leaves

1/2 pounds (24 to 30) large shrimp, shelled and deveined

1 medium onion, sliced
1 lemon, sliced thinly
2 tablespoons minced fresh dill

In a bowl whisk together vinegar and dry ingredients. Add oil in a stream, whisking. Stir in garlic and bay leaves.

Bring a large saucepan of salted water to boil. Add shrimp and cook for 1 minutes. Drain and add to marinade. Let mixture cool, stir in onion, lemon, and dill. Cover and chill, stirring occasionally for at least 12 hours.

Serve as an appetizer or with a green salad for a light lunch.

Of course after an afternoon of such detox, we all found it necessary to retox at one of our favorite Napa restaurants.

Over salad, pasta, and wine we gabbed not only about how much we love each other but how much we love each other's husbands. It's nice to have a women-only outing, but the truth is friendships are as strong in the group across as within genders. And it's kind of nice to have my next husband lined up in case mine and my girlfriend are simultaneously struck by lightening.

And how old are you?

2010-06-16T13:20:00.000-07:00

1st—adorable

2nd—sometimes adorable

3rd—fun to dress up

16th—annoyed by family

18th—too cool

21st—inebriated

22nd—moving target

23rd—charming

24th—indestructible

25th—can balance checkbook

26th—still idealistic

27th—self-absorbed

28th—cute as a bug's ear

29th—has a clue

30th—scintillating

31st—knows everything

32nd—trying to seem younger

33rd—set in own ways

34th—mellowing slightly

35th—resembling parents

36th—in denial

37—shows age when dancing

38th—still untamed

39th—bothered by loud music

40th—attractive in some lighting

41st—wearing hair of yesteryear

42nd—should know better

43rd—turning strange

44th—takes longer

45th—huggable

46th—wise-elder wannabe

47th—still got it

48th—still got part of it

49th—embarrassing when flirting

50th—probably can't read this

51st—mostly harmless

52nd—respected by some

53rd—out of the running

54th—worrying offspring

55th—most content while resting

56th—confused by young people

57th—resting on laurels

58th—shouldn't really be driving

59th—stories sound improbable

60th—valuable historical resource

I've still got part of it, which is certainly better than none of it.

Are you wondering what Mr. Gift will have for me? So am I. He used the plural "gifts." I have to wait until we get home from work this evening. Stay tuned!

Happy birthday to me. :)

Working my last nerve, messing with my heart

2010-06-14T11:23:00.000-07:00

My daughter. Because she can.

Just like why I embarrass her: Because I can. It's my job. We usually keep it in balance pretty well. When it's just to the two of us, I'm the greatest person in the world. When there are other kids involved, I pretty much suck. Acknowledgment of my presence is limited to grunts and groans. No kisses. We roll our eyes and sneer at each other, she trying to claim distance and I trying not to look as pathetic as I feel.

This morning marked the first day of summer camp. We woke early, were wonderfully organized thanks to preparations made the night before (outfit, backpack, directions to camp), but things fell apart at the last minute as we packed ourselves on the scooter. We needed to run back for her helmet, my wallet, something involving the cats. . . . It was a wonder we arrived on time. But we did, I signed her in, and was summarily dismissed. The days when she thought it was cool to roar into camp on the back of my scooter in a motocross helmet are obviously over. She probably wishes I were driving a Volvo or Prius like very other mom. But I left quietly without a fuss and without my kiss.

After a few hours at work, I opened my purse and found a branch of rosemary. The scooter was parked in front of a large bush of it this morning, and while I was dashing in and out of the house, she pulled off a branch and put it in my purse, knowing how much I love the smell and probably knowing how the little reminder of her thoughtfulness would make me smile.

I can't wait to pick her up this afternoon. I'm going to wait until we're around the corner where no one can see us to give her a big hug and kiss. I'm getting it, slowly.

Who do you want in your kitchen?

2010-06-03T09:09:00.000-07:00

My blogger pal and friend in real life Trevor (if you're lucky someday I'll show you our high school homecoming picture) LOVES Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa. Loves her. Ina this, Ina that. When he was recently pondering what to prepare for an upcoming dinner for eighteen, I advised him to do whatever Ina says. He knows I'm right.

I could totally imagine them hanging out in his kitchen threading kabobs and glazing cakes. And maybe he could ask her what I've always wondered: Is that really her name? Is it supposed to be a sort of play on "In a Garden"? Or is just a coincidence that her name sounds like that and she likes fresh produce? I looked in the questions section of her website, and they don't address this.

Who do I love? That's easy: Joanne Weir.

I first discovered her on her PBS cooking show Wine Country Cooking. She cooks exactly what I like to eat, Mediterranean-inspired seasonal California cuisine. And unlike other cooking shows, when I watch hers I think "I could make that!" and "Oh, she seems really nice!" Both are important to me. Her book Weir Cooking: Recipes from the Wine Country is one of my favorites go-to books when I need inspiration and a no-fail recipe. I've cooked my way through it and back several times.

And it's not just cookbooks and a show. For a ghastly sum of money you can accompany Joanne on a "culinary journey." Joanne arranges everything: fabulous accomodations, cooking, shopping, touring. I would love to go on vacation with Joanne. I would happily carry all her bags. She also teaches private cooking classes in her San Francisco home. I probably couldn't afford those either, but sometimes I dream about standing on my tiptoes outside her window and watching one.

I've made her recipe for Asparagus Cheese Puffs several times this spring. The puffs are best hot out of the oven, and guests were delighted when I pulled out sheets of these as they hung around the kitchen with a glass of wine or enjoyed a game of dominoes and a cocktail while I finished dinner.

Affordable asparagus is nearing the end of its season, so the time to make these is now.

One of my adaptations is mixing the dough in a standing mixer, beating thoroughly after the addition of each egg.

I'm eager to try variations of this recipe when the asparagus are gone—cheddar chive is one I'm thinking of.

I cooked one sheet of these at a time for a total of two sheets, so just as guests were finishing one batch, out came another.

ASPARAGUS CHEESE PUFFS
Adapted from Weir Cooking in the Wine Country

1/2 pound asparagus, ends trimmed and bottom of stems peeled
3/4 cup whole milk
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 10 pieces
1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more for the pot
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup coarsely grated dry sheep’s milk cheese, such as pecorino or Manchego
1/2 cup finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Cut the asparagus into 1/4-inch lengths. Bring a medium saucepan of salted water to a boil over medium-high heat. Add the asparagus and simmer until just tender, about 1 minute. Drain immediately and reserve.

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with lightly buttered parchment paper or use a Silpat-lined pan.

In a heavy saucepan, bring the milk and butter to a boil over medium-high heat. In the meantime, whisk together the 1/2 teaspoon salt, flour, and cayenne. As soon as the milk comes to a boil and the butter has melted, remove the pan from the heat and add the flour mixture all at once. With a wooden spoon, beat the mixture until it thickens and pulls away from the sides of the pan, about 1 minute. Transfer the mixture to the bowl of a standing mixer. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Do not add another egg until the previous one has been thoroughly incorporated. Let cool for 10 minutes.

Add the asparagus, sheep’s milk cheese, and Parmigiano to the dough and mix together. Spoon rounded teaspoons of the dough 1 inch apart onto the baking sheets (half of the dough—this will give you two sheets). Bake until golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes. Remove the puffs from the parchment and serve immediately.

Makes 36 puffs to serve 6.

In this day of over-the-top bombast celebrity chefs, it's so nice to find a true cooking inspiration. If I agreed to sweep the villa and scrub pans after everyone else goes to bed and carry Joanne's bags, do you think she'd let me come on one of her tours??

Fun with fruit: Pate de Fruit

2010-05-30T17:35:00.000-07:00

Remember my spring kitchen to-do list? OK, maybe not, but I do and I'm working my way down it. Anchovy-stuffed fried olives went pretty smoothly—I picked that one first suspecting it would be the easiest. I didn't expect Pate de Fruit to go as smoothly, and it didn't. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

As I often do when taking on a new kitchen project, I spend ages on the internet looking at and comparing different recipes. Pate de Fruit recipes are more or less the same: fruit, sugar, and pectin, with lots of cooking and stirring, but some include other ingredients like tartaric acid, glucose, and one even butter. After much research and an email consul twith blogger pal Laura who recently made this treat, I went with a recipe from Helen at Tartlette.

In California, the summer fruits are on their way in. Strawberries are best right now, and my produce market had some nice small sweet organic ones. Helen's recipe includes rhubarb as well, but I stuck with just strawberries, substituting strawberries for the rhubarb that I omitted.

Helen's recipe gives the berry amounts in ounces and grams. I went with grams since the fruit is measured before pureeing. And it was nice to find another use for the cute little scale I bought for making macarons (coming up on the to-do list).

I followed instructions for cooking carefully. Any recipe that involves a candy thermometer makes me nervous. That usually means that temperature is really important. In other words, if you don't get the temperature just right, you can completely screw it up. I've poured out or had to recook my share of jellies that didn't jell. And cooked fudge—that's another story and not a good one.

So I stirred continuously and watched. The last stage where you take the temperature up to 223 degrees (what is marked as "thread" on most candy thermometers) takes forever. Seriously—about 40 minutes. Maybe I got a little too impatient and turned up the heat a little too high because the wonderful concentrated fruit aroma turned to a . . . burning, scorching BAD smell.

I panicked, pulled the thermometer, and poured the mixture into my prepared pan. The burned pan aside, I was worried about the scorched taste ruining the flavor.

But the coating on the cooled spoon tasted ok, so I forged on.

Amazingly enough, the final product was delicious, with a burst of concentrated strawberry flavor. I must have ditched the pan soon enough. And even though the mixture never got quite to 223, the consistency was just right.

I was so thrilled that I got a little cocky and decided to see what I could do with a few kiwis I had on hand. I had skipped straining the strawberry mixtures because my food processor seemed to have done a good enough job, but kiwi has more to strain out. I wanted a few seeds but not too many.

My main divergence from any recipe I found was to add an amount of sugar that depends on the sweetness of the fruit. I'm always suspicious of sugar amounts in fruit recipes since fruits vary widely in sweetness depending on type, ripeness, and season. I also had to guess at the pectin amount to add since different fruits have different natural pectin amounts.

One thing that helped this time is I used a smaller pan, so stirring the mixture from the edges to prevent scorching as it reached a higher temperature was easier. Also, given that I had some idea from the previous batch of the consistency I was looking for, I ignored the thermometer at the end and instead decided that when you could draw with a spoon through the mixture a line that held for a few seconds that we were done. I was still a little below 223 degrees at this point, but I was right that this was enough cooking for the mixture to set.

Because I limited the amount of sugar I use, these were slightly sour, just like a kiwi. The sugar coating balanced the flavor nicely. Another change: Since the color was so beautiful, I sugared only the top. This meant that I couldn't store them stacked since the sides would stick together, but after leaving them on a small plate on the kitchen counter, this turned out to be a nonissue.

KIWI PATE DE FRUIT

Four kiwi
sugar to taste, about 1/2 cup
1 1/2 tablespoon liquid pectin

Line a small loaf pan with parchment paper, using at little canola spray to fix the parchment to the sides of the pan.

Peel and chop kiwi. Puree in food processor. You should have about a cup.

Place in small saucepan. Stir in sugar to taste and then add pectin. Stir constantly over medium heat until mixture thickens and cooks down to the point that a line drawn with a wooden spoon will hold for a few seconds before filling in. This may take nearly half an hour.

Pour mixture into prepared pan and allow to set until cooled, about an hour.

Remove set mixture from pan and cut with sharp knife into small pieces. Coat pieces in sugar. Store at room temperature for a few days and in the refrigerator for longer than that.

So there you have it. Chalk this one up to "If Cindy can make this, so can I." I can't wait to experiment with more fruits as they come in season. I'm especially looking forward to my favorites, white peaches and nectarines, which I can imagine will have a delicate blush flavor. I'm also considering freezing a few batches of puree so I can make Pate de Fruit at Christmas for gifts.

How to handle this one

2010-05-26T09:22:00.000-07:00

What to do. The third book in Steig Larsson's Millenium trilogy is OUT!!! And my favorite independent bookseller has called to tell me the copy I reserved is IN.

I read the first, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and took Husband to see the movie, which I thought was one of the best book-adaptation screenplays ever. Of course the movie was different from the book, else you probably would have had a five-hour film, but the choices made were intelligent ones and in a few cases I thought improvements over the book. Husband like it so much, he read the book. And then he read the next one. Which is sort of amazing since his reading repertoire is usually limited to geeky science and construction magazines. I can list the books he's read in our twelve years of marriage. Here they are:

Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America, Theodora Kroeber. He read this on our honeymoon, perhaps reflecting on his recent state of captivity. Loved it—at the end, he cried sitting on the beach in Maui.

Sacred Hunger, Barry Unsworth. Good for him, I thought. Unsworth is hardly easy reading. He totally dug it but then didn't read another book for years. Seriously.

Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton, Diane Wood Middlebrook. He picked this up following an NPR interview with the author. Billy Tipton was a female jazz musician who lived as a man—very successfully it would seem given that he was married to several woman who somehow did not notice this. It's a beautiful and poignant story of the nature of identity and gender, but alas, Billy dies at the end, once again bringing Husband to tears. To make things worse, every time he tried to get my book group to read this, everyone laughed. And we haven't stopped: We're supposed to nominate three books each time, and if we're ever short a choice, we throw in Suits Me and then vote for one of the other two.

Then a couple of summer ago when we were on an Alaskan cruise with the MIL, he read a book about the cruise ship business. It was just great: He regaled us at dinner each night with endless statistics on what it took to run a large cruise ship: how many freezers, how much lettuce, how many prep cooks. Fascinating.

And then he's read the first two books in the Millenium trilogy. And he wants the third one. Badly. He will not wait until paperback. And neither will I, for that matter. These books are a hoot, sort of like smart mind candy. Problem is they keep you up at night and prevent you from peeling yourself off the couch in the day time. When he was on the first and I on the second, Husband and I spend an entire rainy weekend day doing nothing but reading in front of the fire.We are both in love with Lisbeth Salander, that tattooed computer-hacking motorcyle-riding little minx. Did you know Larsson said once that he envisioned her as modern-day Pippi Longstocking? No wonder I love her so much.

But here's the dilemma. Whereas I am perfectly happy to buy the third book in hardback and even let Husband read it first (I'm in the middle of two other books—see the reading list), I am concerned about the ramifications of turning it over to him. His company, like mine, has mandated furloughs, and he has ganged up some of his to stretch Memorial Day weekend into a five-day frenzy of work on . . . (yes!) our house.

So if I give him the book, the furlough may get pissed away. If I withhold it, I may get a front door I can actually walk through and plastic tarps off the front of my house. Maybe. But I want him to be happy. So how about this: I let him have the book only between the hours of 7:00 and 11:00 p.m. During the rest of the time I'm going to have to either hide it or if that fails put it in the car and drive it away. So I can read it.

Discuss, please

2010-05-22T10:51:00.000-07:00

This question has been vexing me for years.

Are salt and pepper shakers obsolete?

Here's why I need to know.

I bought these pretty shakers at an antique show years ago—I think in Baltimore, where I visited often with my graduate school roommate when I was at Penn State. They were a little battered, but I considered that part of their charm. What I appreciated most was the intricate glass pattern, which is of course none the worse for the wear.

The tops, however, are another story. The years have taken their toll, and the silver plate has completely worn off in spots.

So the decision I need to make is whether to have them replated. But does this make any sense? I have put them on the table maybe once or twice in the past ten years, probably at a holiday meal. I don't think anyone used them. And I can count on one finger when someone at my table requested salt. I fear salt and pepper shakers are a thing of the past. My mother served food mostly unsalted; shakers were always on the table. I serve food already salted, making an executive decision concerning seasoning. And, of course, I try to season as much as I can with substances other than salt (citrus is my favorite flavor kicker).

So that is why I ask . . .

Are salt and pepper shakers obsolete?

If I don't have them replated, what do I do with them? Cinnamon? Nutmeg?

Thanks for your help here.

An appetizer out of the cupboard: Fried anchovy-stuffed olives

2010-05-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

I'm a sort of a Girl Scout when it comes to the front end of meals, the appetizer: I like to be prepared. (Or was that Boy Scouts? I don't know—I was a Campfire Girl). Point is I often go to bed thinking about desserts and wake up in the middle of the night for a little meal planning but relegate appetizers to an afterthought. So I try to have on hand a good supply of items in my cupboard and freezer that can be whipped into a tasty bite or two. I certainly don't serve appetizers before regular weeknight dinners, but an appetizer and a cocktail are required for the Domino, Scrabble, or Flinch game on the kitchen table that precedes Sunday dinner at our house.

This past weekend I turned my shopping attention to the fried anchovy-stuffed olives in my spring kitchen to-do list. I always have anchovies on hand (useful in puttanesca sauce, one of my weeknight go-to meals) and bread crumbs (useful for all sorts of things) on hand. But while there is almost always a jar of Kalamata olives in my fridge, I needed to search for and buy the green olives I have seen in this dish. I bypassed the fancy expensive ones sold by the pound at my local fancy expensive market since most of them already had something stuffed in them. I thought unstuffing and restuffing would be stupid. And I didn't want olives cured in a vinegar since I thought that flavor would complete with the anchovy.

These green olives in a can by the same company that makes the black ones we all ate off them ends of our fingers when we were little turned out to be the least expensive option and the perfect choice.

After reading nearly a dozen recipes for this dish, I combined bits of several to approximate what I remember washing down with a dry martini at a zinc bar in a restaurant that went away.

I rinsed the anchovies and picked out as many of the little bones as I could. Whenever I do this, I think of my friend Eric, who says that anchovies remind him of eating an eyebrow.

I chopped them up with a little garlic and parsley.

I searched for the perfect tool with which to stuff the mixture into the olives and found them on the end of my hand. Messy but effective.

The stuffed olives traveled left to right through flour, beaten egg, and bread crumbs.

Here they are ready for their frying. No picture of that though—it happens pretty quickly. I rarely fry and hate the idea of throwing out a bunch of expensive olive oil, so I fried in a very small saucepan in a 50:50 mixture of olive and canola oils.

Success! Or as Sophie now says "booyah!" (I looked it up in an online urban slang dictionary—it means "good.")

FRIED ANCHOVY-STUFFED OLIVES

1 6-oz. can of green olives
5–6 olive oil packed anchovies; rinsed, boned, and minced
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tsp. parsley, minced
1/2 cup flour
1 egg, beaten
1 cup breadcrumbs
olive and canola oil for frying

Mince together anchovies, garlic, and parsley. Use fingers to stuff into olives. Coat olives in flour, then beaten egg, then breadcrumbs.

Heat 50:50 combination of olive and canola oil in a small saucepan. Oil should be deep enough to fully cover olives, about 1 inch. When oil starts to bubble, add the olives a few at a time. When golden brown, remove with a slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel-lined plate. Serve warm.

Tick that off the list, please. Booyah!

A spring kitchen list: I've got plans

2010-05-17T11:45:00.000-07:00

I'm a sucker for a list. I could list the things I love about lists, but I won't.

Instead I'll list what's on my spring kitchen list.

Fried anchovy-stuff olives

The Berkeley restaurant Downtown (not surprisingly located in downtown Berkeley) closed up several months ago. I was surprised: They seemed to be doing brisk lunch business from the university, and their proximity to the Berkeley Rep Theater seemed to bode well for dinner traffic. And it was a great (well, really at the time the only) place to get decent martini in that neighborhood. Their bar plate of fried anchovy-stuffed olives was the perfect accompaniment. I'm going to give it my best shot at recreating these.

Homemade ravioli

I am embarrassed to admit I registered for and received a lovely hand-crank pasta machine for our wedding twelve years ago, and I have not used it once. God, that was embarrassing to even type! But seriously, I see and occasionally buy expensive fancy raviolis with all sorts of wonderful fillings and always ponder how difficult these can be to make. And I often think that among the fillings there is one thing that I'd perhaps change. If I make my own, I'll be able to.

Pâtes de fruits

Blogger pal Laura, owner of one amazing Vermont bakery, was chatting about these on Facebook a while ago, and the idea has been wedged in my head ever since. Mine will probably turn out like little blobs instead of these tidy equal-sized cubes, but given the summer fruit on the horizon how could they not taste good?

Better macarons

I was behind a favorite food blogger but well ahead of popular media in realizing the importance of these confections. One of my favorite local bakeries does an amazing job at them—with flavors like mango, pistachio, and sea salt caramel—but when they are too busy with special orders, they often don't have time to make them, leaving me wanting to throw myself in a little heap on their floor if I've come in with my mouth watering for one. It was the only thing that could damper my enthusiasm for all the pre-proposition 8 weddings and cakes that needed baking. I bought a little kitchen scale just for making these (I don't know why, but all the recipes seems to be in grams) and have learned to produce a macaron that everyone agrees tastes great. However, I would also like them to look great, not just okay. Call me superficial.

And call me busy in my kitchen if I succeed in working down my list. But first, a confession: I've already nailed the olives (coming up next). It's one of my keys to list satisfaction: Include something you've already done.

Favas here, favas there

2010-05-08T10:36:00.000-07:00

There's a lot to like about spring in northern California—the almost electric green hills, the smell of flowers wafting through my neighborhood, the gentle warm days and cool night (good sleeping weather, they say), longer evenings with enough light for a run in the hills after work—but my favorite harbinger of the season is the arrival at my local produce market of the fava bean.

I love later in the summer when they drop to 39 cents a pound, but at 79 cents, a pound of the tender spring beans is well worth the price—smaller and more shelling work but tender enough that the smallest can be eaten with the skin on.

Favas made appearances at my dinner table twice this week.

This was an salad of orzo, favas, lightly sauteed yellow squash, tomatoes (the romanitos aren't bad for an early tomato), fresh mozzarella, olive oil, and fresh Meyer lemon juice.

Later in the week was fresh corn (a little too early—I'll wait a few weeks to buy more) sauteed in browned butter, with favas, chives, and toasted pine nuts.

The first strawberries are in, and the small organic ones are good (the ginormous overwatered ones horrible). We have very good inexpensive avocados. Still waiting for the stone fruits, good corn, and heirloom tomatoes. But that's another season.

I comment on fashion

2010-05-04T09:31:00.000-07:00

Stop rolling your eyes. Just because I spend most of my life in yoga pants does not mean I do not love looking at pictures from events like the Met Costume Institute Gala and am not entitled to a few opinions (as long as I keep them brief). Here are a few standouts, shown in shamelessly highjacked photos:

I don't care when she had a baby.

I keep shutting my eyes really tight and hoping when I open them

Tina Fey will not be wearing a pants suit.

Janet Jackson's boobs look ridiculous.

Enough already with the blue.

This hairdo looks better on my MIL.

This dress is too short.

One person looked better than all the rest.

Who did you like? Hate? Laugh at?

It's not about fat

2010-04-29T11:45:00.000-07:00

Research on diet, exercise, and weight is good. I especially appreciate a focus on gender differences in these areas. It's obvious that the battle women fight against weight gain as they age is more brutal. And so, I think, is our perception of that battle. I look at a pooch or sag on my husband and smile, focusing instead on how awesome it is that in his fifties he can kick pretty much anyone's butt on a bike. I don't let myself off nearly so easy. I tend to focus more not on what my body can do but how it looks.

It's my personal issue with which to grapple, and I'm working on it. But a recent New York Times article didn't help. Or maybe it has: The fact that it pisses me off may be a sign of progress.

Whereas the results reported identify some interesting gender differences (women have a biological urge to almost immediately replenish calories they burn, as in "Give me a sandwich RIGHT FUCKING NOW!!"), the focus is largely on whether exercise will help you lose weight. They conclude that for women at least the answer is not really, or at least not the way one would hope (you eat the same amount, exercise more, and tada!) because for most people, exercise will cause you to eat more.

Fine fine fine. It's good to know this hasn't been my imagination. But the article pulls up short of another point to exercise:

What about being STRONG?

Exercise not because of how it will make you

LOOK but what it will help you DO.

For the first time in a couple of years, I started off this ski season feeling not as strong as usual. I had been rehabbing a shoulder injury, traveling across town for physical therapy at lunchtime when I normally would have been at the gym, and otherwise refraining from exercise that just hurt too much. Shoulder surgery three weeks before the season started had me off exercise as well. By the time I got on the snow, my shoulder was feeling better, but the rest of me felt like crap.

So I worked. Hard. I skied nearly every weekend and squeezed in as much exercise as I could during the week. Of course I ate like a horse. Skiing makes me HUNGRY. Although I'm far from the machine I would like to be (I am not a naturally muscly person), I got stronger and felt better. The funny thing is that when I shifted my focus to strength not weight, I lost five pounds. But who cares?? OK, I do. I've got a ways to go, both physically and mentally.

So here's my standard spring/summer workout schedule. I aim for six days of exercise and usually hit five. Thank goodness my office is only several blocks from the world's greatest YMCA.

Monday: Spin at lunch

Tuesday: Body sculpt at lunch

Wednesday: Pilates at lunch + hike/jog in the evening

Thursday: Spin at lunch

Friday: Spin at lunch

Saturday/Sunday: Something outside one day / Day off on the other

I'm a creature of habit, and I love me a schedule. Having a schedule helps by removing whether I am going to exercise from a decision process. It's Thursday, so it's spin. Speaking of which . . . time to go. :)

I kill two birds

2010-04-26T20:28:00.000-07:00

Really, I just make two things out of the Meyer lemons growing in my backyard. (I like birds.)

Now that the MIL is convinced I make the best lemon drop martini (her favorite cocktail), it behooves me to have a little homemade limoncello on hand. I can buy it at Trader Joe's but it's fairly expensive and a little too syrupy.

It's easy to make: Instructions are here and here.

But what to do with all the lemon juice? And what was more the question this weekend, how to turn it into dessert for Sunday dinner with the least possible effort and use of the oven? The oven (poor me—I only have one) was busy roasting chickens (one to eat, another to send home with the MIL) and then asparagus.

Note on the asparagus: I tried the New York Time's recipe for slow-roasted asparagus in paper packets, and whereas it was fun tying up the asparagus in a little paper package, ninety minutes for cooking asparagus is insane, and I still prefer it seared quickly on a grill and drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette.

So I decided on a lemon granita.

Granita is a fancy name for ice.

Lemon Thyme Granita

Fresh lemon juice
Baker's sugar
Water
Fresh thyme, minced

Start this at about three hours before you wish to serve it.

Juice as many lemons as you have. Add baker's sugar (it dissolves easier) and water until it tastes like . . . well, lemonade. You could stop here, pour mixture over ice, and have a glass of lemonade or, if you are a very disciplined person like I am or more interested in a cocktail at this point anyway, proceed toward dessert.

Stir until sugar is dissolved. Mix in minced thyme or other fresh herb (mint is good).

Pour mixture in a square or rectangular baking pan so that mixture is about an inch to an inch and a half deep. Place pan in freezer.

Every half an hour or so stir mixture with a fork. When mixtures starts to freeze, you will be raking it with the fork. To serve, scrape across the top of the frozen mixture with a large spoon. It will be sort of the texture of snow.

I served mine with store-bought madeleines I had been hiding in the freezer (most have enough butter that if you leave them in the cupboard for too long, they will turn rancid). Dessert problem solved. More lemon cocktails coming up in a few months.

I have been very busy

2010-04-21T18:11:00.000-07:00

See?

Really. I have to work very hard at relaxing. It's not what comes naturally. Which is GOOD considering the schedule I've survived this winter.

It is fun but not easy being a ski racer mom. Instead of sitting comfortably in a lawn chair, you stand on the side of a race course, sometimes in very cold blustery weather, waiting waiting . . . waiting. This picture is slalom, which is Sophie's least favorite event. Midway through the season, she developed Osgood-Schlatter disease, a growth-related condition (she grew nearly an inch in the month of March alone) that causes her a lot of knee pain, and cranking around the tight curves in slalom was hard for her. GS was her favorite, and she was able to get in more of a tuck and really let it rip. Watching her drop right into a tuck out of the starting gate always put a lump in my throat because I knew she did it with a lot of pain. We tell her to do what she feels she can and remind her that she will outgrow this in a year or so. In the meantime, it was liquid ibuprofen every morning before she headed out. I'll probably keep a bottle in my car's glove compartment for the next few years.

Around the busy race season schedule, we took full advantage of our Squaw season passes. We are now official Squaw junkies, which does not come without its price. Everywhere else we skied during the season, including Mammoth, left me thinking "Well, it's good, . . . but it's not Squaw." Squaw is the best: a beautiful valley and mountains (Mammoth looks sort of like an elevated golf course, don't you think?), with terrain that keeps everyone in my family engaged and challenged.

After a horrible accident last year at Alta, followed by nearly half a year of no weight on his leg and a zillion or so hours of physical therapy, my dad rejoined us on the slopes. I knew he would be back. Hats off also to my mom, who in spite of having to nurse him through his long injury and not skiing herself, totally supported him getting right back out there. Thanks, Mom.

It was great to have three generations of us out on the snow!

We celebrated the end of race season and Sophie's spring break with a trip to Mammoth. It worked out really well: My dad brought some brownies my mom made, a Honeybaked Ham, and a one-bedroom condominium, borrowed from a friend of my mom's. I brought my family of three, the neighbor kid, and three guys. Cozy!

Fortunately, everyone played well together and adhered to the same eat-ski-sleep schedule.

And soak! After skiing most days, we headed out to the wild hot springs in the Owens Valley.

Hot Creek has been closed for four years following a geothermal burp that cooked several soakers. We took our chances and hiked in about a mile past the road gate and were rewarded with a perfectly soakable spring, as long as you didn't mind swimming through a very cool river to get to the warm water on the far side. Swimming back to get out was harder.

Crowley's is always nice, and we even had it to ourselves for a little while.

My wintertime favorite is Travertine, which we stop at on the way home. Clean water, a mud bottom (see picture above), great rock formations, and that amazing eastern Sierra view. Could it get any better??

The snow? There was snow . . . and ice and slush, and no wind, which was sort of amazing given the time of year.

It was great, . . . but it wasn't Squaw.

We were happy to finish out the season last weekend back at our home mountain. By the last day, conditions were falling apart, but I skied some of KT that I hadn't done all year, and in the morning we caught a ride on Squaw's springtime secret stash, Smoothie. Fun! There's more snow headed for the Sierras, but we have school events and a violin concert and so probably won't be back to ski this year. As usual, I was a little teary on my last run. It was my best season ever (39 days!!). We've reloaded our season passes for next year (prices go way up May 9!), and we'll be putting the skis in storage wax. Now we just have to figure out what to do with ourselves for the next seven months.

I have some new dishes

2010-04-13T20:53:00.000-07:00

I know . . . stop the presses. But really, it's sort of a big deal for me. My current black dishes (yes, black—I love them) have been slowly showing signs of wear. Black dishes are sort of like red nail polish: They look great until they start to chip a little.

The last time I saw dishes I liked I dithered and when I returned to buy them, they were gone.

This time I acted and bought.

They're a touch on the kitschy side, but I like that they remind me of Inspector Clouseau—in the kitchen. This picture shows the pasta bowl on one of my black plates, which I think is a nice combination. And the colors go nicely with my kitchen, which you surely remember from the world-famous kitchen tour over at userealbutter.com, right?

But don't worry. There are limits with where I will go with this collection.

I would die before serving chips in this.

For Sunday dinner we had Daube Provencal, egg noodles, and green beans in browned butter, followed by a green salad and then individual molten chocolate cakes with sweetened whipped cream for dessert. Is it any wonder we don't all weigh a total of several tons?? Stay tuned for an explanation of why we don't (yet).

Procrastination takesthe shape of wee vegetables

2010-04-03T17:24:00.000-07:00

When I had finals to study for in college, it was always really important—urgent, really—to vacuum my dorm room.

It's the day before Easter, and I have tomorrow's dinner to get ready for, laundry to do, and a trip to pack for, and so

making vegetables out of marzipan cannot wait.

And, of course, things have escalated. What began as a carrot project soon involved potatoes

and then radishes.

In case you're also looking to waste time, there's a nicely illustrated explanation of how-to here. I used rosemary sprigs for the greenery.

Did I mention I completed my taxes this afternoon? And that I did them myself using TurboTax? And that it was actually really fun? I decided that I did not want to spend hundreds of dollars again being bossed around by a small woman at H.R. Block. But regardless of how delighted I am with myself, I did think I deserved a reward. And these were more fun that vacuuming.

I used that word

2010-04-02T08:54:00.000-07:00

Sometime I think I've just got this mom thing going on. I've laid down one of my daughter's favorite dinners (beer-can-up-the-butt roasted chicken, buttermilk mashed potatoes, roasted zucchini with balsamic vinegar glaze, capers, and ricotta salata—on a weeknight), and I'm cheerfully frosting away at cupcakes for the next day's school party to celebrate the upcoming spring break, and then I just totally lose my shit.

Truth be told, I wasn't frosting cheerfully. I was tired and cross. So I needed kind words rather than a dose of reality. I did not react well to receiving the latter.

Martha thought it up, of course.

Loooook! It's a butterfly!!

Oh. Well, it doesn't look exactly like a butterfly. . . .

That's because IT'S NOT. It's a fucking CUPCAKE.

Two dozen fucking cupcakes, but who's counting?

I have a dream

2010-03-29T13:14:00.001-07:00

Sarah Palin has recently embarked on a Tea Party Express tour. This means she is not going away. And given hubris on the verge of delusion, she is probably envisioning a 2012 run.

To which I say FINE. But I want it like this:

Does it not nearly make you swoon?

My motive is two-fold.

1. This will ensure a second Democratic victory (I'm not happy with everything Obama has done, but the alternative in unthinkable).

2. My favorite television character (well, really my only television character), Kenneth the Page, will become more famous than ever!

Kenneth will rule the world!!

No one loves Kenneth the Page more than I, and we already know that Tina Fey and Jack McBrayer work well together. It will be perfect!!

But then on the other hand, this may also give a boost to Huckleberry Hound.

I'll have to give this one some more thought.

When soup is indicated

2010-03-24T08:18:00.000-07:00

When my husband looks like a cross between

Bill the Cat

(think of the hacking noises associated with hairball expulsion)

and

Albert Einstein

(the hair)

and claims to be "weak as a kitten!" with "vultures circling our house!"

and I am starting in on a sore throat, it is time to make soup. It's always one of the last things I try to do on my way down. I may become more ill and my husband may even pass away, but I won't starve.

A final trip to the produce market to procure ingredients revealed a spring treat, morels! I love their deep, woody taste and Sophie likes them because they taste similar to mushrooms but without what she considers the slimy texture. A win-win.

Tender baby California-grown asparagus is starting to show up (fava beans are surely not far behind).

And I chose flavorings of green onions, baby ginger, and cilantro.

I could have added a whole chicken to the pot, but we're sick, remember? So I resorted to the stock of stock I usually have in my freezer and boneless chicken breasts.

It all went into the pot, along with a little fish sauce and lime, to simmer while I repaired to the couch for a little rest.

Rice noodles added at the end rounded out a hearty and fragrant meal-worthy soup.

It's Wednesday, so that means I have today and tomorrow to pull myself back to my general state of excellent health. Sophie's race team has Friday afternoon practice and then two final days of racing over the weekend. In the worst case scenario, I'll toss Husband in the back of the car and we'll be off. Last weekend I logged my thirtieth (30th!!!!!) day on the slopes—a new record for me and I think not bad for someone who does not live in the mountains—and I'm not done yet!

Enjoy the spring if you're so inclined. If you're not, pray with me for more snow!!

A card, a party, and . . . a litter box

2010-03-18T21:24:00.000-07:00

There's a connection, and it's my husband.

Yesterday was his birthday, an occasion that in his mind should involve cards. Although I love heavy paper, letterpress, and monograms, cards—especially those with only a signature added—I've just never been that into cards. But unlike me, Husband comes from a Card Family. When births, deaths, illnesses, graduations, or birthdays occur, there is a good chance my MIL will call with a Card Alert ("Just thought you'd want to send a card!"), even though we're sometimes talking about people I barely know. When she receives a card, she likely call us to report the card and/or bring the card over for us to see ourselves. The apple falls not far from the tree. Husband saves up his cards as they arrive in the mail, and on the morning of his birthday announces "Now I will open my cards!"

So you can imagine how disappointed he was to not receive a card from either Sophie or me?Somehow I think of cards as something you send, not something you just hand to someone who lives in the same house as you. You think I'd remember that on every significant occasion, I find a card waiting for me on the kitchen table. But I had bought him a gift, and isn't a gift always better? Apparently not. Although he was somewhat confused by his gift, he was not displeased (see below). Still, he called me at work later in the day to report that he felt a little blue about the lack of cards.

So Sophie and I threw him a little party.

We had a school event that evening, so it was a quick pizza dinner at home, but we did it up with china, a CARD, a crown,

flowers, candles, streamers, and bubbly.

He was surprised and very happy.

His gift? An electronic cat litter box! Because scooping the litter box (twice daily—he's a very tidy man) in the wake of our three cats is a horrible chore.

Me: Isn't it wonderful??

H: Oh yes, it is. . . . I just didn't know that I . . .

Me: Wanted one? Like when you bought me a motor scooter for my birthday and I thought it was part of a plot to kill me?

H: Yes, sort of. It's just so . . .

Me: Practical. Exactly! Like when you got me a toaster for Valentine's Day! Remember how happy I was about that? It meant you were really thinking about me. Making toast.

And so I am thinking about him. And Sophie? She gave him a $10 bill (cleverly hidden beneath his card) because she knows that the property tax is due soon. We love him so much.

Happy St. Pat's

2010-03-17T19:37:00.000-07:00

Not that we're that into the holiday around here.

But who can argue with a green crown and a blooming magnolia tree?

Happy spring.

Facebook: Bringing it back

2010-03-03T17:36:00.001-08:00

Everyone knows Facebook invites ghosts from the past, so when they come, I guess you've got to deal with them, right?

Really, most of it has been easy and fun. How great it was to find out that one of my high school crushes grew from a boy with stringy hair and wire-rimmed glasses into an extraordinarily handsome man—a kind, thoughtful, and funny one at that? And how nice it has been in anticipation of my thirty-year high school reunion this summer to find a much warmer, friendlier group than I felt I had left behind so long ago. Most of the focus in our contact has been on who we are now: the jobs, travels, kids, and experiences that have made us into the adults we have become, with only passing thoughts as to who we were then and whether we liked or even talked to each other in that past microcosm.

But the other day I received a message on FB that took me back more than thirty years and has left me stuck there. Someone reached across all those years, through another person, over a social networking site to say hi—someone who totally broke my heart. Not a boy. I'm not sure there was a boy in high school who put much of a dent in my heart, and if I inflicted any dents, I walked away unaware and unconcerned. But the girlfriend who broke my heart can still make me cry.

In early high school I hung with a crowd of what I would think of now as bad kids. We cut class and smoked a lot of pot. In reality many of us were probably alienated and depressed self-medicators. But although I include myself in that group, I was happy to be part of a group. There was a lot of conflict in my house (typical teenage rebellion conflicts with strict parents), and these kids felt like family. Better than joining a cult, right? And this girl—she was funny, honest, and got me completely. We had some of the best times.

There were probably signs things changed, but I missed them. Then there was the football game that a couple of girls, including my friend, told me they were not going to, so I stayed home. The next day at school, I overheard that they had all gone. A few more instances like that, including a Peter Frampton concert that I desperately wanted to attend, and I knew the truth: I was out.

I was socially awkward kid with poor social instincts. I was completely confused about why someone I loved so much had rejected me. I'm not saying her actions were without reason; I just lacked the social sophistication to understand them. And I of course lacked the courage to confront her, opting to go off and cry by myself and pretend I didn't care. Around that time the group sort of imploded: kids were transferring to other schools, taking the GED and getting out, some probably dropping out. And I would have been fine with the group falling apart if only I could have kept her.

In the long run, it was probably the best thing for me. I cleaned up my act, patched things up with my parents, found new friends, excelled in school, and went on to good things. I'm not saying the rest of them did not, but where I was going at that time would not have been a reasonable path to where I have found personal and professional satisfaction.

But still. When I look at other people's pictures of themselves today with old friends from back then, I think "That should have been us—old friends thirty years later." But I like to think I learned and got better at being a friend. There's other people now that are my "us," and I do think this time they're for keeps.

So I got her email address from the third party and sent her a note. I told her a little about what I've been up to and said I hoped she was well and that life had been kind. I signed it "your old friend" because even though I'm not really, I would like to be. I haven't heard back, but I'm checking my email all the time.

So, no pictures or recipe. And a delete button almost hit. So there you go.

Not spring: Risotto withshrimp, procuitto, lemon

2010-02-25T19:48:00.000-08:00

It looked like spring for a minute—really.

But then the rain smacked down my daffodils.

And I noticed my fruit trees are bare.

And my husband has turned into a phlegm monster. No picture of that (you're welcome).

So it must still be winter, which is FINE because I've still got business to take care of in the mountains. In the snow. At Squaw. On Headwall and Granite Chief, to be exact. Stuff, you know.

But winter also means time for more winter dishes cooked as a slow simmering pace, using ingredients that do not require me to leave the house. Using my standard risotto recipe, I modified using some prosciutto, shrimp, and chicken broth, all of which I usually have a stock of in my freezer.

And I found one of my backyard trees that is not bare—my Meyer lemon. So that went in too.

The salty prosciutto balances nicely with the sweetness of the shrimp. This risotto is rich enough that just a sprinkling of parmesan at the end is all that's needed.

RISOTTO WITH SHRIMP, PROSCIUTTO, AND LEMON

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
4 shallots, minced
2—4 ounces prosciutto, diced
1-1/2 cup of arborio rice
1/2 cup dry white wine
5 cups of stock

1 pound large uncooked shrimp, peeled and chopped coarsely
zest from several lemons

1/4 cup Parmesan, grated

Saute the shallots in 1 tablespoon of olive oil and the butter until translucent. Add the rice, stir to coat and saute for 2 minutes. Add prosciutto and saute until slightly crisped. Add the wine and cook uncovered, stirring often until liquid is absorbed. Add 1/2 cup of stock, simmer until absorbed, and repeat until until the rice is tender.

Stir in shrimp and lemon zest and cook until shrimp is just pink. Sprinkle and cheese and serve.

Very tasty but not particularly colorful. I served with sauteed chard and roasted orange cauliflower, which helped.

A commentor was asking about about ski house dinners. This would be a great one—it's warm, rich, and manageable to prepare even when you've stepped out of your hot shower and would just as soon do a face-plant into bed. And it makes great leftovers for lunch the next day, handily beating out expensive sucky lodge food.

Lindsey who?

2010-02-23T12:58:00.000-08:00

Lindsey Vonn Lindsey Vonn Lindsey Vonn Lindsey Vonn. You've heard of her, right? Obviously the media has as well. Eyes rolled in our house at the New York Times front-page article title that read

Vonn crashes out of super combined

U.S. teammate Mancuso wins silver

How about a rewrite on that:

Julia Mancuso wins silver to become the first woman Olympic skier ever to medal the three different races

Vonn crashes and does not finish race

Ok, that's probably too long, so how about this:

Mancuso wins silver

Vonn biffs

Julia Mancuso has three—count 'em, three— Olympic medals: a gold in Turin and two silvers so far in Vancouver. And lots to say and a great attitude. Listen to the two and tell me who you'd rather hang with. So maybe the media can switch their focus from Lindsey Vonn talking about Tiger Woods (the man plays golf for christsake—and sleeps with a bunch of skanky women) and listen to the woman who skis for fun, designs underwear, and before heading to Vancouver spent her weekend with a bunch of kids on her home mountain at Squaw.

Yep—including my kid, fourth from the left in the bright green pants. She poses for pics and took a run down the mountain with the Mighty Mites (the little guys) on Saturday and since the Tahoe League was away racing that day came back on Sunday for more pics and helmet signings. She was friendly, accessible, and a great example for all the Squaw kids. The Mighty Mite boy in the house we share observed "She was very nice. And I think she is a little bit prettier than Lindsey Vonn." She's the whole package, and while we root for all the U.S. skiers, we save the loudest cheers for Julia Mancuso.

Concerning big

2010-02-10T20:02:00.000-08:00

After being told by Sophie that they would have time to make their valentines in class and that I need not worry about procuring supplies and setting aside time at home for this (hooray!), Sophie came home from school with a few pieces of colored construction paper and NO VALENTINES (crap). Thanks goodness she was able to resolve this on her own. She was telling me the other day how she sometimes wishes she were little again. I observed that whereas she was really cute and very funny when she was little, I mostly prefer her being big. I think.

A good part about her being big is that she could make all the valentines for her classmates by herself (yah!):

What I'm not so sure about is that she also made one for an older boy (11!!) on whom she has had a crush for going on three years.

To put this in perspective:

The word "disproportionate" comes to mind. But her feelings are big, so I guess it's appropriate that the valentine should be as well.

I'm working to remember that they're her feelings, not mine. And I have to admit, this is a fairly reasonable and appropriate way for her to express them. She does not want to embarrass herself or the boy and so plans on having a third party discretely slip the valentine in the boy's desk. Then we're going to hightail it out of town for a week. I assume by the time Sophie's back at school all will return to blushes, stammering, and giggles. Right? Right???

All the good

2010-02-09T10:37:00.000-08:00

While I'm stressing out about the mad scrambling pace of my life these days (pack, unpack, repack, drive, drive, drive), I'm trying to focus on what is good. There's a lot. Here it is.

Good: Heading to the mountains with a few friends and a lot of skis.

Good: The heated boot bag Husband and Sophie got me for Christmas (a surprise late present). This bag plugs into the car while we drive up, and when I put on my boots, they are warm. At the end of the day, wet boots and gloves go in here to dry, significantly reducing stink.

Also good: The new boots I bought to replace the ones that were stolen out of my car the other weekend. They're the same model as I had before, but the current model is much improved and came with a custom, heat-molded liner—super comfy, plus no more cold toes. They rock. Husband thinks I hid my old boots so I could buy these.

Good: Sophie looking good while waiting for her times at last weekend's race at Sierra-at-Tahoe. (Not good: Sierra-at-Tahoe. Besides having a stupid name, it is the lamest ski area ever. Most of the runs are so flat, you should really bring reading material for going down them.)

Really good: The great new friends Sophie has made on her team. We couldn't ask for a more welcoming, supportive group of girls. No mean girls here!

Good: The fact that feminine protection is including in the price of a Squaw lift ticket. Is that awesome or what? So much better than fumbling for lip balm on the lift and dropping a tampon on the head of someone down below. No I haven't, but almost.

Good: Snow, snow, and more snow. Keep it coming!

Racing to somewhere

2010-01-26T19:09:00.000-08:00

Tahoe powder? Financial ruin? Some of both?

Last weekend we headed to the mountains (again) for Sophie's first race as part of our favorite ski resort's developmental race team.

Leaving Friday morning (at a reasonable hour for once) to get her there for the pre-race afternoon practice gave a leisurely drive where I could marvel at all the new snow instead of trying to catch a few winks. Up on the mountain many of the trees were bare because the snow had come with high winds. But heading up the pass, everything had a thick frozen coat. I love the exposed granite of the Sierras, but nothing beats this. Well, maybe removing all the SUVs in front of us . . .

And sadly, this was the last picture we took over the weekend where you could see anything. The race was in snowy conditions with flat light, making outside shots indeciperable. The lodge chaos with hundreds of race-suit clad kids swarming to register and find coaches would have been a good subject, but we were busy swarming to register and find coaches. It's all new, confusing, and exciting to us. Next time—promise.

We grabbed some race skis (season rentals, thank goodness) on the way up and a new race suit (on sale, thank goodness) on the way down. Remember when the main character from Tom Wolf's laments he is hemorrhaging cash? That feeling. Are we living in our van and shooting squirrels? Not yet, but the possibility is certainly in our minds.

And so too is the quesiness about the competitive aspect of this all. Aside from the face that children's competitive sports deprive many families of ever eating dinner together, I am uneasy with the winner/loser distinction. I know good teams work to emphasize being both a good winner and a good loser, but let's face it: The winners and the losers are each often the same people. For example, throughout my entire elementary, middle school, and high school career, Marcie Wurts was a winner. With obvious talent and hard work, she excelled at nearly every sport offered. She got lots of practice at winning and I'm sure became a gracious and good winner. I, in stark contrast, was a vastly experienced loser. Did being a loser time and again make me a better loser? No—it merely deepened the humiliation and hammered into me my loser status. I overcame it, but it took years. It seems to me the character building of competition vastly favors the winners. I know so much of the world outside of sports is about competition, winning, and losing, but whereas it may be the reality, I think it may also be the problem in many instances.

Sophie finished both of her runs with respectable times. She was far from the top and not too close to the bottom, which I think is great, especially considering she joined the race team late and this was her first race. She was pleased with her times posted on the board (she improved in her second race), and I haven't shown her the website where they rank all the kids in each division. She was nervous to start, relieved to finish, happy with her new group of friends, finding her feet in the new skis, and looking forward to the next race. She was a little concerned that she was one of the only kids without a race suit and said she would really like to have one if that were possible. Done. I told her jokingly that I do not want to see any more wide gate roundings; she has the padding, and I expect her to be smacking those gates.

Maybe some day she'll be on a podium doing this. (She pointed out "You've got to show the audience what kind of skis you have!") But for right now, she's plenty happy where she is. And I'm happy too, although while I was freezing my butt off watching races, I was sort of wondering if those soccer moms and their folding chairs and sunshine weren't on to something. Nah.

My daughter switches teams,I have anxiety, and I make a very easyand delicious shrimp dish

2010-01-19T21:38:00.000-08:00

No, not switching teams like that, although it would be fine with me. Over the weekend Sophie switched from the Squaw Valley Big Mountain Team to the Tahoe League race team. My genius husband made a few phone calls and got the ok for her to ski with them for a weekend. I thought she would do it for a day or so and then go back. Wrong. She loved it. Loved the kids, loved the coaches, loved the racing. Not that she had a problem with the other team at all. But her mind was made up.

Thanks, Husband. So in addition to driving up nearly every weekend and the team fee we (really, the MIL) have already paid, we are now on the hook for race fees, traveling to and skiing at other resorts where we do not have season passes, and (I can hardly bear to type this) RACE SKIS. Because apparently the high-performance season rentals we have for her are INAPPROPRIATE. And of course most ski shops do not rent race skis, because why would anyone do that when they have parents who have been told they must BUY them? So we are trying to find a used pair or wait until after the big trade show when our local shop might be able to find us a good sale pair. God, we're so hosed. It's kind of like being a soccer mom on steroids. At least I'm out there working on my bumps instead of sitting in a foldable lawn chair.

In the past few weeks, I've spent so much time driving, packing, unpacking, repacking that I hardly know if I'm coming or going. And not that I'm complaining about operating two kitchens, one at home and another in the mountains, but I'm starting to get confused about what ingredients I have where. And I'm just plain tired. This meal is an answer to those problems. For the most part, it's an off-the-shelf deal. I almost always have a bag of frozen shrimp on hand (I think Trader Joe's does a better job at deveining than the other brands), and aside from feta cheese, the rest of the ingredients are standard kitchen stock.

SHRIMP WITH TOMATOES, OREGANO, AND FETA

1 1/2 large shrimp, peeled and deveined
salt and freshly ground pepper
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 small yellow onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
pinch cayenne
2 tablespoons dried oregano
1 28-oz. can diced tomatoes
1/2 cup green olives stuffed with pimento, sliced
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 pound feta cheese, crumbled

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Rinse shrimp and press dry in a kitchen towel. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add shrimp and saute, stirring until just pink, about 2 minutes. Remove from pan using a slotted spoon to a shallow baking dish that has been sprayed with olive oil.

In the same pan, warm remaining two tablespoons oil. Add onion and saute until tender, about 2 minutes. Add garlic, cayenne, and oregano and saute until fragrant, about 2 minutes longer. Stir in tomatoes with juice and olives. Cook over medium heat until slightly reduced, about 20 minutes. Add wine and simmer a minute or two longer.

Pour tomato mixture over shrimp. Top with feta. Bake until feta starts to brown, about 10 minutes.

Serve over rice.

Come to think of it, I think I have these ingredients in the other kitchen also. If you're in the Tahoe region next weekend, give me a call if you'd like to come over for dinner. You can make the green salad.

It's a WHISK! So let's make some gravy

2010-01-12T20:21:00.001-08:00

Who knew?

My blog pal and friend in real life (we went to our high school homecoming dance together!) Trevor sent this to me for Christmas. It's a Scandinavian (yes, he's all kind of blond fabulousness) birch twig whisk that you can read all about here (plus much other craziness: one minute he's quite unnecessarily on The Zone diet, the next he's making homemade mac and cheese—you find the sense in that).

These whisks are supposed to excellent at producing a smooth gravy by doing a particularly effective job of combining the flour or whatever thickening agent you use.

I was just taking a beer can roasted chicken out of the oven the other day and so decided to give my whisk a whirl.

Everyone who cooks probably has their own way of making gravy. My mom taught me hers, and I hardly ever serve this gravy without receiving a compliment. Here's how we do it.

ROAST CHICKEN PAN GRAVY

Whisk pan drippings (which will include grease from the bird and whatever liquid you have used for basting, e.g., white wine or, in this case, beer) in the pan to release baked-on bits.

Pour drippings through a mesh sieve into a glass measuring cup or small bowl. Discard solids in sieve. Spoon off and discard fat that settles as the top layer in the cup.

Pour liquid into a small pan, keeping off heat. Mix in a small bowl about 3 tablespoons of flour with 1/4 cup of water, pressing with the back of a spoon to form a smooth paste (fine if a few lumps remain—it's going through the sieve again). Whisk paste into liquid in pan. Simmer over gentle heat while whisking until thickened. (Whisking in the thickener before heating helps reduce lumping.)

Continue to cook until reduced and thickened to the consistency you want. Season to taste, which may involve salt if you have not used a kosher bird and perhaps some dry white wine. to assure a velvety smooth gravy, send it through a sieve again on its way to your serving piece.

And while we're here, here's the chicken recipe. What great about it is that you can roast the chicken at a fairly high heat, thereby reducing roasting time, but still end up with a tender and moist bird. The chicken steams from the inside and roasts from the outside. Pretty simple, just a few tricks.

BEER CAN ROASTED CHICKEN
Rinse chicken and pat dry. Pull open chicken cavity to make sure chicken will fit over beer can.

Spray can of beer with cooking spray. Open can and pour about about a third of the beer (or drink if you can stand canned beer). Place can in roaster pan. Cram chicken over beer can. Use the end of a sharp knife to cut tiny slits in chicken skin all over bird.

Roast in 450 degree oven for about an hour and a half, until leg joint is loose and juice from it runs clear.

Let chicken rest for about 15 minutes and then remove from beer can with a pair of large tongs. Discard can and beer (don't be tempted to add the beer to the pan drippings—you'll have as much beer taste as you want already).

Thank you, Trevor, for the whisk and for the inspiration to head back to the kitchen after my holiday wake/ski/cook/crash/repeat marathon. I'm looking forward to another year of exchanging recipes and tips. And I'm just going to ignore that Zone business. xo

Let's stick a fork in it

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

So we can finally call the holiday season done, here's a few off-the-slopes snaps of significant holiday going-ons for us.

We had already had a tree at home and were more or less over the whole business, but the person's whose house we were staying in went back home to retrieve his son and have a turn at custodial parent the day after Christmas. What better way to welcome him than with a stolen tree!

There were so many that it was hard to choose.

This one looked good, but we figured why stop at a single tree

when were able to fit three in the truck? We stopped by the grocery store on the way back to the house, and I hoped that people thought we were going to the recycling center instead of from. They were probably impressed by how much money they thought we spent on trees. God, we crack ourselves up.

Later, in a spasm of irrationality, I decided Christmas cookies would be a good idea. They rolled, cut, and baked one day and frosted another, thereby spreading the mess over two days instead of one. I know: brilliant.

And you know what happens to sugar cookie dough when you roll it out, cut something, change your mind, wad it up, and do it all again? And again? Right. But they looked pretty.

I did have some peace and quiet in the kitchen though when my peeps went outside to build an igloo. It ended up looking more like a snow beehive, but it was completely functional. It will be fun to see how long it lasts throughout the season.

Finally, look what was waiting for me in the mail when I arrived home! What do you think it is? Go ahead and guess! It's about twelve inches long, so it's too small to use as a witch's broom, although I can imagine why you might think that an appropriate gift.

And so ends what my girlfriend calls the Holiday Death March, kicking off with Halloween and collapsing in a heap on New Year's. We're thankful to have survived it and grateful for peace in the months ahead.

The last post of 2009

2009-12-31T13:28:00.000-08:00

So I ran away from the holidays to Tahoe to hole up in a friend's house in Incline and ski my butt off.

Not such a bad idea, as it turned out. We bought season tickets for Squaw last spring during an amazing promotion that priced them at less than half what they are now. Something about opening and Olympic anniversaries. Thank goodness for the naked guy I chatted up in Travertine Hot Spring on the way home from Mammoth last year.

This is also Sophie's first year on ski team. Thank goodness for the MIL who generously funded that. And for the friend who is putting us up for the season at his significantly fabulous house overlooking the Late Tahoe in Incline. I'm trying to work it off though by doing things like fixing him rocking ski sandwiches and dinner every day, cleaning the house, and making his picky (but adorable) son Toaster Waffles.

A few highlights so far:

Husband spent the other afternoon skiing with Olympic shredboy Jonny Moseley! Really!! On scheduled days Moseley shows up at the top of the Funitel to ski with anyone who's up for it. I settled for just waving shyly as I deposited Husband into his hands. The idea is that they start off on easy stuff (of course at completely ridiculous speeds) and then progress, with the group diminishing as they go. They started off at about twenty; at the end it was Jonny and five. Husband (considerably older than Jonny, as I kept pointing out) hung in there until the end, which was a few runs down Jonny's Run, Chute 75 off KT-22. They road a few chairs together, chatted it up, and Husband picked up a few tips.

I was just happy he survived. Near the end of the afternoon, I received a transmission on my radio (some friends gave us those fancy ones like the ski patrol use for wedding presents years ago) that was NOT HUSBAND. Which is unusual because the radios have a squelch chip that minimizes most cross traffic. It was the ski patrol informing me that they had our other radio and would be skiing it down to KT-22. I waited there, and when it showed up inquired if there was a body accompanying it. There wasn't. And the body I was looking for did not answer its cell phone. It eventually showed up though, and I counted that as a little holiday miracle.

And speaking of holiday miracles . . . Husband got me a present that I totally loved! Kidding. Regular readers will recall his title of Mr. Gift. And indeed, he came through again. Realizing that I do not need any more stuff (well, not really), he gave me an afternoon of skiing with a private coach. Which I totally needed.

I skied the afternoon with the little sis of Olympic champion Julia Mancuso, Sara. Although I was sure at first that this was a terrible mistake. Instead of the gentle middle-age woman I thought I would be meeting, I was faced with a gum-snapping, smart mouthed hipster less than half my age. Who skied like a friggin rocket. But by the end of two hours, I was sold. Fact is the girl rocks. She gave me just the (actually quite gentle) butt-kicking I needed: weight forward, poles out front, shoulders downhill. All the stuff I know but do but do poorly once I get off the groomers. But what we really liked was her ass-kicking confidence. She knows she rocks too, and as the mother of a daughter, you've got to love that. Ski team is on a half day today, so after lunch, she is skiing with Sophie.

Speaking of whom . . . She is rocking her ski team, and is right in the middle of her Big Mountain Team, keeping up with all the locals and kids who have come through the Squaw Mighty Mites program since they could walk. She's out skiing her tenth day in a row (unlike me, who after getting up at 6:30 to make lunches and send them off crawled back to bed to read for three hours). She didn't get to ski with Jonny Mosely, but she did take a header down his Chute 75.

Right there down the middle. It's steeper than it looks here, and there are more rocks since it's early in the season. She hit some slippery near the top, lost it, and slid down head first sans skis and pole most of the run until a kind man reached out and caught her. Husband and our friend, usually unflappable about this sort of thing, were slightly flapped. I'm still kind of nauseous thinking about it. Sara probably has her up there right now.

I can't figure out how to download pictures from my camera onto this laptop, but if I could I could show you the largest icicle ever hanging outside our bedroom window or the tree Husband and I lifted from Incline's tree recycling. Can you believe people up here buy these really expensive ginormous trees and then dump them the very next day?? Can you believe we think this works really well for people like us who really don't give a rip about the holiday but have a bunch of kids who do?

Happy New Year. I fully subscribe to that holiday as long as I don't have to get out of my yoga pants and go to a fancy party. And it's a good time to give thanks to my blog community. It has been a great year, and you have all made it richer. Thank you.

Serving kittens

2009-12-19T17:22:00.000-08:00

Our new Ocicat kittens have thin coats and get cold easily. At night they sleep in our bed, under the covers. There's no better feeling that falling asleep with a warm purring kitten against your stomach. In the daytime, though, while we are at work, they get cold. We've given them a small electric blanket on the platform of their climbing structure, but it's clearly not warm enough.

The other evening, I came home to find Lily, the brains of the kitten operation around here, in a cast-iron skillet I had left on the stove to dry. Our antique O'Keefe-Merritt stove has pilot lights that keep the stove top warm even when it's not on.

I thought it was a brilliant idea, and so I helped them out a little. The next day I left out two skillets and lined them each with a soft towel.

It was a hit. But Husband had this silly idea that one of the towels would come in contact with the pilot and burn down the house.

So he went out the next day and bought them what we have dubbed The Apartment. He has installed heating in the downstairs, and sun hits the lanai (the middle) nicely in late morning.

But still, sometimes there's no keeping a good idea down. I came home yesterday to this:

Don't tell Husband, but when we leave for the mountains tomorrow, I'm going to leave out two skillets (without towels, probably). Because our kittens like to be served.

Merry Christmas to me

2009-12-16T20:44:00.000-08:00

So happy to be headed to Tahoe on Monday for two weeks of general mountain bliss, skiing, and curling up with this stack.

I'll talk on the lifts and while I'm cooking dinner; otherwise . . .

Off to a little gathering,cranberry tart in hand

2009-12-12T09:05:00.000-08:00

Because I hate to show up empty handed. And I never show up to a gathering of my book group without a dessert.

Our book group is getting worse every meeting about reading and discussing books, but we never have a problem with the food, drink, and party aspect of it all. Last night we invited all the spouses so they can more or less confirm that the whole book group concept is really a ruse designed to give a group of old friends a night out.

This time of year I'm always looking for a new dessert idea. The wonderful summer fruits are gone, my Meyer lemon tree is a few months off from delivering, and I've had enough of chocolate. A co-worker pointed me to this recipe, reprinted last year in The New York Times. I'll give it to you hear since I did a few things to simplify and reorganize it. I hate when a recipe has you use part of an ingredient in one part of the recipe, and then in the next part tells you to use "the rest." Damn it—don't make me go back to the ingredient list! Give me the amount!!

CRANBERRY TART

Crust

1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup finely ground cornmeal
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
freshly ground zest of 1 lemon
1 stick of unsalted butter, diced
1 egg
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Place flour, polenta, 1 cup sugar, salt, and lemon zest in a food processor and blend. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse sand. In a small bowl, whisk egg, olive oil, and vanilla. Add liquid ingredients to food processor and pulse until dough forms into a ball. Form dough in a ball and wrap in plastic. Chill for at least one hour (or 20 minutes in the freezer if you're in a hurry). Dough can be made the night before.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roll out dough to a 12-inch circle and press into a 10-inch removable-bottom tart pan. Trim edges.

Filling

3 cups (12-ounce bag) fresh cranberries, rinsed and picked over
3/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 large egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch salt

In a 3-quart sauce pan, combine cranberries, sugar, and corn syrup. Stir over medium heat until cranberries release juices, about 2 minutes. Remove to a bowl and allow to cool for about 20 minutes (or place pan in a bowl of ice and water for about 10 minutes).

In a small bowl, whisk together creams and flour until smooth. Whisk in egg yolks, vanilla, and salt. Pour over cranberries and fold together.

Place tart shell in pan on rimmed baking sheet. Using slotted spoon, add cranberries to tart shell. Pour as much remaining liquid as will fit on top of cranberries into shell. Bake about 40 minutes, until filling bubbles but is not yet firm and crust begins to brown. Cool to room temperature before serving.

I took a wrapped book for our book-themed Yankee swap (we've advanced so much from the days where someone would bring a really lame gift and pin a joint or a $20 bill to it to sweeten the pot). I also brought some homemade quince paste and some manchego cheese and some candied rosemary to garnish the tart.

I'm slowly moving into the holiday spirit. Sophie and I are off to the city today to see A.C.T.'s A Christmas Carol. Ghosts in chains! Dancing onions! And of course that grumpy old man.

If the show's not doing it for me, I can always sit and watch my daughter's happy shining face.