[First ever grown up tree, December 2011.]

The end of the calendar year is so close I can hear it tip-toeing behind me as it gently (or not-so) hurries me along into 2012. 2012. I’m trying to remember December 2001, ten years ago, and what I was planning for the holidays that year. I think we were still walking around in a blind daze, pointed only toward the turning into a new year that was going to be better, would have to be. Or December 1991 — I was in eighth grade, right? Probably my afternoons were taken up with basketball practice and my nights with piano lessons and homework. (That was so very long ago. I never imagined the things that have happened in between then and now.)

Sometimes it seems life rushes by so quickly it leaves us hardly an extra moment to catch our breathes. The holiday season is a perfect illustration of such. Cards — do/mail. Cakes — make/bake. Presents — find/wrap. And on and on.

But a way to s-l-o-w down the days, or at least to create a space to savor them, is to throw a party. And so on Saturday afternoon, we invited a mix of old and new friends, relatives, and little kids over to eat, drink, and enjoy the sunshine that spilled irrepressibly into our apartment from the moment we woke up at 8a (or so) ’til dusk settled in for the night.

[Part of the spread, December 2011.]

We ate a lot of things, some of which included

phyllo-vegetable cups
an enormous cheese plate with gluten-free crackers and Acme breads
hummus and carrots
caramelized onion + mushroom pizza squares
chocolate + dried fruit + nut candies
cheesecakes with gingersnap crust
a nutmeg-spice cake (and an apple cake)
flourless chocolate cake bites
butter and jam cookies
gingerbread cookies (aptly decorated by the little girls)

I poured bubbly and sparkly lemon water in equal measure, accidentally stirred still water into the cranberry-orange punch (oooops! — said with a very Rick Perry-like smirk, except that actually I felt rather dumb) but it still tasted nice, and thrilled to see all the little treats I’d prepared be happily eaten … nay, devoured. How I like to feed people, it’s true.

Alas I was too busy putting out more smoked salmon and crackers and such to take any decent photos, though I did lug out my big camera to snap a few shots here and there. That seems to be my life lately — I want to capture everything around me but more often than not I have just a few moments in between pulling a tray of cookies out of the oven and dishing up a sort of ersatz risotto of long grain brown rice and a medley of vegetables and cheddar cheese (topped with a fried egg) before shoveling it into my mouth and starting on my holiday cards. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: thank goodness for the iphone (and Instagram), even if the pictures aren’t quite as pretty as I might like them to be …

But anyway, the main thing is the recipes, no? And I have a lovely one today: for a buttery, tender, jammy cookie I made mostly to showcase that blackberry jam I canned this summer. The jam is delicious: not-too-sweet, nice and seedy the way I like it, full of whole and partly smashed-up berries. But the surprise was the cookie base, which, made with good-tasting butter, proved slightly addictive, especially when eaten Sunday afternoon with a cup of tea after the scrubbing the apartment within an inch of its formerly dusty baseboarded self.

So I know you might not have your own homemade jam for these cookies, and that’s just fine. Any berry jam will do (note: recipe for cranberry jam coming soon, as soon as I … err … take a proper photo of the jars I canned last week, and that would be wonderful here). These cookies, I will admit, did not turn out to be the most beautiful cookies I’ve ever baked, but man were they good. Lush with butter and plushy with sugar, they’re decadent little bites of holiday goodness with a hint of the summer’s long-harvested bounty. Sit down with one and you may even be transported back to August — remember August? It was warm and sunny, the perfect weather for lake-swimming –, and that glorious summer feeling, reminding us that indeed it’s possible to slow down for a moment even in these hectic days of baking, card-making, parties, and all else.

Tuck them into your cookie tins or bring a plate in to work for the office party and watch them work their magic. Or just keep them on your table at home, sneaking one or two in between stamping envelopes and swilling tea in an effort to stay awake. It’s the last push ’til the new year. These will help.

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[New Year's Eve 2010, San Francisco.]

At the beginning of the new year — for all of January, really — I find I am more quiet. After the rush of the holidays has subsided I want only to go to bed early with a book, to curl up on the couch in a patch of winter sun and read the entire Sunday Times (well … one day), to catch up on magazines, to make soup (recently cauliflower-potato; tonight, most probably, lentil-brown rice with spinach), to drink tea at tea-time and then maybe a glass of red wine (or orange juice, depending on mood) a bit later on, to make simple cookies (like oatmeal-chocolate chip) after the flurry of holiday baking.

And so I do some of these things as well as others — including a few days out of town to explore the central coast; pictorial evidence to come tomorrow — and marvel in this beautiful sun Northern California is currently experiencing. And so also I have not recounted my 2010 ushering out of the year which, despite the beginnings of a cold which necessitated the drinking of cold care tea rather than champagne, was warm and good and full of equally warm and good and delicious food.

I woke up New Year’s Eve day feeling sickish — though I’d foregone the semi-traditional backpacking trip out to Wildcat Camp I’d still spent a sunny, blustery day in the Seashore which perhaps didn’t help, and so, probably inevitably, succumbed to the cold that had gotten my brother as well as nearly half my office. But do not, please, discount the powers of over-the-counter cold medicine combined with force of will. I had planned to cook a New Year’s Eve dinner for eight, and so a New Year’s Eve dinner for eight I would cook. Also do not discount the mania of the cook — originally I’d envisioned, somehow, a multi-course rendition of the Thanksgiving feast, complete with a turkey that would’ve taken up most of the space in my wee oven and finished with updates on the traditional fixings.

Fortunately my friend Kate, ever the voice of reason and my house guest for a long weekend along with her husband Avner, intervened, offering not just aid in the kitchen but her sturdy shoulders for carrying groceries, cheerful spirit, and generic decongestant. She gently turned me away from my dinner plot which in hindsight was completely ridiculous and way too much work. Instead, she offered to make her baked fish (usually tilapia) dish, which involved in this case a couple of pounds of wild-caught cod nestled on a bed of sliced onions and chopped tomatoes laced with dill and lavished with lemon juice. It was a thing of beauty (and deliciousness, though of course I didn’t partake myself even if I was tempted) and something which I shall make again, if only so as to take a photo and share the recipe here.

I didn’t take a single photo that day and evening of all the food, mostly because I worked straight for about four hours (happily so, I will add, and really not that long comparatively) and also I was a bit hopped up on decongestants. But it was a beautiful new year’s dinner — the last day of the year, no matter if one is low-key and doesn’t feel like going out (all of us), or is headed off to the airport (my brother and Emily), or feeling slightly under-the-weather (me), is a bit special and should be treated accordingly. I love to do so with a dinner, and thus now I must recount it here before it slips away entirely, a whole 18 days after the fact …

To start
A silky mushroom- leek soup

Then
Baked wild-caught Alaskan cod with onions + tomatoes + dill
Sweet potato-spinach gratin
Roasted cauliflower
Garlic-roasted fingerling potatoes
A simple green salad
Sauteed green beans + toasted pine nuts

And to finish
Alice Water’s chocolate cake with chocolate ganache
Vegan chocolate cake
Vanilla ice cream

Though we ate rather quickly owing to the necessity (darn it) of travelers and their flight back to (darned — though lovely) Maine, the conversation was no less lively for its brevity. After the guests (darn them) had departed, the dishes were washed and put away, more chats were had, and bed early awaited. I know, we’re crazy. But that just made the next morning more pleasant — a good thing given that adventures awaited ‘cross the bay.

[At the lighthouse, January 1, 2011.]

The first day of the new year we had oatmeal for breakfast, and the chocolate babka my mom had brought the night before, and cups of tea (black, with milk and sugar for K and I; green for A). Then we put on coats and shoes and scarves in a rush, grabbed our cameras, and went out through the rain to the Pelican Inn for pints of Guinness and a chai tea. One of the bar tenders told me her fail-safe remedy for a cold: lemon, fresh ginger, hot water, honey, and lots of whiskey. I said, I’ll take it, but maybe without the whiskey. (For I was nearly voiceless, the cold having drawn its claws and sunk in for the long haul.) Kate very nicely handed over one of her extra-strength decongestants, and that and the pint surely helped keep me upright the rest of the day.

For then: Olema for lunch; then to the Lighthouse, slipping up and down the narrow steps, all 308 of them in the rain. We swore we spotted a whale and I think we did (and now there are rumors of a gray whale in Tomales Bay) — certainly lots of seals and shore birds. Then careening through the green fields for a cup of tea and a stout shot of single malt before the fire, singing songs and petting the dog. Then home through the dark rainy night back to the city for Thai coconut soup and bed in a cold room, shivering even wearing wool socks.

It was the perfect day to start off the year.

Often on the first day of the year I like to go for a long run or hike, or in a previous life had my new year’s eve dinner on new year’s day. I don’t make many hard-and-fast resolutions, but usually have a little list in my mind upon which to reflect in the waning hours of the year and into the next.

This year was different, and perhaps it was better: there was lots of laughter, good food and conversation, and beautiful landscape to set the tone for the next 12 months. I was completely in and of the moment — something I hope will continue well into 2011 and beyond. To spend the day with old and much-loved friends was the icing on the proverbial freshly-baked cake of the new year; if I am to have similar slices of it in the days ahead I will consider myself the luckiest and consider the year a blessed one indeed.

Next time I’ll share a recipe for these sesame butter cookies, which are a childhood holiday staple for me but which can be made any time of the year …

A taste:

PS to KK and AO: come visit again soon. I promise I’ll make more cake.

Tomorrow I am 32.

Tomorrow I am 32 and I am not, for once, baking my own birthday cake, though it is often my wont and wish to do so — no, this year will be spent drinking lots of water, carbo-loading, crossing my fingers for the Giants to win the first game of this next playoff round, and obsessing about Sunday’s 26.2 miles to be run so awfully early in the morning.

For, OH, the marathon. It is all I can think of right now — fearfully, and with great excitement. The forecast here in San Francisco has changed from sun to fog with possible rain, and though I envisioned running along the Great Ocean Highway in the wild, hot sun with salt drying white in funny tracks on my shins, I know it is far, far better to run in cool temperatures. And how pretty the bridge will look with the fog misting about its columns. Maybe I will catch sight of a few pelicans winging purposefully out to sea, like I did the time I ran a half-marathon four years ago, and the fog will burn off after all.

Oh, the marathon. Despite my hip that aches so deeply and inexplicably, despite my nerves, despite all else — I am impatient for it, eager for the camaraderie that comes with these things, the anonymous companionship of 20,000 (!) others slogging along with you, in pain and exhilaration. Into the quiet morning I shall go, solidly 32, belly full of chocolate cake, to run past the Transamerica Building (and perhaps even my office, for I work a hard stone’s throw away) with the Financial District still and nearly empty for once, and down along the bay and up through Seacliff into the park, and back ’round Lake Merced for the last four miles (I hear they are the longest slog of the long slog), and then … and then by 12.30 pm on Sunday it will be all over. I will cry and cheer and get fetched home for food and later will finally open that delicious bottle of rosé I’ve been saving since I bought it in Sonoma two (!) months ago.

It is my birthday present to myself.

But wait a minute — back to birthdays. And also cake. I have this funny thing about birthdays wherein I often end up baking my own cake/s, or throwing my own party (very happily so, I will add). See, please, a few years ago — for 29 — when I had a little wine and cheese party with a friend of mine who shares my birthday; we drew an eclectic collection of friends to my apartment (some of her law school friends, some friends I went to kindergarten — and earlier — with, an old college friend, new San Francisco friends) and stayed up late but not too drinking wine and eating fancy cheese and the madeleine cookies I for some reason thought would be a good idea to bake. We also ate cake — three of them: a coconut-pineapple (my most asked-for birthday cake, still), a chocolate with chocolate butter cream, an opera cake, sliced into thick wedges and piled high with strawberries. I’d stayed up late the night before baking. This seems to be a pattern for me.

See also my last year in DC, when my brother had me stay the night in a wonderful old farmhouse b+b near Wheatland Vegetable Farm in Virginia, where he was working and finishing out the growing season. We ate a late and delicious dinner (his treat) and I woke early on my birthday to eat fluffy scrambled eggs and pet the malodorous dogs. After, I came back to the city to cook — I’d decided, darn it, that what I wanted most to do for my birthday was to cook a birthday dinner and invite my best beloveds and so, I did.

The thing is, I love cooking, I wrote to a friend in California before the party. Love it. And I love throwing parties. So, what would make me happy would be to have a little dinner party for my birthday and I even know what I would make: a soup of wild mushrooms and herbs; onion foccacia and rich cheeses; pesto or some sort of baked-in-the-oven dish; some kind of green; chocolate cake, to finish. And drinks beforehand, and champagne also, and wine. Simple, but nice, and what I would really like to do seeing as how I won’t be sunning myself in Hawaii or washing my feet out at Keyhoe Beach with the dogs.

I think my friends thought I was slightly crazy for cooking a big meal on my birthday (I mean, it was my birth-day), but it was so sweet and satisfying to make Amarula martinis (I was on a kick with those for about six months — they are deliciously deadly, imminently sippable) and crack champagne and nibble cheese and eat the food I’d made. Those days … What better than to indulge myself in the thing I loved best? Birthdays might be a little bit selfish, after all.

For my 26th, I remember, there was

1.
-foccacia: one onion, one olive (?) with basil and tomato and fresh mozz
-hummus
-cheese and crackers

2.
-roasted garlic and tomato soup

3.
-mushroom/asparagus risotto
-green beans with garlic and lemon
-spinach/greens salad with almonds

4.
-a variation on something called a ‘Cuban Opera Cake’

We all had so much fun.

Birthdays, birthdays. One year I was in Scotland (bliss). Last year I was in London and saw the Tower (and shivered over poor Anne) and went for high tea (and a pint later). Sometimes I worked and went for dinner after; sometimes I cooked; once I was in California similarly obsessing over a marathon and went to Goat Rock in the bright sun to chase the seals. (I may have to cook belatedly this year, after the miles are logged and the shoes stowed neatly away for a little while). This year will be smaller and sweeter — I will go to the farmers’ market; I will have an early dinner at Greens; I will eat chocolate cake; I will read Dylan Thomas; I will go to bed early, in nervous trepidation, clothes laid carefully out for the morning’s early start — and I think that will suit me just fine.

Tomorrow I am 32. What comes next.

**

I know I posted this last year but I feel it is appropriate for any and every October birthday — and so here it ’tis again. I shall read it each year on my birthday, swear. Dear Dylan Thomas, you have part of my soul.

Poem in October

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.

A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill’s shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.

It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels

And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.

And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart’s truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year’s turning.

- Dylan Thomas (b. Oct. 27)

And for reading all that — a reward:

Coconut-pineapple layer cake, long-ago adapted from gourmet.com

For cake layers
2 1/3 cups cake flour (not self-rising)
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
5 large eggs, beaten lightly

For filling
a 28-ounce can crushed pineapple in unsweetened juice
1 tablespoon cornstarch
a rounded 1/4 cup sugar

2 2/3 cups sweetened flaked coconut (a 7-ounce bag), toasted golden
and cooled

Make cake layers:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Line bottoms of 2 buttered 9- by2-inch round cake pans with rounds of wax paper. Dust pans with flour, knocking out excess.

Into a bowl sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. In a glass measuring cup stir together milk and vanilla. In a bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed cream butter 1 minute and add sugar in a steady stream, beating until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Beat in eggs, a little at a time, beating well after each addition, until pale and fluffy. Stir in flour mixture in 4 batches alternately with milk, beginning and ending with flour mixture and stirring after each addition until batter is smooth.

Divide batter between pans, smoothing tops, and bake in middle of oven until a tester inserted in center comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Cool cake layers in pans on racks 10 minutes. Run a thin knife around edge of each pan and invert cake layers onto racks. Remove wax paper carefully and cool cake layers completely. Cake layers may be made 5 days ahead and frozen, wrapped in plastic wrap and foil. Thaw cake layers in refrigerator 1 day before proceeding with recipe.

[Before dinner, July 2010.]

Cheese plate + good bread
Phyllo-mushroom cups

Zuni Cafe roast chicken with heirloom tomatoes + bread salad, parsley-almond pesto
White bean + mushrooms, with basil pistou

Corn + barley + arugula salad
Green beans + summer squash, sauteed shallots

Plum torte, homemade mint ice cream
Vegan peach-plum crumble

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

- Wllm. Carlos Williams

[Last bits of summer, September 2009.]

[Plus le Meme Chose, non?]

October slips in on a rush of 70-degree mornings and the sun beams down as if to say, Silly you. There are days more of me so do not lament those dark 6.30 wake-ups just yet. Coffee tastes especially good lately and I have pretty pink flowers on my table courtesy of my mom. Fall is here at last and for real: the light is blue and golden and sweet and finally — and truly — I feel ready for it. I am ready to kick some leaves around, to make roasted vegetable soups and applesauce. And while some people may shudder at the thought of baking pumpkins for dinner it’s nearly time for that, too.

So far this fall my kitchen has been put to good use: last weekend I had a lunch party for the first time in ages. My guests were the same as the ones invited to my last proper luncheon, all the way back in July of 2008, and even bits of the menu were the same. I can be rather humdrum in my choices sometimes but as no one really seems to mind, I think it’s OK.

I started out, as is my wont, with a plate of lemon-pepper smoked salmon from the fish seller at my farmers’ market, a bowl of olives, bread brought me from Sebastopol, and plenty of homemade hummus. It was a hot afternoon so I poured water and white wine and even a a few gin and tonics in equal measure to ease the heat, and then a breeze picked up and swept through my apartment which eased it even more.

For the lunch I roasted a head-and-a-half of cauliflower and tossed it with sauteed green beans and a handful of quickly toasted pine nuts. I also roasted a big pan of fingerling potatoes with crushed garlic and olive oil until just barely tender, and piled them in a pretty bowl. I’d gone to the Ferry Building fish market the day before and bought a pound of local, wild-caught halibut which I doused fairly liberally with white wine and a splash of olive oil, covered with lemon slices, and then baked for about 20 minutes until flaking and cooked through (after taking it from the oven I slid it onto a nice plate and topped with sauteed shallots and crimini mushrooms).

For my vegetarian offering I layered tomatoes from my parents’ neighbors garden with a freshly-picked zucchini from my boss’ garden, poured in two lightly beaten eggs mixed with about a 1/2 cup of milk and some parmesan cheese and baked for about 25 minutes — a sort of faux quiche/souffle thing that was experimental but surprisingly delicious. Of course there was a large salad made from greens I’d gotten that morning at the farmers market strewn with little tomatoes and radishes and dressed with Stonehouse olive oil and balsamic vinegar. For dessert I served a chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream and a small vegan plum galette.

I really thought I’d have leftovers — I imagined dining off cauliflower for days — but I forget how much six people can eat (especially, ahem, two guys with hearty appetites) and there was not a scrap to be savored later except for the cake. I also forget sometimes how much I love having little parties — of course there’s some work involved but I always see this as a cheerful enterprise — both so as to indulge in my penchant for cooking but also as a means to bring people together.

I do love to bring people together and it was a lovely afternoon, not least of all because I didn’t have to do the dishes.

October each year is full of the unexpected (a new sweater, a trip abroad) as well as the usual (loads of apples to be made into sauce, trying and perpetually failing to send out the birthday cards to my fellow Libras on time); perhaps the best thing about it is that, like fall itself, this beloved month can be full of twists and turns — wholly and entirely unpredictable. I am eager to see what comes next.

So maybe it’s not so much plus ça change, plus le meme chose but instead the more things change, the more they stay the same albeit with a few amendments/changes which actually are the best amendments/changes imaginable — such as the new-to-me chocolate cake I baked on Sunday — in menus as well as life.

Anyway: this cake. It’s quite simply the best chocolate cake I’ve ever made (and I have made a lot of chocolate cakes), simple and sweet and true (just like October perhaps?). It’s rich and dense with chocolate but not too, if that makes sense. There’s a fair amount of butter but somehow the cake is still light and doesn’t feel overly heavy; this, to me, is the mark of a good cake. I’m filing this recipe away to make again and again, for birthdays and everydays alike. It’s the perfect way to usher in fall’s most brilliant month — October, welcome, and please stay as long as you can.

The Best Chocolate Cake, via David Lebovitz
Vanilla ice cream served alongside is a necessity.

For the cake:
9 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1½ cups flour

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon baking powder

1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature

1½ cups granulated sugar

2 large eggs
½ cup coffee
½ cup whole milk

For the ganache frosting:
10 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

½ cup water
¾ cup (1½ sticks) unsalted butter

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Butter two 9″ x 2″ cake pans and line the bottoms with circles of parchment paper.

To make the cake layers, sift together the cocoa powder, cake flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder in a bowl.

In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar about 5 minutes until smooth and creamy. Add the eggs one at a time until fully incorporated.

Mix together the coffee and milk. Stir half of the dry ingredients into the butter mixture, then add the coffee, and finish with the other half of the dry ingredients.

Divide the batter into the two prepared cake pans and bake for 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool completely before frosting.

Frosting:

Melt the chopped chocolate with the water in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water, stirring occasionally until melted. Remove the bowl from the pan of water.

Cut the butter into small pieces and whisk them into the chocolate until completely melted and the ganache is smooth. Cool until spreadable, which may take about 1 hour at room temperature.

Fill and frost the cake layers with the ganache.

[Anniversary roses, August 2009.]

I don’t think any day is worth living without thinking about what you’re going to eat next at all times. – Nora Ephron on gourmet.com

The funny thing about this anniversary party was not that we made too much food — I think that was pretty much a given from the moment we started out — but that a few days later there were barely any leftovers. I mean, we made a lot of food. People ate and ate and ate and some even went back for more. My mom told me people were wandering around with handfuls of cookies after dinner and the toasts (I wondered if I really needed to bake two batches of oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies when I’d also baked two coconut-pineapple-peach cakes and two dozen mini vegan chocolate cupcakes and yet … and yet.), though certainly they couldn’t have been hungry.

It was the kind of party that sparkles — if you know what I mean? A 40th wedding anniversary celebration with old friends and family and friends who are family. Buckets of chilled wine and sitting outside in the sweet, sunny afternoon talking about Virginia and building boats and photography and food politics. Piles and piles of delicious food spilling from the table in the kitchen (cheeses, couscous salad with roasted sungold tomato and garlic dressing, salmon cooked to pink perfection on the neighbor’s grill, bread, Greek salad, tomatoes slow-roasted in olive oil and white wine, patty pan squash scattered with fresh basil, wasabi-deviled eggs from a backyard chicken coop). There were flowers and heart-to-hearts and friends from the city and all sorts of silliness, too.

But mostly there was food.

[Emily's grilled squash, bits of my uncle's Greek salad, August 2009.

]

When I plan a party the center is always the food — the food is what makes the occasion, be it birthday, casual dinner, or major wedding anniversary fete. This can’t be a surprise; food is the thing I’m thinking about most times (and yes, I barely finish one meal before I start contemplating the next) and which I is such an integral part of my life. Food, too, is one of my best ways to show love; it’s the thing that brings us all together in happy appetite.

In the case of my parents’ 40th anniversary party I knew I wanted to do something special — specialer, even, than special. Forty years with a person (“Patience,” says my friend who just celebrated her 45th

.) is something most of us only dream of achieving and thus should be celebrated and cheered. So the food had to be not necessarily extravagant — because those days for me are long, long gone — but it had to be absolutely enticing, delicious, and worthy of such an occasion.

I think it was.

When I started planning the menu I gave careful thought to logistics — not working in my own kitchen, only having a day and a half to prepare the food, assorted other events such as a surprise visit from a far-away uncle and his girlfriend, how I’d squeeze in a run (and I did!), etc. — and considered options. I knew we’d have a five-hour window during which I envisioned the food resting comfortably on a table in the kitchen, available for nibbling on whenever, and so didn’t want to make anything that needed to be either hot or cold at any one time. (A sit-down dinner didn’t appeal because it just seemed so … formal and this was meant to be a relaxed and comfortable affair.)

I also knew the food would be unrefrigerated and didn’t want to prepare anything that could spoil by sitting out for a lengthy period (the cake, of course, would be alright because it tastes best after being at room temperature for a few hours). And, OK, fine, I have this penchant for making dishes that are very vegetable-friendly as well as being utterly delicious, so the majority ended up being not only vegetarian but vegan (don’t worry; there was also lots of grilled fish and shrimp). Of course there had to be a cake — I knew immediately it would be a coconut-pineapple concoction — as well as mini vegan chocolate cupcakes for those who might eschew all that whipped cream.

I haven’t given a party on that scope in quite awhile — I think there were about 25 guests and family members — but oh, how I love doing so. I won’t say it doesn’t take a bit of work to put on an event of that magnitude, but when it comes together and you look at a table piled with gorgeous food, see brilliant flowers on tables set up in the backyard, and hug beloved friends who’ve come to celebrate — well, it’s worth every hour and slight exhaustion.

A few things that help, when you’re putting on a special ‘do:

- A fabulous co-cook (and griller extraordinaire) is not only appreciated but absolutely essential. It helps when the co-cook in question is someone whom you adore and who will enthusiastically wake up early to hit a) Hardcore Espresso for coffee and b) the Sebastopol farmers’ market by 9a, discussing tomatoes (we’re still marveling over the gorgeous flat of seconds we got for $3), wild-caught salmon, and squash with equal interest. I don’t honestly know what I would have done without her.

- Planning your menu in advance, but leaving room for additions and changes (i.e. be flexible). In terms of this party, we added a few last-minute items (my uncle’s fantastic Greek salad, a plate of shrimp cocktail, a pesto that was more cilantro than parsley as I, err, got distracted while making it. And you know? It was all fantastic.

- If you think one cake might not be enough bake two. In the moment this might seem slightly insane, but when the party arrives you’ll be quite glad you did. (Also, sending guests home with plates of cake and leftovers is immensely gratifying.)

- Allow people to help you. This is a lesson I’ve learned over the years — I used to want to do it all mostly myself — and I’m so grateful I did. There’s no way I could’ve done that party without Kurt and Emily, and I would not have wanted to. I’m so often a solitary cook but I think I prefer to cook with others if I have a choice, especially when they’re just so awfully good at it.

- Make a lot of food but keep it simple if you can.

- Make it a group effort

- At the last minute when you’re supposed to be changing into a pretty party frock, instead slip into the backyard garden to snip herbs (lavender, rosemary) and flowers (nasturtiums) to adorn the plates. You’ll still have time to change and it will look so lovely.

- Allow lots of time for hugs throughout the day-of cooking process, especially from your younger brother.

Our menu was wide-ranging, but it was tied together by sharp, fresh, seasonal flavors and the simplicity of the dishes that allowed said flavors to sing through. I was proud of every single bit of food we served to our guests, and I don’t think I would have changed a thing — except, perhaps to have made less. But that’s the point of leftovers, I suppose, and as I mentioned, there weren’t that many anyhow.

We have ten years to plan the next one. In the meantime, I’m missing my Mainers and hope we’ll be able to cook together again very soon.

A 40th Anniversary Fête

Spanikopita, Greek spinach and feta pastry

Dolmades, grape leaves stuffed with rice and tomatoes
Homemade hummus, with whole-grain bread
Cheese plate, with sharp cheddar, havarti, brie, swiss

Grilled salmon, with choice of parsely-almond pesto or nectarine-lime salsa
Shrimp cocktail
Roasted potato salad, with green beans and vegan pesto
Pearl couscous salad, with roasted sungold tomato and garlic dressing, chickpeas, cucumber and feta
Greek salad
Grilled patty pan squash and grilled asparagus, with olive oil-soy sauce glaze
Slow-roasted heirloom tomatoes, braised with olive oil and white wine
Grilled vegetable skewers, with onion, red pepper, mushrooms

Coconut cakes, one filled with pineapple, one filled with peaches
Mini vegan chocolate cupcakes, with bittersweet vegan ‘butter’cream
Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

[Lemon cake, February 2009.]

This will come as a surprise to exactly no one, but I like to bake. A lot. In the past two weeks alone I’ve baked banana bread, lemon-poppy seed muffins, two batches of cookies, red velvet cake, a banana-chocolate loaf, and a lemon cake. It’s a good thing I never turn the heat on in my apartment (I prefer instead to leave the shades up during the day so my south-facing — lucky, lucky me — windows let in as much sun and light as possible to warm the place up a bit, and then of course I also pile on the sweaters) because the amount of time my oven is on is staggering.

I hardly need an excuse, but lately things have been getting a bit ridiculous. A birthday? Why, sure, I’ll whip up a little something (three layers of red velvet cake filled and topped with swirls of dreamy cream cheese frosting). A mid-morning snack? Muffins, please. Cookies for my dad on a rainy Sunday? Mais bien sûr. A 10-year anniversary cake? Oh, wait, that’s not coming up ’til next week (but since you asked, it’ll most likely be a Guinness-chocolate, as requested). So yeah, it’s mostly good I don’t turn on my heat I think.

The thing about baking all these sweets, however, means that a girl like me is left especially craving her veggies. Butter may be best and chocolate sublime, but throwing in a smattering of greens every so often is absolutely imperative.

Fortunate, then, I had a few visitors this past weekend and thus was ‘forced’ to cook a tiny dinner party. I made a simple meal of mushroom soup, salad, and my mom’s outstanding recipe for a pasta with gremolata and squash, adapted from Green’s restaurant. We ate a lot of cheese, drank a lot of red wine — and choked down not a few green vegetables.

[Clouds over San Francisco, February 2009

.]

A few weeks ago I’d gotten a call from one of my best friends (who incidentally is married to another one of my best friends; this, in case you’re wondering, is quite fantastic). She told me she’d taken a job in London and would be moving there in a few weeks — would it be OK if they came to visit me en route? Instead of jumping up and down and yelling yes please come immediately wheeee! I replied very calmly and maturely that (eeeeeeeeee!) I’d love to see them and couldn’t wait. And so plane tickets were purchased, soup was made, and they arrived at my doorstep not-too-late last Thursday night.

Basically, it was a great weekend. We hung around on Friday while I did some work (breakfast: scrambled eggs with mushrooms; banana-chocolate bread; lots of coffee) and then I had the dinner party. Saturday we had breakfast out up the street (omelets, potatoes, biscuits ) and went to the Ferry Building for coffee and a wander, fighting our way through the crowds at the farmers’ market (we sampled jams, dried tomatoes, talked about Brussels sprouts). After, we walked along the water and up the Filbert Steps to Coit Tower and then down through North Beach, China Town, and downtown, finishing with Little Star for dinner (Happy Valentine’s to us). Sunday we dressed more warmly and trooped out to Alcatraz in the rain (with delicious sandwiches of cheese, leftover hummus, and avocado on sourdough, with biscotti dipped in instant hot chocolate from the gift shop that was somehow the best hot chocolate I’ve ever tasted), finally landing up home, drenched, in the late afternoon for tea and a snack (leftover pizza, cheese and bread) before piling on the futon under blankets to watch SNL clips (sushi delivery for dinner). It rained and rained but I think for the most part I was able to show them a slice of San Francisco they’d perhaps not seen before (the infamous parrots on the way up the Steps were an unexpected bonus).

Another bonus? Leftovers from dinner for my lunches this week, as well as some of that lemon cake. It’s a quiet week in general, and I’m glad to have a wee bit of veggies to tide me over.

Friday Dinner

Cheese/baguette/white bean hummus/olives

Mushroom-leek soup
Linguine with gremolata and squash
Salad of green beans, romaine, and radish

Lemon pound cake with whipped cream and fruit

for 6

[Cheese and wine, November 2008.]

I was watching some silly movie the other night that took place in England. The plot was pretty lame (but yes, the couple got together in the end, as they should have) and I don’t remember who was in it — however, there was a scene in which a family was sitting outside at a white-swathed table in the long, soft English afternoon eating and drinking wine and it looked just marvelous.

It’s no secret I love a party. Heck, I’m already planning the menu for my New Year’s Eve party — which, somehow, has grown to at least 10 guests and counting — even though I am kind of horrified at myself for thinking that far ahead. (For the record, possibly some sort of braised and baked fish; a sweet potato souffle; lots of roasted vegetables of course; other things I haven’t decided on yet except that I think actually it might be revised to be more like small plates and pot-luck … oh, dear g-d, you see how I am.) So when I see what appears to be a perfect scene in a perfect setting (England. Countryside. Lovely grey light. Summer.) I just … want.

What is it about making something special out of a meal? This is the time of year when we’re thinking even more than usual about how to lay the table, what to serve, what time to serve it, who will share the food with us, where we’ll sit down to eat. I still have that little dream of a Thanksgiving set in a clearing in a redwood forest, with an outdoor fireplace, good red wine, cool snapping air, simple, seasonal, healthful dishes, all my beloveds gathered round. The conservation would be lively and comfortable and we’d probably have gone for a hike earlier in the day to whet the appetite (the practicality of how we’d cook all the food is not important I guess). Doesn’t it sounds perfect? One day, I promise.

Of course, something I always must have at any sort of party large or small is a cheese plate. A few weeks ago I’d been cooking and baking all day (my usual Sunday activities, as you know) and as I’d been sampling little bits of whatever it was I was working on I wasn’t terribly hungry when it came dinner time. I’d picked up a few beautiful apples at the farmers’ market that morning and as I am usually well-stocked with cheese I cut up an apple, some cheddar, poured myself a glass of Zin and flopped down on the couch to watch my HBO Sunday night circuit. I guess because I really wasn’t too hungry I didn’t feel like weighing the plate down with bread and I didn’t miss it. The apple, sweet and crisp, was the perfect complement to the sharp cheese, and I was left satisfied but not overfull.

I mean, I wasn’t sitting at a luncheon party in the English countryside but I don’t know, there was something sort of special and sweet about it anyway — maybe because it was a little different than the usual thing and because I put it on a pretty plate and so savored the bite of the apple against the smooth slices of cheese. I’d argue such a plate would be perfectly appropriate on this year’s Thanksgiving table, or at a New Year’s gathering, or even for a Boxing Day snack.

Sometimes I wonder if I like to throw parties for the little ceremonies they involve as well as for the food. You know what I mean: the choosing what napkins to use (I have three options: plain white, from eight years ago when I moved into my first apartment and treated myself to cloth napkins at Pottery Barn; a lovely golden-flowered set, which I picked up on sale at Williams-Sonoma ages ago in Washington; and a set of every-day, slightly faded red ones given me last year for my birthday) and how to fold them, what flowers or greenery to arrange just so on the table, what tablecloth would look best against the food, what sort of champagne would go with the cheese plate, etc. etc. It’s all part of the little thrill of planning I suppose.

I realized yesterday, as I crumbled probably my year’s quota of butter into various baked goods and thought seriously about finding a new recipe for gingerbread, that the holiday season is nearly officially upon us. Gulp. Oh, I’m almost ready, make no mistake, but it did give me pause for a moment. There’s so much to do before the first day of the new year dawns — things I want to do, but still — and dreamily imaging table settings isn’t really the most productive use of my time.

But it sure is fun.