[Winter beach, January 2012.]

In Maine, where my toes are chillier than usual and the clouds seem tangible (and puffy) enough to hold in your hands. The clouds here are different than anywhere else I’ve seen them: arranged across the horizon in great billows rather than wisps. The sky this week, clear for the most part, has been the purest, brightest blue, turning the river across the street into shifting shades of indigo and then grey when a storm comes on. I took a walk-run yesterday morning to the end of the street and back; the ice in the river whispered past creakily on its way out to the coast as I tucked my hands deeper into my pockets. The landscape is so different from what I’m accustomed to, but there is that same wildness, that same edge-of-the-land stillness I so love about California. If not for my truest love for the West I think I could see myself living here (well … maybe. There’s that whole deep-freeze thing.).

But: Maine. It snowed in the night and we woke today to sun pouring through the windows of the upstairs rooms; utterly gorgeous. A bluebird day* for real and especially special because I’ll never see one of those in San Francisco. We went for a swim at the Y (Kurt played basketball) and coffee in town and will cook and bake later — Emily, delicious appetizers and bread and drinks and icecream; Kurt the main meal; me a chocolate-hazelnut torte — a bit for my last night. I am leaving tomorrow and I … don’t … want … to go, though I miss my husband and it will be good to come home to rain and the 49ers game and my little comfortable things around me and not only in a suitcase.

We’ve eaten well this week as I predicted: sweet potato enchiladas with homemade enchilada sauce, the best marinated and fried tofu and roasted cauliflower and carrots and some sort of scrumptious miso? dressing I must get the recipe for, beans from scratch and brown rice, mushroom risotto and an addictive brussels sprouts salad with grapefruit dressing, a decadent dinner at Trattoria Athena where we drank a bottle of the wine we so loved in Greece lo these many summers ago and I ate a piece of tiramisu that, yes, was probably the best I’ve ever had. And I’ve been inspired, as I knew I would with new cookery ideas, the impetus to step outside my comfort zone a little bit, to delve back into cookbooks more particularly to make such things as an easy and astonishingly delicious chard-kale gratin that tastes perfect alongside a fluffy pile of buttermilk-mashed potatoes or even a quick saute of garlic and chickpeas and greens …

[Along the Kennebec, January 2012.]

I like to do that choose-a-word-have-it-be-your-year’s-intention thing each year if I can. Sometimes it’s easier than others. Last year’s word was ‘peace’ but after getting engaged in February and planning a wedding in seven months there wasn’t a lot of ‘peace’ of mind for awhile. (Though, if I’m honest, there was peace in other areas; so, win some, lose some I guess.) Now it’s well in 2012 and around the first, when I decided to attempt to find a word, I couldn’t land on one. None felt right, nothing fit. Maybe 2012 will be the Year of No-Intention-Word, I thought, but still … I hoped something would come to me.

And then today! it did. From this old, lovely house in Bath where I type this, my toes just slightly on the side of freezing even wool socks, Fotis the grey-and-white cat asleep in a pile on the bed behind me, the San Francisco classical station streaming over the Internet to keep me company whilst I work, my hands warm in fingerless gloves, and a cup of tea steaming to my immediate left, I have found at last my word: make. It makes so much sense.

‘Make’ surely could’ve been last year’s word but I shall consciously apply it to this year instead. Always I am making: food, cookies, little cards, plans. But this will apply too to new friendships; books; others things I can’t think of at this moment but which probably are mostly food-related (of course). Like: make new dishes. Open up the cookbooks more. I can broaden my scope every night, make dinner less of a chore and more of a learning experience and then hopefully new things (dishes, ideas, a more cheerful attitude) will come out of that if nothing else. That gratin I made on Sunday in a riff from Alice Waters (‘The Art of Simple Food’) was so good and easy – why don’t I ever even open that one too much? I forget to make the time (get it?) to do that. I must make sure to open my mind up a bit more in casting about for new recipes. Cookbooks, even if I never strictly follow the recipe, serve to jumpstart the creative process for me. Remember this. And other things.

And then there is this, which I may just adopt for my 2012 motto: You have your whole life ahead of you. You will always have your whole life ahead of you. That never stops and you shouldn’t forget it. — Bill Bryson

(I love that.)

There also are almond butter cookies.

[Almond butter - + other stuff - cookies, January 2012.]

Thanks to Emily I’ve delved into the world of flourless baking and am finding it a new challenge and a pleasure. I’ve come up with a pretty decent recipe for gluten-free brownies as well as a decadent chocolate cake and ginger cookies, and am realizing there are many treats out there that are naturally flour-free (pots de creme, custards, rice puddings, milk chocolate puddings and the like). But the best, the best, recipe I’ve encountered and then developed a bit is for flourless peanut butter cookies.

What to say? These cookies are absolutely addictive. I made a batch a week ago and brought them on the plane with me, restraining myself from devouring them all. Of course, once here, they didn’t last long and so I made another round yesterday with special tweaks that I think made it the best version so far (and which I’m saving for an article, but I promise it’s worth the wait). I just devoured one, in fact, with my lunch. I will make some again very soon to send East to my grandma for her birthday, to make it special (OK, will stop now). From a spare ingredient list — 1 egg, almond butter, sugar, baking soda — comes a thing of beauty: chewy yet light at the same time, not-too-sweet, rich with nut nutter … these cookies are all good. Every single bite.

As is Maine, and my time here. I am so loathe to go but know real life beckons with its own particular goodness … back soon, for sure.

*Bluebird day: The most gorgeous day imaginable. A bluebird day is a bright, sunny day after a fresh snowfall the night before.

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[Yosemite Valley from above, August 2011.]

It’s difficult to do justice to Yosemite through words though I can try — the waterfalls, especially this summer after an enormous snow fall and long spring, are spilling over in a mad torrent, crashing down into the valley and roaring in a blur of white and green past hikers toiling up alongside. The mountains stand as they have for centuries: still, tipped with gold at certain moments of the day, and almost too perfect to be real. In the back country little streams rush and hum, ferns droop low to touch the water, mosquitoes linger too long and will not depart even when swatted-at. Almost everywhere you turn there is a surprise: a bear sticking its nose into Lukens Lake, a shooting star falling through a Pleiades-flecked sky, the faint sweetness of smoke from a forest wildfire drifting through the air, the bluest afternoon sky at the base of Half Dome, the cleanest, whitest-gold sun.

I can write these things, but they feel thin; most of us know the feeling Yosemite and the high Sierra creates, and each of us has our own private experience of it, perhaps even too precious to articulate. We spent five days there — my brother, my sister-in-law, D, and I — and it never ceases to amaze me how easy it is, in the end, to leave everything behind. Existing without computer, bed (!), running water, or electricity, sleeping outside and waking with the sun (or, err, not), hiking miles up and down rocky trails every day carrying heavy packs, is to reduce life to its most elemental. Time pauses somehow, or at least eases and slows. When I am out there I believe I could stay, and happily so. I would not miss this more settled life; I think I would prefer one fashioned of rock and sky and sharp trees, the world spread out before me to be discovered at my leisure.

Now back in San Francisco, with the press of ‘normal’ daily life once again weighing down a bit, it feels surreal to remember what I was doing a week ago (hiking 18 miles up to Half Dome and back; filtering glacially cold water from mountain streams). I know I was there but — was I?

Instead of analyzing too much, I should just tell you about what we ate.

[Breakfast, Yosemite, August 2011.]

Mornings were usually: oatmeal with chopped apples, dried cranberries, a sprinkle of cashew nuts, nescafe with dried milk and sugar. We’d eat, clean the dishes, finish packing up and set off, stopping in an hour or so for a piece of fruit, an oatmeal-chocolate chip cookie, a granola bar. Lunch was, the first day, hummus and cheese and tomato on whole-wheat bread, with peanut butter and blackberry jam on bread for lunches the rest of of the time, probably more fruit, some trail mix, and whatever bits and pieces survived the smashing into the bear canisters every day that still looked good. Dinner was different each night, thanks to master planners Kurt and Emily: fried tofu with rice noodles, broccoli, and scallions the first; chili mac (the standard Annie’s shells and cheddar, essential to all backpacking trips in the Spiridakis tradition, mixed with vegetarian chili) the second; and brothy noodle soup and a couple of those reconstituted ‘backpacker meals’ the final night (hey — we were tired!). There were also an assortment of chocolate, little snacks, teas (and emergen-Cs) scattered throughout the days at whim.

You could probably argue we brought perhaps too much food but in the end ate nearly all of it, and nothing was sacrificed to bears, raccoons, or forgetfulness. Often we made campfires, and if not too tired sat up and watched the stars come out. We slept two nights next to fairly significant creeks — or, significant enough so their gurgles and rushes sang us to sleep. The last day we packed out and eventually made our way down to the valley for beer, tacos, and the end of the Giants game which they actually won, and recounted our adventures and tallied up minor injuries. Afterward we swam in the frigid Merced near the backpackers camp and went to bed earlyish to wake up at dawn for the long trek up to Half Dome (no cables for me this time, alas; fourth time was apparently not the charm) and back down the John Muir Trail from Nevada Falls to Happy Isles, thirsty and dust-spattered.

[Vernal Falls, August 2011.]

Yosemite basically puts almost everything to rights. It is clean air and the high mountains — lavender some times, grey-blue at others — rising behind Curry Village nearly close enough to touch and granite warmed by the summer sun. It is childhood and memory and climbing and hiking and sweat in your eyes. It is quiet. It reminds you to breathe even when it takes it away (the altitude gains, the sheer beauty of the place). It is the most gorgeous place on earth to me — magical, yet so solid and real that I only need picture it in my mind to be soothed.

In the back country it all fades away: Wedding planning, tired, stupid injury, deadlines, tasks, burn-out. And to be there with three of my most favorite people in the world was a gift. We are still young and childless for now, and I know how special this time was: to walk along for miles, singing — particularly when we saw the bear, to scare it away — or talking desultorily about whatever was on our minds, stopping to eat lunch and swim at the perfect expanse of flat rock along Yosemite Creek, to simply be together without worry or responsibility. I was slightly nervous I wouldn’t be able to handle it all due to the ongoing injury but it turned out to be exactly what I needed. I am still biding my time until I can run again, but it feels just a little bit less desperate (that and hiking all those miles was an enormous ego boost as well as a wake-up call to my muscles), and I am grateful. Sometimes maybe you have to force yourself over the worry, to push past and through.

As we left the valley, tired from the miles logged, dirty and a bit footsore but very happy, I peered round the last bend that takes you away and out, trying to imprint those mountains and trees in my mind. They are already lodged firmly in my heart — so far away now, with the clattering of cars outside my apartment the last sounds I hear as I go to sleep rather than the wind through the pine trees, I cannot help but wish to be back. Still — I know I will be, even if it’s an almost physical pain to not be there right now. The valley and the trails above wait for my returning, shining by early morning sunlight, by starlight, by the moon’s light. I always think of Yosemite as shining somehow, though its surfaces are battered by storm and sun and wear down and evolve each day that goes by. But yes: shining.

While it may be ‘too much’ to quote John Muir yet again I must, for his words still hold as true today as when he wrote them about this beloved spot. I half expected to see him coming down the trail to the Yosemite Falls overlook, the breeze tossing his beard over his shoulder and his feet set straight ahead of him as he ‘sauntered’ over the switchbacks. In his memory, the Yosemite: home, still and always.

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.

No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so insuperable an obstacle in the way of a right understanding of the relations which culture sustains to wildness as that which regards the world as made especially for the uses of man. Every animal, plant, and crystal controverts it in the plainest terms. Yet it is taught from century to century as something ever new and precious, and in the resulting darkness the enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged.

~ John Muir

* A bit of reminiscing today …

[Spetses from the boat, August 2007.]

My coworker just gave me the August issue of Saveur, which is the Greece issue, and just a quick glance-through has me sighing, and exclaiming over the photos (oh, it is so real, so truly Greece), and wistful for that place — and also wanting to cook. Soon, soon.

For me, everything began with Greece in both the real and literary sense. It was the place from where my grandfather came, providing me with my name and my very existence. It was also the first country I visited outside of the United States. And it was the place that informed my childish imaginings –- a country of golden light and mist over the hills, strangely resembling the California landscape to which I was accustomed though I wouldn’t know how similar they are until later when I finally visited.

Hellas, agapi-mou, I’ll whisper into the stillness some nights before I fall asleep. Sweet dusty country of battered boats and ferries filled the brim with cars and mykanakis roaring back onto to land at the docks. Younger, I always pictured the Mediterranean as perfectly clear with a deep, true blue farther out and indeed it’s mostly thus though I have seen it also muddy and wild after a storm.

I’ve only gone to Greece in the summers: once in July and twice more in August. When my brother lived there for a year he’d call me from a pay phone during his first few weeks on the island where he’d landed up. February, and I could hear the rain in the background because it was so quiet then, all the tourists safely at home in Athens for the winter. At first he had a tiny apartment he had to scour out upon move-in with not much heat, and I tried to imagine him from my bigger apartment in San Francisco, so far away.

“It’s cold here,” he told me once and we were silent a little, letting the rush of the international phone line fill up the space between the words. I could see the dark, wet streets, the few cafes that were open spilling their light out onto the stone sea-wall, the horses that usually crowded the narrow alleyways shut up for the season.

Greece in the summer is hot and messy. Dogs linger around the train stations and the souvlaki sold down by Piraeus is pretty much the worst souvlaki you’ll eat when you’re there (the frappes, however, are icy cold and delicious). It’s dirty and sometimes it’s hard to breath through the smog and heat. And yet in Athens and Thessaloniki almost all the apartments have balconies and on almost all of the balconies there are plants: bright flowers spilling over the sides, herbs, strange palm-like shrubs with fronds that lift in the occasional, longed-for breeze.

I don’t know what it’s like in the winter -– my brother tells me on the smaller islands it’s quiet and people save up their summer earnings because there is not much work in the off-season, or else they go to Athens –- but I promise myself I’ll go sometime. In the cities at least the bakeries will surely still be open and if I can’t swim I can prowl the ruins of the Acropolis in the rain. I would like to see Athens just once not pressed down with the blasting white heat of summer.

[Spetses, harbor, August 2007.]

As a child I was fascinated with Greece from the moment I learned my grandfather was born there. Though I never got to have him in any real way, he left me my first name (he was “Nicholas” and so I was “Nicole” — or so I like to think it went this way) and my last (originally it was “Spyridakhs” though it was changed, probably when he came through Ellis Island, to “Spiridakis”), a wish to find my lost relatives that is yet unfulfilled, a wicked ability to acquire a good tan, and an affinity for cooking.

Then, I wanted to learn everything. I wanted to breathe Greece. I let audio tapes of the ancient myths lull me to sleep at night and proudly identified with my ancestral land when my skin turned ever browner in the summer. I longed to go, even though I couldn’t speak the language other than a timid “yassou” and “please, thank-you, what-time-is-it.” Greece was my destiny; I knew this before I set my feet onto its dusty roads for the first time.

Rather predictably the first time I went there I found the reality did not live up to the glossy fantasy –- how could it? I had swooned over the country for so long it had grown in my mind into a mythical place of sheep and ships, sweet milk flowing like the nectar the gods and goddesses drank on Mt. Olympus, buildings standing white and sharp against a smear of blue sea. Nevermind I couldn’t speak the language (or read it, for that matter) — I knew it was my place.

[Mt. Olympus, photo by Simo, August 2005.]

It took me three tries to love it. The first time I went I was just 21, traveling with my college boyfriend, and neither of us could speak the language. It was my first transatlantic flight and I sat up through the night wide-awake and clenched with anxiety until I caught the first bright glimpse of the Mediterranean. The man next to me told me how to properly pronounce Aegena (with the hard ‘g’; we’d always thought it was with a soft one), where my grandfather had grown up, and wished us luck.

Athens was brutally hot. The airport was filled with jostling travelers and cigarette smoke; few signs were in English. People rushed around frenetically. I dug my backpack out of the heap of bags that made up baggage claim –- in those pre-Olympics times things were somewhat … disorganized (it’s much better now). Finally we caught a bus into the city, me drooping with heat and fatigue and wanting only to sleep. Everything felt strange, incredibly foreign, and I wondered what I was doing there.

The second time was better. I met my best friend –- a Greek-American -– in Thessaloniki and traveled with him even further north to his family’s village in the mountains. The first night there we drank icy cold retsina and ate tzatziki thick with garlic and cucumbers, onion ‘pita,’ and good, fresh bread. We climbed high through the woods to drink from a mountain spring and ate cold cucumbers rubbed in salt. We visited a matriarch of the village who offered us corn roasted on a wood-burning stove and potatoes dipped in sugar, all of which she’d grown in her sprawling garden. I felt a little bit like I belonged.

But the third time I went to Greece something shifted into place. Maybe it was because I was visiting my brother on one of the beautiful islands –- Spetses –- or because I’d been there before and finally knew a little bit of what to expect. Whatever the reason, that summer I slipped under its skin and it under mine, inexorable and finite. I come to my love of the place now with a more clear-eyed love that sees it both for what it is and what it could be.

[Spetses, harbor, August 2007.]

The last time I went to Greece was over three years ago now and some days it feels so very far away. All I really did was sleep and eat and swim and eat and swim and swim and swim and read on the little rocky beach that was my brother’s favorite. I probably have never been so tan in my entire life and I never got sunburned. We ate languid meals during his lunch hour and then I was dispatched back to the beach for my afternoon. The day I left I felt like planting my feet on the dock and wailing; it was impossible to imagine coming back to the states.

One day we road bikes to the supposed best restaurant on the island (and it was very good) up the hills and past the horses in the blazing sun. The last bit was down a dirt path and as soon as we got the beach we threw the bikes down and jumped in the water to wash away all the dust and sweat. We drank beer with dinner and rode back through the deserted roads to town, me stopping every so often to take pictures of the bay and the boats anchored there. It was so quiet I could hear the wind rushing through the dry grass. A tanker ship sailed serenely in at dusk

Every day I drank cups and cups of coffee and frappes and slept dreamlessly and deeply at night even so. I’d have coffee first thing in the still, heavy mornings right when I woke up, with the milk heated in one of those little Greek coffee pot-tins on the hot plate. Then I’d walk through the narrow, hot streets to the kafenio near the boat yard where my brother worked to meet him for a mid-morning frappé (mine I liked metrios, and with a little milk) or met his girlfriend Emily at a restaurant above the dock to watch the ferry come in. We cooked enormous meals at my apartment –- roasted chicken, vegetables baked in the little convection oven, drizzled honey over nectarines and thick yogurt –- and sat outside drinking dry white wine.

For a long time previous, though, I eschewed the tastes of Greece. An early aversion to eggplant meant moussakka, that heavy, baked casserole full of eggplant and cheese, was out. Olives for a long time I found to be too bitter, maybe because I was mostly only familiar with the tinned kind strewn across pizza and I didn’t like those. I turned my nose up at feta for years –- it was too salty, too crumbly, too unfamiliar. I may have draped myself in sheets at Halloween pretending I was Artemis, the goddess of hunting and nature, or wished for a swim in the Mediterranean every time I shivered through another Northern California summer along the coast (the Pacific Ocean, of course, being cold in all seasons), but I missed out on the really good stuff: the food.

Fortunately I grew up a bit and my taste buds developed. Perhaps it was just that I finally forced myself to expand my palate. After all, how could I be a true Greek if I didn’t eat the things so indicative to that dusty, wind-blown place? As a vegetarian I couldn’t eat fish or meat -– a shame, my brother would later tell me, shaking his head in regret that I’d miss out on lamb slow-roasted outside during a spring afternoon and liberally flavored with rosemary, garlic, and olive oil –- but there still were so many other things to snatch up and devour.

Olives, especially when perched alongside a cold glass of retsina and a dish of pistachio nuts, are perfect during a lazy afternoon in the shade (or anytime, really). They’ve become one of my staples when I serve appetizers and it’s rare I’ll have a dinner party without placing small bowls for olives and pits within easy reach of my guests. While it’s unfortunately true I still can’t stand eggplant, I’ve fallen hard and fast for fried zucchini ‘coins,’ particularly when they’re eaten outside at a seaside taverna. And feta -– oh lovely feta. I’ve learned to love that pungent cheese baked with tomatoes, gently warmed on the stove in a pool of olive oil, scrambled quickly with eggs and spinach, or simply crumbled over salads laced with cucumber and mint.

My dad wasn’t –- and still isn’t –- much of a cook when I was growing up. But he always made dolmades, the Greek dish of grape leaves stuffed with slow-simmered rice flecked with onions and tomatoes. The recipe he relied upon is from a book titled “Can the Greeks Cook!” which apparently my grandfather gave my mom when my parents married. They are the best grape leaves I’ve ever had in or out of Greece, and they are still the only ones I’ll eat and then ask for more.

When I’ve made these dolmades myself they never taste quite the same as his version. Probably this is because there is an inexplicable sweetness to a dish your dad has made you because he knows you like it -– an invisible ingredient that serves to elevate a humble meal of grape leaves and rice to something memorable and lasting. Or maybe it’s because I don’t make them enough; I am working on remedying that situation as often as possible.

Living in California, the place that is forever home to me and where I am most contented, I find I miss Greece. It’s a patient, quiet, back-of-the mind ache that is nonetheless always there, a particular kind of homesickness that can’t really be assuaged by looking at photos or eating a certain kind of food (though I try.). And really, Greece has never been my home – I didn’t grow up there, after all, and I don’t even speak the language! But perhaps these things aren’t necessary at the end of it: to love and miss can’t always be explained. It just simply is.

See also a piece I wrote for NPR’s Kitchen Window, on feta:
The Making of a Feta Fan.

Dolmades

1 jar grape leaves, 15 oz. (or fresh, if you’re lucky enough to have them)
1 cup rice
1 cup olive oil
1/3 cup lemon juice
5 cups water
3 onions, chopped fine
2 Tb. tomato paste
2 Tb. chopped parsley or mint
Salt and pepper

Soak the rice for 20 minutes in two cups of cold water and one teaspoon of salt. Drain. Sauté the onion over a medium flame with one cup of the water until tender, about 15 minutes. Add oil and cook five minutes. Add rice and tomato paste, salt and pepper to taste. Cook for five minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add parsley and cook for about three minutes. Add half the lemon juice and cook for five more minutes. Spread out the grape leaves and place one teaspoon of the filling in the center of each one.

Starting from the stem of the leaf, turn in the ends and roll tightly. Arrange in layers in a medium saucepan. Pour remaining lemon juice over the rolls, and add one cup of water.

Cover and bring to a boil for five minutes. Reduce heat to medium and cook for 15 minutes. Add one more cup of water if needed. Reduce heat to low, and continue to cook for 15 minutes or until rice is tender. Serve at room temperature.

Note: Better photos/full analysis coming in a story I wrote for NPR about baking the cake (pub. TBD) … but here are a few tid-bits.

[Near Barre, Vermont, June 2010.]

An ongoing list in no particular order:

1. Days at the beach
2. Light nearly ’til 9p
3. Soft serve ice cream
4. Swimming in the Russian River
5. Swimming in the pool downtown
6. A foggy July 5 at Ocean Beach
7. Blueberries
8. Gin and tonics when it’s hot
9. Lots of rooibos tea when it’s cold
10. Peaches
11. Blueberry pie
12. Marathon training
13. Golden Gate Park at dusk
14. Cherries
15. Basil
16. Tomatoes (!!)
17. The promise of Indian Summer
18. Time off
19. Trips to Vermont
20. Swimming in the Atlantic Ocean
21. Eating dinner outside
22. ICED COFFEE
23. Baseball season
24. The World Cup (every 4 years, but still)
25. Slow, hot August afternoons
26. Camping trips
27. Corn on the cob
28. Santa Cruz
29. Champagne in the park
30. Picnics
31. Waking up early on weekends with the light
32. Happy – if tired – farmers at the markets
33. Planning fall trips
34. Daydreaming about Greece
35. The red quinoa salad with feta and mint I am apparently addicted to and can’t stop making (and eating)

… etc.

[Maine, Father's Day, June 2010.]

Quinoa, actually, marked June for me. I made a whole lot of it in various kitchens and there seems to be no end in sight. You know how some summers are distinguished by particular dishes that you make over and over again because they just hit something just right? (Last summer for me, I think, was the Summer of Roasted Beet Salads. The summer before that was the Summer of Roasted Fingerling Potatoes + Carrots and From-scratch White Beans with Heirloom Tomatoes.) This summer is turning into the Summer of Quinoa Salad. I couldn’t be happier.

My trip to the East Coast last month was a glorious whirlwind of family and dogs and wedding parties and World Cup games and hardly sitting down, it seemed, for more than a few minutes at a time. Except for a few wonderful meals here and there — the first night at my aunt’s house in Barre, she made me a delicious pasta dish with red peppers cooked in cream (!) and from-the-garden steamed asparagus, and I won’t even start on the Greek-inspired meal we ate in Maine at a restaurant that fed us dinner even before they’d opened to the public, complete with a proper, much-missed frappe that had Emily and I sighing over Spetses — there was a lot of rushrushrush. And all that rushrushrush does tend to stimulate the appetite. Thus this quinoa salad.

I came up with the idea en route from Vermont to Maine on an early Sunday morning (it was honestly pretty early; we were on the road by 7.30 a.m., even lacking in good coffee). Though I do like pasta, I’d eaten it every day for the previous four days, and my body was screaming for protein-vegetables-less carbs please. Quinoa came immediately to mind because a) I love it b) I love it c) it’s a gorgeous vegetarian-friendly whole grain loaded with good things like a lot of protein. Plus, did I mention I really love it?

Radishes! I thought aloud as we sped through New Hampshire bound for the coast. Definitely with chopped mint. Oh and feta. Feta for sure. I wanted some healthy crunch of fresh vegetables, a punch of lemon, the creamy swirl of tahini. And it was summerhot — all you really want when it’s like that is raw vegetables and cold salads. So then …

Once in Maine it was, like I said, too hot to do anything really except to go straight to the beach — which, being reasonable people, we did. We took sandwiches and a towel each and flung ourselves into that frigid water for a few minutes before devouring lunch and stretching out for an hour or so before the thunderstorm hit. We talked about wedding-things and life-things and cooking-things — the kind of stuff you talk about when you haven’t seen each other since February. A sailboat lolled gently just offshore and I thought again that while California owns me heart and soul Maine ranks pretty darn high in my affections. (It’s those piney woods, you see. The green fields. The rocky coast. The pale blue light.)

On the drive back, the rain pelting the windshield and the river nearly obscured by water drifting slantwise across the road, we stopped at the local garden and Emily hopped out to pick fresh mint. At home Kurt picked greens and radishes from the garden out back. And it was Father’s Day so we cooked — the quinoa salad, with lots of chopped red pepper, some spring onions, cucumber, radishes, lots of feta; baked halibut; a salad of greens from the garden — and had my parents over for dinner. We talked about wedding-things and life-things and cake-baking-things and the oil spill — the kind of stuff you talk about when you can finally sit down and catch your breath for a bit after a long drive before the madness begins again.

A few days later I made the salad again, just to have for when more people came to stay at the house if they might be hungry (which did indeed happen and the salad did indeed get eaten, sometimes topped with slices of ham. Ahem). Then when I came home to California I made it again because I just liked it so much, and then I made it yet again last weekend because I just had to.

So yeah: I’m addicted. It’s clearly my 2010 summer thing. Maybe it will become yours, too.

[Ocean Beach, July 2010.]

Here we are right smack in the middle of the year already. July slid in on a wave of fog and it is socked in here in San Francisco with no end in sight. Last night I ran in 55-degree weather into a strong headwind; I saw a girl wearing gloves as she sped past me. Everywhere but here it is hot — hot like stay-indoors-with-the-fan-on-and-air-conditioning-if-you’re-lucky-eating-cold-watermelon hot. But here — here we shiver and wear winter sweaters and make pots of tea. What a funny place California is. And how I love it.

Luckily I have my new favorite salad to tide me through these long chilly days, though I might tonight turn the oven on and revisit two years ago with a batch of roasted vegetables just because I need an excuse. Every year I forget how July is in this city and every year I (slightly) curse my choice to live here … but soon enough we slip into August, and then September, and then white-gold October, and then, oh then, you don’t want to be anywhere else.

I gotta remember this. In the meantime: scarves. Sweaters. Wool socks. Very hot coffee. Soup for lunch. You do what you have to.

East Coasters: make this quinoa salad. It will help.

Californians: our time will come.

(And dear summer, I do still love you no matter what.)

Quinoa Salad with Feta and Mint

Note: Vegans, omit the feta. It will taste just as delicious.

1 1/2 cups red quinoa (white is fine, though I prefer the red or black here as it cooks up a bit firmer, which is better for a salad; you could also do a combo of both
1 red onion, chopped
5 radishes, sliced and chopped
1 cucumber, peeled and sliced into rounds, then quartered
1 red pepper, diced
2 carrots, peeled and grated
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (I crumble them in by hand)
1/2 cup dried cranberries
3 Tablespoons tahini
2-4 Tablespoons lemon juice
splash olive oil
salt and pepper
1 cup crumbled feta
1 cup (approx.) mint, finely chopped

Make the quinoa: add grains to 3 cups of water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer, put on the lid, and let cook until all the water is absorbed. Pour into a large bowl and set aside to cool a bit.

Meanwhile, chop the vegetables and mint. When the quinoa is pretty cool — about room temperature if you can wait that long — add all the vegetables, walnuts, dried cranberries tahini, lemon juice, olive oil, and salt and pepper. Stir well to combine. Add the feta and stir. Add about one-half of the mint, stir and taste, adjusting seasonings if necessary. Add more mint as you like and sprinkle some over the top before serving.

[Miami, May 2010.]

Friends, I have logged some serious miles in the past 10 days or so. I went to the East Coast for work and pleasure — but mostly all of it was a pleasure, despite the long stretches spent hauling luggage around via public transport (however! I think I finally have mostly conquered the Subway. It only took 10 years.) There were a lot of cross-continental flights, happily not too much jetlag, a few hours spent on a beach, many hours spent on a porch during a balmy, green upstate May, and lots of delicious food consumed all over the place. I’ve just piled a lot of vegetables on a plate for my return-to-California dinner and need to dive in (to wit: quinoa with sauteed shittake mushrooms and garlic and spinach; roasted cauliflower; a shaved red cabbage, beet, and carrot salad), so will keep this brief.

[On the porch, Rochester, May 2010.

]

First, there was Rochester. I took a red-eye via Detroit, of all places, and landed up in a cool spring morning to my favorite upstate New York city. I: heard much Greek; sat on a porch and remembered how good that feels; ate a lot of hummus; rode a bike to the Lilac Festival; danced with a baby, tried to distract a baby with many toys, wondered how I could convince my friends to move to San Francisco so I could spend more time with said baby (and also them, of course); devoured creme brulee gelato (yes, that’s creme brulee gelato and yes it was probably the best gelato I’ve ever eaten); lamented yet again the many (many!) miles between California and upstate New York.

Then, I went to Florida — Miami, to be exact, mostly for work but also to eat. I ate, actually, pretty well for a work conference — lots of fresh fruit (pineapple, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries), vegetables (staying at a fancy hotel has its perks, namely delicious ), as well as an unexpected dinner outside on South Beach (various interesting sushi rolls, including roasted vegetable, and an enormous and filling bowl of quinoa laced with asiago fresco, fresh asparagus, and mushrooms) that made me wish San Francisco didn’t have that whole, uh, fog thing that makes eating outside an exercise in patience and warm scarves. The first day I was there I arrived earlier than anticipated, so I checked in to said fancy hotel and promptly took myself to lunch overlooking the beach. I ate salad and perfectly toasted pita with hummus, and watched the rain patter down on the pool outside the restaurant. After, when the rain had stopped, I flung myself into the Atlantic for the first time in probably five years. I don’t need to tell you it was marvelous.

[Along the river, New York City, May 2010.]

Finally: New York City, after far too long. There were brunches, with homemade biscuits and strawberry butter; rice and beans and roasted vegetables and a mojito with much-missed friends at a little place in the West Village (we sat out back in the garden until late); countless coffees; cookies eaten with my grandmother on a Sunday afternoon in Jersey City as we pored over old photos and I was astounded anew at her 90-year-old memory for specifics (her brothers, old boyfriends, crossing Niagara Falls via , summer weekends spent in rural Pennsylvania); a few glasses of cold white wine and a cheese plate tucked up in a little spot on the Upper West Side; an early-morning run. It all went by, of course, much too quickly.

[From Milk Bar, May 2010.]

My last night in the city my friends indulged my wish — nay, my need — to go to for dinner. I don’t even know why exactly I wanted to go so badly — perhaps it was that New Yorker profile of I’d read a few years ago and which lingered in memory — but once my friend mentioned it as a possibility I could think of nothing else (plus, uh, and the fabled right around the corner). There were just a few vegetarian options on the menu but oh holy god, were they good. This is what I ate:

- barely steamed sugar snap peas topped with shaved horseradish and tossed with bits of radish and mint
- the ginger scallion noodles, which is: a huge bowl of gorgeous, chewy ramen laced with the perfect proportion of thinly sliced, lightly pickled cucumber, pickled, sliced shitaake mushrooms, , ginger and a crisp sheet of nori to crumble in

- (a few Lagunitas pale ales)
- and finished with a tiny, perfect portion of pickled cherry soft serve

I think I sort of lost my mind over this meal. I mean, it wasn’t fancy in any way. It was served fast and furious and the restaurant was so packed we could hardly hear each other shouting over the loud music. But if you’re in New York City, or planning to be, get there as soon as possible. Believe the hype; it’s so good. In fact, I don’t really even think it’s hype so much as delicious food with interesting flavors balanced with good ingredients that taste of themselves and nicely salted just as I like.

I truly, honestly, seriously considered ordering double of everything I ate, to take home, but caught myself before I did so (a long Subway trip and an early morning plane were on the agenda and it seemed slightly foolish to lug all that with me rather than simply enjoying in the moment — but, like, man. I kind of wish I had anyway.) I bet the meat dishes for which he’s popular are even better, though I was quite, quite happy to bury my head in that amazing bowl of noodles and hardly come up for air until they were all gone (note: I vowed to eat every last scrap, and yeah. I did.). I cannot wait to go back. Really. I cannot wait. In the meantime I guess this means I have to learn how to make this stuff at home (there are worse things).

Luckily, though I might rather have a repeat of last night, I treated myself well tonight, the first night I’ve been back in the kitchen in 10 days. I missed it, a little. To ease the pain of departure — and jetlag — after my dinner I’m going to have a bowl of Greek yogurt and raspberries with a drizzle of honey — my favorite late-spring indulgence. And so I shall wish you a dreamy and delicious good-night, filled with visions of sweet-tart soft serve ice cream, chocolate-chocolate chip cookies, and that incredible green-blue sea.

[Cambridge, U.K., October 2009.]

A few months ago I went to England. I have this several times already but it bears repeating because! England! J’adore! I promptly handed it my heart — again — and had a simply marvelous time with my friends there, if it was all too brief. I ate a lot and saw a play and wandered around Cambridge and wished I lived there and ate a proper English breakfast and drank two pints of Guinness on my and saw where poor Anne Boleyn was beheaded and drank some tea and ate too many Thai-chili crisps and it was absolutely great.

The first day I arrived I didn’t sleep. I was caught in that in-between traveling space, where time seems inconsequential except for paying attention to what time your flight is leaving from what city (I flew straight across the country to New York, and then from there to London) but also I couldn’t bear to waste a moment. I arrived to Heathrow a bit bleary-eyed in the early morning, collected my bag, and made the long trek out to where my friends live.

(I love wee , by the way. It is small and sweet; there are some old pubs and a pretty park and funny take-away shops, and all this is just 20 minutes from London.)

[Mocha at the Tate, London, October 2009.]

That day we ate scrambled eggs for breakfast, with toast, and I drank as much coffee as I could stand. Later we went back in to town and walked all around by the Globe, had lunch and then an iced coffee at the Tate, and eventually ended up on the stairs at Trafalgar watching the light fade in the sky. It was almost warm and it felt like a spring vacation somehow — comfortable, and a bit like home.

[St. Martin's from Trafalgar Square, October 2009.

]

London to me forever is: double-decker buses, crowds and crowds of people rushing everywhere, incredibly prompt trains, sharp sharp cheddar, tea, chips, cathedrals soaring high above uneven streets and pressing against a perpetually watercolored sky.

Outside of the city is lovely, too, of course. I was treated to two short road trips — to Brighton, where the sun bounced and glittered off the water and I ate a surprisingly delicious veggie burger and chips while watching sailboats pass serenely by; and Cambridge, where I ate the most delicious sandwich: just a baguette smeared with brie (and butter) and cranberry jam. Maybe it was so good because I was so hungry, my appetite sharpened by jetlag and wandering around the old, stony streets?

(Later we had tea and a piece of cheesecake at a little cafe across the street from King’s College, killing time before evening services (then of course we wished we’d been able to stay longer, and eat more).

This visit I realized again that despite being maligned in certain sectors, the food in England is very good. It’s actually very very good. I know there are lots of complaints about the U.K. being too expensive for Americans or having awful food or or or but I am here to tell you: don’t believe a word of it.

I ate prodigiously and well for the entirety of my week there, both in the kitchen and out of it (can I please mention how delicious my friend’s homemade lasagna is just one more time? Especially when she makes it because she knows it’s your favorite thing of all the things she makes? I swear there’s love just baked into that thing, sandwiched in between the pasta.). Even with delicious lunches out, sometimes savored with a glass of wine, and I don’t feel like I drained my bank account too awfully. And I am grateful.

Today my trip feels so long ago and I feel as though I am not doing it justice with this writing — here we are, pressed up against the end of the year and today, the first day of winter, dawned cold and clear and crisp in San Francisco, Christmas is in three days! — but it was a truly wonderful holiday full of friends-who-are family and sleeping in and the exact right amount of rest and activity. England now feels like a dream: ethereal, perfect, far away and wished-for.

But happily I have my photos to sigh over when the mood strikes me, and I remember.

ps: Please do remember for last-minute gifties!