[San Francisco this morning, February 2012.]

Today: the sky a sweet, deep blue, warm for February. I am eating an orange. Trying to write an article. I just got ‘adjusted’ and now my right ankle is buzzing away not unpleasantly (I hope this means healing is occurring) and in a few hours will take the bus north across the bay to Sonoma County. I am exhaling. Sort of.

Lately I’m looking for inspiration wherever I can find it — in a new book, in a slew of flourless baking recipes, in my green tea leaves (swear), in cookbooks, in my memories of the clouds in Maine — and while it can be slow going sometimes it’s there if I just look around. Truth is, I’ve been feeling a bit bogged down with the day job and the endless routine of it all, leaving me feeling quite flat. There have been more nights than I should admit when all we’ve had for dinner is leftover (cabbage-chard-white bean) soup and grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches, or vegetarian ‘sausages’ (and, ahem, chicken-portabello sausages), roasted fingerling potatoes, and a salad. Good, nourishing stuff sure, but not necessarily fodder for dreamy food writing (or blog posts).

Still, despite my slight winter malaise, I am mostly always cooking even if I’m not always writing about it. I did just bang out two pieces for NPR, publication TBD, which jostled me out of my rut a little even though it’s kept me quieter here, and last Saturday cooked for a laid-back dinner party after a long, lazy afternoon at the beach. Come to think of it, that afternoon really did wonders for my mental outlook despite my blasted achilles tendon: a good catch-up with old friends, lots of photography talk (if Emily is my cooking soul mate Randy is surely the photo equivalent), a pint at the Station House, a black lab to play with, and dinner to make. It wasn’t fancy – my dinners so rarely are these days – but it was good.

[Kehoe Beach, February 2012.]

[Also good was Saturday's weather. I mean, look at that beach! The weather out here right now is insane, in a good way.]

I roasted a chicken with lemon and onions and tomatoes and made a big pot of mashed potatoes (with buttermilk, and lots of butter), a salad, a chocolate cake, and a chard gratin. Oh, have I not mentioned this chard gratin before? A travesty. This was a product of poring over cookbooks in Maine a few weeks ago, specifically Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food. As the title suggests, most of the recipes contained therein are incredibly simple (yet incredibly good), sometimes to the point where you’re like … this is a recipe? I’m just roasting a butternut squash and pureeing it with some broth and calling it ‘soup.’ No matter; I look at recipes more as inspiration points anyway, and I certainly got inspired by that gratin.

As you may or may not know (but really how could you not?) I love chard. Love it. I know it’s not to everyone’s taste, but, oh, there’s something about it. Nice and (naturally) salty with fluffy leaves and pretty white or red-and-yellow stems, it cooks beautifully in soups and stews, just on the stove with some garlic to pile on top of polenta, in my mom’s amazing pesto-potato lasagna, etc. etc. Yet a chard gratin I’d never tried and so it was an obvious choice. In Maine we used 1 bunch chard and 2 bunches of kale and I’d do that again; last weekend I used 3 bunches of chard and it was, as my octogenarian friend Josie might say, utterly divine.

I don’t have a photo because, well, I was cooking all that stuff I mentioned above. I’m planning to make it again next week for a small dinner party (which, err, may be nearly the same menu repeated – our secret), but I hate to wait that long to share the recipe because it’s the sort of thing you could make this weekend for your own dinner party or just because. It takes about 15 minutes of active work and then another half-hour in the oven which to me seems a small, and fair, price to pay for the result. One of the best parts about this recipe is that it’s easily doubled, probably tripled, too, and you can fool around with using different kinds of cheese, or bread crumbs, or greens, or whatever. (I’ve already made some adjustments such as eliminating the butter.) Get, you know, inspired with it. I know I will.

       Print This!    

Tomorrow I go to Maine to visit Kurt and Emily, she of the biscotti pictured above and the delicious fresh-ginger ginger cookies sent for the holidays (no photo but trust me on this one). The last time I saw them in Maine was June 2010 for their wedding, and the last time I saw them in California was this past fall for my wedding, so, y’know, it’ll be nice to just hang around and talk about other things like … I don’t know … food.

Actually, we’ll probably talk about food most of the time. And the rest of the time we’ll be cooking it. I always learn something new when I cook with them — Kurt got me into red cabbage one February, and I feel foolish I’d never really tried it before I love it so much now — and I always leave filled with inspiration or at least a new way of looking at things. I forget that cooking with the right people is one of my favorite past-times. Too often I am solitary in the kitchen – or with a sous-chef to chop the garlic – gulping down water after a run and throwing the quinoa on to boil before jumping the shower. Vegetables are stir-fried quickly, a glass of wine is poured while the silverware is assembled, and dinner is served. We – or, to be honest, me – often see food as fuel around here, which it is, no doubt about it. I can be a terribly utilitarian cook. But given the opportunity I also like to slow it down and talk and experiment along the way.

So when I say I am very much looking forward to my week in New England that would probably be a bit of an understatement. I cannot wait, in fact. My bag is mostly packed, my books decided upon, my ipod fully charged. I’m looking forward to frigid mornings, the deep blue of the river across the street to accompany me on my walks, a new cat to meet and snuggle with, early bedtimes, an exhale into the quiet and peace that I always find there. There isn’t much planned other than to hang out (I hope this will help my poor legs to rest and relax themselves after all the prodding they’ve endured lately (chiropractors are fantastic but, ouch)) and, yes, to cook. Maybe some ice skating, too, if I’m lucky.

I hope to write a bit from there; New England has a special hold on my heart and it’s been far too long since I’ve made my way ‘cross country. But before I set off to Boston in the morning I wanted to leave a recipe for a soup I made the other night. I meant to write about it more poetically but I just got back from a swim and my mind, like my muscles, is all loose and warm and not so good for prettily stringing words together. But I will tell you that it was the exact thing I needed last night after an amazing, hard(ish) yoga class stretched my hamstrings to their edge and all I wanted after was shower, vegetables, sleep.

I started making a chard and white bean soup this fall with the last of the tomatoes, and I’ve moved on into winter with a variation of such but with the main ingredient being cabbage. My husband jokes that cabbage has replaced cauliflower as my favorite vegetable lately – and indeed they are of the same family – but I scoff at that. Cauliflower and I are tried and true, forever and ever amen. Still, I do love my cabbage. I’ve been stir-frying heads of green cabbage from Richard, who grows gorgeous things at Firme Farms, with a chopped yellow onion and lots of garlic and white beans plus some thyme or basil (dried) if I feel like it. Then I make a pot of polenta and pile it all on top and it is just! the perfect winter meal. (And come to think of it, perhaps inspired by my brother). The soup is very similar, but with more vegetables and in soup-like form; there’s onion, garlic, carrots, celery, white beans, cabbage, and a little chard, too. It’s nourishing and healthy and brothy and salty and full of good vegetables and damn, if I hadn’t eaten the last bowl for lunch I’d be slurping up some right now …

This means, of course, that I must make it for my Mainers when I see them. What kind of guest would I be if I didn’t cook dinner a few times? The rest of it hopefully we’ll cook together, with that brilliant view of the sunset outside the kitchen window to keep us company.

Catch you on the east side.

       Print This!    

[Thanksgiving dinner, November 2011.]

This year, Thanksgiving weekend involved a lot of time outdoors and that’s perhaps the thing I’m most grateful for in these waning days of 2011. But of course all the other stuff was grand, too. Dinner was lovely — all turned out well, even the last-minute chicken I roasted with olive oil and herbs rather than a turkey — and we ate prodigiously but not to the point of over-doing it. There was butternut squash soup, and cauliflower soup, sweet potato-chard gratin, homemade biscuits, upside-cranberry cake, pumpkin pie from a pumpkin that was so creamily, custardily perfect I’m making another one tonight, and an apple pie. There was champagne and many cups of tea and good conversation and rain at night which cleared during the day, allowing for walks in the woods, sleeping out by the sea with the sound of the waves to lull us to sleep at 8:30 p.m. (when it gets dark at 5:30 there’s only so much reading you can do by flashlight), and foraging for mushrooms up the road. We read and meandered and I cooked a lot and it was as good and simple and right as I hoped it would be.

[Up the ridge trail, November 2011.]

Yesterday afternoon, before packing up to return to the city, we took the dog for a walk on a path that winds steeply up through a thick brush of greenery. Thought it hadn’t rained in a few days the Northern California coastal fog was omnipresent nearly every morning, blanketing the grass with water and making it seem as though inside the dim green forest things would never dry out again. My pants and hiking boots were soaked after just a few minutes and the muddy black lab who constantly bumped my shins in his mad dashing about after sticks ensured I would remain so for the duration. No matter; that’s why we lucky modern-era dwellers have washing machines, yes? Banana slugs carpeted the narrow trail and salamanders crept shyly alongside it (I say ‘shy’ because they are; pick one up and he will rest in your hand a moment before gravely and unobtrusively beginning his attempt to escape) and the air was full of birdsong and the good damp smells of the forest.

[Chanterelles, November 2011.]

This is the sort of environment that is perfect for mushrooms. And, consequently, mushroom picking.

I’ve never picked any before, though I’ve often meant to. It seems a science, or at least an all-day endeavour. I just read a story in the New Yorker about foraging, and how the truly diligent use dogs to sniff out truffles (my dog companion, though I love him dearly, is not one for doing what humans ask him to do) and spend hours tramping through field and wood. It’s enticing, romantic, and slightly dangerous; you definitely want to get the right sort, i.e. don’t confuse the ‘death’s cap’ mushroom with the benign morel or you’ll pay a terrible price.

In the spirit of honesty, I’ll tell you that my effort yesterday afternoon was more of the lazy-girl variety rather than that of the hard-core aficionado — when I wrote ‘foraging’ what I really meant was that I was told there were chanterelles growing nearby and so I went and picked ‘em. Not that I wouldn’t have been happy to further muddify my clothes — I rarely mind getting dirty –, it’s just that in this case it wasn’t necessary, time was waning, and anyway, who am I to turn down the prospect of hauling home a bunch of ‘wild’ fungus for the price of 10 minutes hunting around? So on the way back down the trail we stopped in the old horse corral, the dog dog firmly ensconced himself in the brackish pond (did I mention he is not very obedient?), and we scuffled through leaves and grass and pulled chanterelles.

A few things before I get to today’s recipe:

1. I’m spoiled. I live in what I consider to be one of the very best cities in the world, perched on the edge of the Pacific and run through with fog and sea breezes and accessible beaches from which you might see dolphins on an October weekday afternoon. We have delicious coffee stands on nearly every corner. Most of the buses are electric. People are terribly nice, if a bit flaky at times, and I could (and do) go on and on and on about the produce.

2 … and yet, I long for the woods, the out-of-doors, the more wild places. Leaving creates an almost physical ache; the woods and fields of the northern counties are where I feel most at home. I love the city, yes, but I am, I must admit, more of a country girl at heart.

(2b. I am making my peace with this for the moment.)

3. I like to cook with new-to-me ingredients.

4. I sincerely love all kinds of mushrooms.

5. Last night I was able to bring the woods into my little urban kitchen because of those chanterelles, and that to me is argument enough that I should go ‘foraging’ again.

[In the woods, November 2011.]

The Sunday after the Thanksgiving holiday is always a bit strange. If you still have leftovers from the feast you’re sick to the teeth of them and possibly are sick of eating in general. And yet, you need to eat for health and nourishment and perhaps even a few pangs of hunger, too. One year I created a quinoa, mushroom, and spinach chowder to counter the post-long weekend blues (and which served as a nice antidote to all the previous days’ slight over consumption).

Last night I made a pot of barley, white bean, and chard soup (with a salty, tomato-y broth) for our dinner and decided that mushrooms on toast would be the perfect accompaniment. Not being very familiar with chanterelles I didn’t know how they would taste — update: slightly floral, and very buttery and tender — but knew I should cook them very simply so we could really taste their flavor. So what I did was, I melted some butter in a frying pan, cleaned the mushrooms and sliced them not too thinly but thinly enough, and then gently fried the slices in the butter, adding a splash of white wine near the end. I toasted whole-grain bread and spread some slices with a bit of butter and some with a bit of brie and piled the mushrooms on top. I ladled bowls of soup and poured out two glasses of the white wine and we sat down to eat.

Silence. Then — wow, I can see why these things go for $16 a pound!

Now, I can’t condone spending that much money on what is, essentially, you know, fungus. But if you live near a place where you can go hunting for them yourself … or you come across a parcel that’s on sale … or know someone who might generously invite you over for a late lunch of a chanterelle-infused omelet … jump at the chance. And remember to cook them simply. Tonight I’m planning to lightly sautee the rest in some olive oil and toss them with whole wheat linguine, peas, red onion, lots of black pepper, and a cheddar-cream sauce (I’m out of parmesan, though that might go better) with more white wine. If I can’t have the woods outside my back door I can at least have a little of that feeling in my kitchen …

Mushrooms on toast you can make with any mushrooms, wild or not, self-obtained or from the grocery store — woods not required. Just be sure to cook them until they’re soft and melting, and invest in a good loaf of hearty bread to shore them up. Like beans on toast, I consider this the ultimate (and easy) comfort food, perfect for the in-between holiday lull.

       Print This!    

[San Francisco, September 2011.]

Currently, slowly consuming a piece of cake I baked for a coworker’s mumble mumble th birthday — chocolate cake filled with chocolate ganache and frosted with coffee buttercream. It’s delicious, and immediately after I finish it I will eat a plum to make up for all the butter. No photo because to be honest it wasn’t one of my prettiest cakes, although what it lacks in appearance (a bit scruffy this time, especially after withstanding a packed bus ride) it makes up for in taste. Eating it reminds me of another baking project looming on my horizon: a wedding cake. Specifically, mine.

I’m getting married in a few weeks. Have I mentioned that before? Probably … though I tend not to dwell on it too much, preferring instead to put my head down and plow through the (seeming) mountain of to-do’s. That was the point of all that blackberry jam I just finished off in my little apartment on Sunday, and I won’t bore you with the details of how much I obsessed over what kind of jars (Weck), how large (about 5 oz.), to attach ribbons or not (not), could/should I make my own labels or farm it out (farm it out; I have neither time nor patience for such things right now). Though I claim I’m ‘not really a wedding person’, an enormous amount of mental energy has gone into planning what essentially will be a 6-hour event, with a few others sprinkled there in before and after — but one thing, strangely, I haven’t obsessed about at all is the cake.

And why should I? I have tried-and-true recipes courtesy of Alice Waters; I’ve baked two wedding cakes (technically three, since I went overboard for my brother’s wedding and baked two) in the past year-and-a-half, one of which was done in said small apartment kitchen; I bake so regularly I feel like it’s my second job. I do worry slightly about transporting it an hour from the city into the country — but I’ve delegated that delicate task to my very reliable brother and sister-in-law and I’m sure it will be fine. Anyway, what’s a little dented cake between friends?

This is what I’m planning: 5 tiers in 6,8,9,10, and 12- inch layers. The nine-inch will be chocolate cake filled with chocolate ganache (for fun!); the rest will be the 1-2-3-4 yellow cake filled with alternating ribbons of homemade lemon curd and blackberry jam. All will be frosted with vanilla-laced butter cream.

Well I think it sounds nice …

I know it seems rather nuts to want to bake your own wedding cake, but I’m looking forward to it. So much so that the second thing I said after ‘OK!’ to my true love’s ‘will you please?’ was ‘I mean, YES, but can I make the cake?’ True story. Fortunately for me, as well as for my guests, he wisely agreed, knowing how I am.

(It’s nice to be known.)

It also probably seems rather nuts to make such a large amount of cake but! There is a reason for it. You see, I am a big fan of leftovers. Big fan. So I’ve procured some of those (recyclable, compostable) take-away boxes and will send pieces of cake home with whomever wants some as the night wanes. I’ll probably be sick of cake at that point and will be glad to foist it off on my unwitting guests (or witting; some coworkers have already logged requests for slice size). Thinking of that cake being enjoyed and savored in the days after the party — of my guests taking home little bits of my appreciation and love for them — makes me happy.

I can’t wait to get to baking (soon, soon).

Speaking of leftovers, I’ve been cooking and not photographing some pretty delicious dinners of late, including a smashing chard and heirloom tomato soup with white beans I made in less than 20 minutes last night after surviving the horror that is the Powell Street Sephora (served with cheddar cheese quesadillas). Luckily I do have leftovers of that so I may photograph it properly and share the recipe soon. Over the weekend I made pesto and greens beans and stirred it into whole wheat spaghetti, with corn on the cob on the side. Sunday night, after making and canning 23 jars of blackberry jam and sitting in the sun for a few hours, I was properly exhausted and didn’t feel much like cooking — so I made mashed potatoes with buttemilk and scrambled us up some eggs with feta, spinach, and tomatoes.

But the best leftovers, lately, involves a carrot soup I can’t stop making. It comes by way of Joy the Baker, and is a slight step outside of my comfort zone. I don’t tend to like carrot soup — carrots in soup, sure, but not straight up carrot soup. It always turns out too sweet for my taste. This recipe, calling for coconut milk, surely would follow that pattern — but then all that fresh ginger made me pause. I’m pressed for time these days and my cooking is in a slight fallow phase as I churn my way through weeknight stirfries and beans on toast and the like — and I’m trying to shake myself out of it. I decided, why not, to go for the carrot soup.

Plus — have you seen the produce at Bay Area farmers’ markets right now? If you haven’t, I’ll tell you: fat heirloom tomatoes literally bursting out at their seams, piles of gorgeous and tender corn, little sweet beets, carrots in great bundles, summer squash (!), chard … Needless to say, we’ve got it good. So I’m trying to cook from it and to get inspired by it — because despite the slight ‘decision fatigue’ I’m experiencing, if there’s one thing I never fail to get excited about it’s cooking. And I’m excited about this carrot soup. I added a lot of chopped garlic and a few small potatoes, upped the ginger, slipped in a pinch of chili powder, and called it a day. It turned out firey (but not too) and smokey and not-too-sweet — perfect for fall, and Indian Summer too.

Soon, free-bird time again. But until then, carrot soup.

       Print This!    

I wrote this post two years ago, and I’m re-posting today because whenever I sit down to write something about 9/11 I find I write the same things over and over again: It was a beautiful day in Washington; I remember that morning as if it were etched in glass; I couldn’t eat anything; Samer walked me home; the firehouse down the street hung the flag, for weeks, in mourning; the empty streets; we were so incredibly angry; we were so incredibly sad; it was the day everything changed forever. And so rather than repeat myself, I’d like to share what I was thinking about two years ago, and which is how I still feel — today, the tenth anniversary.

And I will never forget.

[Redwoods, Armstrong State Reserve, June 2008.]

Today, the day of days. How the sun shines on this western city as if we have been granted some sort of miraculous blessing and the sky — swept clear of clouds — is that bluest blue of almost-autumn. I am drinking a delicious americano with cream and clattering my spoon around a bowl of granola and yogurt. San Francisco this morning would break your heart and put it back together again it’s so beautiful.

One Tuesday in September, eight years ago today on a morning very much like this one, I woke up early — before the alarm even. I hopped in the shower and felt the cool breeze through the window: fall, in Washington DC, had come if only for that morning. I heard the phone ring but didn’t answer it (much later, I would pick up the message from my grandfather who had called from Jersey City just after 9 a.m.).

It was crisp and sunny — a peach of a day, an excuse in and of itself for sloughing off work and sitting outside, but I packed up my lunch and went to wait for the bus anyhow. A nice woman gave me her transfer and so I settled in with my free ride and a book and thought about my sweet little new apartment, the change of seasons, the sun. The bus went by the the White House and I looked up to see people standing on the sidewalks, heard a woman shouting something about planes crashing, and everything was changed utterly and forever.

Eight years ago on September 11, 2001 the world collapsed and turned in on itself and nothing has been the same since. Can it really be eight years? It’s hard to fathom sometimes — that life still bowls on at its usual pace and the sun rises and sets in its regular rhythm is both impossible and comforting.

Then, I lived in another city and lived another life. That bright Tuesday I came in to work to find the newsroom a frenzy of activity, the television shining like a beacon with its terrible images. Cameramen were rushing about and the phones were screaming; I went into the bathroom and locked myself in for a few moments, clasping my hands tight to stop their shaking. All day I couldn’t eat, could barely choke down the awful coffee we used to drink there. My friend walked with me through the deserted Washington downtown, miles up to Adams Morgan to another friend’s house where we made Annie’s macaroni and cheese, drank Sierra Nevada, and talked and talked, trying to make sense out of the nonsensical. Then I went home and cried as though there was no possible end to the tears. It was such a blank, awful night — the kind where, when you wake up the next morning, it feels like a terrible dream until you remember.

At first, time dragged. I marked every month. Each day was to be gotten-through. We walked around in a daze. Most meals I ate with my friends, when I could — simple things of pastas and roasted vegetables with green salad from the farmers market with lots of wine and talking — always talking — to try to sort out what had happened. What was still happening. We stayed up late and wondered and wished and made pots of soup. Fall turned into winter turned into spring turned into summer and then it was a whole year since and somehow we were still there, if a bit battered and heartsore.

Now, eight years on, the after-effects of that September linger but the pain has eased just the smallest bit. Life keeps going even in the face of such loss and anguish — and I am more grateful than I can ever express that it does. Perhaps this is the most fitting memorial to all we lost: that we can grab up the pieces and go on, that we can laugh at the silly sketches on SNL, that we can breathe deeply again, that we can fall in love, that the ocean crashes and burns along the jagged coast, that we wake in the morning with the ordinary-morning-feeling rather than filled with worry and dread — that life has returned to a sense of ‘normalcy.’ Back then I never, honestly, thought that it could.

Maybe the truest way to live in a world such as this one is to create hope every day and to hold on to love in all kinds of ways. It is not so difficult, really, only it can take some time — and how far we have come since eight, or even five, years ago. I believe fiercely there is beauty everywhere, including in the littlest of the little things — a perfect plum, a good run, a walk at the coast with an old friend, washing dishes with company, phone calls from a beloved sibling, a delicious heirloom tomato sauce — and true love and promise. The great gift I have been given is that I have learned to appreciate every day — even if painful, especially when joyous — for what it is: truth, freedom, the hope of peace. I know we are so very lucky be here at all.

Today, I am remembering. I am remembering life is so sweet and precious and must never be taken for granted. I want to scrape my plate clean, to lick up the last bits, to savor every drop, to find grace in each moment.

I promise I will always try.

(I will never forget you.)

Today is also a day for eating simple, nourishing things like roasted-vegetable soup and good bread or slow-roasted tomatoes with red onion turned into sauce to be draped over pasta. It’s simple, sweet, and wholly satisfying; if you have a bit of pesto in the fridge add it to your dinner, too. I made these in about an hour but if you have more time — and need the delicious smells of roasting vegetables to linger longer — turn the oven to 200 F and put in the pan for at least 2-3 hours.

Roasted Tomato Sauce, for quiet days

Olive oil
10 large roma tomatoes, halved lengthwise or 5 heirloom tomatoes, quartered, or a mix
1 red onion, coarsely chopped or sliced
oregano or basil

1 bay leaf

1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Arrange tomatoes and onion in a baking dish and douse well with olive oil and salt. Roast until tomatoes are tender and a little shriveled around the edges, stirring occasionally, about an hour.

2. In a pot, sautee the onion with garlic if you like, and add the tomatoes and 1/2 cup water and the bay leaf. Cook down over low heat until sauce is thick and the tomatoes and onion are melting, about 15 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste, and the oregano or basil. Remove bay leaf.

3. Serve very hot over fettucine or spaghetti, making sure to well-coat the pasta with the sauce, with lots of parmesan.

[At Green Gulch Farm, July 2011.]

A weekend of good eating and, as sometimes happens, not too many photographs taken. My sister-in-law Emily is in town, and thus we meandered and farmers marketed and drank drinks in West Marin and petted an orange-and-white cat at the farm and wished for the sun in Stinson (fog all the day-long) and yoga-d and drank iced coffees in the park and shopped a wee bit and ate dinner at Zuni Cafe (perhaps not the very best place for vegetarians, but c’est la vie) and went to bed early. A good weekend and a mellow and relaxing one to boot, even if the camera lay quiet. Perhaps sometimes it’s better that way? (Still, thank goodness for the iphone.)

[Pelican Inn drinks, July 2011.]

Emily, as I have mentioned probably many, many times by now, is a fantastic cook as well as a cooking instructor — which means that she knows all the tricks and tips (how to properly slice an onion, grow a kitchen garden, and can describe how to make pizza dough with great ease, etc., etc.) that go into preparing a good meal, and she also knows intrinsically what will taste right. She (and my brother) and I, I think, have a similar cooking aesthetic — we cook fairly straightforward food with good ingredients that is never boring (I hope!) despite its simplicity. And, we love to do it. She has already volunteered to bake a flourless chocolate cake for my wedding this fall — I must provide something for the gluten-free folk in attendance, you see, thus upping the cakes to three at this point — and we had a simultaneously giddy yet serious discussion about should it be one or two tiers, should it incorporate ganache, what recipe should be employed (probably the Julia Child one).

So cooking with Emily is a joy and an all-too-infrequent pleasure I do not take for granted. Perhaps this is was in the back of my mind when I took her to the Fillmore farmers market on Saturday morning? There, I first bought a gorgeous (perhaps second-most gorgeous I’ve ever seen) head of lettuce and some radishes from a youngish farm that’s started selling there — we would have salad soon, for sure. I congratulated the guy who sells the delicious fresh eggs on his recent graduation and thought about the next morning’s breakfast. By the time we made it to my usual farmer’s spot and were galvanized by the piles of beautiful corn on the cob, it was a foregone conclusion that we’d cook dinner together that night.

We made: corn, shaved off the cob, and sauteed with slivers of red onion, garlic, butter and salt and pepper (Emily); three tiny pale green summer squashlets sliced finely and simmered with lots of garlic and olive oil with chickpeas added near the end (me); roasted red and new potatoes (me); a large salad (Emily made the dressing, I did the greens); roasted heirloom tomatoes; with a slab of smoked salmon for the omnivores. We sipped glasses of red wine, our appetites sharpened by a ramble along some of the dirt paths near Muir Beach, and ate and ate — we were too full for the gluten-free brownies I’d baked, even.

And then, last night. Oh, last night. I love to cook for others, yes, and I love to cook with, and even more I love to be cooked for every so often, especially after a long day when the last thing you can bear to think about is what to make for dinner. Lucky, then, that Emily stayed another night in the city before departing for points south and further adventure. She treated us to a feast: corn enchiladas stuffed with roasted sweet potatoes and cheddar cheese and corn and topped with a homemade enchilada sauce, more market salad, brown rice, beans cooked down from scratch and then mashed into creamy perfection. I am eying my lunch as I type — glorious leftovers — and wondering how early is too early to eat it.

[Dinner, July 2011.]

Well, you get the general idea.

Summer these days is very grey and very green, at least in some parts, and so I suppose I must embrace the fog for the gifts it provides. I am crossing my fingers for sun, good news tomorrow, and that the vacation I desperately need will occur tout de suite.

And I’m crossing my fingers I’ll cook with Emily again very soon — next time, I will takes notes and tuck away the recipes for further exploration and sharing here.

ETA: She also made yummy and decadent vanilla baked custards. Spoiled. Utterly.

[Near the lighthouse, June 2011.]

Sunday was this really gorgeous day of sort of meandering about and doing all the things I like to do. I woke up (very) early. I read the Sunday Times. I baked blueberry muffins. I went for an 8-mile run. The sun came out. I drank a rather large coffee. I went ‘cross the bridge over to the Marin Headlands and walked around in the strangely humid afternoon and then went to Sausalito to catch some sun and was treated to an ice cream (!). I watched the end of the Giants game and drank a Full Sail Pale Ale. I ate roasted cauliflower for dinner and went to bed on the early side. I don’t know — it was just a day. But it was magic.

Also magic is this sun — San Franciscans, have you been outside? I want to eat up this afternoon with a spoon, preferably after I douse it with chocolate sauce. I am going to run and run later down through the park and along the ocean and back up again before the fog comes in because California in June, when it behaves itself, is nothing short of amazing. Then I will make veggie burgers with lots of avocado and cheddar cheese and baked potato and sweet potato fries for dinner.

For my lunch today I ate leftovers — leftovers I am stretching out for as long as I possibly can because they’re the best kind of leftovers: crunchy red quinoa coated with sharp-sweet pesto and swirled with lots of vegetables, whatever you have that’s good and green and fresh. It’s my new favorite thing and it’s so easy; you can eat it warm, as we did last night, or cool, as I did earlier. You can add more or less pesto as you like, skip the green beans or stir in an extra handful. This protein-rich, incredibly addictive two-pot meal I surely will make again and again — probably next in two days, when my current store has run out. I can’t help it.

I came up with this hodge-podge as I so often do when I’m staring down the fridge, starving and bored with the usual and wanting to use up the miscellany. This time I had basil (pesto, of course), a bit of spinach, some green beans, half a red onion on hand. My immediate thought was to make a pesto-pasta sort of thing but honestly, I only eat pasta about once a week because while it’s easy it doesn’t always satisfy me. Or rather — I’m obsessed with quinoa, as we all know, so my next thought was to make a pot of quinoa, toss it with homemade pesto, slow-cook the vegetables with some chickpeas, and hope for the best. Would it be odd? Maybe. Yet I had a feeling …

Bless that feeling — my intuition turned out to be right on. This has fast become a new summer(ish)(and yes, I am calling ‘summer’ in San Francisco ‘summer(ish)’ for the duration, given the mercurial weather here) staple. I can’t wait for the tomatoes to come in, because I’ll use them here later in the season, and I might just go crazy and throw in some chard, too. Quinoa, often called a ‘super food’ because of its high protein count, to me is super because it’s so versatile as well as being healthfully delicious and simple to make. I cook it probably twice a week or more in various permutations, and never tire of it. But you can read more about that here — in the meantime, quinoa + pesto = summer(ish) love. Also, dinner.

       Print This!    

[This morning, June 2011.]

Today, the urge for train journeys, and snow, and frozen lakes. June 10 and I am still in winter — wintered-over, perhaps, like a garden sleeping under the frost. But no: it is June 10, and I have tea on the table next to me, and the sun is rapidly burning the fog off the trees up the street, has burned it off, in fact. And suddenly it feels like summer (ish) after all and boy, I am ready. The wind is tossing around the branches of the trees outside; the kids at the daycare across the street are playing in the yard on their lunch break. I am baking the last of a batch of oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies and salivating over what I will have for dinner later: homemade macaroni and cheese, baked in the oven slow and sweet until the scent of it drives you almost mad.

I haven’t shared this recipe before, though I’ve certainly made it before, because it’s almost a crime how much cheese is in it. Yet it’s incredibly delicious, and me being me I put in vegetables, too, as if that will make it better. (That, and the addition of vegetables makes it taste extra good.) It comes by way of Martha Stewart, and while on the whole I tend to stick to lighter fare — such as a bowl of garlicky udon noodles, vegetable-laden soups, or quinoa in all sorts of permutations — I definitely appreciate decadence every so often.

This recipe makes an enormous batch of mac and cheese, which is good because it’s slated to go to a few friends who’ve just had a baby, an adorable scrap of a little man I first met when he was about a week old. He’s a little bigger now, but his parents are still hungry — so tomorrow I will bring this by, along with the cookies and a tupperware of potato-leek soup. This recipe makes so much, even, that we’ll tuck into a few bowls tonight (along with a massive salad, just so I feel a bit better about the mumble mumble two pounds or so of cheese that go into the sauce). This time around I’ve added a lot of wilted spinach and halved cherry tomatoes; I’ve also made this with sauteed mushrooms and onions, which is another nice addition. It’s comfort and comforting and filling and freezable and addictive — pretty much all you could ask for in those first few months of new-baby when you’re still wandering bleary-eyed through the days and marveling at this lovely new person who’s now living with you.

(Of course, I’ve also served this at a work lunch and they certainly had no complaints.)

So here goes — I’m posting this as-is, directly from the lady herself. I won’t be offended if you don’t want to make it; I was daunted at the amount of the cheese on the ingredients list the first time I came across it myself. Still, something about it tugged at me … and so I decided to try it anyway, despite my penchant for vegan meals … and I did not regret it for a minute. I doubt you will, either. (But make sure, maybe, to share.)

I recommend using sharpsharp cheddar here as well as Gruyere and parmesan or asiago cheese. I like the contrast that blend creates, and, well, extremely sharp cheddar is kind of my thing, so I’m a bit biased. Still. It’s darn good.

       Print This!    

[Forget-me-nots, April 2011.]

So it’s spring now, even if it doesn’t always feel like it every day due to rain in the forecast and the way that wind still blows something fierce. But — it is. The air feels a little lighter, the birdsongs are different (and there’s more background chatter), dark doesn’t fall until well after 7 p.m., and, at least in Northern California, the hills and fields are poised in that gorgeous, fleeting moment before the dry stillness of summer robs them of their green (and it is dry, man). I don’t grow vegetables — one day, I do hope — but if I did I’d be out everyday with my hands in the dirt planting a kitchen garden to feed me and mine for the rest of the season and beyond. And I’d plant flowers too, though I seem to love best the ones that land where they please, wild and scattered throughout the woods (the spring forest is cool, but by no means unpleasant).

[Lunch, Saturday, April 2011.]

This weekend I cooked a little, which for me constitutes a very fine weekend. I also ate very well, because I am a fortunate girl with generous friends. First, there was a cauliflower-ginger soup that tasted like I should have been eating it during a yoga retreat, or to break a fast — by this I mean it tasted of pure health, fresh and sharp. We ate it with thick slices of a whole wheat walnut loaf I picked from Acme, before the ferry, and good sharp cheddar. The next morning after coffee in town but before my run, I scrambled lots of fresh eggs (by way of Oakland) with some parmesan and dried oregano; that along with toasted homemade bread carried me through the miles to Arch Rock and back. After that, we sat on the deck in the sun and drank beer and ate bowls of savory, substantial minestrone soup from NY Times columnist Mark Bittman’s soup primer published in the magazine a few weeks ago. I also baked a banana bread, adding in a bit of cocoa powder because I couldn’t find any chocolate chips and really, I like my baked goods to at least contain a modicum of chocolate if at all possible.

I’d volunteered for dinner duty and after the afternoon cup of tea and snack I rummaged in the fridge to see what I could put together. Cooking at someone else’s house, no matter if I know it pretty well, is always a welcome challenge (even if I have to hunt for the loaf pan for 5 minutes). Cooking away from my own kitchen, where I know exactly what I have and where it is, forces me to work with exactly what I have, even if there’s not very much. But I swear some of my best, my most creative meals come from these experiences — I rarely use a recipe (even then, I’ll go ‘off book’) and just kind of cook by feel, if that makes sense.

That night I had: fettucine, about a half-head of cauliflower, lots of onions, some frozen spinach, frozen chicken breasts. Not a lot, but certainly not nothing. The chicken I decided to throw in the oven according to package directions, simply roasting it until tender. But just plain chicken? Even a vegetarian such as myself knew that wouldn’t do. So I made good use of all those onions and cut up about three into fine strips which I then sauteed in olive oil and white wine, simmering them until very melting and caramelized. I added a splash of lemon juice and half and half to create a smooth, creamy, onion-infused sauce to serve over the chicken.

The rest was easy: red onion and garlic sauteed with some more white wine, the cauliflower added in along with a chopped red bell pepper and cooked down until tender, spinach, a touch of cream, lots of freshly-ground pepper and dried herbs to finish. I tossed the vegetables with the noodles along with about a 1/4 cup of parmesan and a ladle or two of the pasta cooking water I’d reserved to help bind it all. I didn’t eat the chicken, of course, but I hear it was good — simple fare, and delicious. A throwaway meal, though I like to document it anyway.

But the banana bread and the soup I wish I’d had for lunch today instead of of my usual quinoa + assorted vegetables. Not that I don’t love my usual quinoa + assorted vegetables (and a squeeze of lime), but like I mentioned it’s spring, if a bit chilly, and soup and sweet bread to finish really is just the thing. Bittman’s a genius, and this soup attests to that; the banana bread is my tried-and-true, but with a few substitutions due to the lack of chocolate chips and my thought that whole wheat flour would probably be a good idea (it was). I even — shhh — spread a slice with butter to have with afternoon tea. It was perfection.

Soup and bread, spring flowers, an unexpectedly delicious sandwich eaten outside while looking west from Mt. Vision — this is the stuff dreams are made of, or at least my dreams. Happy spring, and all of that.

       Print This!    

       Print This!    

[In Golden Gate Park, March 2011.]

This past weekend I was in Phoenix where it was hot during the day but cool and dry at night, the stars fanned out across a clear sky sparkling like starfish. We drove through the desert, past cactus and Creosote bushes, to Sedona, where the red-rocked cliffs loomed large. It felt like summer: dry and hot and blazingly sunny with the deepest blue sky. Strange, then, to read about an earthquake in Japan that roiled the ocean into a massive wave of destruction; there were a few creeks and rivers in Arizona that we passed by but otherwise the landscape is dusty and empty of water.

Sometimes unfathomable things happen in the world — the earth heaves and groans and the oceans swell to unreasonable heights and wash away buildings, boats, people. And there is nothing for it other than to wonder; things are unexplainable but they are no less intense for our inability to comprehend them. All the while I was away this weekend one word tickled at the back of my mind: lucky lucky lucky to be so safe, so far away from danger. Such a small thing, really, but then again it is every thing.

I remember in 2005 after the terrible tsunami that ravaged much of Southern Asia I felt helpless, impotent. I wanted to donate money to the Red Cross and so I did, but I had so little; would it really make a difference? But I couldn’t do nothing. And so with my friends an idea began to form, in part inspired by the election fundraisers of the previous fall: a benefit party, with all proceeds donated to the Red Cross and earmarked for tsunami aid. About six of us pooled our resources and sent out many emails and came up with a simple menu. The day arrived and we cooked lots of pasta, made bowls of salad, opened many bottles of wine, slid pans of apple crisp into the oven, and hoped for a crowd.

All these years later, I’m still humbled and honored by the turnout — I think we drew over 30 people, and all came bearing cash and smiles and a hearty appetite. The meal may have been simple — spaghetti with pesto; penne with red sauce; garlic bread; green salad; baked fruit and ice cream — but the goal was clear: to help, even in some small way. And of course a way to appreciate the luck of our existence — as it often is — is through gathering together simply to be together, to be grateful for it.

Amazingly, life spins on — in Japan, in Southern Asia — despite everything. And we, the fortunate ones, can help and we can mourn and mostly we can keep going, no matter what. We can make soup, feel the sun shine down hot and heavy, look out over an immense valley bordered by mountains and hope only for this — peace and gentler days ahead, all throughout the world.

All weekend I did feel that yes, I am so lucky. I hope never to take it for granted.

* Tonight I’m going to prop my eyes open (4:15 wake-up this morn) as long as it takes to make this soup for dinner — I made it last week with farmers market potatoes and a bunch of lovely leeks; it’s not fancy, but it’s comforting, nourishing, and leaves me feeling exceedingly glad simply to be alive. As I chopped the garlic, I remembered I had gathered a few bay leaves on my last foray to Inverness and. I knew they would be exactly what this soup needed to transform it from mere week-night dinner to something much more enticing. This soup is still mellow and smooth — with all those potatoes, how could it not be? — but hints of water and trees. It is of and from the forest, which beckons with all its unexplored beauty and mystery.

(Of course, you may make it without bay leaves, and it will still taste hearty and delicious.)

       Print This!