[Breakfast, January 2012.]

The tide has turned a little: it rained in the night and I woke up intermittently to hear the screen rattling in the frame as the wind tried to push its way into the bedroom. I dreamed strange dreams of the ocean and a wide, flat lake and turned over and turned over and turned over again … We leave for vacation in four days and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t counting the hours, at least virtually. The rain, plus vacation soon, has semi put me back to rights this week, and I am grateful.

The weekend was spent in Sebastopol, which felt like a vacation of sorts even though I worked a bit (cooking and photographing for an article, plus an enormous pot of cauliflower-leek soup). Saturday especially: for a warm, lazy, almost-hour we drank americanos at Hardcore Espresso and listened to funky Greek (I think) music and people and dog-watched and stretched out and felt the sun good and strong on bare arms. Then a swim and lunch at Gypsy Cafe, the replacement for the old Pine Cone diner and to which I was initially resistant because I like tradition and Main Street has changed so much as it is. But I’ve come around. It’s good. My first visit there I had a plate of sauteed chard, roasted tomatoes, poached eggs and toast, and this time we each had burgers (veggie for me) and sweet potato fries and I stole illicit sips of my husband’s beer when he wasn’t paying attention. Then a cinnamon cookie from next door, and a cup of coffee I didn’t really drink. REI, futiley, for a swimsuit. Another swim on Sunday afternoon.

I am pushing through the week. A yoga class tonight, hopefully, and chocolate cake for a mid-morning snack. I brought my lunch to work, which is leftovers – polenta with stir-fried red cabbage, onion, garlic and white beans – but of course all I want it something else though that want is non-specific. Maybe a bowl of fried brown rice? With cheddar?

In Maine we talked a lot about cooking, specifically finding motivation other than appetite to cook dinners night after night (and we all like to cook). They have it worse than me because they get up so much earlier – 5 a.m. a lot of the mornings – that by 5 p.m. sleepiness has settled in for the long haul and the thought of making dinner is probably the last thing they want to deal with. Except they do, of course, as most of us must no matter what time we get up, and so we discussed ways to circumvent the boredom of repetition (me: how much quinoa can I really consume in during the course of one week?) and also not spend three hours making a meal. Things like crockpots are employed to make beans from scratch (I am tempted, and still have some post-wedding Sur la Table gift certificates to use) or soup, a big pot of rice can be used in various ways throughout the week, sometimes beans on toast is just fine.

One thing they cook a lot of it is vegetable fried rice, because if you have leftover rice you can make it into another dinner. In fact, you might specifically cook a lot of rice so as to have leftovers for future meals. I am more the brown rice risotto type but one morning I woke up and as I brewed my cup of tea I decided to try it out for breakfast, though without vegetables because it was 9 o’clock and I wasn’t quite ready for the daily influx of greens. So I heated some olive oil in a frying pan, cracked in an egg and scrambled-cooked it, then added some leftover short grain brown rice and grated sharp cheddar cheese and black pepper and cooked it until the rice was warm and the cheese was melted. It hit the spot. I am now hooked.

Next time I plan to add whatever vegetables I have around to the mix: I probably will start with a chopped red or yellow onion, maybe some garlic, peas, spinach, a red pepper? The key I think is to scramble the eggs very lightly first, or at least to start them so when you add the rice the eggs are already cooked a bit; to add egg to rice coats the rice and is gloppy and sort of gross (in my opinion). You want those eggy scrambled bits to commingle with the rice (brown for me, and not basmati I don’t think). A garnish of scallions I bet would be delicious, and using Parmesan cheese too or instead of cheddar (I do sincerely love cheddar), and if you’re feeling decadent starting off with butter instead of olive oil would be nice. And make as many eggs as you’re hungry for – dinner may call for 2 per person. Plus if you switch up the vegetables incorporated each time it makes a nearly-new dish.

Today is grey and dreary but I can’t say I mind the rain for once; it’s possible a person can get tired of sun day after day. At least, we tire of repetition. Which is to say that the addition of fried brown rice to my dinner repertoire, while indeed a slight repetition of sorts, will serve as a welcome change to the polenta, the quinoa stew, the roasted sweet potatoes with black beans, the grinding task of coming up with something nourishing + wholesome + healthy + delicious every night. Not that I don’t love to cook. But you know …

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[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.

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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.

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[Vegan flourless peanut butter cookies, December 2011.]

Oh, I mean to write about these cookies before Christmas. They were set to be offered up as a beautiful alternative (or addition?) to the holiday cookie bundle: to dip delicately in a cup of tea sipped before the fire, to give away to best beloveds (or new friends), to munch upon whilst decorating the tree. And then … well, the days whisked by in a flash. I barely was able to give the kitchen a quick scrub before hauling these cookies, assorted edible gifts (roasted hazelnuts, smoked salmon from my guy at the farmers market), library books, extraneous pairs of shoes, and myself up to Sonoma County via the commuter bus on Christmas Eve eve. There was no time to sit down and write out a recipe, alas.

Which is not to say these are not killer cookies, or that you shouldn’t make them now in these baby days of the year. You should. And perhaps right now is after all the better time — we are rubbing the gritty remnants of 2011 from our eyes and gazing out at the new year full of hopes and plans (and some expectations too, no doubt). We need fortification for such dreams and imaginings, yes?

[Wildcat, November 2011.]

The day after Thanksgiving I went camping — backpacking, actually, if I am being specific. Which means you pack up a fairly large pack with warm clothes and food and fuel (and if you’re me a too-heavy book) and set out into the wilderness (or, ‘wilderness’ depending). It was just an overnight this time into the Point Reyes Seashore, and we ate very simply (the ‘chili mac’, a.k.a. Annie’s macaroni and cheese + a can of vegetarian chili a la Kurt and Emily), but it was magic to be out in the cool, clear dark. The fog was socked in when we got to the campground — we saw deer on the trail down shrouded in ghostly mist as they nibbled their dinners — but at some point I woke up in the night to see the stars stark and bright against the blackness. Oh for a night unmarred by streetlights! It was quiet except for the constant low roar of the ocean. Orion, I whispered, and squinted to see the Big Dipper, too. I am hopeless at constellations but these are the ones I can remember.

I hadn’t been out to Wildcat in a few years, but it remains one of my favorites as it has been from the beginning. It’s only six miles in or so, but it feels vastly removed. The very first time we went backpacking was out there, my brother and I, with a family friend who threw some hot-dogs and granola bars into our packs and forgot the stove. We ate them semi-raw for dinner (even in those pre vegetarian days I was slightly squeamish about meat) and drank tea that had been brewed over a driftwood fire and was overly sweet and littered with ash (still I think the best cup of tea I’ve ever drunk). The ocean thrummed on in its ceaseless way and we slept out without a tent, waking to skunks trawling the tall grass nearby in the morning. There wasn’t a car in sight. It was good enough that we fell in love on the spot and kept coming back and back again and then went to new places (Yosemite, Sheandoah, Maine). Backpacking = love.

But, there’s something special about your old familiar. That day in November we walked the trail from Bear Valley, hiking steadily along the miles we often run through in half the time, peeling off to the left just before Arch Rock and climbing up through the forest. Hardly anyone was about. We sweated and talked companionably, our conversation peppered with ‘do you remembers’, for the first time I’d ever walked that trail, at 14, was also with my old friend, now my husband. Don’t you remember how you forgot the stove? I asked, though he claims he doesn’t (and in fairness perhaps it wasn’t the stove but the fuel that was left behind to which I still must respond SAME DIFFERENCE REALLY). We’ve hiked and backpacked together that once and then twice — this summer in Yosemite — but this trip felt like a sort of full-circle thing. The first time we went out there together we were friends (and so young) with no inkling of what might come. The second time together on that beach we were married (but still friends), with 100+ jars of blackberry jam behind us as well as not a few life experiences. Suddenly (or not-so) what was old became new again.

If that makes sense.

So, these peanut butter cookies? I feel like they’re another example of something old that’s new again. We’ve all eaten pb cookies (maybe with j, maybe with chocolate?) so many times before no doubt; they’re nothing special. And yet … isn’t there something to be said for the tried-and-true familiar? Well, I will say it: there is. Especially when updated just a smidge.

I made these cookies first off because I was sending a massive box of goodies to the East Coast for my brother and sis-in-law, and needed to make them gluten-free. I’d sent Emily a batch of gluten-free ginger cookies around Thanksgiving, and while she loved them I wanted to do something else this time around. I made a lot of funny-looking flourless chocolate cake bites (which turned out more cookie than cake, unfortunately), some dried fruit-nut-chocolate candies, and flourless peanut butter cookies that were so good I had to hide them from my old-new-again husband. Then, because I was infected with some kind of baking mania, I made another batch — this time vegan, for my dad.

Vegan flourless peanut butter cookies? Don’t cringe. I think they might be better than any other version I’ve ever made (and I’ve made quite a few, with good results). Leaving out the flour makes the cookies crisp and light, yet there’s still heft here, and a bit of sweetness, a bit of salt. There’s peanut butter. The dough comes together so easily and quickly, too — unfussy. Straightforward. They are the same but different.

Today, January 6, it’s hard to imagine the trail ahead. What soups will I make this year? Will my enduring cauliflower obsession serve to well feed or rather bore me? What kinds of jam will I can this summer? Will the economy resuscitate itself? Will it rain in California this winter? Will I ever run again?

The same-old same-old, but viewed through the lens of 2012 which, yes, is new. There are more camping trips to to plan, more cookies to bake. Let’s go.

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[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.

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I woke up from strange (seriously, strange) dreams to the sound of pouring rain, but miraculously the sun came out and is now shining so strongly I had to close the blinds. I am working from home so in the early-morning gloom I was particularly happy to remember the loaf of delicious Acme whole wheat walnut bread I’d picked up yesterday at the Ferry Building. (To eat with homemade blackberry jam, of course.)

So I made tea and toast for breakfast (I may have also had it for lunch) and left my pajamas on for awhile.

Then I carefully placed a flourless chocolate cake (or, a ‘Gateaux Victoire’) in its water bath to bake for a dinner party tomorrow night.

(Here it is post-oven.)

And I popped popcorn for caramel corn for my sweetie, because he likes it and because why not? I haven’t really cooked in a sort of leisurely way in a long time — and I even, gasp, pulled out my real camera, which felt very, very good — and Fridays are nice days for doing that in between all the editing. It was a bit of a massive work-week, and so I’m gently sliding into the weekend with some sun, some cake, and some more tea. There are two full days coming up to relax and enjoy.

The holidays loom. To ease the bite — or as an edible gift — consider making from-scratch caramel corn. It’s pretty simple, tastes better than anything you can buy, and is sure to please. It could even provide Thanksgiving-cooking sustenance if you can turn your thoughts there already. I’m trying to; the only thing I’m sure of right now is that I’ll be baking sweet potato biscuits and making cauliflower soup. But after all, there’s still a few more weeks …

For now:

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[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.

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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.

[Blackberries, Sebastopol, September 2011.]

This past week or so has involved lots of blackberries. Loads. Some I didn’t pick and many I did, and I still have the scratches to prove it. There were also huckleberries, which are more time-consuming to gather but less prickly, as well as three chickens roasted by me, but I will save the diatribe about the vegetarian cooking meat yet again for another time. Let’s just say I am much less squeamish about it than I used to be and am reminded again that nights when I get to cook good, healthy, happy-making food for others are the best nights, whether or not I actually eat all of the food I make. (Also, I now have a really delicious — I heard — and reliable recipe for a roasted chicken.)

Anyway, hello. It’s September. (It’s September???) It’s September, absolutely. And despite a 5:45 a.m. wake-up this morning, despite a terribly long, terribly foggy bus ride in from Sonoma County, the sun is shining in San Francisco today, I have had a deliciously strong Blue Bottle coffee from Jackson Place Cafe, and I think/hope I will be able to get through the rest of the day in one piece so that I can go home, bake chocolate cupcakes, and fling myself onto the couch to watch the Giants game before crawling into bed early.

Oh, lovely bed …

September means apples and blackberries — to pick, to eat, to jam or sauce, to bake with, to can. There are currently 100 or so tiny apples from the tree stored in my parents’ extra fridge (as an aside, I was glad to see this story in last week’s New York Times, the one I’ve been wanting to write for years, about the plight of the Gravensteins in my beloved home town) to be incorporated into a major event next month, and 80 small jars of blackberry jam neatly stacked in a closet in Inverness. I have about 20 more to go but I also think I have enough berries to manage it. I guess you could say I’m feeling good about the blackberries. (And the apples, but in the interest of the sanity I’m skipping the applesauce-making for now.)

Blackberry picking can seem daunting initially — the thorny vines, the hunting for fully ripe berries, the balancing on tiptoes to grab as many as you can — but it’s also somewhat meditative. It’s repetitive work, but because it’s not my everyday job (which is also repetitive) it doesn’t get too boring; because I’ve chosen to undertake the task it’s more fun than excruciating, which might be the word I’d use to describe it if I relied on berry-picking to pay my rent. Funny how that works. However, I will note that I will never complain at paying x for a basket of berries at the farmers’ market ever again. There’s a lot of time that goes into those pretty displays of fruit.

Out here in Northern California, the summer of 2011, we picked along the coast in Bolinas (foggy) and made friends with the horses at the farm there; we picked along the Inverness ridge (hot); we picked along the bike trail in Sebastopol late on a Sunday afternoon (sunny and just cool enough). We picked with adults and we picked with kids and I’ll go out on a limb here to profess that I think mostly everyone had a good time (the key is to quit before you get too tired/distracted). I estimate we picked about 20 pounds of blackberries in total, though as I am awful about measuring and also about being precise with recipes it’s difficult to say for sure. But — there were a lot of berries that went into the freezer. A lot.

Later, I turned all those berries into jam — masses of it. Me being me, I fretted over how well it was setting or if I’d have enough or if cutting down on the sugar was a good idea or if the mess all those berries made whilst they were cooking down was worth it. But I forged on anyhow — I poured and sealed and processed and tried to let the worry go. (To address the fretting: it set great once it cooled, cutting down on the sugar was a fantastic idea, and messes can be cleaned with just a little bit of extra effort.) I may be slightly crazy, but looking at my jars of jam marshaled into gleaming rows gives me an incredible sense of accomplishment, even if most (all) will be given away. Much like cooking meat, it’s about the doing of it rather than the actual eating of it that makes me happy.

[Breakfast, September 2011.]

Still — and I must honest even if it’s a bit of a brag — that jam tastes darned good, especially on toasted challah bread smeared with a little butter and alongside a 12 oz., double-shot americano from Hardcore Espresso (my new drink, dontcha know);.

[In Sebastopol, September 2011.]

One month ago we were in Yosemite — one month! It’s hard to fathom. I barely caught my breath before going on to the next thing but such is life. I am fortunate mine is made up of so many cooking projects (I cooked not a few good meals during the last week, as well as baked a gorgeous loaf of banana-cocoa bread among other things in addition to all that jam) and walks through the fields and swims in the pool downtown and good company around the table. The little things, of course, but as I’ve mentioned too many times to count, the little things are the ones that last. But they’re also fleeting — just like blackberries. You’ve got to catch hold of them while you can.

Things to do with blackberries:

Eat with Greek yogurt!
Turn into a vegan crumble
Fold into lemon cake
Incorporate into a summer fruit cobbler
Or

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**Canning/preserving instructions are available widely and will be further detailed by me at a later date … but if you choose to preserve the jam, it’s not that difficult (truly).

[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.