An early spring story

Blurry specks of black against a gently rolling white backdrop outside. The lampshade to the light of the window. My arm reaching towards my face. The first contrasts my eyes make out. The sturdy stillness of white pine silhouettes, cut off squarely by the upper boundary of my bedroom window.  As I lay in bed, I look out through the glass at pre-dawn. It is black, shapes barely discernible in the light of the moon. Pinching beams and rubbing floorboards, this old house shutters at ill-mannered old man winter. My face is cold. The dog shifts his stare towards me from the heel of the bed.  It is a drowsy look of apathy, simply an eye-brow raise at the movement of my head on the pillow, the curling of my toes under the quilt. My thoughts transition sluggishly, as gears shifting slowly by the cold engine of a truck.

I rock out of bed, bare feet meet the wood floor, flick on the lamp light so harsh. Throw a small blanket around these shoulders, sturdy quilted cloth to this aching back, and I open the door out of this room that holds me well as a lover on a cold night. Strike a match by the wood stove, light the kindling so neatly piled and prepared in a state of fastidiousness that could only be brought on by a thoughtful glass of bourbon the night before. At that quick familiar growth of the fire, without a thought I place one hand near to warm, and I stack on a piece of bone dry wood with the other.

Growing light. Through my kitchen window, at two feet by two feet, rays reach between the trunks of fur trees. A bright arm extending, here, and then there, moving slowly upward, westward, as the hour ticks by.

My movements in the morning are near automatic. It is only after a few hours with my waking mind that my thoughts begin to put my actions into moments of filibuster. Stalls brought on by maybe too much consideration. But in the morning only pure movement; I move, I stoke, I pull on shirts, I put on pants, I clasp buttons, I boil, I turn appliance knobs.

The kettle on the stove. Steam roils followed by its whistling afterthought, which I catch before the fussing becomes so urgent. In the heavy pan goes the grease, flour, a touch of milk. Poured over the meat and salted. I turn off the gas, I pull the foot stool close to the wood stove, and shovel down the meat and gravy. The dog sits by.

There is a sort of quiet urgency to my day. The sun block on the floor hastens my drowsy morning ritual and I take my coat off the hook on the wall

...

What a good meal means to me

    

 

My friend, Gabi, in Arcata, California, teaching me how to make crepes on a stop at a friend's house during our bike trip.

   There is comfort for an introvert in coming home after a long day to a quiet kitchen. Most evenings I arrive back at my empty home while my roommate is still at work, I let the dogs tumble into the kitchen from her bedroom, and I mindlessly open the refrigerator and start pulling out produce and piling it onto the counter. I fill up a sauce pan with water. I choose a grain from a selection of grains in the pantry. I begin chopping meats, vegetables, boiling, sauteeing. There are familiar sputters of oil in the pan, and a hiss when the greens hit the heated metal and liquid. I pivet silently between the cutting board, the stove, and the sink. The radio plays in the background as an illusion of companionship. This is my true comfort at the end of the day. There is no one in sight to answer to, no one around to whom I have to defend this sad, boring concoction of a meal. Soon I will be eating, then I will feel full, then I will do my dishes and eventually mosey on to my futon mattress on the floor with a book and I will quickly and easily fall asleep.

   Day after most days, repeat this weeknight routine. It is comfortable, it is routine, and I adore this lonesome tradition all too much sometimes.

  Now let's talk about true friends. I don't believe everyone shares the same definition. You'll always be reading these quotes in odd places on the internet about what a true friend should do and what a true friend means. If I've learned anything in 26 years it has been that even though us humans have common threads in sharing the same species classification, we have varying social preferences and varying levels of dependency on others. Different folks need different things from the people in their lives. For me a true friend is someone who calls me out of the dark. Someone who will call more than once to try to get a dinner planned with me. A true friend is someone who fills up my comfortable quiet evening with chatter and laughter and claims their own workspace in my kitchen.

  Yesterday afternoon I came home from a race, and I was feeling good stretching out on my living room floor like a cat in the sunlight, enjoying being alone and acting like a weirdo. Gabi called me. She said she had a new cookbook and did I want to cook something out of it? And I told her I would wait to go to the grocery store until she arrived.

 Late afternoon Gabi arrived and we sat on the uncomfortable stools in my kitchen leafing through beautiful pictures and recipes from Jerusalem, a host of delicious-looking formulas for meals that I'd never heard of and fell in love with immediately.

  A trip to the grocery store. Gabi and I can't seem to navigate smoothly through Whole Foods in Sugar House. Where the hell is the tahini? Ohhh SEAWEED. You must see this seaweed recipe I cooked up the other night. Ice cream or gelato? Oh, wow, toasted almond gelato. Wait, we're doing this in the wrong order. We should grab the ice cream after we search for a pie pan. It is more fun to go grocery shopping with a friend, but it takes approximately 4 times longer than it would take me on my own. Wine store. Another grocery store to retrieve a forgotten item on the grocery list because we got distracted reminiscing over our bike tour down the Pacific Coast.

  Soon Gabi and I are cooking in my kitchen. I appoint myself her sous chef, so I get the spices prepared for the cardamom rice chicken, and julienne the chard for the greens with tahini yogurt and pine nights dish. We talk between measuring out amounts of oil, reading the cookbook, and transferring food from cutting boards to pans. Warm smells diffuse throughout the rest of the house, and as I go to open the living room window I notice the aroma of cloves, paprika and garlic. It occurs to me that this friend is breathing new life into my house and I smile cornily as I prop open the window with a bike multi tool.

  Soon Mel comes over, too. My roommate is home and preparing to go out for the night. The dogs are running laps around the perimeter of the house. The sounds of all kinds of voices, sometimes talking over one another. The food is turning out, being plated, and a pie is baking in the oven. We eat after nearly 3 hours of planning and preparation. We talk about how delicious this is. We state it over and over again, as if we're having an epiphany with every bite and amnesia over the previous bite.

   And even though we're full, we pull a bubbling golden berry pie out of the even and eat a couple pieces each with cool ice cream. The evening slows. The spoons scrape up the last of the ice cream. I try to keep Gabi around talking to me even though we're both tired, but then I let my friend go eventually. My house is suddenly quiet again but I feel different than I do most nights of the week. I feel a little friendlier inside.

   That's what a good meal means to me.




 

  

    

Potato and brussel sprout skillet cakes

We have entered a new era of the kitchen and the bicycle. I got inspired a few days ago to shift the main focus of this blog away from cooking other people's recipes to cooking my own. That's not to say I still won't cook other people's recipes, but I'm hoping to write about my own creations a bit more. Some of the recipes will probably be flops. But, failure or success, I'd like to document the trials and errors of my growth as a self-taught cook and baker. So, bare with me in this haphazard journey. I figure if the worst happens and I realize I have no natural abilities to create good recipes, it'll at least be interesting, and it will definitely be funny. I'm unemployed, give me a break.Whatever, you know. It's just life.

Before diving into food talk, I'd like to address the "bicycle" portion of this blog, as I feel its involvement in my life has become a little unclear. This is Greg Orangey looking fly:

Roasted winter squash bruschetta with carmelized onions, Thank you, Mark Bittman

Here is a post to say thank you to Mark Bittman, who I will always think of as The Minimalist, of the New York Times. Mark Bittman doesn't appear to be doing The Minimalist series anymore (or, at least, I haven't seen it in awhile), which is sad, but fine. At least he hasn't fallen off the map completely. He has been posting videos in a How To Cook Everything series, which seems like the logical next step after minimalist cooking.

Mark, I've grown with you. When I was in college, you made me believe that I could create something so much better, but just as easy as, spaghetti and marinara sauce from a jar (I think that is the only thing I "cooked" in college). And then I started cooking easy, quality recipes from scratch. And now that I have done my fair share of single-digit ingredient cooking, we will move onto cooking EVERYTHING. (Though, this recipe is pretty minimalist, too, I suppose...)

Mark, I wanted to say: we could conquer the world.

Just kidding, Mark. I'm honestly pretty lame compared to you. We aren't an even match at all.

Anyway, here is what I cooked up today, under the video guidance of Mark Bittman and chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

Herby Pumpkin Ravioli

A few days ago the weather came in. Foot upon foot of wintry fluff. Weighty and slowing of everything buried beneath it. There are a lot of people in this city who are motivated by the snow, who want to immediately envelop themselves in it. And though I consider myself a winter outdoorswoman as well, I have to admit that when the snow comes, I see it and immediately want to surrender. As in, it snowed, so I guess I'll throw on a second kettle for another french press, it seems like a reading indoors kind of day. It usually takes other people to motivate me to go outside, but whenever that happens I'm always happier in the end. When it snowed, Heidi, my housemate, dragged me out in it for a hike with the promise of a big homecooked meal at the end of the day. It often takes a little cajoling with me.

But isn't it lovely?

Neff's Canyon, Salt Lake City, UT.

10 cheesecakes for a wedding day

It has taken me a little while to post about the great cheesecake-making marathon that took place two days before my sister, Natalie's, wedding. September 22 was the wedding day, I had the best of intentions to blog about it, and we're now in November. But, better late than never. Here is the story. 

I finished out the fire season with steady work nearly all the way up to the time I got on the airplane to head back to Virginia. I put my last load of smokey-smelling, ash-covered nomex into the washer 9pm the night before I left. The next morning I checked a bag full of piping bags, an icing spatula, and various springform pans in with United airlines. The transition was odd, to say the very least... and awesome.

My sister, Chrystie, picked me up at Dulles airport, late on a Wednesday evening, she brought me back to her lovely new house, and she, her husband, Scott, and I chatted just a bit before going to bed. The next morning Chrystie woke me up to take me to the grocery store before she headed off for work so I could spend all day in her kitchen making the wedding cheesecakes.

Lemon Rosemary Scones for a friend

I love the rain and gloomier side of fall. It definitely makes an introvert out of me, as I tend to spend more time indoors reading and doing yoga, drinking tea and baking biscuits. The good news is that biscuits, especially sweet ones (this is how I always think of scones, in my own head), are meant to be shared with friends and family. Thus, I am forced out of the house for baked-goods deliveries.

Rosemary lemon scones. Inspired by the Rose Establishment's rosemary scone, with lemon flair to welcome winter citrus full on. I know we haven't even gotten through apple season yet and I'm jumping the gun but I had an abundance of lemons and it sounded like a nice combination.