Standing on
the platform
on a fiercely
cold and brilliantly
sunny February day
with his back to the
track, not watching
for the next train,
the commuter
tilts his chin up
to the sky, eyes
closed, dreaming of
the summer
that will come,
someday.
In two of the excellent meals we had in San Francisco last week, I ordered an avocado/citrus salad.
At Gialina, it was "blood orange & avocado salad with farro, fennel & goat gouda". [Gialina is low key and serves phenomenally fabulous pizza with a magical perfect crust.] A few days later, it was "california avocado salad with fennel, celery, citrus vinaigrette", at the Presidio Social Club. [PSC is a nostalgic throwback, like an upscale yacht club with great food and a daily Manhattan.] I loved both salads. The avocado provided lushness, the citrus made them sparkle.
Then, driving down the Pacific Coast Highway to Santa Cruz, we found a guy selling fruit out of the back of a truck in a bug out overlooking the ocean. He had boxes of tiny, jewel-toned avocados, each about the size of a kiwi and five for a dollar. Twenty cents for an avocado! I bought five even though I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them, and we were flying back to New York at the crack of dawn the next day.
Yes, reader, those avocados came home with me. A few days on the kitchen counter and they ripened up to a nice black. And I diced them, and added celery and clementines (alas, from Morocco, not California), and a splash of oil and vinegar, and yes. It's a great salad.
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| We had lunch at Bacon Bacon. They have a mechanical ride-on pig. Everything has bacon in or on it. |
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| The child went in the sea. Air temperature was great; ocean only good for crazy people and 11 year olds. |
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| We had ice cream for breakfast, Secret Breakfast from Humphry Slocombe, because duh, cornflakes. |
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| We, of course, rode the cable cars and hung off the sides. |
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| I spotted a pair of large beige underpants in a window. |
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| We went to the top of the Coit Tower, where you could see for miles. And the sky was blue. |
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| The citrus available at the farmers markets was astonishingly good and varied. |
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| This little angel lived at the entrance to a Sausalito houseboat. |
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| This pig decorated another Sausalito houseboat. One of the houseboats was for sale, for a mere $799K. |
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| Fort Cronkhite. Another place where we went to the beach. In February in Northern California. |
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| I do like a ruin. This is part of a gun emplacement in the Marin Headlands. |
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| Mandatory photo of iconic International Orange bridge, which we crossed a number of times. |
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| The National Cemetery is - as they all are - moving. At the gates to the rear entrance is engraved Archibald MacLeish's poem The Young Dead Soldiers. |
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| In Golden Gate Park, there are casting pools. And an angler's lodge - complete with a stained glass fly. An elegant older man told us all about the casting pools - and then climbed in and demonstrated, beautifully. |
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| There were flowers blooming every where. In February. |
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| We stumbled upon this astonishing building. It was a warehouse, supplying goods like mops and toilet paper to ships departing the Kaiser Shipyards for WWII. |
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| We took the ferry to Alcatraz, where we took many many pictures of rusted metal, crazed paint, and crumbling cement. |
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| And we got to see (most of) the Ai Weiwei exhibit. |
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| Ai Weiwei rendered Edward Snowden (and 175 other prisoners) in LEGO bricks. |
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| The Exploratorium is amazing. This picture sort of looks like a roiling wine glass - but it's about three feet in diameter and demonstrates fluid dynamics. I took almost no pictures there because we were having way too much fun. |
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| One day, we rented a convertible to drive down to just south of Santa Cruz, to visit one of my aunts. We took the Pacific Coast Highway down, and Skyline Ridge back. It was a glorious day. |
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| And we ate really well, because San Francisco is a great restaurant & farmers market town. The high point was a lovely meal in the cafe at Chez Panisse, with a formerly imaginary friend and her husband. And no, I didn't steal one of the water glasses. |
The (young) woman next to me on the train is putting on make up and watching "I Love Lucy".
Meanwhile, I am reading the New York Times, cover to cover, as I am wont to do. Actually that's not quite true; the sports section rarely makes it past the recycling bin on the way into the house.
I love reading Margalit Fox's obituaries in the Times. A couple of days ago brought a lovely one for cruciverbalist Bernice Gordon. It was illustrated by a delicious photo of Mrs. Gordon, in front of a sea of colorful dictionaries, wearing a red shirt, vermilion nail polish, and fuchsia lipstick. Best might be the reveal that Gordon once did a set of commissioned puzzles for Xaviera Hollander, blue clues and all. Today's gem: Fox calls "Harry The Dirty Dog" a "cautionary ablutionary tale".
Elsewhere in the Times, I gasped at a heretofore new to me plural of a compound noun: culs-de-sac. That was in an article about merchandising tie-ins for the coming movie release of Fifty Shades of Grey. I was not one of "the female readers who passed the book around their suburban culs-de-sac" but I did read the article, bemused at the idea of Target selling vibrating love rings. Where would you look for such a thing? Next to the book? Near the condoms? Alongside the toothpaste?
Back to that plural: is culs-de-sac really the right plural? Cul-de-sac translates as bottom of the sack - which is the more important part? When you make a whole bunch of that certain summery drink, you make gins and tonic - gin being the important substance. In a group of Attorneys General, they are lawyers first, "generals" second. Isn't the sack the more important part, the head? After all, the "sack" is the whole of the dead-end road, and the "bottom" is the end where you have to turn around. I dunno. I was intrigued to find it in the first place.
It's been a rich full day, and it's not even noon.
Most of time, I riff in the kitchen. I read cookbooks in bed, and I’m all over the Times food section, and I love Smitten Kitchen, but when it comes right down to it, I rarely make a recipe as printed.
Not long ago, a friend posted something on Facebook, wondering if she could substitute farro for barley in a hamburger soup that she was making. I looked at her recipe and thought, eh, not hamburger, how about sausage? But other than using less of a different meat, and adding a piece of parmesan rind, I pretty much followed the recipe, and wow – it was really good. That little bit of barley gives the soup a certain unctuousness. There’s so little meat in it that the meat becomes more like a condiment, but the little chunks you pick up are delicious. And, parmesan rinds are a wee bit of magic – turning trash into goodness. Keep them in a bag in the freezer, and throw one into a soup. Like this one:
On a southbound MetroNorth train:
Fifteen minutes to
Grand Central and you stand up.
First guy off train wins?
Her long fingernails
Click on the MacBook keyboard.
That typing is loud.
Young man and red cord
Stealing power underground.
Google search can't wait.
As I make my way
downtown, inexorably,
The haikus gush forth.
I am only just now deChristmasing. I should have done it the weekend after New Year's but we had a big party and I had to make 18 quarts of chili and Mary Berry's cherry cake. I could have done it last weekend, but I had to go spend the night elsewhere so we could play Cards Against Humanity with old friends and relatives. So here I am, a Tuesday night, into January's double digits, child and husband already in bed, fondling my Christmas ornaments and thinking about my mother.
It's hard not to. She loved Christmas. She's why I have enough antique glass ornaments to fill three trees - and I only have room for one tree. She's why I have fifteen mismatched red votives marching across the mantlepiece.
The votives were collected over many years, and a few of them have been repaired - with wire, with crazy glue. I take care of them as best as possible, honoring their past, remembering my mother.
Late on Christmas day, I lit the votives. We were sitting around eating cheese and opening second round presents, when, with a cra-ack, one of the votives broke, cleanly spitting out a chunk of glass.
Clearly my mother was visiting. Happily, though, my husband had gotten me a fresh batch of Sugru, so a few days later, I made a Sugru repair to the broken votive. I like to think it's in the spirit of kintsugi, treating the "breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise".
I'm not sure that the repair will work with a candle in it; the Sugru is only supposed to be good to about 350°F and not around open flame. But still - I had to fix it. Honoring the past, you know. Besides, my mother would have loved Sugru.
As the subway slides into the station, I pull my 30 year old beige cashmere gloves out of the pocket of my Lands’-End-meets-East-German-army-surplus down coat. Each of my winter coats has a pair of gloves that lives in the pockets: thin blue wool in the short black duffle coat, grey fleece wristlets in the wool-lined raincoat, the warmest gloves in the warmest coat. I think to myself “don’t drop them in the gap”, knowing that I’ll never replace them. They were a gift from an old boyfriend back in about 1984, and it’s not that I care for him, but rather for the little piece of history that they represent.
As I walk uptown, towards my office, on this bright and cold cold day, I mentally catalogue the rest of my habiliment. A scarf, woven alpaca in muted blue, green, rust and grey – a gift from my father. A black fleece baseball cap – a gift from my sister eons ago. Wool socks, warm but not loved because they’re knee socks that won’t stay up. Black boots, newly acquired, as a result of a conversation on Facebook with an imaginary friend, in which she posted a picture of her new boots – and they reminded me of the cap-toe black leather boots my grandfather used to wear.
[At the reception after his first wedding, my cousin slyly winked at me, and lifted his dress pants from the knee. There on his feet, a pair of our grandfather’s boots. I’d no idea that John had that spirit of thrift and sentimentality that would lead him to claim used footwear for his own - and wear it to his wedding.]
Most of the rest of what I’m wearing is unremarkable – jeans, a pale grey top, a black cashmere sweater with lettuce edges and tiny buttons, my wedding ring, a pair of small silver hoop earrings – though I know where each and every bit came from. But five bangles jangle on my left wrist. Three of them are sterling silver that I’ve had since high school, one a gift from a then best friend, one a gift from a family friend, and one with a forgotten provenance. I’ve worn all three of them for years. Recently I added two – a skinny silly aluminum bangle dabbed with orange paint, probably Indian, once my mother’s, and an odd steel bracelet that looks kind of as though someone took a bead chain and affixed it to a piece of flat wire. I have no idea where it came from. In my strict what goes with what head, I shudder a bit at mixing sterling and aluminum and steel, but I'm also amused to be pushing the envelope.
It’s these things around me, they ground me, they keep me warm. They remind me of old times, of family, of people I’ve never even met.
Everyone complains about the cold; I think of my enveloping warmth, and I’m grateful.
Last Thursday was Thanksgiving. Then came the shopping mayhem days: Black Friday and Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. Today's Giving Tuesday, a day to make a difference.
And, though you're surely inundated by pleas from this great organization and that terrific non-profit, let me tug a little at your heartstrings.
Since sometime in the last century, more than 18 years if you really want to know, I've worked at a small awesome unique tuition-free ballet school. In a nutshell (though we don't put on a Nutcracker), we audition kids in the NYC public schools, and we teach them to dance. And, so that training is frictionless, we have an on-site public school for our students, we help them with transportation, we provide an after school program for working families, and did I mention that there's no tuition for the ballet program? If I may say so myself, we do great work.
In order to conduct auditions, we rent cars - lots of Zipcars - and send teams of people out to the elementary schools. Over the course of a year, we'll audition about 30,000 kids - kids who would never otherwise get a chance to dance. Crunching down the numbers, it ends up costing us just under $13 for each kid that we audition.
Do you have $13 to spare? If so, we'll put it to good use.
Here's a link. It's really fast and easy.
Think of all the people who ask you to sponsor them in walk-a-thons or the like. This is my walk-a-thon. Thank you. Really, thank you so much.
Setting: Our car, at the outset of a two hour drive, the day after Thanksgiving.
Husband: "I can't believe you didn't swap your iPod over to all Christmas music."
I reach for the radio, and he says "how do you know you're going to find any Christmas music?" I push the on button, it launches into the usual last-listened-to NPR. I hit the station search button, and 94.3 locks in, in the middle of Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree.
How it is that my husband did not know that the FM dial is littered with all-Christmas-all-the-time at this time of the year is beyond me.
Point to the Magpie.
It wasn't until I got to work this morning that I remembered about the tattoo.
"Is that a real tattoo?"
"What does it say?"
No, it's a temporary, and it's because months ago I signed onto a goofy Kickstarter where for a bit of pocket change, I got a temporary tattoo with a line out of Through The Looking Glass. The company doing this carved up both Alice In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass into around 5000 unique sentences/phrases, and issued them as one-offs. My job was to apply the tattoo, and upload a picture to their website.
So I did.
Of course it's on my neck. It says "Alice shook her head". But the most entertaining part might be that people in my office actually thought it could be a real tattoo. As if.
I love this bread. It's lovely toasted, it smells a little like Zwieback (which, unhappily, Nabisco discontinued), and it makes me feel virtuous because it's laced with puréed squash. The original recipe includes walnuts, raisins and cranberries and has a long rise in the fridge. I wanted a more versatile loaf, so I leave out all of the nuts & berries, and I start it in the bread machine, but I bake it in the oven.
Yeasted Squash Bread (adapted from Baking With Julia)
Wet stuff
1 egg
1 cup squash purée
2 T. warm water
5 T. butter (at room temperature)
2 2/3 cups bread flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 t. cinnamon
½ t. freshly grated nutmeg
½ t. salt
2 t. active dry yeast
There are hundreds of dozens of recipes for pumpkin bread on the web. I'm posting this mostly because I finally tweaked one just so, and I want to remember it, damn it. It's good.
Squash Bread (adapted from Simply Recipes)
Dry stuff
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup spelt
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. ground ginger
1/2 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. freshly ground nutmeg
1/2 t. allspice
2 eggs
1 cup squash purée*
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup melted coconut oil
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
The other day, I sent a text to my daughter:
You know, it was kind of a nice weekend. I puttered around the house, and I caught up with an old friend while my kid was getting her hair cut. I passed along some Playmobil and Calico Critters, and I put my too-small hiking boots on eBay.
I took a picture of the Cimicifuga racemosa - which started opening its little flowers a week ago. It doesn't know that it's November?
I finished building the Lego Mini Cooper. The girl and I had started it a while ago, and then it got put away in a frantic house cleaning for something or another. I pulled it out this afternoon and had a delightful time snapping the rest of it together.
When I was done, we put a hamster in it. That's Ottilia, the docile hamster. Anastasia wanted no part of the Mini.
I love the Mini. I have made it abundantly clear that it is MY car, and that it is NOT to be cannibalized for other Lego creations. I may take it to my office, just for safekeeping.
In a not fun hour, I vacuumed up three million Nerds that a visiting child had strewn all over my house. Nerds are now off the Halloween candy list, and that child is never coming here again. Seriously, she opened all of the remaining boxes of Nerds and, I don't know, they were EVERYWHERE. We are going to be finding them when Easter rolls around. Nerds, by the way, are almost as annoying to step on in bare feet as Legos are.
I made 3 pints of potato and leek soup (two leeks, two potatoes, three cloves of garlic, a quart of chicken stock, a pinch of tarragon and a bit of salt) for my lunch for this week.
We had rice and stir-fried vegetables leftover in the fridge, so to amplify dinner, I tried out two new recipes, using miso, because I everywhere I turn, I see another recipe that includes miso. One was tofu with a maple miso glaze, the other was a salad dressing which I sort of improvised (a blob of miso, some apple cider vinegar, the last 1/2 teaspoon of sesame oil, a tablespoon of safflower seed oil, a tablespoon of mayonnaise, a dribble of soy sauce, some lemon juice because I'd forgotten that I'd already added vinegar). The girl rejected the tofu, because I made the mistake of mentioning the maple, but ate the salad without complaint. She seems to think that sweet doesn't belong in savory dishes, and yet she douses everything in ketchup. Even rice. [I've spared you that picture.] I liked the tofu, and I can see adding miso to lots of things.
I did not lose my temper at the awful postal clerk, but as I was tossing out the receipt later, I noticed that there was a website and a request to "tell us about your recent postal experience". So I did. THAT was gratifying. Maybe they'll act on my feedback and move the awful clerk to the back room where there are no customers. I know people in town - my husband included - who will wait for the next clerk rather than deal with her.
I made two loaves of bread - one a plain yeast bread for toast and sandwiches, the other a squash quick bread. Oh, you could call it pumpkin bread, but I used pureed butternut squash because that's what was in the freezer.
And I wrapped some presents for the girlie. Old road atlases are my new favorite wrapping paper.
How was your weekend?
I don't like loose ends. I hate it when things don't get resolved, I like everything in its place (although the clutter in my house might not lead you to think so). And when I respond to your PR pitch with a genuine question, I want an answer.
Last night, I was tidying up my email, in which "tidying up" equals "delete delete delete", as one does. In the morass I found a pitch from a PR company, flogging a GPS pet tracker, "that is perfect for your holiday or stocking stuffer gift guide" (like I have such a thing). If Fluffy runs out of the "safe zone", "you will receive an instant text message or email with a live-GPS tracking map to assist you finding your dog/pet immediately". Not only that, the thing acts like a combination FitBit/NannyCam for your dog: "this technology will showcase when your pet is getting exercise...and really let you know if your pet is getting enough exercise on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Also, if you have a dog walker--you can really monitor if your dog is getting enough exercise via this technology."
[Insert eyeroll]
I had, in September when I got this email, responded to the PR flack:
What happens to the GPS if the pet is eaten by a coyote? This a serious question, BTW. Lots of coyotes in my area.
And I have had no response to date.
I imagine that when the coyote (wolf, bear, lion) eats the tracked pet, the tracker ends up in the coyote (wolf, bear, lion). And then, we get a ping that the pet has crossed the line, so we start following the GPS tracking map on the trail of Fluffy, and OOPS, end up in the lion's den. Somehow, this seems like a misguided application of GPS technology. Or not, whatev.
But why didn't the PR flack answer my question?
Despite a general feeling that I'd rather be reading a book, there are some TV shows that I've gotten sucked into. In the past year, I've watched all of House of Cards, all of Orange is the New Black, and all of Luther. In each case it's been in a not-binge, not-attenuated way like thirteen episodes in two weeks - not thirteen weeks, not thirty six hours.
A couple of months ago, I started on Call the Midwife, and I was hooked from the beginning. It's set in mid-century London, and the main characters are a group of lay and nun nurse-midwives, caring largely for poor working class families. Gripping explicit birth scenes punctuate a through-story of the interpersonal dynamics of the midwives, and a fascinating exploration of the life and times of post-war London. It's fabulous television (and my friend the midwife says the birth scenes are really well done).
One night, after I'd watched a few episodes, all by myself on the couch, enraptured, the girl child came downstairs to see what I was doing. Oh, watching TV, said I. Can I watch with you?
Around went the wheels in my head. Many of the pregnancies and births are difficult - babies die, a mother dies, a mother's been beaten, there's an illegal abortion, a teenage pregnancy, incest. I thought quickly, and said yes. (And then looked it up on Common Sense Media, which rates it 14 and up.) A week or so later, she came down and asked again. That time, I said let's start at the beginning, and we'll watch the whole series together.
We watched the first two seasons on Netflix, and switched to the DVR to watch the third season on PBS (it's since been added to Netflix). The girl was distinctly amused by the warning that came up on the PBS broadcast:
Call the Midwife is definitely not for every 10 year old. In fact, there are plenty of grown-ups who might be too squeamish for it. But for me and my girl, it was a wonderful TV experience. I paused it from time to time so we could talk about what was happening. Pre-eclampsia is still a very serious pregnancy complication. A rare few women have 25 pregnancies. Oh, that white woman had an affair with a black man - how's the mixed race baby going to go over? [Actually, that happened in two episodes, with radically different end results.] It's highly unlikely that a woman would give birth to triplets without having known there were multiples. No one should give birth alone. Sometimes babies die. Mostly babies come out head first; a breech birth is a hair-raising event. Wrap that baby in a blanket so it doesn't get cold! Placenta previa, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, polio, retained placenta and cancer all make appearances.
It so happened that her math teacher was pregnant while we were watching, which lead to a lively discussion about what would happen if said very pregnant math teacher went into labor in the classroom. I could deliver the baby, she said. I'd send all of the boys out to get clean towels and hot water, and I'd tell her 'little pants' and now 'a big push'. I suggested she might should run get the principal and have someone call an ambulance. She agreed. I don't think I want to see my math teacher's lady parts.
Last month, we visited the FDR house in Hyde Park. In our exit through the gift shop, the girl picked out a Rosie the Riveter t-shirt, and announced that she wanted to be Rosie for Halloween.
Because I know this girl, I know that her choice was about 40% "let's make mom happy with a feminist icon" and 60% "ooh, i get to buy hair product and screaming red lipstick". I totally went along with it because it was a pretty easy costume to pull off, and um, We Can Do It!
She had the jeans, a belt and the boots. We got a blue oxford cloth shirt at the consignment store - it should have been denim, but oxford cloth is what we found, and it's good enough for jazz. I got the red/white polka dot fabric at a quilt shop and fashioned it into a head schmatte, and we found an image of the collar pin on the web, printed it on photo paper, and hot glued it to a pin-back button. Ta da!
[The electric drill is not historically accurate. Also, it did not go to school with her.]
And then, as one does, I posted the pictures on Facebook and a friend of mine from high school left a comment:
I am smiling because I think your mom would have loved it. It is genius. And intelligent. And historical. And NOT a princess or a sleazy outfit. Post this to your blog. Please.
And so, because Anne asked, and because my mother would indeed have loved it, here's my 10 year old Rosie.
I was perusing the archives of my alma mater, as one does, looking for an image that had been used in a presentation that I'd been to over the weekend. The speaker had said it was from the 1894 yearbook, and happily, all of the yearbooks exist as pdfs on the college library's web page. I love the intertubes.
That 1894 yearbook turned out to be 317 pages long what with covers and endpapers and advertisements, and it is completely wonderful in an unexpectedly whimsical way. Oh sure, there are pages and pages of lists of names, but there was a banjo club! Complete with banjeurines and a factotum! And two members named Florence. The whole yearbook delighted me, actually.
One page was given over to a ditty about bananas:
There's a whole riff on the Declaration of Independence, rendering it applicable to a graduating class:
A Declaration of Dependence.
WHEN, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a class to dissolve the bonds which have connected them with college life, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and their own opinion of their learning and importance entitle them, a decent respect to their Alma Mater requires that they should declare the grief which moves them at the separation.
Prudence, indeed, would dictate (this have we learned line upon line, precept upon precept, from our foster mother) that conditions long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. But when a long train of courses and matriculations, pursuing invariably the same object, has fulfilled its design of reducing us under an absolute sense of our profound ignorance, there is its beneficent task ended, and it is our right, our duty to throw off such conditions and to provide new fields for our future activity. The history of the present Faculty in its relations with the Class of '94 is a history of continued kindness and of repeated benefits (sometimes, we confess, these blessings were so disguised that we failed to recognize them), having in direct object that knowledge of folly which is wisdom, and that mild and submissive disposition which is the crown of womanly character. To prove this let facts be submitted to a candid world.
They have maintained, often against our will, laws the most wholesome, and the most necessary for the public good.
In every stage of our history we have petitioned in humble terms for that which seemed necessary and convenient for us; our repeated petitions have been answered by repeated refusals. Thus has an overruling wisdom preserved us from error.
We, therefore, the representatives of the Class of '94, do, in the name of the class, solemnly publish and declare that this Class of '94 is not, and never can be, unmindful of these benefits; that nothing can absolve them from their allegiance to their Alma Mater; and that the affectionate connection between them and Wellesley College cannot now, or at any other time, be totally dissolved.
And near the beginning was this heart-stopping and ever true statement from Tennyson:
Just that, alone on a page. Wise words. Witty women. I'm so glad I stopped to read that 1894 yearbook.
In days of old, once upon a time, over the river and through the woods, an eon ago, you know, back when I was a kid, there was an Italian deli. It was on Main Street and it had sawdust on the floor. Its fragrant stock included wheels of Parmesan, tubs of olives and giardiniera, enormous wax covered provolone hanging from the ceiling, sturdy little cacciatorini, seeded semolina breads. Exotic but not, for it was the stuff of childhood. For cocktail party nibbles, my parents would buy cecis and favas - roasted salted chickpeas and fava beans - the cecis crumbly to the tooth, the favas requiring a good snap of your back jaw. The juxtaposition of textures chalky and smooth in that bowl of salted mixed not-nuts was what always kept you going back for more.
Recently, I got a pitch from a PR company touting roasted salted chickpeas as new "very unique" snack:
Health Conscious Friends Launch Perfect Crunchy Snack
Cooking "accident inspires new product, Chic-a-peas
I said, sure, send me a sample. But it wasn't until I tasted them that I realized that they really weren't anything new - they were a repackaging of the cecis of my childhood. That's not to say they aren't good - just not new.
Now what I need to do is find some favas to go with the cecis. And throw an old school cocktail party.
