eggbeater

When Life Throws You A Lemon,

buy a hand gun.

No, just kidding.

            Instead, count your blessings that you once heard the phrase, "restraint of pen and tongue."

Even if you feel absolutely Junior High School petty or like you have bounced along the bottom, forgetting to hold your head up and not succumb to your fragile and sensitive heart. Even when you've tousled with, been offended by and tried to defend yourself against the tirades of someone whose maturity is that of the baby sister you don't have.

You can start your day over again.

Although it would be harder to make amends after you've loaded and used the hand gun. {But not impossible} [Or so they say.]

So what does it look like to put one foot in front of the other, even when the comfort of sleep seduces, tempts, cajoles, and tugs at every part of you? I kid you not when I say I woke up one day last week with one loud thought in my head. It crowded out all other possible thoughts, like a headline. It shouted,

"Sleep Is So Much Better Than Anything Else."

But I have gotten up, I have set the alarm, I have thought about my future.
I have tried to set boundaries.
I have written letters I have not sent. /the world sighs with relief

I have told people my truth and the world has not fallen down.
I have tried to let in perspective.
        That's what friends are for, right?
I have listened and cried and railed and remembered. Remembered that I am still me and no amount of betrayal can take me away from me.

I even had an adventure last night. *thank you RF!!*
----->I worked an event where I taught @ 10 people how to make profiteroles from scratch in a room full of 300 other people being taught how to make everything from meatballs to doughnuts, tamales to bastilla! My 2nd most favorite part of the night was drying dishes that came out of a commercial dishwasher about 50 feet long in a room bigger than my whole house if it was flattened by a giant rolling pin! Commercial dish washing is so satisfying...

And I have an entire weekend of cooking, baking and eating planned, starting tomorrow.
And then I will spend an entire week knitting:

"Among the most coveted spots for knitters is one of the 35 openings at the annual Wool Lover's Retreat, held for the last seven years at Manka's Inverness Lodge, a restored Arts and Crafts compound surrounded by the spectacular Point Reyes National Seashore, about an hour north of San Francisco. There, the attraction is not only an immersion in knitting, but also one of the West Coast's most charming inns, with meals by the owners, Margaret Grade and Daniel DeLong, known for organic cuisine built around ingredients fished, farmed and foraged within 30 minutes of their kitchen."

Excerpt from this article in the NY Times
By ANNE V. NELSON

Published: March 19, 2004

(I'm nervous and anxious and excited. Yes, in that order.)

And soon I will have classes announced.
And I have more writing projects than I can do
and
pretty soon I will turn the big four oh, which will mean Spring is here and Persian New Year will rain rose petals and pistachios from the sky and then blossoms will explode and shout and great mirth will be had...
        Great things are coming. Right?

{If nothing else, there is always rhubarb.}

/o my god, remember last year's March?! The first two weeks, the last two weeks.   

No time for eating around the clock if a job gets in the way.

        I mean, really, who needs a job, right?

treehouse portraits at dusk

               

the garden cultivates the gardener/

                     

                                                   

             

 

tell me a secret/  about a place you call home

                        

/find me watering my own garden

chocolate egg cream/ liquid craving. kitchen wisdom

there are times
times like these
when only one thing will do.

a chocolate egg cream.

from your neighborhood Jewish New York Deli. for me this is Saul's.
it could be an egg cream and a blintz.
or an egg cream and a roast beast sandwich.
or an egg cream and a few latkes.

there doesn't need to be a holiday.
or a memorial.
or a desperation.
or a birthday.

it could just be life.
and life could be eh or spectacular
or cold or furious or sweet or sour.

one chocolate egg cream satisfies.

just to dispense with myths or dilemmas or quizzical nomenclature misgivings--

recipe for an egg cream:

one tall glass
real seltzer, preferably under intense pressure
milk, whole, from a cow not a bean or grain
chocolate syrup, like U-Bet
a tall spoon, metal
a straw
a mouth

pour syrup into glass, not too much, not too little. then milk half to three quarters up glass.
take spoon and face the receiving end towards seltzer bottle.
spray seltzer onto spoon and let it ricochet like a waterfall into milk & chocolate syrup
        -------> this will create the froth on top which lets you know that you have made a real egg cream
stir with long spoon before mouth becomes open and drink.

if your seltzer is not under pressure you can still make an egg cream
you can use vanilla syrup too but then it will be

a vanilla egg cream.

egg creams
do not contain
eggs or cream

egg creams
are
either chocolate or vanilla

egg creams
are stirred and
not shaken

mmmmmmmm egg creams.

Living in Alabama. A Morning Story.

    Do you remember postcards? How about lick-the-stamp letters?

    There was a time when I wrote dozens of postcards and letters a month, hundreds a year, not even that long ago. (I did not own a computer until 2004.) I used to love writing postcards to people who lived close to me because it was a such a silly, sweet surprise to get a traditional I-am-far-away-and-I-wish-were-here sentiment/iconic rendition, from a zipcode or two away!

    I have a friend who still writes me letters. She was once my First Assistant at Citizen Cake and she and I, after a bit of processing and time and coming clean (Oy Vey, enough with the California-therapy, queer-theory-esque  mumbo-jumbo already! Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and stop moaning!) became great friends and co-conspirators and all around support and love for each other. Strangely we have had some similar unfortunate experience in common, and over many years, a few time zones and vastly different geography cultures, we have come to share humour over what many would become aghast over.

    In other words, I love this woman and her wacky, quirky self, and she loves me, through thick and thin, and many an odd and crazy rant, and we laugh through each other's sorrows and fears and I am really lucky, and so are you, not merely for this run-on sentence, but because she has agreed to let me publish a letter she wrote to me the other day about one particular, although perhaps "normal," day in Alabama.

    You might remember Melanie Thorn from her seriously in-depth explanation of how to make a perfect cheesecake.

Living In Alabama

A comical story about my morning:

4:03 a.m. Woke up to find out that I live really, really close to the tornado alarm.
Really really close.

4:10 a.m. Figured out it sounds like the banter between the aliens and the humans at the last part of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

4:13 a.m. Figured out I have no power.

4:14 a.m. Stumble to the kitchen to grab a flashlight.

At this point, every animal in the house thinks we are playing the coolest game in the world.

4:16 a.m. All the cats really really want to play the flashlight game.

4:17 a.m. Dog really wants to go back to bed. So does owner.

Dog is freaked out that branches are hitting the house and winds are shaking the house.
Owner gets dog to come up on bed, and we go back to sleep.
Cats are on their own.

6:30 a.m. Alarm goes off on my cell phone.

6:50 a.m. Finally get up.

6:51 a.m. Oh yeah, no power. Where’s that stove-top coffee percolator?!

7:02 a.m. Take the darkest shower in the world. Kind of zen like.

7:07 a.m. Saying prayers of thank you’s while showering. Thank you for gas water heater, thank you for gas stove, thanks for not blowing a tree on top of my car, etc.

7:22 a.m. Fix coffee - walk around. Try to find clothes in dark.

7:36 a.m. Go outside with dog to check out damage to house.

7:38 a.m. See giant old plum tree that has fallen straight down over my driveway (it’s the one way in one way out only driveway…)

7:39 a.m. Ask God what I need to do with this new information.

7:40 a.m. Get the hand saw out of my tool box and start sawing limbs off.

(I should mention that the dog thinks this is a REALLY fun game, and wants to be sure she stays REALLY close by to help)

8:23 a.m. Finally finish sawing up tree. Moved all parts out of driveway.

8:25 a.m. Take another shower. (Sorry drought, I will make it up to you)

8:42 a.m. Head down Grants Mill Road to go to work.

8:44 a.m. Oh, Grants Mill is closed due to storm damage and downed power lines.

8:50 a.m. Get on 459 to hit 280 to go to work.

9:13 a.m. Arrive at work in jeans and flip flops. (It was almost 80 degrees this morning)
Begins to snow 10 minutes later. !!!!!!! ???? !!!!

11:30 a.m. Go to lunch. Realize then that I have left wallet at home.

1:41 p.m. After freezing my butt off and learning it will go down to 20 tonight, I decide to turn on the heater and hibernate inside my office until it’s time to dash to my car to go home.

How’s your day?

Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova: Congratulations!!!!

This post is not about food. Well unless you think that music is food. Or know that music feeds the soul.

When music moves me I fall in love with it. There's a bit of an obsessive quality about my love of music and I will listen to an album over and over until I can not. Until that music, those sentiments, all those words, cloud my life like cold fog in the dim morning.

When I love an album, an artist, a band, the sounds, its words, their dips and falls and sounds become the backdrop for whatever's going on at the moment. I can remember a period of my life because that's when so and so's album came out. I read that author's books when I was listening to that band. I broke up with him right after he gave me that album. The happiest time in my teenage hood is set to a background of that genre of music.

I played flute for four years, but I am not a musician.
But there are some famous ones in my family and I am grateful to have been introduced to music and all that it is and can be. Music is food, emotion, stories, history, medicine, sex, touch, beverage, and a body of water to swim naked through.

When my body moves through hip hop I am whole. When I am dancing I belong to no one but me and everything is everything. When dancing I am electric and few people look at me the same after they see me dance.

Music buoys, delights, ravages, learns, slaps and feeds me.

And there's nothing like seeing musicians, hearing their music coming from them, who you know, just know, that this is their gift. From the gods.

Last year, while in Portland, I saw Once, a movie which moved me to my core. For no absolutely certain reason. Of course I have a thing for the Irish people. But this movie touched me and when I came home I tracked down the music because I wanted to know more.

To my complete surprise one of the songs, "Falling Slowly," from Once, by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, was nominated for an Oscar at The Academy Awards tonight, and WON! People in the living room I was in thought I might have known these two musicians from the ebullience I displayed.

And then something amazing happened.

As with all the acceptance speeches wherein more than one person wins the award, there's only time for one person to talk really fast. We heard great words and an amazing display of red-faced joy from Mr. Hansard, but then Ms. Irglova could not be heard. In what may have been an unprecedented Academy Awards act of generosity, Ms. Irglova was invited back on stage to say something.

And say something she did. Check it out here. My favorite part of her quiet and brave words,

"This is such a big deal, not only for us, but for all other independent musicians and artists that spend most of their time struggling, and this, the fact that we're standing here tonight, the fact that we're able to hold this, it's just to prove no matter how far out your dreams are, it's possible."

No matter how far out your dreams are, it's possible.

Congratulations Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova!!!!!!!!!

Your victory is our victory.

the dreadful phases of farewell.

They are irrefutable. No amount of hiding from the phases, the stages of feelings that go hand-in-hand with break-ups, passive lay-offs, intentional or sudden good-byes, death, departure, can remove one from all the feelings. The roller coaster of feelings. The feelings, that if all sitting together in a straight line, would look nothing like the next, would agree with not one thing the feeling sitting next to that one said, meant, spoke of.

First there's shock. With shock comes a particular brand of humour that only the most sarcastic can appreciate. It is true darkness. Flat faced humour. Not a lot of belly timber laughing, but these are the jokes everyone gets. Except the innocent.

Next comes exhilaration. "I didn't need that fucker anyways! Good riddance!"

Then. remorse. "I will miss getting beaten up." "I will miss my ineffective manager." "But I never got to scream one last time." "My team will never know how much I appreciated them." "I wish I had told her I loved her once more." "I wish I had fired that bastard..."

Of course there's always anxiety. This one permeates. It stinks you no matter how many times you shower. It crawls all over your skin like meth bugs, and yet no one can see them but you. Anxiety bugs burrow. "What did I do to cause this?" Your skin crawls with invisible crawlers. Even in sleep they find their way into your eyes, nose, ears. "What will I do?!" You wail at no one in particular.

You hope it won't come, the next one. You hope you're older, more mature. You hope you're power to reason will take over. You liked the second phase, when you could see how this door shutting could make another window, bigger, clearer, better; open wide to let in sun and fresh air and whimsical winds rush through you.

But the next one does come. Although you might not notice it if all you do is act out. It's a powerful force.

R A G E.  fury. Blind Anger shoots this way and that like a video game with no rules. It's contagious. Bitterness seeps out into dreams, muscles, all interactions. There is one, completely unanswerable word fueling it, behind it all. It's a short word, but a persistent one:

                                            Why?

And ours is not to question why.
For there is no answer. Only thin gasoline soaked through our clothes. Nervous fumes darting this way and that, burning nose hairs and making our minds sick with answerless questions, dizzy with madness, voices, ghosts,

                    we replay the scene over and over
                                                                                            and over and over and over
            and still it never makes sense.

I'm at that phase where I'm so angry and full of rage I might set someone on fire just by looking at them.

                and then it starts all over again. Although in a given minute, hour, week, day, month, it can morph into any configuration of all or some of the above. There could be a day of remorse and fury, followed by a sleepless night of anxiety and shock.

You dream that day, and the days before, over and over. Nightmares both real and imagined repeat like a printing press. Every night the layout is different but the headline is the same.

LOSS

is what it says.

I'm not saying it will never go away, subside, be subdued.

But I am saying that I know I need to get into my walking shoes because I have traversed this desert before, that it's a long trail. Made only longer with avoidance, with stick-my-head- in-the-sand mentality. Unlike some of the people in my family, I never had the option to hide from the responsibility that was me.

/If you want to help cool me down, meet me here this weekend for mint chocolate chip ice cream...

Japanese Junk Food /cure-all for the deep indigos.

when no amount of healthful, local, organic, sustainable produce can take away the blues/ suicidal tendencies/ homicidal obsessions,

look to Japanese junk food to get you through.

Pictured: Fauchon Milk Tea Brulee (your guess is as good as mine), Yangban Seasoned Laver Seaweed (of my most favorite snacks, shhhh it's a secret), Pocky Crush (pronounced POKE-ee) with crushed langue de chat cookies under milk chocolate overlaid on pocky signature almost-salty cracker bar-stick, Marron Pocky (chestnut), and a new one for me: Pucca Chocolate "Taste of Pucca's Baked Custard." yeah, I'm a sucker for a shelf sweet that's shaped like a fish and taste like a pretzel but filled with ganache (?) of shelf-stable custard. hey don't ask me, I'm only trying to describe it!

Five Sordid Facts About Me: A Meme

Time to roll up my sleeves and throw off my shoes and toe binding socks!
The fabulous Rev. Biggles himself has asked me to jump in his sandbox and engage in a meme.
I haven't done one of these in quite some time.
Sordid Facts. 5.
About Me.
Hmmmmmm, intriguing...

1. My cousin Maggie and I used to practice writing with our feet. I could do a pretty good block letter page with my right toes, but my left was all over the place.

2. I grew up in what some would call a cult and others would call a "spiritual school."

3. The first time I got absolutely wasted, falling down drunk, was before getting on stage with my best friend Seven for her father's band at the age of 5.

4. For part of second grade I was in a school that taught us how to read and write phonetically. Yes, it was the 70's.

5. In Junior High School I used to buy 5 & 10 cent candy and sell it for double the price in the school yard. No bartering or "tabs," I was cut-throat.

Now, I could tag a few more people, but from my own experience with memes not everyone enjoys the pressure. If you are reading and you have a blog and you decide to join in the fun, or unfun, let me know and I will link to yours!

My Last Dessert Menu ~

I have sad news. I have been asked to leave the restaurant because their lack of business can no longer gamble on me and my desserts.

Time to move on and rearrange the recipe that makes up life.

    a pinch of this and a slap of that

Thank you for all your good words and well-wishing. Not every home is a house, not every key fits in a tightly designed hole.

I wanted to give you a glimpse into my last menu because I really liked some of the new plates. We'll see what they come up with after me-- my sous chef has been named pastry chef and the idea is that the chef will give her more specific direction of where to go so that her food matches his and the Southern Mediterranean. I gave it my all, yes I did, and that's what I'll remember.

Without further ado, my last dessert menu at a restaurant I helped build from scratch ~

pistachio gift
vanilla phyllo wrapped pistachio frangipane with mastic-rosewater ice cream
{ allow 20 minutes }
9

“open-faced sandwich”
tangerine sherbet, salted caramel pot de crème & crunchy almond cookie
9

cool milk chocolate cream
chocolate-almond salad & sour cherry marmalade
9

citrus!
mandarinquat marmalade, lebne cheesecake, moroccan almond “crust” & mandarin supremes
8

frozen honey mousse
spicy gingerbread, candied citrus peel, balsamic caramel & pomegranate seeds
8

warm chocolate
cocoa cake, sensuous chocolate, cardamon ice cream & shuna’s famous dark chocolate sauce
9

lemon essence
citrus soufflé, fennel shortbread, lemon sherbet & pinenut-date-anise-arbequina oil relish
9

Pastry Chef Love Notes.

Last Friday night one of our waiters came to me to say that he had a four top ( 4 diners ) who were going on and on about my desserts and maybe I wanted to say hello and talk to them? I asked him to bring me to their table, and make an introduction. It is always my pleasure to meet those people who have eaten my desserts. I have said many times in my career that I would love to be one of those corporate spies who just sits in dining rooms and watches how people eat. Yes, these people do exist. Even at independently owned restaurants these people can be hired to experience what the diner experiences.

On this particular night these four people, for whom it was their first time in the restaurant, were not shy about asking me questions, making observations, intuiting and absolutely getting what my desserts were about. It was like having someone come to your gallery opening and buying your best series, on the spot.

Sometimes people just know.

Sometimes you feed people who understand your whys, your process, your love and passion and hair-pulling hard work. Sometimes.

And when it happens you never forget.

Even in the kitchen there are those people who you think will get it, get you, but they don't. My own experience is that I never know who it will be, who will eat my desserts and understand the stories they're telling. But then someone, or many someones, come along and they are so expressive, so excited, so astute, that you meet them and they meet you and your little sweet children are where you all meet.
It's like the dog park, but better.

The next time you eat out, don't be afraid to thank the pastry chef for his or her creations. Whether you think you "get it" or not. Know this: we are the underdogs. We are not who people to go out to eat for. The savoury chef gets all the praise and don't think that if you tell him or her how much you enjoyed your meal he or she will pass that news onto the pastry chef.

Know this: when times are hard, our position is the first to go.

But maybe not if you've taken the time to recognize them. Maybe not if the management knows how much they bring to the place you frequent. Maybe not if you remind the owner that you always went there for the whole meal. Maybe not if that pastry chef knew how to do more than merely make cookies. Although maybe still, for there are no promises.

Look at this note. It's easy, it's funny and it's something to keep.

Thank you wonderful 4 top! For being brave and expressive and silly and generous. And for being some of the last people to appreciate my desserts and all the thought and love that went it to them at that place.

As many of you know, my life is bittersweet at the moment. I will write more about it when life gets a little less murky, or more easily understood.

 

almond blossoms!

abu n babette in the tall tall mustard grasses