Gratitude

I told you I’d come back here with some good stories—and, hooo boy, do I have one for you.

This story starts one day in April, nearly two years ago, when I went over to my friend Danielle’s house and sat on her kitchen couch (just about the coziest spot ever) while she tried to convince me that I should write a book. Of course, I didn’t believe her.

Danielle once said she would walk ten miles out of her way for good bread, so when I wrote a post about Irish soda bread, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I sent her the link. Because she is a literary agent, always on the lookout for a good book idea, I wrote a short note with my email: “There’s no book here, this is just for fun.”

Danielle wrote me back immediately: “there is a book here,” and she pulled out a short passage from the beginning of the post, nothing to do with soda bread. I had written about going into a butcher shop and confessing to the butcher that I was raised a vegetarian and how, though I may eat a bit of meat these days, large pieces of flesh scare me.

Then Danielle wrote five little words: “The Butcher and the Vegetarian.”

When I saw her email I laughed—there was no way I was going to write about meat. Ugh.

I thought the idea was so funny that, when my friend and former publishing colleague Jen Leo came to town the next week, I mentioned it to her over margaritas and Mexican food. I thought she might get a laugh out of it as well. "Guess what Danielle thinks I should be writing about..."

Jen just stared at me. “You’ve got to write this book,” she told me. “It’s perfect for you.”

Now, when two publishing savvy folks both tell you to do the same thing, you have to at least consider it. That’s how I came to be sitting in Danielle’s kitchen, watching her make matzo ball soup and listening to her try to convince me to write about meat. “Just give it a try,” Danielle said, she made it sound easy. Since nonfiction books are sold on the strength of a book proposal—you don’t have to actually write the entire book—I promised that I would at least try.

Then I went home and promptly forgot about it.



I didn’t really forget about the project—but I certainly tried to. I churned out some very bad sample chapters that summer, chapters so unfortunate that the close and trusted friend I asked to read them could only tell me to “keep going.” There was nothing good that could be said about the project at that point. I thought writing a book about food would be just as much fun as writing a blog post, something I find exceedingly enjoyable, but it wasn’t. I tried it this way, I tried it that way, I tried to forget about it and do something else. All the while Danielle was waiting for me to produce something…waiting and waiting and waiting. She’s a very patient lady.

The thing I didn’t quite realize at the time is that I was terrified of writing this book. I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to write about meat—a topic I have very conflicted feelings about. “Couldn’t I write about something romantic?” I asked. “Something like, tea?” (tea is romantic, meat is carnal). I fought the topic until last August, when I went to the doctor who ran the allergy tests and told me I had to cut out all dairy, eggs, and beans out of my diet—the lion's share of vegetarian protien sources. Meat, it seemed, was unavoidable for me—in writing and in life. I took it as a sign.

But still I struggled with the project, for I was slowly realizing that the story was as much about me as it was about meat. I wasn’t sure I wanted to write about my background, my untraditional childhood, my family—I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to conceal such things. Did I really want to write the story of a little girl who used to steal food—not because she was hungry, but because she yearned for flavors that were not allowed at home; because she didn’t want to be different; because she wanted to live and eat and be in the world like “normal” people?

No, I wasn’t sure I wanted to write that story at all. It was hard enough to have lived it.

And so I struggled with the proposal. At the same time, I was poking around the meat world. I spent an afternoon barbequing with Biggles at the Meathenge; I watched Taylor, of the Fatted Calf Charcuterie, make sausage; I talked meat and politics with the hunky guys who work the Prather Ranch meat stall at the Grand Lake Farmers’ Market (former vegetarians, all of them—and oh so hunky), but the writing itself was hard. I spent days staring at a blank computer screen—who on earth wanted to hear about my life? Was this even interesting at all? What was I thinking? I wanted to write a story that was fun and funny, but it challenged me at every turn.



I originally conceived my time in Seattle as time to work on the book, but when I left San Francisco last spring I wasn’t even done with the proposal. I began to feel like a huge failure. When I talked to Danielle she told me, “it’s a great project, with a great writer—I have no doubt it’s going to be great.” I felt awful letting her down. What’s worse, my mother—my vegetarian mother—was bugging me about it too. When a staunch vegetarian is giving you a hard time about not working on a book about meat, you know you’ve got problems.

And so summer passed, with small amounts of fitful progress, and I wondered if this really was my book after all. Perhaps I just wanted a book deal because my friends were getting them (certainly a lame reason to try to do anything, my mother will tell you so). I went to two of the wisest people I know and asked them what they thought. Really, I was just looking for someone to let me off the hook, to tell me it was okay not to write the book. That didn’t happen—they both told me I had to go through with it. And I was getting to the point where I knew it myself—if I’m having this much trouble with something, it usually means there’s something important to be learned and I need to get over my own fear and get out of the way. My late, great writing mentor, the astounding Amanda Davis, used to say that if what you’re writing about doesn’t scare you, you’re not writing about the right thing.

I finally finished the proposal, a full year and a half later (actually more than that, but I’m shaving off a few months to make myself feel better—play along with me, please). Going into the literary festival this fall I was a mere three pages away from being finished—three stinking pages!—but everything had to go on the back burner while festival madness took over. When the smoke cleared, I went back to the computer and finally wrote the last pages of the proposal. I futzed and futzed with it at the end, still nervous about letting it go, but I finally hit send and emailed it to Danielle, who then emailed it into the world—into the inboxes of editors across the country.

The very next day we heard back from the first editor who was interested. And then another, and another, and another. I sat in front of my computer as Danielle forwarded emails to me—people excited about the project, wanting to talk to me, wanting to know more. I spent a surreal week talking to different editors on the phone about the book, about myself (cringe), about my blog. They said the nicest things about the project, about my writing; they asked intelligent questions (I adore the publishing industry, it is filled with whip-smart, funny, passionate, opinionated people); they all wanted me to write more about my family and childhood (good grief). But the most astounding thing of all is that they were all interested in the project I wasn’t sure anyone would be interested in—not even me.

This experience was all the more surreal because I used to work at a literary agency—not too many years ago, in fact. One of the things I did there was to set up these sorts of phone conversations between authors and editors interested in their work. It was hard to believe it was me on the phone this time, my work we were talking about.



And so the book went to auction last week—that’s what happens when there are multiple parties interested in a project (don't underestimate those mild-mannered editorial types—they're gamblers, I tell you, gamblers!). As I was packing to leave for Thanksgiving last week, Danielle was receiving bids and my head was spinning. Most writers go a lifetime hoping to have just one publisher interested in their work—to have multiple offers is, well, beyond what anyone thinks they can hope for. To say I was stunned is to put it mildly. This was the project I came close to walking away from, more times than I can tell you. Clearly Danielle and Jen are far, far smarter than I am (I'm considering turning over all major life decisions to them in the future).

And here I must tell you a secret, something most people don’t know:
I nearly gave up writing three years ago.

It’s true. I hadn’t written in about a year and a half, ever since finishing a masters degree in creative writing, and I wasn’t sure I should even bother to try again (I realize that deciding to stop writing after you’ve gone through the work of getting a degree in the subject is backwards at best, but there you have it). I knew I was a good editor—that I have always had confidence in—but writing was much harder for me. Even though I had some publication credits under my belt, I wondered if I should just stick to what I do well. Surely there were enough people out there trying to be writers. Did the world need one more? Did it need my voice? I wasn't sure the answer to that question was yes.

That summer I attended the Squaw Valley Writers’ Conference, to remind myself I was still a writer and not just an editor. Folks there were very supportive, my workshop group read parts of my novel-in-progress (about tea, ironically—it's terribly romantic) and got mad at me when they heard I hadn’t been working on it. My workshop leader, a best-selling author himself, game me his card and told me to get in touch when I was finished with the project, he wanted to introduce me to his agent and editor. It was encouraging, tremendously so, but at the end of the week I went home and continued not writing. It was so much easier to tell other writers what to do than to put myself on the line.

The following winter I grew sick and started this blog, which was a revelation from the start. Suddenly I couldn’t write enough, suddenly it was fun again, suddenly I was staying up late in the night, writing about food and farming and adventures (all this before anyone was even reading this site). I was falling in love with writing again.

Then folks started trickling in, leaving comments (KitchenMage was the first), linking to me (Jen Maiser was first there), welcoming me into this extraordinary community of bloggers and readers and avid cooks and gracious hosts. This dear little corner of the internet gave me the time and space to develop my voice, to hone my craft, to share the things that excite me, to gain some confidence—and all of you have been so encouraging and supportive. That book proposal went out with my name on the front page, but it really belongs to each and every one of you who have come and spent time here over the past two years, who have left comments, who have linked, who have just read silently—for it wouldn’t have happened without you. Is it too cheesy to quote that Bette Midler song about you guys being the wind beneath my wings? (waaaaay too cheesy, but you get the idea).



This is all a very long way of saying that last week my book—this project I’ve struggled with—found a home (In fact, I had to choose it a home, which sounds great in theory but really is an awful, Sophie’s Choice sort of a thing that I wouldn’t wish on anyone). I’m going to be working with an editor who has published both Candace Bushnell (of Sex and the City fame) and, most recently, Al Gore. I’m hoping I can strike a note somewhere between the two—a fun and flirty story that has some serious issues at its base. Mostly, I hope it makes readers both laugh and think. I hope it’s something you’d want to pick up and read—for really, this book is as much yours (and Danielle’s and Jen’s) as it is mine.

And the title makes me laugh every time:

The Butcher & The Vegetarian:
One Woman’s Romp Through a World of Men, Meat, and Moral Crisis

You’re allowed to laugh at it as well—in fact, I encourage it. I want this story to be fun—poignant, but fun.

I loved our family Thanksgiving this year. It was filled with one little niece-let who toddled into the kitchen where I was cooking and held her arms up when she wanted to be lifted and cuddled. My other niece insisted on taking naptime with me in my bed, where we read stories and sang songs and talked about what vegetables we’d be if we were vegetables (Alice would be broccoli, I’d be a pumpkin). The very next day I woke up sick—no surprise there, I haven’t had a full day off since July. My body took me just as far as I needed to go, on overdrive these past few months, and now it needs to rest.

The past few days I’ve laid low—letting my mother bring me hot cups of honey, lemon, and ginger (if there is anything better than being sick when your mother’s in the house, I can't think of it right now), sleeping lots, composing thank you notes I have yet to send. In between it all, I stop to think about what has happened and I’m overcome. I know the work has only just begun, that this is a project that will test and challenge me every step of the way—it has already. I also know that I will learn and grow because of it. But mostly—as the writer who very nearly walked away entirely—I am so grateful for the opportunity.

And grateful for all of you, more than you can know.

I realize that not everyone celebrates Thanksgiving—and not everyone celebrates it in November (yay, Canada, yay). Wherever you are, whatever you celebrate, know that I am sending my thanks your way. Thanks for helping me grow, and learn…and maybe even bloom a little.



And, in the PS department: I’ve set myself a deadline of Friday to answer all your sweet comments from the past few months. Now that the brouhaha is over, I’m going to get back in gear and remember my manners, maybe I’ll even post a recipe or two some day. In the meantime, thanks for your patience, and your kindness.

Happiness is a Case of Mariquita Tomatoes

I chopped an onion the other day.

This may not sound extraordinary to you, but it was to me. I have barely cooked at all in the last two months—not real cooking. My food life most recently has revolved around takeout and things that can be thrown together easily—reheated tamales, pasta with fresh tomatoes, cubes of sweet potato that roast in the toaster oven while I answer email. The fact that I now have the time to make something whole, fully, from scratch—well, let’s just say that the tears welling up in my eyes might not just have been from the onions. It’s been a long haul, and I’m so glad that it’s almost over (I swear I can see light at the end of the tunnel, just a little further).

To celebrate, I went out and bought myself a case of tomatoes. If I had time to cook, then maybe I had time to do some preserving. It’s pained me to watch the harvest pass me by.

My friends have been busy putting things up. Anita and Cameron spent two weekends canning 100 pounds of tomatoes, an impressive feat. The following weekend Jen and Jeanne did the same. In the East Bay, my favorite Monkey Wrangler and family has been preserving for weeks, with the most impressive results. I was jealous of these canning parties, I wanted nothing better than to spend a weekend in the kitchen, putting away the harvest. But I didn’t have the time. I barely had the time to feed myself, and I wasn’t even doing a grand job of that.

So I waited until the festival was over and the smoke had cleared. And when I noticed that Mariquita Farms—one of my very favorite farms—was still selling cases of their San Marzano tomatoes, I put in a call to Julia Wiley and asked her to reserve me a case of tomatoes for her next San Francisco produce delivery.

Julia, together with her farmer husband Andy Griffith, run Mariquita, They used to sell their produce at the Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market, where I happily bought from them each Saturday. Now they run a special guerrilla produce delivery in the evenings, two Thursdays a month (this is a lot nicer for them than having to wake up at 3 AM on a Saturday morning). The delivery site changes each time, and there is a minimum order of twenty-five dollars, but meeting for an under-the-radar produce hand-off is no end of fun. You can email them and be put on their notification list for these drop offs. I’ve begun to joke that Julia is my “dealer.” My organic produce dealer, that is.

And that’s how I ended up, alone in the kitchen with a case of tomatoes. San Marzano tomatoes.



I don’t know if you’re already acquainted with the nature of San Marzano tomatoes, I didn’t happen upon them until a few years back. I knew about Roma tomatoes, and I assumed that San Marzanos were pretty much the same—same torpedo-shaped body. What I discovered, when I made a batch of sauce from the San Marzanos, was that they are extremely well suited to sauce. In a perfect world where we’re all designed for one role and one role only (wouldn’t that cut down on life angst?), San Marzano tomatoes are made for sauce. They’re often called the world’s sauciest tomatoes.

What makes them so good? They have a fairly thick skin, a dense flesh, and not too many seeds. There may be something technical at play as well—I’m sure you can find some analysis somewhere of the sugar to acid ratio—but I will say this: that first batch of San Marzano sauce I made was the best batch of tomato sauce I had ever made. When the proof is in the pudding, who cares that much about the scientific mumbo-jumbo? (well, let’s just say that I don’t).



Last year I bought a case of tomatoes as well. I was so enamored of the post Ivonne had written on Cream Puffs in Venice about making tomato sauce with her extended Italian-Canadian family, that I wanted to do it as well (though spending the day in the kitchen with comrades is really the way to go I think—my day lacked any juicy family gossip to speed the task along). I made my sauce the way Ivonne’s family does—cooking the tomatoes whole and straining it through a food mill. It made for a smooth and flavorful sauce, perfect to use for dishes such as Ivonne’s baked rice (yummy—I highly recommend it).

This year I decided to do things a little differently. I wanted a chunky sauce, something with a little bit more body. I decided to skin and seed the tomatoes first. This requires a bit of work, it is true.

I cut a cross into the skin of the tomato.



Then I put them into a pot of boiling water, removed them fairly quickly, and plunged them into a bowl of icy cold water. This causes the skins to loosen ever so slightly, and to peel back around the cut area.



I peeled and (mostly) seeded the tomatoes, which left them looking a little like a pile of tiny tomato corpses laid out on the chopping block.



Then I played queen and cried "off with their heads!" and chopped them into chunky little pieces. There were tomato guts and gore all over the place.



All that went into my favorite large and battered soup pot that I brought down from Seattle with me (please don’t tell me what it means that I now travel with my own soup pot, I fear it is a distressing development).



The resulting sauce was a vivid red, chunky and soft, and oh-so-full of that bright tomato flavor. I had some immediately, on pasta, with a side of sautéed chard with lemon.



My brother and I had an ongoing debate, when we were kids, over whether it was better to eat the good-tasting thing first, or leave it for last. He always gobbled up the good stuff immediately, I wanted it to be the last flavor that remained in my mouth at the end of the meal so I waited (I also wanted to lord it over him that I still had yummy stuff to eat while his was long gone; sibling rivalry knew no bounds in our household).

Old habits are hard to break. I saved my pasta for last.



And it was worth it, every bite.

The remaining sauce went into large ziplock bags, tucked into the freezer, waiting for the winter day when I’ll dig them out, defrost them, and get to again enjoy the bounty of late summer in California, the tart/sweet flavor of summer’s last tomatoes.



And I’ll remember the day when I was so happy to be back in the kitchen, it practically made me cry.

[We won't even go into the fact that the bulk of my sauce making took place between 10 pm and midnight, the night before I had to wake at 5:45 to catch an early flight out of town (please tell me I'm not the only one who ends up doing crazy midnight cookery projects); these days we take what kitchen play time we can get.]

Market Basics

Oh, my friends—what can I say? I keep thinking life is going to slow down, yet things keep on spinning, faster, faster, faster. Usually this is the calm time of year—a slow few weeks before the hectic and bright holiday season. This is the time to catch your breath in anticipations of the slew of parties and celebrating that is the end of November through on to New Year’s, a period of time that includes no less than two national holidays, three religious holidays, and my birthday. But there is no rest this year, not for me.

My California friends warn me about winters in Seattle, short days and endless long nights (actually, my Seattle friends warn me about this as well). They may have a point, but a nice long hibernation opportunity sounds pretty good to me right now!

In these days of little time I am paring back to the essentials—photos, images, what the eye can capture on the run. Here are some highlights from the market recently. We’re all for basics around here these days. I hope to catch my breath soon. When I do, I’ll be back here with stories to tell. I promise.

LACY:


TEMPTING:


CHEERFUL:


FRECKLED?


STICKY:


SPICY:


GEOMETRIC:


AUTUMNAL:


SAD:


Back with more soon!

Mornings in the Sunset, with Cherry Corn Scones

Goodness, where has the time gone? Has it really been three weeks? Is it really November already? How did that happen?

While I’d love to tell you that I’ve been sleeping for the past three weeks—and I really and truly wish that I had—things have been bopping around here. I still want to toss my computer out the window and go back to bed, but in the meantime life goes on. There was a whirlwind 48-hour quickie of a trip to Seattle (yes, I still love you, Seattle) and a short (too short) visit from an old friend. There were much-neglected work projects to jump back into, phone calls to return, a domineering email inbox to make peace with (the brute, we’re still fighting it out), and suddenly it’s November and practically the holiday season. I thought things would calm down after the festival but life continues to spin faster and faster and sometimes it’s all I can do to just hold on.

So instead, I am going to tell you about mornings in my neighborhood. The best kind of mornings—those rare slow ones.

Early autumn is perhaps the most perfect season in my San Francisco neighborhood, an area called the Sunset District that runs along the south border of Golden Gate Park from Cole Valley out to the ocean. From June through August this neighborhood is socked in with summer fog and a clear day is a rarity. But once summer officially ends, in early September, the weather clears up and San Francisco’s secret summer begins. Suddenly every morning is bright and sunny, the fog is gone, and residents of the Sunset wake to skies so blue it makes us blink in disbelief and delight.

It’s not a bad time to be coming home.

I love the Sunset District—perhaps not the entire district, which encompasses blocks and blocks of single-family homes painted in pale colors stretching all the way out to the beach—but I love my corner of it. I live in a little village of a neighborhood, a string of shops, restaurants and cafes that stretch out along Irving Street, one block south of the towering green cypress trees and botanical gardens of Golden Gate Park. After all, I’ve lived here for seven years.



When I moved into this neighborhood I didn’t know how much I would come to love it. I simply wanted to be along the N-Judah tramline so that I could easily commute to work. My real estate search was conducted along a narrow corridor that followed the N route—Duboce Park, Cole Valley, Inner Sunset. In the end I chose the house I most wanted to live in , it just happened to be in the Inner Sunset.

I didn’t know how much I would love being next door to Golden Gate Park, able to walk down the street with my picnic blanket and book on sunny days. I didn’t know I would love the medical students (from nearby UCSF) who run around the neighborhood in scrubs and clogs and keep things casual. I didn’t know how I would love standing at the intersection of 8th and Irving in the morning, when the clean and sharp breeze blows in from the west and makes me remember there is an ocean out there even though I cannot see it. And in the evenings, the broad sky over the rooftops is painted with a startling array of vivid oranges, pinks, and purples. They don’t call it the Sunset for nothing.



It’s this open and slightly wild feeling that I love about my neighborhood. On the rare occasions when I think about moving to another part of the city I worry that I might feel boxed in by hills and tall buildings, too confined. I’m not a city girl at heart, no matter how much I might enjoy living in one. The Sunset allows me to have the city at easy access, the freedom of a green forest in my backyard, and the wild winds off the Pacific running through my hair.

It also allows me easy access to cherry corn scones.

A few months after I moved to the neighborhood a new bakery opened up, an offshoot of the Berkeley Cheeseboard, a well-known local collective. The Arizmendi Bakeries—of which there are now three—are independently run but they use the same recipes as the Cheeseboard. That means I have Cheese Rolls, Wolverines, Suburban Bread, and Brioche Knots a few mere minutes from my front door. Oh, and Cheeseboard-style pizza (which is, for those of you who have not had the pleasure, seriously addictive).

To be honest, I don’t go to Arizmendi all that often. It could easily turn into a daily indulgence, which wouldn’t turn out well for either my waistline or my wallet. I buy my weekly bread, when I do buy bread, from Della Fattoria (simply the best around, if you ask me), and I reserve Arizmendi for special days when I want to treat myself. Sometimes months pass without a visit. But I can tell you this, when I do go to Arizmendi it’s near impossible for me to walk out without a cherry corn scone.

I tried the other scone varieties when I first began buying baked goods at the Cheeseboard, when I was in college, but once I tried the cherry corn scone there was no going back. This is almost not a scone at all. There's a moist, bright yellow crumb that is crunchy with cormeal. It is slightly sweet and studded with dried cherries, their flavor deep and wine-like. The craggy crust is sprinkled with the lightest dusting of sugar. Think of it as a cross between a scone and cornbread.



Luisa, the Wednesday Chef, wasn’t won over when she tried the recipe. She thought they were too sweet to be split open and spread with jam—and I agree that this would be a misuse of the product. Cherry corn scones don’t split open neatly, the cornmeal makes them crumbly, and adding jam would turn them over-the-top sweet. What they are perfect for is being broken off into pieces and dunked in tea and eaten out of hand, preferably on a bench in Golden Gate Park on a slow sunny morning.



This is what I like to do—when I have the time, which I admittedly don’t have often. On mornings when I don’t feel chained to my computer, when I have a little something to celebrate, or when things feel grim and there’s nothing to celebrate and I need to remind myself that eventually there will be good things again to be excited about again (the festival will come to an end, life will go on, I will survive this). On days like that, I wander down to Arizmendi and buy a scone. Then I continue down 9th Avenue and into the park, where I walk around and eventually find myself always in the same place, the Shakespeare Garden. It is one of my very favorite spots in the city, a orderly corner in what is in many ways a wonderfully wild park.



I’ve been here, sitting on these benches, on days that were good, on days that were heart-shatteringly difficult, and on many days that fell somewhere between those two points. This garden is like an old friend—consistent, comforting, lovely.



And so I break off my little pieces of scone and I dip them in my milky tea and I am grateful for this sunny morning, for the small moments we are able to carve out in our day to enjoy the beauty. The email beast is waiting at home, still needing to be battled, but for this moment I get the chance to breathe, to enjoy the way the sunlight filters through the trees, the scent of freshly cut grass, and the perfection of a scone and tea on a park bench in the sun. It doesn't take much for happiness.



Cheese Board/Arizmendi Cherry Corn Scone recipe

To be honest with you, I've not made this recipe before (if you lived blocks from Arizmendi Bakery you wouldn't either; not to mention, a full batch of these things would be a dangerous challenge to my willpower). The recipe comes from the cookbook The Cheeseboard Collective Works, which includes all the recipes for the amazing baked goods that come out of these wonderful worker owned and operated local businesses. You can bet I'm taking a copy with me to Seattle. I'm still going to be craving these scones, even when I'm far from the Sunset.



PS. to Carroll—thanks for your concern over my absence! (call it a combination of deferred life maintenance, big writing projects, and the fact that I can't stand the sight of my computer right now). Sweet of you to notice, thank you. I hope to get around to answering comments soon.