Late Summer at the Farmers' Market

It's been so glorious at the farmers' markets here lately, I just had to share. Late summer is a time of such bounty, such gorgeous colors and flavors.



I am loving red peppers these days, crunchy and sweet; the tomatoes have come in like gangbusters, finally tasting like their wonderful tomatoey selves; the green beans are snappy; the peaches dripping with juice that run down your arm; and the basil turns even more fragrant in the summer sunshine. At a farmers' market in late summer, it's hard not to feel happy just to be alive.



I've been going to a few markets each week—for the fun of the experience, and also because I am making good on that promise of attempting raw veganism for a week and, whew, you go through a lot of produce!



Seattle has neighborhood markets, which means that on almost any day of the week there is a farmers' market somewhere. Some days there are more than one. I have my favorites, but I haven't been to all of them yet. It's fun to explore.



And the produce this time of the year makes me swoon. It's so beautiful, so perfectly ripe and delicious, I find that I don't want to do much to it once I get home—a splash of olive oil, a pinch of salt, a sprinkling of fresh herbs from the garden, and all the fruit eaten out of hand. This is good because, well, see above note about raw foodism.



What are you picking up at the market these days?

The Pie Basket

My mother bought this pie basket at the Fremont Sunday Market here in Seattle about six years ago. At the time I think I made fun of the poor basket; I thought it terribly twee.

Not to mention, my mother doesn’t actually bake pies.



But she does like old things, and she does like baskets. She took the pie basket up to the cabin in Canada, where it has spent the last few years.

Until I noticed it this summer, hidden up in the loft, and asked her to bring it back to Seattle for me.



It is still slightly twee—and I feel a little like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz when I use it (I’m just certain I should be wearing a pinafore and skipping). But it’s terribly useful, especially when you are going to lots of potlucks and picnics as I have been lately.

I can even fit my largest glass bowl inside the basket—filled with whatever summer bounty is at hand, like these little plum tomatoes from the farmers’ market (I wait all year for these guys). And I can carry it easily and gracefully in one hand.



It occurs to me that if I'd had this basket last winter, I wouldn’t have tripped down the stairs at my brother’s house and twisted my ankle (because I was carrying too many bowls and plates from our homemade ravioli feast and couldn’t see the steps) and I wouldn’t have had to cancel my New Year’s getaway plans and instead spend two days icing my foot.

Clearly this is a case of mom being right. Again.

Glad she snagged the pie basket.

Have a good weekend, friends—and thanks for all the meat recipes!

Meat Me Halfway?

As some of you may know, I’m writing a book about meat (well, it's about other things too, but yes, it's about meat) This topic makes me laugh part of the time, cringe the other part of the time—but it all makes for a good story, one that I hope you’ll get to read somewhere about September of next year.

(Did you know it takes longer to make a book than it does to make a human baby? It’s true!)

This means that I’ve been hanging out with butchers and ranchers and the nicest charcuterie folks ever. Yes, my friends, I have seen a lot of meat this year.

Right now—in the name of unscientific research and dubious literary pursuit—I am attempting to eat meat every day for a week.* If I can, I may try to eat it every meal of every day for a week (small amounts, mind you; I'm nothing if not dainty). I hear there are people who do so on a regular basis. Having been raised as a vegetarian, this is almost inconceivable to me.

But my friends, I have hit a problem—I’m on day four and I have run out of recipes! I literally have cooked all the red meat dishes I know how to cook.

So here is your challenge—should you chose to accept it:

Those of you who are meat-eaters, would you send me some recipes? Do you have suggestions of things that are easy to cook for a meat novice and that your family/friends love? I’m looking especially for red meat recipes (I do okay with chicken) and for things that are good to make in the summer. A pot roast in August is a little daunting, even when the fate of a book is at stake.

And you should know that I don’t have a barbeque—though I may have run out and bought one by the end of the week. I figure I can always transition it to a tofu-grilling machine once the week is over, right?

Feel free to post recipes in the comments—or email them to me (tea_austen[at]yahoo.com) if you would prefer.

Any and all help is much appreciated—even a pep talk, somewhere roundabouts Thursday. I may need one.

And for all you veggies out there—don’t worry, next week is vegan raw foods.

(You think I'm kidding?)

Ironically enough, that will be much easier for me.

Many thanks,

—The novice meat girl, Tea.

* For those of you concerned about my health, I am making sure to get a goodly amount of vegetables, fruits, and grains along with all that meat. It's not just all bacon and pancetta over here at Chez Tea.

Meeting Maya

One day last November, I parked my car on a quiet residential street in Berkeley. I had never been on this small, tree-lined street before and I was full of anticipation. I gathered my bags and packages and made my way up the stairs of the house whose address had been emailed to me. I was going to see Meg.

My friend Meg was once my roommate. We lived together in a rambling old house in San Francisco shortly after I returned from Japan. We hung our combined baseball cap collection along the high molding of the back hallway and soon had merged our sweater collections (imagine your wardrobe doubling overnight— whee!). Meg wasn’t around much, she spent a lot of time at her boyfriend’s in the East Bay, but Wednesday night would usually find us watching West Wing, and she is the only person, besides my best guy friend Paul, for whom I have willingly woken up early to get coffee and hang out with before work.

Meg and I may both be Northern Californians—in love with the outdoors, dogs, and fleece clothing—but we are plenty different as people. She jokes that her version of cooking is to call and order number 27 from the restaurant down the street. When we lived together her room was perpetually clean and organized, mine not always so. But there was something about Meg that felt like family to me. When she eventually moved to the East Bay I was sad—and not just because I lost access to all her lovely sweaters.

The trade off, of course, is that she and Tim did start hosting awesome tamale parties each December.

I’ve never told Meg this, but I’ve always secretly thought that if I were to have a sister—if I were able to pick my sister—I think I would pick Meg.

Since then Meg and I have kept up our friendship in a sporadic but enthusiastic manner. Our schedules sometimes find us planning dinners two and three months out to find a date that’s free (when did we all get so darned busy?), and sometimes we see each other only a few times a year. But it’s always quality over quantity with Meg.

It isn’t always lightness and mirth on the nights we get together. I remember one evening a few years ago when—both of us reeling from respective loss—we sat on the terrace of the Sharffenberger Café and cried into our red wine and chocolate mousse. At that moment life just felt gutting and the only consolation was a friend who knew how painful things were.

Other times with Meg have made me laugh so hard my stomach hurts. It’s good to have the sort of friend who is able to put you back into your own skin. Meg knows me well enough that I don’t have to explain why something is funny or awful or totally embarrassing; she knows me well enough to point out big picture shifts in my own life that I may have missed. A chat session with Meg leaves me feeling like somehow the world is at rights again.

And she always shows up wearing some item of clothing—usually footwear—that I have at home in my own closet. It’s a good thing we aren’t sisters because we might end up being the sort of sisters who dress alike.

I haven’t seen Meg much lately. I attended her wedding the summer before last—my first big excursion after months of illness. On the top of a mountain in Northern California I watched her and her sweetie pledge their love in a ceremony that was the most moving I have ever been to—perhaps because it was the most like what I might choose for myself (including post-ceremony, specially decorated bridal flip-flops). Then there was Zydeco dancing as the sun slowly slipped behind the mountains in a sunset that seemed to go on forever.



And last summer, shortly after I had returned from Seattle, I met Meg for lunch. She showed up wearing the same sandals that I have (of course) and a black maternity dress. I had known it beforehand but it wasn’t real until I saw her: Meg was having a baby.

(Though to be honest—and this is something that perhaps only Meg will appreciate—I had a hard time remembering it was a baby Meg was having; I kept on thinking in some part of my brain that she was having a puppy.)

Meg’s little one made her way into the world last fall, while I was busy with the literary festival. In the midst of my chaotic inbox was an email with photos of the most adorable little peanut and her name—Maya—which by sheer coincidence is the name I was nearly given and always sort of wished I had been. I couldn’t help feel a bond with this new young thing.



A few weeks later I made my way to the East Bay to see Meg and meet little Maya in their new home, a house Meg and her husband had bought not long before. I walked up the steps, marveling at the paths our lives had taken in the eight years or so since we shared a home and watched West Wing together on Wednesday nights.

And there was my dear friend with her new child.

What words can I use to explain the feeling of seeing a friend with their new baby for the first time? They are at once the same person you’ve always know—how could they not be? Yet, at the same time, they are completely different. They’ve stepped over the threshold and into an experience that carries with it the entire spectrum of human emotion in high relief—taken on an awesome responsibility from which there is no withdrawing. It's not possible to be changed by such a transition; they will never be the same again. The sheer humanity of it makes my heart feel like it has cracked open in a new way and I am left blinking away tears.



And all the while my phone was ringing. I normally would have turned it off—there were clearly far my important things at hand—but my book had just been submitted to editors and it was my agent calling with updates that there was lots of interest. Meg was so excited for me—more excited that I was, even. I was somewhat stunned by the whole experience.

As I sat in my friend’s new house, with her and her baby and my agent on the phone talking about a book deal, it occurred to me that perhaps we’re grownups now. At least we seemed to have picked up all the accoutrement somewhere along the way.

A little later I held Maya while Meg made us both turkey sandwiches and I told her she could take a shower if she wanted. The baby seemed fine to be held by a stranger and I know that parents of newborns rarely get a moment for their own basic life maintenance.

“Are you serious?” she asked me, tempted but somewhat disbelieving the offer.

“Sure, go ahead. We’ll be fine—I’ll call you if she starts to fuss.”

Halfway out of the room Meg turned and looked at me. “You know, people throw you baby showers and give you all this stuff,” she said. “But the true present is someone who comes over and offers to hold your baby so you can take a shower.”

And that meant the world to me, because of course I was far away in Seattle when Meg had her shower. I know that I won’t be able to support my friend they way I would like to as she undertakes the awesome job of raising a person. This baby won’t know me as she might if I were in the Bay Area and able to really be part of her life. This is something that makes me sad.



And so little Maya and I sat in the kitchen—this sun-strewn kitchen in my friend’s new house. I held her and told her important things—like what a wonderful mother she has; how very much she has to look forward to; and how her parents can’t wait to share with her this beautiful world filled with rivers and forests and oceans that they’ve both worked hard to protect.

And I ate my turkey sandwich and it was the best turkey sandwich ever.

Because sometimes the most delicious thing you’ve ever tasted is the sandwich your friend makes for you in those first wondrous and frightening days of her new parenthood, when she is tired and in need of a shower and she lets you hold her child and shares this new chapter of her life with you and you watch as this person you know and dearly love becomes someone’s mother.



I was lucky enough to see the two Ms again last week—on a dizzying swing through the Bay Area. I now have a new definition of sheer pleasure: dancing in the kitchen with your dear friend and her young child to the pop tunes of George Michael—which only goes to show you that perhaps we haven't entirely grown up.

(But our musical tastes are terribly dated, it is true.)

Nine-month-old Maya, however, loves George.

Did I mention that I adore this child?

Her mom, too.

Thanks to Meg for letting me show off her gorgeous girl.



TURKEY SANDWICH

What can I tell you about a turkey sandwich? I probably shouldn't even try—I don't make too many sandwiches, you see. I had to nick the bread for this version from my brother's house because I don't even keep sliced bread on hand. In my recipe index on this site I have a category for "sandwiches and assorted lunchables" and there is one measly entry—for stuffed pita pockets.

Guess I don't really "do" sandwiches.



The problem, I find, is that most sandwiches are boring. Unless they are an amazing combination of flavors and ingredients, they tend to fall flat for me. Lettuce, maybe a tomato, some kind of meat or cheese—are you falling asleep already?

Of course, in my world there must be mustard.

And cheese—preferably a sharp cheddar.

And in an attempt to make sure that every bite doesn't taste exactly the same, I like to use salad mix as a stand in for plain lettuce. At least there you get a bit of radicchio, maybe some arugula, some sort of texture and flavor complexity. I don't usually buy salad mix (I find lettuce tastes better and keeps longer when bought by the head), but I do for sandwiches.



And I like to add sliced radish, for some crunch and bite.

Or sometimes I'll toss a handful of capers on top. That perks things up.

All that said, I'll eat turkey sandwiches with Meg and Maya any day of the week.