dude, Friday is my par-tay. Are you coming or what?
Ganda to winnie:
Happy birthday!
Didn't I RSVP? I'm going to be on a llama
farm at a bachelorette party. It's the kind of "party" where we take
walks wearing long pants and caps to keep the ticks off. I'm looking
forward to it, but very sorry to be missing what I'm sure will be a fab
fete.
winnie to me:
Oh, got it. Yes, you did RSVP. Which must be why I took you off the list for the reminder email. Llama farm sounds awesome. Do you get to eat any?
San Franciscans love their pastries. They're everywhere. On any given S.F. corner, you can exhale pot smoke in any direction and hotbox a fancy pastry shop.
On my last morning, we hit up La Boulange de Hayes, a kind of west coast Le Pain Quotidien. The darkly caramelized cannelés de Bordeaux are a little too boozy for me at this hour, but the almond croissant is making me happy (though I think I prefer the buttery, almond paste-overstuffed chocolate almond croissant from Mission Beach Cafe). My favorite thing at La Boulange is the free condiment station where you can load up on cornichons from a little glass jar. Like all-you-can-eat. Like my inner suburban immigrant is doing a happy dance in the frozen party snacks sample aisle at Costco on a Saturday afternoon. Also, the tuna nicoise sandwich and herb dusted potato chips I pick up for the plane trip are perfectly portable and delicious.
It's been fun, but I leave S.F. knowing that it's not my town. Not anymore. There was a time when I thought I'd take root there. All the buttery pastries and all the produce, all the fragrant flora and oversexed fauna, they're still fun to enjoy as a tourist. It's weird, I've been in New York for nine years now. We may not be able to grow Meyer lemons or avocado trees in my apartment; I still wish we had a dishwasher and a garbage disposal; I want to roll out of bed and have a yoga studio across the street instead of a White Castle; but NYC's home for me now, and I'm looking forward to getting back.
The Lodge's restaurant is ill-equipped to handle the 30-person brunch my cousin and his wife have arranged for the morning after, but it's fun to be seated at a long table with our big Thai family and Alanna's big Irish family.
After brunch, Sirion and Alex drive me back to Julie's. We pass the dregs of the Bay to Breakers run, which is basically a cross between a frat kegger, the gay pride parade, a group acid trip, a middle-aged amateur porno without the sex, and a 12K run. Up by the Marina, we drive by a hot twink rocking an ensemble of short white tennis shorts (through which his American Apparel tighty-fluorescent-greenies are visible), a popped-collar white polo, mirrored aviators, striped headband and tennis racket. We're not sure if he's for real or if he's in costume. I hope he's for real.
Back at Julie's, we grill up a feast -- marinated chicken, carne asada (none for me), big gamy steaks of goat, Italian sausages and more.
My contribution: a grated carrot salad with plum tomatoes, garlic, sesame oil, and Meyer lemon juice. (I put those Meyer lemons in EVERYTHING.) I go overboard on just about everything, but it's the radioactive Cool Whip cake that puts a fork in me. I ask for a cup of tea while everyone around me gets trashed. An old friend shows up while tripping on mushrooms. By himself. Ladies are making out on the coat pile in the bedroom, nook nook is happening in the laundry room downstairs, flirtations turn into out and out propositions, bi-, gay, and straight sexual intrigue abounds. But not for me. I'm hiding out at the top of the stairs, nursing my mug of green jasmine tea and thinking, "Doesn't anybody have to work tomorrow? It's a Sunday night!" I am such a grandma.
We end the night closing out The Mint, where Grandma pulls it together enough to kick out a little 2 am "Welcome to the Jungle" before going back chez Julie and passing out on the couch.
5/19, Monday
Julie and I have a most glorious hangover day of yoga and food shopping. We invite my friends Justin and Jim for dinner, where I cook a bunch of my standards. We gab at the kitchen table over way too much food. I keep thinking giddily that this is how I should be living my life every day. The best part of the meal is dessert -- two ice creams from the Bi-Rite Creamery, salted caramel and orange cardamom. Very adult flavors. Be jealous, that shit is CRAZY delicious. The ice cream is a little airier than gelato or frozen custard. The orange cardamom is totally for me -- spicy and sunny, yet cold and creamy. It will have to be another obligatory stop the next time I'm in town.
5/20, Tuesday We hit a 9 am yoga class being taught by Jehfree Spirit. His drag name is Freetah B. I didn't even need to make that up.
For lunch, we head to the Ferry Plaza market. Stone fruit and berries have already come in for California, and I'm reveling in the blush-fleshed peaches, fleshy brook cherries, and fragrant blueberries.
The dried fruit selection is unbelievable -- pluots, tangy apricots or sweet apricots, moist golden raisins the size of june bugs, Asian pear rings, and pretty much anything else you can think of.
The Ferry Plaza market is like foodie yuppie heaven. Seriously, if someone locked me up in there overnight, my liver would be foie gras by morning. Acme Bread, Stonehouse Olive Oil, pastries, meats and more -- it's like Dean and Deluca on steroids. I love foods that taste like expensive perfume because they make me feel like a lady; these Miette rose geranium macarons are like the culinary incarnation of Nancy Mitford in two crisp-cloudy bites.
I especially love the bombolonis we get from the Italian shop. They make me want to bomboloni someone, or bomboloni all over their bomboloni. They're round fried doughnuts the size of Arnold Schwarzenegger's fist, dusted with granulated sugar and piped til they're ready to burst with nutella, chocolate, seedless raspberry jam, or our favorite, bombolonidacious golden pastry cream. You can't see, but a single tear just rolled down my cheek. If that isn't enough, the bomboloni are being sold by an unbelievably adorable gaysian Gumby with a five inch pompadour and clear braces.
We've missed breakfast at Boulette's Larder, but we sit down for one of the most fortifying, nourishing, lively lunches I've had in a long time -- verdant Japanese turnip soup sprinkled with fried giblet bits, a rich sardine salad with endive, dill and feta, and a poached chicken salad with barberries, pistachios, za'atar spices, tahini, and the most tender bloomsday spinach ever, the arrowhead leaves impossibly sweet. Most of the ingredients are local; low prices keep it from being precious. Why aren't sardines on the menu more often? I will order them whenever I see them. You can't see, but I am totally pumping my fist and engaging my mulabanda while taking these pictures.
After an easy, digestive walk up Market St., we get back to Julie's house and noodle around on the guitar and piano, singing Carpenters tunes, nipping at wine, cheese, and our fruit booty from the market. For dinner, we make a Mexican feast, mostly using leftovers from the previous two nights. I can't remember the last time I ate so well -- a boatload of homemade guac, cumin-scented black beans, fresh, thick tortillas from the Mexicatessen, grilled chicken stir-fried with broccoli raab and leftover red peppers, store-bought salsa fresca spruced up with fresh habanero, and an incredible tart slaw Brent made by mixing my fresh meyer lemon relish with slivered green cabbage -- perfect in a taco with the leftover pan-fried salmon. Mostly leftovers, but still, one of my favorite meals of the whole trip. It's kind of a revelation. This is how I want to be eating, every day -- surrounded by friends, at home, using good, honest ingredients and letting nothing go to waste. As a California ex-pat, I used to dream about Bay Area burritos all the time, but sometimes I forget that I'm perfectly capable of making Cali-style Mexican food exactly suited to my taste.
My cousin Sirion and her boyfriend Alex pick me up in a sunburnt orange compact car. (Is that the teal of the aughts?) We snake down Divisadero to Lombard St., which takes us straight to the Golden Gate Bridge. The wispy fog looks like it's been piped in for a movie set. It's picturesque and romantic without obstructing drivers' sightlines.
ALEX: It looks like they've got a fog machine going, doesn't it?
Tiburon is one of those tiny Marin county towns on the other side of the Golden Gate. Spiny sailboats are moored along every dock. Multi-million dollar homes cling to the verdant cliffs against a backdrop of blue, blue ocean. It makes me think of the Hamptons -- the few clothing boutiques mainly sell Amalfi-ready sandals and gauzy cover-ups in pastels and whites, and oysters on the half-shell are easier to pick up than a can of hairspray.
My whole family is staying at the Lodge at Tiburon. I find that I have become the kind of guest that must find something to complain about. I get a room for my parents and a room for myself -- can I switch the room on the second floor for one with two queens instead of one king? Can I switch the room on the ground floor for security reasons and because it smells strongly of chlorine from the pool it's situated by? Can I get a room with a bathtub instead of just a shower? Why don't the windows have screens? I don't really give a shit about amenities, I just don't like thinking that somebody else might have been given something better.
But it's great to be with my family, whom I adore. I love the way my very private cousin Sakorn endures being the center of attention, and the way his wife's eyes tear up as he reads his vows, which are far more tender than we might have expected. I love Sirion's speech, which reveals her intimate knowledge of her brother, but also how much his wife Alanna will be able to teach us about Sakorn's character. I love the way my cousin's baby Sadie lights up when she sees my Mae, her bonus grandma, and the way she stretches her soft little arms up to be held.
The festivities are over in a flash, but in a moment, our family has grown by one. Alanna has tied her fate to his, thus mooring her life to ours. The details of the day have already faded a bit, but I'm left with the muscle memory that my heart is full.
It's my first wedding weekend of the year and I just missed my flight to San Francisco. I'd like to say that this is the first time in my life I've ever missed a flight, but my oft-inconvenienced parents would call bullshit on me. Not my fault this time. My itinerary said that the flight left at 3:30pm. After years of traveling with musicians, I've picked up the bad habit of not showing up at the airport till 1 hour before departure, even when I have a bag to check. This usually works out just fine -- I get to relax at home and spend as little time as humanly possible at the airport.
But when I got here at 2:30, I tried to check in and was told that it was too late, my flight was leaving at 2:55. I don't know how 2:55 means 3:30, which is what I printed out from my e-mail itinerary, but I basically had to get on a long ass line with the tourists to attempt to get on the next flight out, at 5:25pm.
I actually don't have too much trouble with waiting. I can go to my zen place as long as I've got a book to read (I brought The Rest is Noise), maybe a magazine (picked up The New Yorker this time, though I usually go with a mix of snortable fluff like Lucky and wordy human drama like Nat Geo), and a little candy (Raisinets are really doing it for me lately, which makes me feel even more like a grandma than I already do.)
The one thing I do resent is having to waste an entire meal at the airport. Given that I ate right before I left home, and that it will be another 9 hours before I get to San Francisco, I'm going to have to eat something. You know you're in a miserable place when a woman walks by with an Au Bon Pain coffee cup and you think to yourself, "Ooh, I wonder where she got that from?"
Wouldn't it be great if an airport food vendor decided one day to break the pact of mediocrity they all seem to agree to upon signing their leases? Here in the American Airlines terminal at JFK, there doesn't seem to be much of a difference between the Soho Express, the Euro Café and the Brooklyn Deli -- it's basically the same sorry menu of chips, underripe fruit, wet sandwiches, preternaturally perky romaine salads, and cut fruit that look like salmonella playgrounds.
And when did wraps become so ubiquitous and acceptable? There is so much wrong with a cold tortilla. Why not just wrap up your grilled chicken in ranch dressing-doused double-ply Charmin?
I still have a bit of post-9/11 flight anxiety. Sometimes I find myself thinking, what if this is it and the last taste in my mouth is this tempera paint-yellow mustard, waterlogged turkey and vermilion Dorito powder? Not that I would be giving a shit about my most recent meal, but you know, one thinks about these things. All this salt is going to make grandma grind her teeth all night.
Anyway, seems like this flight is all kinds of delayed. I'm grumps. I need to go do a few handstands or something.
*****
Of all the "how dumb are we" warnings they could be announcing over the loudspeaker at the airport, why does the "If any unknown person asks you to carry any unknown item onto the plane, do not accept it" one still get play? Is the general public really still that clueless, given that we're in a permastate of orange alert? I mean, if we're going to issue warnings for that, why not issue warnings like, "If the guy sitting next to you tries to light his shoe on fire, alert the stewardess"? Or, "If a bunch of angry young men with one-way tickets threaten to slit throats with boxcutters if you don't give them access to the cockpit, don't give in"?
A couple of things I took away from our weekend at Steve's fancy shack upstate:
1. Breakfast for a group can be a challenge -- scrambled eggs are only appealing as soon as they come out of the pan. Better presentation: a frittata, which you can cook in a big pan and serve everyone at once. Late wakers can eat frittata wedges cold -- utensils optional. Winnie made a fab chorizo frittata. For mixed veg/omnivore crowds, try a frittata with nettles, which add a meaty depth to the eggs. It's too late in the season for nettles and green garlic, but heirloom tomatoes and parmesan would be good, or maybe Black Tuscan kale and goat cheese. I liked the breakfast strategy at Steve's -- make a ton of food, like bacon, home fries, pancakes, frittata -- and just leave everything out for people to graze on.
2. Cochecton has an amazing organic farm stand with freshly pastured chickens, Tonjes dairy goods, and some impressive produce. We got these heirloom tomatoes, blondie heirloom cukes, purple peppers and beans, some tall mizuna, and tons more. I especially loved the tiny radish-sized beets. I roasted them with their elephant garlic, which was like one huge, clementine-sized clove. You can just lop a bit of the top off, stick it in with the beets, and squeeze the single clove out of its round, papery shell. They also had cute lambs, goats, and boars, which you could buy live or...not live.
3. I've never shown any natural aptitude for a video game until this past weekend. Now I'm totally obsessed with Guitar Hero. I have got to find a way to rent a Playstation for our annual Hudson trip.
4. Port Authority is a place for crazy people. I got yelled at by the crazy Shortline bus lady who told me I would wind up 45 miles away from where I needed to go, and that I ought to go take a different bus. She made me doubt my route, so I went downstairs to talk to the information booth woman, who was super friendly and sympathetic. She put her hand up against the plexiglass in solidarity and told me to just go on following my path. The buses may get out of Manhattan faster, but food options there suck. And the pigeons trapped inside the station go nuts, flying way too close overhead for my comfort. It's a fucking weird place.
Went to a glorious wedding in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont this past weekend. We stayed on Caspian Lake, watched fish spawn and die, swam in clear water, and ate lots of Jasper Hill Farm cheese. My friend Val called Constant Bliss the best cheese she's ever had. It's a volcano-shaped puck made of raw cow's milk, a bit smaller than a baseball. Mild and creamy with just enough moldy bite to keep things interesting, it's got a bloomy white rind, an oozy middle layer, and a firm-paste nougat center. Jasper Hill makes American cheese we can all be proud of. It's too bad I can't summer in Greensboro every weekend. Luckily, we can get buy Constant Bliss and Jasper Hill Farm's other delectable milkrot (including the sexy Bayley Hazen Blue) at Saxelby Cheesemongers in the Essex Market.
There's nothing like a little R&R with friends to recharge the old batteries. Doug's mom went out of town, so we moved in for the weekend bearing groceries, liquor, and bathing suits. We were laughing at what a bunch of old farts we've become -- who'd've thunk we could get so excited about hanging out at mom's house?
But what's not to love? An adorable house on the Cape, a deck festooned with pink roses, a dreamy kitchen with all the amenities, peace and quiet. You could hear and smell the sea from the woodsy neighborhood we were in. We noshed all weekend on nubbly shrimp butter toasts, Pimm's cup, and pan-fried cod. Doug baked and frosted a giant four-layer pecan spice cake with lemony cream cheese icing. It pretty much set me back about 3 weeks in exercise maintenance, but it was worth it. Oink oink.
I'd never been to Cape Cod, and being from California, I didn't really have any preconceptions of what the Cape would be like. Big houses with white decks and pebble gray shingles sit on unbelievably lush hills of grass. We were just blocks from a private beach, where mossy rocks jutted out onto a boisterous ocean and seabirds were kamikaze diving for fish.
A few highlights:
[At the McDonald's drive-thru.]
DOUG: I just need a little caffeine. I'm going to get a Diet Coke. Anyone want anything?
GANDA: No. Ooh, I want a caramel sundae if they have it.
BOX: Can I take your order?
DOUG: Hi, yeah, can I get a medium Diet Coke and a caramel sundae?
BOX: We don't have caramel, just chocolate and strawberry.
DOUG: [to me] You want?
GANDA: No.
DOUG: Okay, then, I'll just get a cone.
HEE JIN: Wait, get me a small fries.
GANDA: Make that a medium fries.
DOUG:[to BOX] And can I get a large fries?
**
The Raw Bar in Popponessett, where the steamers dipped in clarified butter were the best I've ever had; the lobster roll runneth over with scarlet, sweet lobster hunks just barely anointed with mayo; the oysters were so tantalizing and icy, I had to try one though I don't usually touch them in the summer. I asked the bronzed teenage waitress what kind of oysters they were, and she gave me this look like, "Jigga-wha?" I'll tell you what they were -- they were quivering, fresh and briny, perfect with a squeeze of lemon and a squirt of horseradishy cocktail sauce, and that's all you need to know.
**
Francis proclaimed these the best muffins he's ever had. I'm not disagreeing. The French butter gives them a crispy top and the sour cream keeps the crumb moist. I used a Barefoot Contessa Family Style recipe, which I changed just a bit to suit the ingredients we had. I should have doubled the recipe though -- I could have eaten five of those muffins myself.
Fruity Coffee Cake Muffins
5 tbsp. unsalted French butter at room temperature (I used Lescure)
3/4 c. sugar
2 large eggs
3/4 tsp. vanilla
1/2 c. sour cream
1/8 c. milk
1 1/4 c. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 c. blueberries
2 large strawberries, diced
1/2 ripe banana, diced
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a muffin tin or line with paper cups. Beat sugar and butter together. Add vanilla, eggs, sour cream and milk. Beat some more. In a separate bowl, sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together. Mix dry ingredients into wet with a light hand til smooth but not overbeaten. Fold fruit in. Scoop into muffin tin. Bake for 25-30 minutes til golden. Makes 9 muffins.
**
We spent all day Sunday chasing the shade across the backyard while drinking sangria. We nibbled on russet chips and FranwichesTM, Francis's genius contribution to the culinary world. (I'm not sure if I'm allowed to divulge his recipe, so you'll have to use your imagination for now.) La Doug brought the clock radio out and blasted Tracy Chapman with Pavarotti, Mariah, and enough other pop fluff to chase the cardinals away. I thought, wow, if this is what Doug's mom's life is like every day, maybe I should start looking to buy a house outside the city.
Road trip tip: It never hurts to bring a loaf of bread, olives, cheeses, and a bottle of wine to enjoy when you arrive at your destination. Nobody wants to cook after a long drive, and liquor stores will be closed by the time you get there.
I'm going to the Cape tonight with La Doug, Heej and Francis, so there won't be any You Are What You Eat this week. (Heej's work, by the way, will be featured in the next issue of Blind Spot magazine.)
These last few months, I've been working like a dog, practically every free minute of the day. I'm getting sort of contracted and hard, like a steroidal zit. I've also been going to the gym to try and alleviate the stress, but I think it's only concentrating my aggression. I really need this weekend to step back and take measure of my life. Clambake or bust!
