The Circle Game

Los Angeles, California


I was a passionate Joni Mitchell fan. A teenager when her album, Blue, was released, I listened to it so many times that I may have worn out the grooves. I am certain I am not the only one who memorized every word of every song on both sides of it. All I Want was the anthem that carried me into my first, doomed love affair. I listened to Blue when I was elatedly in love, and then I listened to it incessantly when I was heartbroken. For a couple of decades after I had left my teens behind, I avoided it, as I couldn't listen to it without reliving heartbreak, Pavlovian-style. Such is the power of anthems. Finally, slowly, I came back to it, after purchasing the CD in the summer of 2001. And again, heartbreak followed, though of a much more universal, and less solipsistic nature.


I was never a big fan of Joni's song, The Circle Game. It was from an earlier album that hadn't really spoken to me, and I never really got that particular song -- something about that merry-go-round melody. That is, until a few years ago when I heard Christine Ebersole sing it at a small cabaret concert in Costa Mesa. It was one of those weird moments, when Wile e Coyote appears out of nowhere to drop an Acme anvil on your head. Tears formed and flowed. Quietly; discreetly. But, nevertheless.


Now I get The Circle Game. Probably because I'm older, and have learned to assuage much of the heartbreak in my life, through dance. As a dancer, I spend a lot of time with partners making patterns on the dance floor. We circle, and move across. We glide, turning sideways; back and forth. We never get anywhere. It's all about nothing. Dolce far niente.


I often look around a salsa club and think about what it is that brought us all to learn and live this thing. We're so diverse. We live; work; probably in many ways we think differently, and often in different languages. But we come together on the floor. For whatever reason, we are drawn to dance. To move in circles; to pass a portion of our time and lives in this way.


There has been loss in our salsa world. And there has been new romance after loss. There has been drama (are you kidding me?), and recently, a car accident that has rendered a member of our community onto crutches (no dancing for a few months yet after a knee surgery). Time circles and passes. We dance.


Summer will soon be over. I started to dance salsa one August afternoon, now quite a few years back. We stood in two concentric circles; ladies inside. We watched, learned, practiced, then changed partners. Occasionally, I will run into one of those early partners at a different club; that first one having closed several years back. We will say hello; sometimes we will dance. Moving to music as always; this way, then that. Round and round.


We're lucky -- even my friend, the car crash victim. Could have been worse. And dancing will wait for him, just up ahead. That's the thing about dancing. In dancing unlike life, you rarely look back.


We can't return, we can only look
Behind from where we came,
And go round and round and round,
In the circle game.


Thanks for reading my blog, and sometime please, as Ray Davies implored, Come Dancing. Life is short . . .

Prisoner of Gluten

Los Angeles, California

I suffer from guilt. Seriously. I often feel guilty. I think guilt was installed in me when I was too young to resist. In spite of everything I am doing for my mom, which is providing all of the family care for her, I always feel I could do more. That I could spend more time with her, solve her ongoing problem with boredom, be that better kid that I always felt I should be for my mom. Inexplicably, I did not feel this in my relationship with my dad. I always felt that he enjoyed my company, and was proud of how I turned out, in spite of that brief incarceration which I wrote about in my last post (available here, while supplies last!).

I feel twinges of guilt about my blog as well. I often regret the complaining, the grousing, the bitching about things I see around me that I do not like one bit: reality TV; carpooling parents in SUVs who run stop signs; people subjecting you to their end of loud cellphone conversations, especially if they are using the words the production -- and lastly, those of you who proclaim that you eat clean but then I observe that you wash neither your fruits nor your vegetables. I'm just saying.

One thing I don't feel guilty about is my food. We eat well and good. Almost enough said, but not quite. I want to go on record as saying that I like tofu, when I run across it in miso soup or pad thai noodles. I like quinoa. I like kale. I just don't want to eat these things every day when there are so many yummy foods out there to eat. We like a variety of vegetables, and, while I can't speak for Billy (who, frankly, could use a twelve-step program to get that Fudgsicle monkey off his back), I don't have much of a sweet tooth so I don't get into trouble on that front. We are pretty much slow-food people, as we cook often, and we eat a minimum of foods that are considered to be processed.However, that doesn't stop us from the occasional Animal-style In-and-Out Burger; nor the occasional Dodger dog at a baseball game. And, if truth be told, I probably do have a chili burger every year or so. That, along with, say, a perfect loaf of french bread; and some terribly fine Camembert cheese, occasionally serve as reminders for why life is worth living -- at least on the food front.

I shouldn't go off on the whole GF (gluten-free) thing. Because whether you have a genuine health problem with gluten, or you just want to have a problem with gluten, that is your business. Trends become fads. But, I do get the white food thing, and we do moderate our intake of it -- sugar, flour, pasta, bread, etc. I do feel a bit sluggish if I overload on it; and I often cook whole-wheat pasta instead of white because I feel it is a bit more digestible. But, let's be honest, don't some of us occasionally imbibe things designed to make us feel a little logy and sluggish? And who doesn't feel a bit, well, bloated after a beer? Isn't that just what comes with the territory -- not a bad thing, unless overdone?

I happen to think that the idea of brown rice sushi is, well, silly. I want to eat authentically, and brown rice sushi, risotto, or paella just isn't right. So, again, I'm not planning to abstain from food, white and otherwise, as long as my weight and blood work continues to indicate that I don't have to. And for those of you who are now treating gluten like second-hand smoke, please be aware that if you invite me to your home for a meal, I am now XGF (Xanthan Gum Free). Xanthan gum, by the way, is what is used in GF bakery items to mimic gluten. It is created by the process of fermentation of glucose, sucrose, or lactose, and is frequently made from corn, soy, or wheat. It's also used in the process of oil drilling -- to thicken mud. And, in the creation of fake blood and slime. Whatever gets us through the night.

Now, having finished that rant, and, trust me I will feel guilty about it later as I always do, I want to share a recipe for something I think is really healthy, because it has yogurt in it. White yogurt.

Ubiquitous French Yogurt Cake

1 1/2 cups           WHITE flour
2        teaspoons baking powder
1/2    teaspoon   kosher salt
2        teaspoons grated zest of Meyer Lemon (two or three small)
1         cup            WHITE sugar
3/4    cup             whole-milk plain Greek yogurt
1/2     cup             vegetable oil
2                            eggs, large
1/2    teaspoon   vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a standard-sized loaf pan with nonstick vegetable oil. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Whisk in lemon zest. In a large bowl, whisk yogurt, oil, eggs, and vanilla. Yes, we're having lots of whisking. Add dry ingredients, and fold in until just blended. Pour into pan. Bake until cake is golden brown, and the toothpick test comes out clean -- about 40 to 50 minutes. Cool in pan for fifteen minutes, then turn out to cool completely.

I called this recipe Ubiquitous French Yogurt Cake because recently I've been running across it in cookbooks and food magazines just about everywhere I look. And I understand why. It's a good recipe, easy to make, with an almost pound cake-like texture, but without the pound of butter required to make pound cake. It caught my eye in Molly Wizenberg's food memoir, A Homemade Life. She is the author of the food blog, Orangette, which you can look at by clicking here. But that was not the recipe I initially used when baking this over the weekend for a sojourn to a Hollywood Bowl concert featuring Placido Domingo. I used a recipe from a recent Bon Appetit magazine. Since it was in a loaf, and was going to be served in slices, I sliced off the end to try. Not bad, a little dry, perhaps. Then I sliced off another couple of slices for dessert that night. What do you think? I asked Billy. It's a little dry, he said.

The next morning I baked another French-Style Lemon Yogurt Cake, this time varying both recipe and technique a la Molly's recipe. She uses less yogurt and an extra egg. She also offers the variation to replace 1/2 cup of the WHITE flour with almond meal. I did that. What I didn't do is bake it, as she directed, in a 9-inch cake pan. I went back to my trusty loaf pan. I presented both cakes last night at the Bowl and the consensus was that they were both good, but I think I liked the texture of the Bon Appetit one better. Plus, without the almonds, the Meyer lemon flavor came through more clearly. But my plan is to keep playing around with this. I think the next time I will be using lemon olive oil, or maybe tilting the whole thing towards autumn with orange zest. I will let you know how this turns out. Meanwhile, I thank you for reading my blog -- even you GF'ers. Really. Just lighten up a little . . .

The Awful Truth

Los Angeles, California

Billy and I have been married for quite awhile now, and while we all like to think and project that our marriages are consistently blissful, it is honest to admit that while time together can present moments of bliss, there are also moments of blah, and worse. That's life, and that's not a bad thing, unless you came to the party expecting a total fun blow-out every moment that you spend there. Marriage is not that party. In fact, marriage isn't really like a party at all. It's more like a doctor's appointment: interminable waiting in the presence of company; trading of information, both intimate and otherwise; occasional discomfort; the odd shot-in-the-arm; shared goals; reassurance; feeling that you are an integral part of the team; occasional elation at how well you are doing; dodging traffic coming and going. Also, it will cost you, but you can get a tax break.

My parents never, ever fought. I'm not kidding. There was virtually no conflict displayed, and, unfortunately, no conflict resolution was modeled. I had a lot of conflict in early relationships with my boyfriends in high school and college, and I had no idea how to handle that. As a teenager, I also had conflict with my parents and my sibs. The way it played out in our home was that everyone went to their own quarters, slammed their own doors, and basically disappeared until they had dealt with it on their own, in their own way. Then, they returned to shared areas of our home and pretended like nothing had ever happened. Not healthy, I think, and weird.

During my teenaged years, I once got picked up for a curfew violation. Well, to be honest, it was worse than that. My girlfriend, Nina, and I were with our boyfriends; actually on the back of our boyfriends' motorcycles (in my case, a Honda 160 -- we're not talking Hell's Angels here), and they had gone into a local liquor store known for selling beer to teenagers. We were buying beer for an outdoor gathering at an area known as Plummer Hill. The rest of our friends were already there; waiting for us to show up with the brew. Unfortunately, there were undercover LAPD officers hanging around the parking lot of the liquor store, in place to bust the liquor store for selling to minors. They brought the four of us in to Foothill Division because it was after 10:00 pm, and that was a curfew violation. They told us they were going to call our parents, to come and pick us up. We gave them Nina's mother's number. Nina's mom was much cooler than my parents. We could drink beer at her house, so we didn't think it would be a big deal, and maybe, just maybe, her mom wouldn't tell my parents. Unfortunately, Nina's mother was not at home, so the police asked for my home number. A short time later, I saw my dad walk into the police station. If I could see him, clearly he could see me. I was in a holding cell, and, I was barefooted. He looked at me and shook his head gravely. I was mortified.

Before leaving the division, the officers gave my father a lecture about letting me ride barefoot on the back of motorcycles (this being an era shortly before helmets were required). My dad told the officer that I was forbidden to ride motorcycles at any time. Clearly, the officer understood that: A) my father was unable to exercise control of his errant teenaged daughter: B) I was hopping on the back of motorcycles a mere block away from my home; C) things were about to change D) all of the above.

My mom was in the passenger seat of her car when Nina and I climbed into the back of the Audi. Nina immediately began to apologize, calling my parents with their title of Mr. and Mrs. She was good. My mom stared straight ahead, neither acknowledging Nina, nor her very own barefooted, juvenile delinquent daughter sitting in the backseat making the OMG big eyes at Nina.

The next day my family embarked on one of its bizillion Sunday drives, on this day down to Laguna Beach. We had dinner in Corona del Mar. The entire day, from the the car to the dinner table at The Five Crowns and back home, I was invisible to my mother. She talked to my dad; she talked to my sister. But I simply wasn't there. I doubt the Amish do shunning this expertly. When we got home, I escaped into my room, quietly closing the door behind me.

Shortly after, my dad knocked on my door and I opened it for him. He came into my room, sat on my bed with me, and asked me what had happened the previous night. I told him what all four of us were telling our parents: that we weren't going to drink the beer, but had volunteered to pick it up for the other people at the party who, sadly, were drinkers. My dad listened to this, then pregnant-paused for a moment before he spoke. I think that next time you should let those people get their own beer. We both knew that he hadn't bought my story. Ok, I said. And, I don't want to find out again that you've been riding on a motorcycle. Mark has a car. If he wants to take you out, he needs to use it. I nodded. My dad continued, Your mom is upset, but don't take that too hard. I nodded again, feeling tears well up in my eyes. I was such a bad kid, I thought. My dad looked uncomfortable as he stood up. Ok, he said, in closing. Then he left my room.

I knew that my mom would not have wanted my dad to speak to me. He was supposed to back her up, and shunning was the order of the day(s). It felt strange to me that he had spoken to me, regardless of my mom, but I came to believe that he had taken pity on me. It was scary to be placed in a cell. I really wasn't a bad kid. I was just a teenager, trying to work it all out. And it was unbearable to be treated so coldly by my mother. I think my dad got it, and felt some empathy for me. Finally, a few days or so later, my mom started speaking to me again. She told me that she had never been so embarrassed in her life, as when they got a call from the LAPD and went to pick me up at the police station. But she didn't have to say that. I knew that she hadn't experienced many bad times in her life, and that most of them, including my birth situated at the top of the short list, had been generated by bad-kid me.

That talk with my dad was my one home experience of conflict resolution. By the time I was in college, with a longterm boyfriend, I was trying to work things out for myself. Every single fight we had was a break-up. I just couldn't see any other way. And then I met Billy. We didn't have any conflict during our first six months as a couple. Then, about six weeks after we became engaged, we had a big fight, and that started a year or so of trying to map out a way to have conflict but not come apart. We were married during that time; bought a house together the following year; a business together five years later. There were a lot of things to work out during that time, and we did it without a map and without help. We found our way.

Billy tells this story about our marriage (which isn't original, but neither of us can remember the origin of it), which I'll paraphrase: When we got married, we decided that Billy would make all of the big decisions; I would make all of the small ones. And it's worked quite well, although he's still waiting for a big decision to come along. Well, you figure things out so that they will work, and most of the time they do.

The Awful Truth is a classic comedy film about a couple who can't work out what appears to be an indiscretion on the part of the wife (there are indiscretions on the part of the husband, but they seem to have stipulated a mutual blind eye to this, which I don't get at all, but it's an old film with old mores; pre-women's lib, and whathaveyou). The couple, played by Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, decide to split over this indiscretion, and each goes on to a relationship with someone else. Then they spend the length of the movie trying to break up the other's new relationship. It's a favorite of mine. Not because it is about marriage, but because it's Cary Grant and Irene Dunn, and the writing is stellar.

But I also think of my own awful truth about marriage. When I was young, I believed that people were either happy in marriage (my parents and many of my friends' parents) or they divorced. It never, ever occurred to me, until I was an adult and saw siblings and peers married around me, that some people, for a variety of reasons, stay in marriages even when they are miserable. Who knew? It is just one of those facts of life that can escape you until adulthood.

I rather fuzzily remember an interview which I believe was with Tom Selleck, and I think that it was on Charlie Rose, but don't hold me to either of those facts. What I remember is this: Selleck had gotten into a flack with Rosie O'Donnell about some of his right-wing views. It may have had to do with gun control, but I really don't remember and am too lazy to do the research here (if any of you know, please feel free to enlighten us all via a comment). The interviewer (Charlie?) was asking him about his views/stand on various current issues; one of these was if he was supportive of gay marriage. Sure, he said (and I am paraphrasing). Why shouldn't they be as miserable as the rest of us? 

Marriage can be tough. The good thing about it is that someone is always there, willing to offer advice/counsel, willing to give their opinion, willing to share the same space with you. The bad thing about it is that someone is always there, willing to offer advice/counsel, willing to give their opinion . . . oh, I think we all get the point here. It's about balance. It's about having each other's back. It's about empathy, even when you have to scrounge for that last scintilla of empathy within you. But it's also about company, laughter, a shared appreciation of whatever (in our case: food; books; dogs; Carmel; friends -- not small things). And, last but not least, support. We are there for each other, even when we don't quite agree about the other's approach to the problem. I guess all of these things are the opposite of the awful truth. Or maybe they are, in fact, the awful truth. Not so bad after all. I think I can live with that. Billy says he can too. Thank you for reading my blog.

The Cupcake

Los Angeles, California


I've written a bit (a bit, she says?) about salsa dance, and the community of salseros I know here in Los Angeles, but not so much about the girlfriends I have made during my time around the dance floor. So, let's focus on the salseras for the moment.


I have become good friends with a lovely woman named Dora. Dora, like my frister Diana, is Russian (although Diana was born in Shanghai and grew up in Montreal, and met her husband, Brendan, in Mexico, but that is a story entitled to its own post, which I will call The Passport; coming soon to your neighborhood my blog, can you stand the anticipation?!?), intelligent, kind, supportive, a lot of fun, and a good cook and baker. It has been a pleasure to get to know her; even more so because she is capable of magic (we became friends after she helped me find my lost wallet -- again, a story which should have it's own post. I got a million of 'em!).


Dora recently took some time off from salsa, something we all do now and again. During Dora's absence, I danced a few times at Mama Juana's on a Saturday night. I don't usually do this. I usually spend my Saturdays with Billy; and every other Saturday we book with friends (at least that is the general plan, though it is hard to stick to this, calendars taking on a life of their own as they do). But there were a few salsero birthdays celebrated on Saturdays; as well as one of my favorite salsa groups performing, and that would be Ricardo Lemvo (who is wonderful and you can find out more about him here).


So, while Dora was away, I started hanging out with Jo, Carol, and the girls (which is what they call their circle of friends). I met Jo back in the day when I was dancing in Pasadena at a club called Vive, and have frequently seen her at a variety of clubs through the years. This girl loves her dance, and is out there a lot. And so is Carol. While Dora was on hiatus, Carol kept me updated as to what was going on and where they were dancing. The texts were flying, and I was grateful.


One of the birthdays celebrated during this time was Darryl's. Darryl owns Mama Juana's, and I had just gotten to know him shortly before his birthday. He has a huge personality; is a lively storyteller, and I enjoyed our 'dates' -- sitting at a table talking while class was still going on and I was waiting to get on the dance floor.


The Sunday before Darryl's birthday, Jo and Carol were sitting at a booth on the dance floor when I arrived. On the table was a large plate with about a dozen cupcakes on it. Half of the cupcakes were pink, the other half had white frosting with broken bits of candy on the top. When offered one, I demurred. Salsa and cake go together real good (I'm using bad grammar for effect), but I like my cake at the end of an evening of hard cardio. No one is more surprised at this than I. You might think the last thing you would want when you and everyone around you are sweaty, spent, and, most likely, dehydrated, is cake. But cake never tastes as good; even for someone like me, who doesn't really skew towards the sweet end of the spectrum when it comes to snacks. It tastes insanely good -- any variety of it, be it carrot, chocolate, whatever. Bring out a cake at the end of an evening of salsa and you will create a feeding frenzy. However, at this juncture, I hadn't begun to dance, so I wasn't yet sweatyspentdehydrated. But, I was eyeing those cupcakes. Can I have one later? I asked.


Sometime during the course of the evening, I noticed, with some chagrin, that the plate had disappeared. Too bad, I thought. They really had looked tasty. It turned out that Carol had brought them for Darryl to choose which variety he preferred, for Carol planned to bake cupcakes for his birthday party. The pink ones were white cake with a raspberry-cream cheese frosting piped on top. They were pretty. The other ones were chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting and broken bits of Butterfinger candy bars on top. I wanted one of those.


Carol and I walked out together at the end of the evening, and I mentioned that the cupcakes had disappeared. I think they're in the kitchen, she said. As we walked by, I peeked through the window of the kitchen, and saw the plate sitting on a counter close by the door. On it was one lone Butterfinger cupcake and a half of a raspberry one, with a short stack of paper plates alongside. I opened the door about a foot. There was only one person in the kitchen and she looked up at me. Can I have this? I asked, pointing at the plate. Sure, came the response. So Carol and I left Mama Juana's with me balancing the lone Butterfinger cupcake on a paper late. I'm going to take it home, I said to Carol. Which was my plan . . .


It sat on the passenger seat of my car as I started the engine and pulled away from the curb. I glanced at it a few times, just to make sure it was ok there, sitting on the seat, all alone. It was still sitting there, staring at me, when I executed a U-turn at the corner; and headed west on Cahuenga Boulevard towards home. I got about a block away from Mama Juana's. Maybe just a bite, I said to myself, as I tucked in to that cupcake. And, the sad truth is that you probably know what happened next. I had it half down by the time I passed Vineland Avenue; all gone by the time I hit Tujunga. No need to Mapquest; we're talking less than a mile, and bye-bye cupcake.


I texted Carol when I got home: That was the best cupcake I have ever had in my life! And, it was. She texted me back: Wow! Did you take 'nice' lessons? No, I didn't (ask Billy). A week later, at Darryl's birthday party at Mama Juana's, Carol brought out the cupcakes Darryl had chosen: the pretty white ones with the piped, raspberry-cream cheese frosting. She had help bringing them out. She had baked one hundred and twenty cupcakes! It was a fun night, with lots of dancing that culminated in consuming the second-best cupcake I have ever eaten in my life. Or maybe they could be tied for first. I'll have to try them both again sometime, in order to decide for sure. This experiment best carried out at the end of a night of dancing. Life is short, dance and eat cupcakes! And thank you for reading my blog.