Stillmeadow

Los Angeles, California

And so it arrived. It is a coveted book; one in which I've been interested for a very long time. I found it in my mailbox this evening; a padded envelope clearly containing a book. I had almost forgotten. I ripped open the envelope while still parked at the curb in front of my mailbox, and slid the book out. I ran my hand across the jacket, then furled open the pages. The seller was honest, the book was in very good condition; tenderly used. I waited a long time to buy it, but only paid about forty-two dollars for it. Not as expensive as the other books I have been covetously eyeing while searching for a signed copy of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Books. I carried a heavy one, Richard Russo's Everybody's Fool, to a doctor's office yesterday. As he took it out of my hands, I felt a pang of guilt. Is it still ok to buy real books? It is one of the investments that I have always felt important. It's the product of the 'company' I feel it is vitally important to support: writers. I am glad there are libraries for children and adults who cannot afford to purchase the books they want to read. But for the rest of us, supporting your reading habit means supporting the writers and publishers! Afterwards, donate your purchased books to libraries. It's a win-win. I have invested in a lot of books over the years. I come by it rightly as my dad was a voracious reader, though mostly of non-fiction books. His interests ran along archaeology and history. Mom and I were both English majors, but I was dismayed to find that in her later years she was reading a lot of cat books. More specifically, a series she referred to as The Cat Who books. I shouldn't scoff. I read Watership Down on my honeymoon so very many years back.

Mom also collected cookbooks; mostly purchased on her travels or given to her by my dad. He took a great deal of time choosing the cookbook that he gave her every year for Christmas. While the rest of the gifts sat under the tree, Mom and Dad always shared the rare drink at home, after church services wrapped at midnight on Christmas Eve. Dad would have Mom open her dad-wrapped cookbook. I recently purchased a tall, standing book shelf for my dining room to contain Mom's cookbooks -- and mine, as I too began collecting early in my adult life. There are 217 of them; sorted and filed by author; frequency of use; ethnicity and region.

The book that arrived this week is The Best of Stillmeadow, A Treasury of Country Living by Gladys Taber. I first learned of Gladys Taber back in the '80s, when I began collecting Susan Branch's books. It was the era of Martha Stewart, and I preferred Susan Branch's books about cooking and entertaining to Martha's, because Branch's books didn't make you feel stupid for not raising your own goats, forcing your own forsythia, or whatever... Branch uses quotations in her books and most were familiar to me... except for Gladys Taber. Gladys who?, I thought (a variation on the Cat Who theme...).

In Susan Branch's 3-book memoir, she wrote about finding a Gladys Taber book amongst the books she acquired when she purchased her small cottage on Martha's Vineyard. And so it began. My book is now bookmarked at fifty-nine pages. I am juggling it with the Russo novel which I have not yet finished. Not good at that. Even as an English major with five upper-division literature classes, I could not easily go back and forth between reading material. One weekend, for a course in Mark Twain, I read Tom Sawyer on Saturday; Huck Finn on Sunday. A lot accomplished, although I was speaking in southern dialect by Monday.

Life being what it is, or rather, my life being where it is, it is important to relish these things with meaning: Joel; friends (always friends); salsa dancing; books; music; cherished films to watch over and over. Dodgers baseball; Live from Here (formerly known as A Prairie Home Companion), which I delight to find is quite good with its new host; L.A. Opera with training wheels. And more, and more, and more. But right now, Stillmeadow sits on my coffee table waiting for me to turn its pages carefully, preserving its value for whoever next may hold it and run their hand across its jacket, some years down the road. A treasured friend eventually passed on to kindred spirit...

Tattoo You

Los Angeles, California

A while back, our mutual friend, Debra, asked Lydia and me if either of us had ever thought about getting a tattoo. Lydia immediately said no. I said that I had considered it. The big surprise was when Debra came back saying that she had, as well. I doubt if there was much surprise engendered by learning that I had considered it, but Debra? She doesn't seem like the tattoo type, though I am sure I am dating myself by revealing that I think there is such a thing. Tattoos are now ubiquitous on women, starting with the tramp stamp and progressing to sleeves. In the salsa world, there is an abundance of tattoos, and that might be a random sample of the world at large, or at least Los Angeles at large.

This all came back to me tonight as I was watching Thelma and Louise. I love Thelma and Louise, which is probably inconsistent with who I am, though with tastes that lean towards watching Downton Abbey, reading The Spellman Files + listening to both A Prairie Home Companion + Dodgers baseball games on the radio, my choice of entertainment may be hard to pin down.  Anyway, I love Thelma and Louise. I love the unraveling of their journey, and the way it all gets looser, including the look of both of them, as their story tumults towards the end. And it's got some great lines in it, like when Thelma states something like Call me crazy, but I think I've got a knack for this sh*t, after they lock the state trooper into his trunk.

Even though (spoiler alert!!) the girls don't make it, it is nevertheless a story of survival and confronting what crosses their path. It's about their finding the strength within them. I could go on, but it's Thelma and Louise. If you don't know it, or you couldn't figure out what it was about when you saw it, maybe you should watch it (again + again, as I do).

So, as I was watching it tonight, I thought of another tattoo. My fantasy tattoo is a hibiscus. I once had one drawn on my ankle when I was in Hawaii, freehand + in henna. It was beautiful and I grieved as it faded. So I thought about getting one, permanent. Then I remembered that my friend, Todd, told me that the anklet tattoo he got was so painful that he wanted to stop in the middle of it, but he was too vain to walk around with what would appear to be half a tattoo. So I put the ankle hibiscus on the back burner. Still, thinking about Thelma + Louise, I thought that the calligraphic initials, T+L would mean a lot to me. Not for the girls, but for my father and my uncle's initials-- two men who meant a great deal in my life. And that it would be emblematic of the courage and survival I have come hard to learn is essential in life.

Just after my life changed forever, Matthew, a member of the outlaws (in-laws) who, nevertheless remains in touch with me, showed me his most recent tattoo. It is of Hiroshima. Matthew is mixed Japanese-American, so I initially thought he felt that connection to it. But, he explained that he had gotten it because it reminds him daily that, regardless of whatever he is going through, someone else has had it worse. I don't think I need that reminder, though I do have to poke myself with it now and again. And it is true: T+L sail off into the sunset, because not everyone gets to go home like E.T. And while some of us may feel that a dark cloud is attached to us as we cope with whatever it is that the universe has thrown at us, that dark cloud is very different from Hiroshima's. So while I currently struggle with what feels like a total eclipse of my very own, I try to get a purchase on what I have accomplished so far. It has been more than two years of plain and simple hell. But, so far, I have survived. I have survived. And that is no small thing. I never want to go through anything like this again, but I have learned that I am stronger than I ever knew. Though, truth be told, I am far from thinking, like Thelma, that I've got a knack for this sh*t. While I have so far survived the journey, there were a vast amount of stretches on the road that I will always, always wish I could have detoured. But that is surely true of all of us, including Thelma. And, most certainly, Louise.

Another Saturday Night

Los Angeles, California

At home tonight, prepping dinner in my tiny postage stamp of a kitchen. The owners are young, and their decor is comprised of dark cabinets, dark floors, grey walls. An ubiquitous look that doesn't matter much to me as I try not to long for beat-up flooring and eclectic farmhouse furniture. Try. Not. To.

I am listening to A Prairie Home Companion as I have for many decades and it comforts me because of that. Garrison Keillor's voice has been a constant to me over the past thirty-plus years. One of the last things I do now each night is to listen to the podcast of his daily A Writer's Almanac. It gives a sense of closure to my day, and wistfully reminds me of my young dreams to be a poet.

Tonight, dinner is (as I look at the wreckage) leftovers from last night: pasta shells which I tossed with yogurt tempered with a spoonful of creme fraiche (truly the ultimate comfort condiment that will nurse me through it all) after tossing the pasta first with olive oil; pecorino romano, reggiano parmigiana, and truffle cheese (adding half of what I had grated); some magic pasta water; the mix of yogurt and cream, then the rest of the cheese. Lots of pepper. And with it all, I roasted fat, autumn red grapes with brussels sprouts. It was good. Besides the leftovers, I tossed a Caesar salad; the croutons crisply cooked in butter and olive oil; the greens, sadly-diminished, from a bag of organic romaine purchased at Trader Joe's several days ago, in a moment of I have no appetite, no idea, but maybe this would be good to have. I expect single humans everywhere will understand this.

It's so hard, this making my way and I feel sad and loose-ended. I remember what I left behind; needing to be the one to walk away from the house with the crystal glasses and the sunsets from my kitchen. I also remember the sad, empty misery of feeling left alone there in the midst of what should have been enough. I brought A Prairie Home Companion to the marriage. I bought the crystal glasses. I imagined and offered the let's do this, and the do you want to do that? I was an engine but was not the little engine who could. Otherwise, I would have made it work. I would have sucked it up and continued to pretend that there was someone else there with me. I would have made water from chocolate.

It takes a lot to leave your home. And it took me a long time. I didn't want to be the one who left. But the sad truth is that when a marriage is offering nothing to either party but blankness to one and pain and bad memories to the other, someone has to leave. And he was tenacious. Eventually, I found a place. I packed as I often packed for my months in Carmel, and tried not to look back. The old adage of possession being nine-tenths of the law is not a consideration in California matrimonial law. We own equally regardless of who retains residence.  It is still my home. I picked the paint colors, and the tiles for the pool that he did not want to build. I chose where art was hung. In the master bedroom a crucifix I bought in Carmel, a replica of the one buried in Father Junipero Serra's hands, hangs on the wall above a tiny watercolor of the Carmel Mission Basilica. And on and on and on. I said to my friend at the time: it's just stuff. And truly, is not what is substantial in life. But I had dressed my home with love, and, if it is true that home is where the heart is, what was left of my heart remains silently there.

I have often thought that the support I offer my friends when needed is surely within the realm of do what I say. And truthfully, at this time in my life, I would not recommend to anyone that they do what I do. I am alone with my limp romaine. Not stretched to the limit, but not yet seeing any hope of light at the end of the tunnel. This is it, and what I need to live. I won't stay in this place. I know this. I know this. I know this...

Tomorrow night I will go out. I will dance with Joel, and I will probably feel better. It is Armando's band, and he is a musician and a gentleman. I will be glad to dance to his music, and to applaud heartily after each song. He is from Nicaragua, and his brother is also a musician. Armando has his own band, but also plays in his brother's, where they make music together. That must be something; to create and share that, while watching us moving to the waves of music they are sending out.

I have always loved the Sam Cooke song, Another Saturday Night. It's a great singalong tune, and I have it in my iTunes library and on many of the playlists I have created, and subsequently given as gifts. So on this, another Saturday night, I tell myself that there is music; there is A Prairie Home Companion; there is pasta; there will be dancing. With Joel. I am a refugee, but life is as it should be for me for now. Maybe a faint glow at the tapering darkness of the tunnel will appear shortly. Maybe I will find myself a home down the road somewhere. A place to hang my hat and my heart. You never know. I guess you just have to have faith.

C'est Bastille Day!

Los Angeles, California


Our house guests arrived on Friday the 13th, just a day or so after my voice vacated. To say that Billy and I had been burning the candle at both ends would be lying. We were burning it in the middle, as well. At first, I figured I was suffering from allergies. I don't generally get waylaid by anything other than the blues. But, neither allergies nor the blues are contagious. And Billy came down with whatever the raging plague was shortly after I got it.


Our house guests, Brendan and Diana, were good-natured about this. They have come for a long weekend visit for the past seven or so summers. We generally hang about the pool all day, finally showering in the early evening, then reconvening for cocktails, and finally dinner. We're talking late dinner; usually nine o'clock or even past that (which is fine with us as neither Billy nor I believe you should eat dinner while it is still light out, unless it is a holiday, and sometimes not even then). The last night they take us out to dinner. And, that's been the tradition, which was, in many years, tied to the Fourth of July holiday.


This year was a little different. First, B & D were not available for the Fourth. Then, we discovered that Garrison Keillor was bringing A Prairie Home Companion to The Hollywood Bowl on Friday the 13th of July. So, we got tickets for a box, and invited them for the weekend of the 13th. They accepted, with the caveat that they wanted to take us out to dinner two of the four nights they would be here. We agreed (what's not to like about that?), and all went according to plan, except for that pesky, raging plague thing.


You know how you always manage to make it through finals or your wedding, and then you get sick? Well, we've had that kind of a year -- making it through a lot. I guess we finally succumbed to defensive indifference (great baseball term, which I learned last year, and will use for a post title someday) and you know what followed.


We more or less limped through the weekend. B & D are perfect friends and house guests. They never complained, and even cheerfully sat in our box at the Bowl, and at dinner and card tables with us without flinching at all the coughing we were doing. They were much nicer than we would have been about this, by the way. Billy is relentless about not being around people who are sick. I'm a little less so, trusting my body's ability to fight things off with the aid of Purell (a pro-active regime which obviously failed me this time). But B & D were troupers.


Diana and I have spent some portion of most of the summers that have come and gone since we met each other, in 1995, on a Caribbean cruise. We were both traveling with our moms, and, as mentioned in an earlier post (available here for free!), we went on to cruise together with the moms another three times. Her mom, Emma, who was lovely and fun, passed away three years ago. At about that same time, my mom began to dwindle. Lots of changes in both our lives, but we have remained a constant in each other's, which is both heartwarming and comforting.


So, you might ask, what does all of this have to do with Bastille Day? Well, that requires a bit of backstory. Another couple, who are friends of ours, once told us about this week they spent in the Loire Valley in France. They had rented a home there with some very nice British friends. Their time there together sounded like something out of M.F.K. Fisher. Each day they would tour around the area, tasting and buying wines and, if memory serves, visiting markets in the small towns. For dinner, they often put out a variety of french cheeses, pates, and some french bread. They would enjoy the bread, the cheese, the wines. Meanwhile, they would roast a chicken, and that would be their dinner, followed by a green salad. I LOVE stories like that, and have, for a long time, lusted after replicating that menu. And so, this is what I did on Bastille Day. I put out two cheeses: a brie and a fontina with rosemary. I threw a loaf of french bread into my convection oven where the chicken was roasting, and tossed a salad of plain arugula dressed with lemon oil, sea salt, and pepper. Then, I prepped the roasted cauliflower (recipe in my post dated March 5, 2012 entitled: What's Cooking, available here, oh you know) and slid that into the oven.


We had candles (ok, they were those cool battery candles, which I've been buying by the boatload) all over the table, and we ate our bread, the lovely cheeses, and the slightly-underdressed salad (ran out of lemon oil, oops!), with the warm crusty bread. I was IN HEAVEN! Seriously, we avoid cheese and especially those triple-creme varieties, for the same reason that you probably all do. And then. And then you realize that your soul really needs some good cheese every now and then. After the cheese (and the other stuff, but this is obviously all about the cheese) we had the chicken and the cauliflower before we moved to the dining room inside to play our favorite card game which is called (I'm so sorry!) Shithead. We had gelato and my homemade chocolate chunk-coconut-pecan cookies for dessert. Yes, a summer fruit tart would have been better, with less dairy after all that cheese. But still.


After our guests left, Billy and I collapsed for about five days. We held it together, mas o menos, while they were here, but it all caught up with us and we were both sick and tired. In fact, as of today, we're still incredibly exhausted. But I suspect that's more because of the past year than because of whatever this bug happens to be (a widespread bug, as I know a lot of people who have either have this, or did have it).


Once we're feeling better, we intend to spend the rest of our summer weekends relaxing by the pool. It's been a long, hard year, and we both deserve some time out, enjoying our home and each other's company. But, as I'm never without some plan or another, here are some notes on my plan for those weekends:


1) After sundown, no shoes and no electric lights.


2) After eating salads for dinner during the week, Saturday or Sunday nights will entail a revisit to the cheese & chicken repast described above (we started this last night, with the leftover fontina and a truffle cheese). This predicated on our continued low lipid count.


3) Lots of music (I finally loaded my replacement iPod and we've been listening to a lot of Hawaiian slack-key and Brazilian Bossa Nova from the 60s. I sneak in a little salsa whenever I feel I can get away with it.


So there you have it. Bastille Day with all the summer bliss that follows: eat good food; play fun games with friends; enjoy candlelit nights; run barefoot through your house, and all to your favorite music. This is probably the best advice you will get from me, like, maybe ever! Or at least for the duration of the summer. Happy Bastille Day, bon appeitit, et merci bien for reading my blog. 

You Just Need More Ketchup?

Los Angeles, California


I have a sortakinda love-hate thing going with ketchup/catsup. Seriously, how can you really get down with a food that doesn't even have a consistent spelling? I must confess to a checkered history with it. For starters, I find ketchup too sweet. Especially since it's something that you're supposed to put on french fries; salty french fries (two of my favorite things: potatoes and salt). Put catsup on them, and you're looking to ruin what french fries have going for them. I'd rather dip them in something savory like garlic aioli. But I'm not picky. I'll dip them in ranch dressing, or even tartar sauce if that's what you've got.


Then there's that other thing. I often attribute it to being a Scorpio, since I have it on authority that other Scorpios do it (for example, my sister, who did it to me). Sometimes an incident happens with something or someone, and it's like a curtain comes down. We're out. It's not my favorite thing, neither about myself nor those other Scorpios. But, in our defense, I must say that it takes a lot for us to get to that point. Still, there it is. And, believe it or not, that trait did once raise its ugly head with . . . ketchup.


It happened the summer I graduated high school; spent mostly barefoot, in Waikiki. I had come over with my family and had brought along a girlfriend. We were from LA -- an easy hop over to Hawaii, and fairly cheap on student standby, so there were people we knew there, plus we were making new friends fast. When it was time to leave, I asked my parents if we could stay on with a friend of ours who had a summer rental apartment. And, inexplicably, they said yes. Did I mention that I was only seventeen? Anyway, they said I could stay for another week, which eventually turned into a month, then another month. They finally cut me off just before I was scheduled to start college in September. Believe me, I wanted to stay longer. But a lot of our friends were returning to school in and around LA, so we begrudgingly came home.


But, before we did, there was that catsup incident. It happened at The Snack Shop, this cool coffee shop that was on the grounds of The Royal Hawaiian hotel for a couple of decades. It looked like this. I was spending my second summer in Waikiki; the first being the one after I graduated junior high school, when my mom, sister, and cousin decided to attend summer session at the University of Hawaii. The Snack Shop was a destination of choice for my younger cousins and me. They served iced tea with a slice of pineapple; they had the best teriyaki burgers; not to mention the macadamia nut pancakes; mahi (mahi mahi) and eggs; mahi burgers, and pretty good hot fudge sundaes, if memory serves. Like many restaurants in Hawaii, it had a roof, but the walls opened to the outdoors. Birds often joined us.


But, back to that summer after high school, where one day, after we were on our own, my friend and I went for breakfast at The Snack Shop, and she ordered: ham and eggs, scrambled; hashed brown potatoes. Then she reached for the ketchup bottle. She poured it on everything -- the ham, the eggs, the potatoes, and pools of it! It looked like a crime scene. I conjured up Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, when she observes Cecil Jacobs pouring syrup all over his food and blurts out: What in the Sam Hill are you doing?!? It was like Antietam, only her food, not the ground, ran red. You think I'm putting too fine a point on this? Well, I'm paying no heed, as I strongly suspect that this started my aversion to catsup. I'll use a little of it. But if I see too much -- Holy condiments, Batman . . . . I'm outta there.


I've got a bit of an issue with the Heinz thing, too. And I'm not being snobby. I like Best Foods (Hellman's to you on the other coast) mayonnaise, and even Heinz mustard (the ballparkish variety). And I eat hot dogs -- I mean, what's not to like about kid-friendly food and condiments? So, my credentials here are sound. But, aside from the too-much ketchup thing, I also find the Heinz brand of catsup too sweet. Somewhere I read a taste-test where Whole Foods 365 Organic Tomato Ketchup came in highly rated, and that is what I now buy. It's a little smoky, with almost a barbecue sauce under taste. It's not bad.


Billy, who was born in Minneapolis, reminds me that a catsup deficiency can be a serious problem. As Jim cajoles Barb each week on A Prairie Home Companion: You just need more ketchup. We've learned, from that same source, that catsup has natural mellowing agents. And, I can certainly use mellowing, so maybe I do suffer from this deficiency. Still, when I'm jonesing for roasted or fried potatoes, I want something else to dip and here it is:


Cayenne Aioli


2 cups           mayonnaise
4 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
3                   garlic cloves, smashed, minced or pressed or whathaveyou
1 teaspoon  cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon  Dijon mustard


Whisk together to blend. Let flavors develop overnight by storing in refrigerator.


Makes one pint.


This originally showed up at our table as an accompaniment to artichokes. It often makes an appearance when steamed asparagus is about. I specify steamed because when we roast asparagus, we generally toss it with some fancy olive oil, lots of pepper, some sea salt and a good dusting of freshly grated Parmesan cheese. I suppose you could still dip those spears into this aioli, but we don't throw caution to the wind in that way. And of course, you're not going to put catsup on the vegetables named above. That is, unless you are a philistine, or in the throes of that ketchup deficiency. In which case, I would say, go head on. But, please, don't be dumping it on everything. Nobody needs that much mellowing. Not even Scorpios. You must trust me about this. And, thank you for reading my blog.