morsels & sauces

We spent the few days after Christmas in Inglenook, California (just north of Fort Bragg), at a little cottage tucked away down Beal Lane.  At the end of the lane, you can take a small path behind some Cyprus trees to emerge upon the most wonderful of sand dunes.  Rising up hugely, like hills, sometimes higher than houses, the dunes have that particular windswept cleanliness, the sides curdled then smooth.  For a ten-minute walk across the dunes, you are rewarded with the croak of frogs from a nearby river and the roar of the ocean you know is somewhere on the other side of the dunes, but you cannot see it.  A feast of sound and sand. I walked there one evening with my father-in-law; we talked of ways to make one's life filled with more love and beauty, and I thought a lot about a dear friend of mine who is struggling right now with some major health issues.  She has been on my mind a good deal, and she is good and she is strong and she is d...

Today, I learned that poet Jake Adam Yor k died, too young.  He loved poetry, barbecue, language, music.  Thus, a poem from this dear teacher, mentor, inspiration and man whose kindness I will remember.  Grace                By Jake Adam York  Because my grandmother made me the breakfast her mother made her, when I crack the eggs, pat the butter on the toast, and remember the bacon to cast iron, to fork, to plate, to tongue, my great grandmother moves my hands to whisk, to spatula, to biscuit ring, and I move her hands too, making her mess, so the syllable of batter I’ll find tomorrow beneath the fridge and the strew of salt and oil are all memorials, like the pan-fried chicken that whistles in the grease in the voice of my best friend’s grandmother like a midnight mockingbird, and the smoke from the grill is the smell of my father coming home from the furnace and the tang ...

Dear world:  Enough with the bad news.  In the mean time, a post I wrote yesterday about salmon. Salmon.  Mmmmmmm.  Filled with Vitamin A, Vitamin D, B vitamins, protein and omega-3 fatty acids, salmon is the king of fish.  Do you see what I did there?  I made a king salmon pun. Oh dear. Anyhoo, for all its glory, one has to be careful with one's salmon.  Wild salmon is better than farmed salmon, as the wild has considerably fewer environmental pollutants in it.  That's important.  However, wild salmon also has less Omega-3.  However, I think that's a fine trade-off.  Less contaminants.  Less fatty acids.  Then to boot , almost 99% of Atlantic salmon is farmed and around 80% of Pacific salmon is wild.  All important to know when you're standing at your local fish monger eyeballing the salmon (and the rock cod is eyeballing you back). The cookbook that I am cooking from is a new one for the...

Okay, this is a rambly post, unedited, and filled with a discussion of Christmas, gougères , and Michael Ch abon.  F ollow along : I am one of those people.   I put my tree up the day after Thanksgiving and I would lea ve it up until Epiphany if I could ( given that the husband has endured the tree for little over a month, I cave to the pressu re to take it down New Year's Eve Day ).  I genuinely love Christmas music .   I love Holiday Parties, Holiday Car ds, Holiday Decorations .  Give n that I am not Christian , it do es seem somewhat biz arre that I embrace this season so fully.  But I think I love the way lights shine through ornaments, th e simple joy of keeping in touch with friends and family with a handw ritten note, the presentation of tokens of how one feels to another pers on, the way the house feels warm and cozy once a seven-foot tree has taken up valu able rea l estate, and the feast of rich foods with family around a crowded t...

I have been thinking about my next recipe post, and I just can't seem to post it.  It's all typed up and ready to go, but every time I get ready to press publish, I just can't.  Even this post seems hard.  I am torn between remaining silent out of respect and speaking something because I am so sad. You see, my heart--like everyone else's--is breaking and has been all weekend.  Those children, those educators, that mother in Connecticut are all on my mind. Someone I know on facebook posted this quotation from everybody's favorite neighbor, Fred Rogers:   "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of "disaster," I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world. " I am trying to ...