Suzy Says

I love canelés de Bordeaux. When I lived in San Francisco, I used to buy them at the French bakery on Polk Street, a charming place with little green metal tables on the sidewalk under a striped awning and delicious delicacies inside. Of course, this delightful place is long gone, along with the French lingerie shop, Polk-Vallejo Market, and the combination shoe repair and tailoring establishment run by an elderly Italian couple who used to have lunch together at a table on the sidewalk every day, complete with a glass of wine and their dog napping peacefully at their feet. They are part of the San Francisco I loved, now lost to time and encroaching soullessness. I feel lucky that I lived in the City when the neighborhoods had distinct characters and it wasn’t all rich people and Starbucks.

Here in distant Hooterville, the closest place to get a canelé fix is at Franny’s Cup & Saucer, an hour’s drive from Chez Suzy, and they don’t always have them. I did pick some up on my way to Bodega Bay recently, and as I enjoyed its distinctive crust and creamy interior, I began to wonder if I could make them myself.

Locating a recipe on the ever-helpful interwebs, it didn’t look very difficult, though special equipment was required, including the pan and food-grade beeswax, which is apparently essential for getting the dark, crispy outer shell. Once I obtained these items, I ventured on my first batch ever of canelés.

I used my prettiest kitchen equipment to inspire me:

The trophy measuring cups were actually useful as well as pretty, especially since I used the smallest one to pour the batter into the molds. Before long, the house was filled with the distinctive scent of canelés. As I took them out of the oven, I thought, “They look pretty convincing”:

The recipe said to unmold them while they were hot to keep the crust crisp. If you leave them in the molds while they cool, they will sort of steam and become soft. They unmolded easily:

When I was ready to test one, I was pleased to see that the inside was appropriately custardy, while the outside was crispy and caramelized:

The hardest part was dealing with the beeswax and butter mixture, which is used to brush the molds before pouring in the batter. You have to do it quickly, before it hardens, and then cleaning the pan you melted it in, the pastry brush, and eventually, the pan you baked the canelés in is not easy. Getting buttery wax off dishes is challenging. But it was all worth it.

A YEAR AGO: Things were rocking and rolling in the family garden.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Another look at the local message boards.

TEN YEARS AGO: My attempts at gardening.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: It’s here. The official Month of Death.

Voilà!

I have been spectacularly demotivated in the kitchen lately. I have not lost my enthusiasm for trading recipes with my BFF Alice and reading them in the missives from the New York Times Cooking editors, but there seems to be a long way between interest and execution these days.

I have been meaning to make my own falafel (how hard can it be?) and tabouli*. I went so far as to get dried chickpeas for the falafel – apparently, using canned chickpeas is the Number One reason that home-made falafel fails – and bulgar wheat for the tabouli, but they continue to languish in the Closet of Doom, alone and unloved. Tidying up the Closet of Doom is another project that I have failed to complete and which remains on my ever-cluttered radar.

While it’s still spring and rhubarb is still in season, I intend to try a recipe for roasted rhubarb cobbler. At least I have not bought the rhubarb for it, since it would likely end up in the compost, where it would probably not delight the ravens and foxes. One of these days/weekends/maybe never…

But for some reason, on Sunday, I decided it was time to make the tourtière that has been under consideration all year. I originally planned to make it for New Year’s, but that resolution faded before the year began, quite possibly a personal best (or worst?) for not keeping a resolution. That sunny Sunday morning seemed like the perfect time.

I used a new to me recipe for the crust, which includes a tablespoon of cider vinegar, and I think that makes it extra flaky. I pulsed everything in the food processor, which makes it easier.

While I was rolling out the crust, I heard a thud. I went over to the sliding glass doors next to the kitchen counter and saw that a very small, very bright yellow-green bird was lying on the deck, having flown into the glass doors. My heart sank, and I thought, That’s a bad sign. It made me sad to see that poor little guy out there. Clyde and Dodge were both fascinated, and for a fleeting moment, I considered letting them out there to put the injured bird out of his misery. I hated to think of him dying slowly out there.

I went back to the pie making, and after a while, checked on the bird. He had moved to a different part of the deck, so I began to hope. After I put the pie in the oven, I looked again, and he was gone! He had recovered enough to fly off! It made me really happy. I’m glad he’s out there somewhere, singing.

*I learned how to make this from another high school friend when we were still in high school. Her father was from Beirut. He used to grow carnations, and when I went to her house, he would always cut some and give them to me, saying, “For you. Very beautiful.” I never knew if he meant me or the carnations.

A YEAR AGO: Celebrating Dodge’s birthday.

FIVE YEARS AGO: A busy, but delightful, weekend.

TEN YEARS AGO: Some yard sale scores.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: Dreaming about Mom.

TWENTY YEARS AGO: Oh, the things you see in San Francisco when you are out and about when night meets day!

Looking back on the year with 2020 vision…or 2020 hindsight.

I made a decision to keep this space free of politics and other unpleasantness. As usual, with any decision I have ever made, I am not sure I made the right one. I work at a medical clinic and could have written about what it was/is like to work in a medical clinic during a pandemic, but I don’t want to write about work and I am too frivolous for such serious topics. Also, I like keeping everything ugly at bay. This is my safe (and sparkly) space, for better or for worse, for shallower or shallower.

Despite enjoying escapist fare such as children’s books (the wonderful E.L. Konigsberg and E. Nesbit) and Agatha Christies, as well as re-reading classics like The Catcher in the Rye and the works of the divine Jane when there was no library access, the total of books read by the local library chairperson was a paltry 86, not much of an improvement over the embarrassing 82 recorded in 2019. I greatly enjoyed Elton John’s memoir, Peter Swanson’s Eight Perfect Murders, Ruth Ware’s One by One, Connie Schultz’s The Daughters of Erietown, and Alex North’s The Whisper Man. As usual, Stephen King with If It Bleeds and Michael Connelly with Fair Warning and The Law of Innocence did not disappoint.

In addition to comfort viewing (The Rockford Files and Columbo), there were some amazing TV shows brightening my screen on these dark days: City on a Hill, Succession, Escape at Dannemora, Russian Doll, Unbelievable, Perry Mason (the new one; not the classic, which is also wonderful, but very different), The Morning Show, Dead to Me, Dash & Lily, Ozark, Bad Blood, Little Fires Everywhere, Better Call Saul, Emily in Paris, and Get Shorty. If you haven’t seen any of these, check them out. You’ll thank me later.

Other than that, here’s all the news I saw fit to print:

January: A quiet beginning to the new year, with no hangover and no particular plans. My beautiful commute. It still amazes me and reveals new joys. A seemingly endless supply of meetings.

February: The gift of a new cell phone from my sister, who was tired of not being able to text me at home. It took three visits to the Verizon Store to sort of get my data transferred. The nightmare of the kitties. A long story which was entirely my fault, and you know how much I love that. The kitchen sink was full of sewage again, and the power was out. Good times. Sunny days outside and pretty inside. A lovely day. And a lovely dinner.

March: An update on my bosses, the cats. Ignoring the ignominious time change with a look around the family garden. Close encounters with wildlife. In my case, the hare (thankfully) won the race. Remembering my beloved father on his birthday. A night in town. Of tires and take-out. Michelin-starred, no less. the take-out, not the tires (though they could have been Michelins). I was shocked and saddened to hear of my former brother-in-law Mike’s death, but thankful it was a peaceful one at home. Rest in peace, dear Mike. You were a wonderful man and will always be loved and remembered with joy.

April: Michelin starred take-out 2.0. Is it conceited that I prefer my own cooking? Maybe the starriness doesn’t translate well to the take-out genre. Mom? Is that you? The tale of the grandfather clock, more than 250 years and counting (the hours and minutes). Beauty is all around me. My blog turned 19! The differences between my weekday and weekend routines. Adventures in cooking.

May: Welcoming spring. I really enjoyed spring this year. It was so beautiful. The beauty of the season was darkened by the sudden and shocking death of a dear and long-time friend. Randy, I will never forget you or your smile that lit up a room. Some reflections on Mother’s Day from someone who will never be one and who had a complicated relationship with her own. There may be a connection here. Celebrating Dodge’s fourth (or so) birthday. He is such a beautiful, affectionate little guy. Never a dull moment for Megan, at work in the ER. The month ended with the end of the Beautiful Harriet, Megan and Rob’s much-loved 19 year old cat, just two days after Megan’s birthday. Harriet (then called Olivia) made her first appearance on my blog in December, 2001. She was part of our family for a long time and will always be missed.

June: Things were flourishing in the family garden. Of haircuts and hardware stores. A happy birthday for me…and for my beloved Clyde, who turned 10. A nice addition to the bedroom. Remembering the unforgettable Ginger, our childhood dog.

July: Celebrating the Fourth of July and both sides of my heritage. Also Megan and Rob’s 29th anniversary. Here’s to the next 29! Things were shady over at the family estate. Adjusting to a Kindle. I’m still a paper book girl at heart. Rob’s beautiful garden art. A delightful breakfast at the delightful Queenie’s. Some kitty adventures.

August: Things were rocking and rolling in the family garden. I think I did a better job of using produce this year. An unexpected operation for Stella. I’m glad to report she is fine. A lot of sadness in a short period of time in our little town. Time to start cooking with all that produce. The Evil Eighteenth rolled around for the nineteenth time. I was angry this year. I will never get over losing Dad like that. A heatwave, and remembering past summers. Trying to cool down with some icy adult beverages beside the ocean. Hello, darkness, my old enemy.

September: Rearranging the kitchen after my microwave gave up the ghost, as my appliances tend to do. Audrey being Audrey. Rob: always there to make my life better. Happy birthday to my amazing brother, Jonathan. The horror of wildfires. Getting my MacBook fixed, with all the fun that entails. And getting Wednesday repaired. Attacking the Closet of Doom, with Rob’s help.

October: Rob was working hard on the Closet of Doom. It’s still a work in progress. Summer seemed to be endless. A delightful visit with a friend. I hope we can do that again soon. Yet another crown for our princess. My ex John adopted a pregnant stray cat. Meet Willow, Peach, and Daisy (I named Daisy)! Doing some project cooking.

November: A road trip to beautiful Anderson Valley. Problems with the heater. Megan started an exciting new side gig at prestigious Stanford University! An update on Willow and her kittens. Getting my third crown was about as fun as you’d expect. I hope it’s the last one, but fear it won’t be. What would I be like if I had a different name? Trying to find the right blanket was harder than you’d expect.

December: The Christmas tree went up a little early this year. And the kitchen sink needed a minor procedure. Some lights in the darkness. Best friends. Memories of Christmas past. A quiet Christmas.

Thank you for coming along with me on this journey for another year, or staying with me for another year. Here’s to a brighter New Year for all of us!

It was a quiet Christmas this year.

On Christmas Eve, I headed out to Navarro Beach, passing the mill superintendent’s house and Captain Fletcher’s Inn, remembering what a great time Megan and I had at Navarro by the Sea Day a couple of years ago.

Arriving at the beach, I was surprised to find it was much warmer than I expected, and I did not need my hat and coat at all. I wandered the beach:

and enjoyed watching and hearing the waves. I can’t imagine living where it’s landlocked. Watching the ocean brings me peace. When I lived in the City, I walked to the waterfront when I was sad or worried and watched the waves in the Bay. It was always soothing.

I enjoyed the breeze, the cormorants sitting placidly in the water, the gulls shrieking, and the ravens surfing the thermals above the crashing waves. I thought about Dad and how much he loved the ocean, and the astonishing fact that next year marks twenty years without him.

Back home, I did some dinner prep for Christmas Day itself. It was a stripped-down version of our usual feast. I was a bit worried about the ham. Jonathan always takes care of it, and I have no ham experience. Also, both Megan and my good friend A had Christmas ham disasters this year, so I was somewhat concerned that I would follow in their culinary footsteps.

A had suggested a hack for my world-famous cheese biscuits: using the food processor. I whizzed the dry ingredients in it, pulsed in the butter, and poured it into a bowl. I then used the food processor to grate the cheeses, instead of doing it by hand. I tossed the cheese into the dry ingredients with my hands and used a spoon to stir in the milk. They were literally the best cheese biscuits I have ever made, and I will do them this way from now on.

I need not have worried about the ham. It came out perfectly, and was quite small, so I wasn’t inundated with leftovers. Also, no bone to deal with.

To accompany all this, I had our traditional Christmas salad of bitter greens with roasted pears and fresh pomegranate seeds, topped with a shallot dressing:

After dinner, I had sparkling pink wine and opened my presents, which were quite wonderful, ranging from a gift certificate for getting my hair done to a pair of beautiful slate blue gloves from Edinburgh. I watched the Grinch and Charlie Brown and felt like a pretty lucky girl.

A YEAR AGO: A happy holiday.

FIVE YEARS AGO: A festive Christmas.

TEN YEARS AGO: A happy Christmas. Jessica was so little!

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: Things were eventful during the holiday season.

I usually put up the Christmas tree the first Saturday in December, and take it down on Twelfth Night, aka the Saddest Day of the Year. One’s house looks so sad and empty once the holiday cheer has been removed, in the midst of the midwinter darkness, to (snow/rain) boot. I do this because it’s the way my parents did it, so I guess that makes it family tradition, even if I am the only one in our rapidly declining family to maintain the tradition.

This year, there was no Thanksgiving*, and the lack of company caused a lack of enthusiasm on my part for cooking anything Thanksgiving-like, even while feeling obligated to do so. I decided to make it minimal, just getting a turkey breast and making a couple of sides. I was unable to locate a turkey breast, other than a boneless frozen one. I had my suspicions, but went ahead with it anyway. It cooked from frozen in a bag and was as delicious as you would expect. In my usual capacity as an Awful Warning, I will tell you all to run like the wind if you ever see a Frankenturkey like that. Get a real turkey, or forget the whole thing. At least my mashed potatoes and glazed carrots were fabulous. I didn’t bother with the traditional cranberry bourbon relish, just making plain cranberries with a dash of orange zest.

Much as I never want to eat Thanksgiving dinner after cooking it – the fun for me is seeing everyone else enjoy it – I didn’t bother making it until the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and I didn’t eat any of it until the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.

My lack of enthusiasm for the Thanksgiving that wasn’t didn’t dampen my desire for Christmas sparkle, though, and on the Saturday morning after what should have been Thanksgiving, I found myself eagerly hauling out the little tree my coworker gave me last year, twining it with lights and adding the snowflakes and glass icicles, as well as the beautiful mercury glass ornament from my friend Erin, my favorite adornment:

It makes me smile to look at it.

I also planted a couple of amaryllis bulbs:

which will hopefully give me some much-needed color in the winter darkness. We shall see.

I’m thinking about getting a wreath for the front door, though it’s hard to hang one up when your front door is glass. Maybe I will find some way to put up lights on the front porch, too. The more sparkle, the better, I always say.

*I really shouldn’t complain, even though it IS one of my super powers. Megan of course worked the Thanksgiving night shift in the ER, which she described as a “shitshow”. Apparently Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July are the worst ER shifts for alcohol and stupidity related incidents.

A YEAR AGO: A happy, if belated, Thanksgiving.

FIVE YEARS AGO: The fabulous Festival of Lights.

TEN YEARS AGO: Dinner with the family.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: Christmas in the City.

There’s finally a nip in the air, and I no longer have the fan on in the bedroom at night. In fact, there was a frost warning for the coast and a hard freeze warning inland overnight. The warnings didn’t stop there. Our frenemies at PG&E once again announced that they were planning to cut off power again, just like they did around this time last year.

This time, just like the last time, there wasn’t a breath of wind on the coast and it was chilly, despite the forecast “wind event” and “extremely high temperatures”. At least this time, they only shut off some of the high risk inland areas instead of plunging our entire county into darkness. Even though we only have about 90,000 people, our county is the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined, a large area. And the inland part is very different from the coast in weather and terrain. Fire risk is much higher inland, with its routine triple digit temperatures in the summer versus the coast’s typical 60-65 degrees.

With power at my disposal* over the weekend, I did some project cooking, which was like a little armchair (or ovenside) trip to distant and cosmopolitan Montreal. I made a tourti?re, using a recipe our beloved Ben (born and raised in Montreal) sent me:

And a batch of Montreal-style bagels. They look pretty convincing to me, despite hailing from 3,000 miles away, the wrong country, and not having a wood-fired brick oven:

My boss loves them, so it was nice to bring her some when I headed back to work.

I had originally planned to take a mini trip to Anderson Valley since the weather had finally cooled off, but when the time came, I found I really just wanted to enjoy the small pleasures at home, like sleeping in until it’s light out, drinking coffee in bed with all three cats, and doing some cooking. It was so fun that I’m planning to take this Friday off, too.

*Although it’s a gas oven, powered by platinum propane, it needs electricity to start. The same goes for the only source of heat for the house. See a theme (and a problem) here, in a place where it’s “when” not “if” the power will go out?

FIVE YEARS AGO: The Food Fairy stopped by, bearing a wide array of canned goods.

TEN YEARS AGO: Cold and rainy.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: Interesting times in the building I lived in back then, a suitably seasonal Victorian coffin factory.

I think I say this every year, but the Naked Ladies, those harbingers of fall, seem to have arrived early this year:

It’s the canning and preserving time of year, the season that follows the watering and weeding season in the family garden. As usual, I am the work-free beneficiary of my siblings’ labors. Recently, I was gifted with still-warm jars of peach jam:

and pickled onions:

as well as my annual ration of peaches for my yearly peach pie:

Every year, I wish had just a few more to really fill the pie crust, but I can’t complain about free peaches. Oh, wait: I just did. The pie came out great. This time, I used a new recipe for crust from the trusty New York Times. Secret ingredient: Vitamin V (aka vodka)! This is my go-to crust from now on.

The filling was my American grandmother Nana’s style. Like me, she was a “pinch of this, pinch of that” cook. It’s hard to share recipes, since I don’t measure very often and just add ingredients until they look about right to me. For the pie filling, I peeled the eight peaches, cut the fruit off the pits over a bowl, and squeezed some lemon juice into it. In a separate bowl, I mixed together two tablespoons of sugar, a tablespoon of flour, some nutmeg and cinnamon, and then sprinkled it over the fruit and tossed it together. I like to think that my grandmothers and my father live on in the way I cook.

Last weekend, I had a text from my landlord Danielle, asking if I’d like some basil. I said yes, and she appeared with a huge bag of it, fresh from her garden. We chatted for a while, which was nice. I hadn’t seen her since the “inspection” a few months ago, and it was good to feel like our relationship (or coexistence, anyway) is in a good and positive place. I don’t think there is any weirdness left between us, and she did not mention the cats, which was kind of a relief.

After she left, I spread the basil out to dry on my state of Maine tea towel:

That’s summer, right there.

A YEAR AGO: Trying to survive a marathon of work and obligations.

Sometimes you just want someone else to cook for you. And more importantly, clean up after both the cooking and the eating. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather cook three meals than clean up after one. This may have something to do with the fact that the only dishwasher I have ever had was Me.

When John and I were selling our apartment in San Francisco, the girl who ended up buying it complained bitterly that there was no dishwasher. I seem to remember she also complained that the height of the 1920s-era counters were not high enough to install one, either*.

When I was a kid, dishwashing also included drying and putting away, in addition to wiping off counters, putting away placemats and napkins, and wiping the table. Now, I tend to leave the dishes in the drainer, though I do all the other things, despite telling myself that when I grew up, I would do none of those things. My childhood self might also be appalled and annoyed to learn that I still make my bed before going to work and lay out my clothes the night before, since I also decided I would not do that when I was (allegedly) a grown up and could (allegedly) do whatever I wanted.

Little did child Suzy know…

But one thing the present day Suzy could do was go to Queenie’s for a breakfast made by, and fit for, a queen. Not to mention cleaned up by the queen’s courtiers. I sat outside on the wooden deck and enjoyed the view:

while breakfast was being made. It was worth the wait:

That’s freshly-squeezed orange juice, a waffle, real maple syrup (accept no substitutes!) and chicken-apple sausage from Roundman’s Smokehouse. It was so nice to have breakfast across the street from the ocean, sitting in the sunshine.

And no dishes to do afterwards.

*She solved this “problem” by making the kitchen into a second bedroom and part of the living/dining room into a boring stainless steel kitchen. Undoubtedly, there is a dishwasher in my old living room now.

A YEAR AGO: Vanquishing the mess from the move. Things look pretty much the same, though I did get a bigger area rug. I still love this house and can still hardly believe I live here.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Kalli’s birthday camping party. So fun!

TEN YEARS AGO: Marilyn’s house was up for sale.

I don’t really think of myself as a baker. I can’t remember the last time I made a cake. I don’t even have cake pans, which probably makes it unlikely that I will be doing so any time soon. I am no Erica! She can make anything. I always joke with her that Jessica is the logical conclusion to her ultra craftiness. “I’m going to make a human being! And she’s going to be awesome!” And she is.

I am good at making Montreal* style bagels, somewhat surprising since I do not have a wood-fired oven and have never lived in Montreal or have any Quebec background at all. Also because it is a lengthy process, and you know how patient I am not. I have streamlined the process as much as possible, having learned a few things along the way, like proper shaping technique. I am pleased to say that they almost never come apart during the boiling process. And there’s something meditative about rolling them in my hands while looking out of the kitchen window at the mighty redwoods and passing wildlife. Here is the most recent batch:

Recently, I tried my hand at lumpia Shanghai, a kind of Filipino egg roll. I was a little intimidated by the rolling technique, but it was easier than I thought. I did not deep fry them as the recipe said, just lightly fried them. They were not at all greasy, and the filling was a wonderful, savory combination of juicy ground pork and crunchy water chestnuts and celery:

I also skipped the suggested accompaniment of banana ketchup, which just sounds weird to me. I made a dipping sauce of sesame oil, soy sauce, rice vinegar, a few sesame seeds, and a dash of brown sugar and called it good. And it was.

Another new baking endeavor was cinnamon rolls, made from a friend’s father’s recipe. They turned out well, though the recipe was somewhat vague in places. It didn’t say what thickness the dough should be before rolling, or how much sugar and cinnamon to mix together for the filling (it just says, “A mixture of sugar and a generous amount of cinnamon”). It called for a mixture of Crisco and margarine, which horrified me, so I substituted butter. Despite all this, they were great:

It’s a little late in the year for resolutions, but it’s good to work on being a more confident baker. Who knows, maybe I’ll get around to making a cake before my next birthday!

*Lately I’ve been watching a TV show filmed in Montreal called “Bad Blood”, starring Kim Coates. I have loved him since he was a bad guy (he is pretty much always a bad guy) in the late ‘80s-early 90s “Street Legal”, a TV show I would like to revisit. “Bad Blood” is a fictional riff on a real Montreal mob empire, and very entertaining.

A YEAR AGO: The cats were enjoying their new home. I note that now Audrey is upstairs all the time and the boys are downstairs or on the bed. The dishes and litter box are upstairs now, too.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Remembering a long-ago trip to Paris.

TEN YEARS AGO: Road work and attempted laundry.

I tend to do my cooking for the week on Saturday, making dishes I can heat up after work during the week. About the last thing I want to do after driving, working, and arriving home to take care of cats and removing faux adult armor so painstakingly applied that morning is slicing and dicing. I have a limited supply of patience and niceness, and it’s running on empty by the end of the work day. Basically, I just want to heat something up, watch a little TV, and go to bed and read.

Sometimes I do special projects on the weekends, like making Montreal-style bagels. I have actually gotten pretty good at making these, though they are a time consuming and messy process. I live 3,000 miles from the nearest commercially available Montreal bagels, so if I want them (and I do), I have to make them myself.

Recently, I tried my hand at strawberry granola, from a recipe in the New York Times. It came out perfect the first time, and I wouldn’t change a thing:

While I was combining the dried strawberries with the cooled granola mixture, I noticed several deer wandering down the driveway, outside the kitchen window. They were completely unafraid, nibbling here and there. They had a couple of young ones with them, at the stage where they were shedding their spots. the biggest deer peeked in the window at me, and for a moment, my little green eyes met his huge, liquid brown ones. Then he and his family headed off into the woods. A little moment of magic.

Another success was a first-time attempt at making Carolina-style ribs. I like the tangy style of barbecue sauce rather than the thick, sweet, sticky one. I made a rub and applied it the night before, letting it marinate overnight, and then baking the ribs for a few hours the next night. They turned out great, and I will not change a thing the next time I make them, and there will be a next time. It’s fun to try new recipes along with the tried and true.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Farewell to Marco, the gentle giant. We still miss you, sweet boy.

TEN YEARS AGO: Well, this is still true. Between a writing project and writing social media posts fro work, my blog has been neglected lately. Seems two posts a week is about all I can do these days.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: Again, all these things are still true. A girl can dream…

Despite the horror of the lamb* and the milder ick of the cauliflower soup, I had not totally given up on the lure of the Michelin starred food right here in Nowhere. After the shocking unappetizingness of the last meal, I gently suggested that they might want to post the menu before taking orders for the meal. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one, since they did just that and it sounded pretty good:

This time, the dessert cost extra. It was “Japanese cheesecake”, and since I do not like cheesecake and Asian desserts tend to be on the overly sweet and weird side for me, I passed on that in favor of a loaf of their excellent sourdough bread instead.

Instead of going home that Friday, I kept going down to the South Coast. It was a beautiful day for a drive:

As I paused to take some photos, I saw a whale flip his tail out of the water and another spouting as he made his majestic way through the blue waters of the Pacific. Arriving at the restaurant, I was handed a plain brown paper bag, and I retraced my steps back home, where I unpacked it:

Apparently, the foragers were not successful, since there was slaw instead of foraged salad. I called the restaurant to ask how to assemble it. It turned out there was orange-ginger slaw on the side, and the rest of it (toasted sesame and hemp seeds; fresh cilantro and basil; and preserved lime) all got mixed together with the pork and rice noodles.

The soup was pretty heavy, though velvety, and rather dull. Same goes for the slaw. The noodles were ordinaire other than the preserved lime, a new ingredient to me which was delightful and which I would like to try making at home. Secretly (or perhaps not so secretly, since I just told you), I prefer the pork noodles I make, which seems astonishingly conceited, especially for someone who will never have a Michelin star or even half of one. At least it was only $18 per person instead of $180. Maybe it doesn’t translate well to take out or perhaps I can’t appreciate the subtlety of haute cuisine. At least I tried.

*Am amazed that they haven’t come up with a euphemism for it, like “beef” for “cow” and “veal” for “tortured baby cow”. They aren’t even pretending it’s something else.

A YEAR AGO: An unexpected, and unexpectedly moving funeral.

FIVE YEARS AGO: My past selves. I wish I had appreciated being young and cute when I was young and cute.

TEN YEARS AGO: The peaceful death of my beloved Henry Etta, the little stray cat who found a permanent place in my heart. I still miss that scrappy little thing.

You might be as surprised as I was to learn that there is a Michelin starred restaurant right here in Nowhere. Their prix fixe is a little out of my range, at $180 per person (and $120 extra if you order the wine pairing), so I was happy to learn through the ever-handy (and ever-quirky) local message boards that the restaurant was offering pick up meals for $18 a person. Even someone as math-challenged as I am can see that it’s a tenth of the normally astronomical price.

I went ahead and ordered it online and paid ahead per the instructions, without knowing what it was and suspecting that it might well be something horrifying, like lamb or salmon or mushrooms. Still, a Michelin star! Also I ordered a loaf of their house made sourdough to go with the mystery meal.

It was a glorious day as I headed to the magical south coast to pick up my mystery meal. I hadn’t gone far down the highway when a young man waved me to a halt. I pulled over and he told me that he had a flat tire. He wondered if Wednesday’s spare might work. I told him he was welcome to it, and removed it from the trunk.

Remembering my own flat tire experience, I told him not to drive far on it. By this time, the tire stores in the Big Town were closed, and I told the young man that they wouldn’t open again until Monday. We exchanged contact information, and he tried to give me $100 as collateral for my tire, which I told him was unnecessary.

I wished him luck and continued on my way to the restaurant, where I was handed a plain brown paper bag and the sad news that dinner consisted of braised lamb, cauliflower soup, and a cookie:

None of which appealed to me.

As I neared home, I saw the young man was still by the side of the road, but with another car and an older gentleman. I stopped and he told me that Wednesday’s spare didn’t fit, but the older gentleman’s spare tire did. They were applying it as I headed home.

So my record of never eating Michelin starred food remains more or less unbroken. The bread and the cookie were pretty good.

A YEAR AGO: Enjoying time with friends.

FIVE YEARS AGO: An unforgettable performance of A Streetcar Named Desire.

TEN YEARS AGO: My sister is totally amazing.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: Driving around in Florida.

The week leading up to Thanksgiving was a stormy one. The Ridge was covered with redwood needles, fallen twigs, branches, and general debris. One night driving home from work, it was so foggy and stormy that I could barely see the road. In fact, I couldn’t see the turn off from the highway to the Ridge, so I guessed. I was close: I ended up in the pullout at the foot of the Ridge. I drove down the middle of the road at 20 miles an hour, hoping for the best. I wanted to drive faster and get the hell off the road, but the visibility made even 20 about as fast as I could safely go. I was so glad to get home!

We were hoping that Clayton could join us from the City, but the weather was too bad for that four hour drive, especially on a motorcycle.

We celebrated Thanksgiving on Saturday, so I had some extra time to get things ready. Over the years, I have learned that the key to surviving the holidays is to do as much in advance as possible. So I made the cranberry sauce, dressing and roasted pears for the salad, cut up the bread to get stale for dressing/stuffing, and roasted and peeled the chestnuts:

Like every year, I forgot how horrible it is to peel chestnuts until I was actually doing it, even though I let them steam in a tea towel for fifteen minutes after roasting, which is supposed to make it easier.

It doesn’t.

Oddly, I never seem to have trouble peeling chestnuts I buy from street vendors in Paris, served in a paper cone. Maybe it’s being in Paris.

The house was pretty clean, so I didn’t worry about that, either. I did trap the boys in the bachelor pad (Megan’s old dog crate, fitted out with a comfy quilt) and close the bedroom doors to keep Audrey in. Audrey disdains company, but I didn’t want to take any chances on an escape attempt happening while people were going in and out.

On the day itself, I was putting the turkey breasts into the oven and thinking how lucky I was that my guests were almost entirely very capable cooks, ready to spring into action if something went wrong in the kitchen. Jonathan made the gravy while Rob mashed the potatoes. Everything was ready:

when the power went out. Sighing, I headed to the closet to get the power outage box with its lanterns and headlights. Bu the time I had it all set up, the power was back on again. We kept the lanterns out just in case, but I’m pleased to say we didn’t need them.

Dinner was fabulous. I was too busy eating and talking to take many photos. We had last year’s cider:

This year’s model wasn’t ready yet. Jonathan is planning to make vinegar and applejack from cider this winter, so stay tuned.

We finished off dinner with wild huckleberry tarts and a pie made from butternut squash we grew:

It was a wonderful evening. I’m very thankful for my family. No matter what life throws at me, they are always there for me.

Sometimes when I actually get around to cooking on the weekends, I begin to feel that I may have been overly ambitious in formulating my culinary plans.

Sitting in bed with a cup of coffee and the kitties in various relaxing attitudes, getting up, getting dressed, and starting to cook doesn’t seem all that appealing. Cats are very demotivating.

Most of the time, they just stay in bed while I start cooking and tidying up. Cats quite rightly despise housework and avoid at all costs, wisely leaving it the help.

This weekend, I had the delusion that I could make my own Montreal bagels, despite not having a wood-fired oven and being about 3,000 miles away from Montreal. As I started to assemble the ingredients – one of the drawbacks of my house is that the food is stored in a separate area from the kitchenette – it occurred to me that I could use up some leftover mint and some cucumber by making spa water:

I often have mint left over, and this turned out to be a delicious and refreshing way to use the leftovers.

With spa water at hand and kitties snoring upstairs, I started the bagel construction process. It is lengthy and, to be honest with you, something of a hassle. I used this recipe from the New York Times, and the irony was not lost on me, since Montreal bagels are a very different style from the bready New York ones. They are mostly hole, resembling a bracelet, and are chewy and slightly sweet from being boiled in honey water, just one part of the lengthy process.

My oven is an overachiever – faithful readers may recall how I inadvertently quick roasted a turkey one Thanksgiving – so I overcooked the bagels a bit. Still, not bad for a first attempt:

The oven was quite busy that day, cooking apple crumble to use up the four or five aging apples in the fruit bowl and my Dad’s honey-mustard chicken. Maybe my underachieving is really overachieving!

A YEAR AGO: Dodge joined the family! I am pleased to report that he is now 100% plush and 100% happy.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Hanging out on the couch.

TEN YEARS AGO: Hating the heat. I always have, and I always will.

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: A little on the sleepy side.

Dad’s birthday dawned sunny and beautiful. He probably would have approved that I spent the morning doing some cooking for the week: my friend Alice’s recipe for dak dori tang (spicy braised chicken) and Ottolenghi’s recipe for mejadra. It was Suzy’s international kitchen!

Megan and Rob hosted the party this year. I arrived to find that the appetizers were ready:

set by a photo we call “American Dad”:

It shows Dad in Cloverdale, wearing Jonathan’s straw hat and holding a slushy from the no longer extant Foster Freeze. He’s standing next to Jonathan’s old car, Grandma. Among Grandma’s eccentricities was the need to operate the windshield wipers by hand, using a string. I love that photo.

The appetizer was baguette with melted cheese and peppers my siblings grew and roasted over mesquite. It was delicious.

We headed to the greenhouse to snip some salad for dinner:

I got some extra to take home. The latest resident of the greenhouse is a Meyer lemon tree, which is something of an experiment. We are hoping it will work, since it would be great to have our own lemons.

Walking back to Megan’s place through the garden, I really felt like the seasons had changed from winter to spring. The plum tree agreed:

I know we are still slated to get more rain, but I think winter has lost its grip on us for now.

Back at Megan’s place, we toasted Dad with the cider we made last fall: “The old man wasn’t so bad!” Megan made spaghetti carbonara to go with the salad, and dessert was two sorbets: one made of wild blackberries and the other from raspberries my siblings grew. They were intense and delicious. After dinner, we watched Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, this time catching the Master’s cameo and enjoying the film very much.

I think Dad would have approved of his party.

A YEAR AGO: Celebrating Dad’s birthday.

FIVE YEARS AGO: A boy and his dog.

TEN YEARS AGO: Remembering a vintage birthday.

It may be appropriate that the days leading up to Dad’s birthday had such English weather, raining like crazy one minute, sunny the next, then hailing. Inland, there was snow, and it seems that all this late season precipitation may help to keep us from drought status.

Fortunately, the sun was peeking through the clouds when Megan and I arrived at our favorite seaside bar, which had been closed for nearly a month to repair its floors and opened just in time for Dad’s birthday eve. Strawberry margaritas were the special of the day, and what could be more festive than that? Especially since they were the size of young swimming pools:

Dad’s birthday fell on a Saturday this year, the perfect day for family dinner. I seemed to be feeling the occasion this year, since I polished the silver napkins which are engraved either “Madame” or “Monsieur”, and Megan hauled down both the big chest of Grammie’s ivory-handled silver and the little chest containing the ivory-handled fish set. The fish set was presented to Grammie by Daddy’s Daddy on the Christmas before their wedding. There is a little slip of paper inside which reads, “To Marjory, from her loving fiancé Ernest. Christmas, 1923”. I treasure that little piece of paper*.

I put all this, the grocery shopping I had done for dinner, and the first two seasons of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” into a box to bring over to Rio’s place, where the party would be held. Jonathan really wanted to watch the Hitchcocks on the Predicta after dinner. We made our way through the winding woods to Rio’s place, where I set to work as Jonathan and Megan fetched home-made cider.

Here is the menu.

Not listed, but still appreciated, were the tarts Jonathan and Rio made from the peaches we grew and froze last year:

They were as delicious as they look.

Rio’s kitchen is much more reasonable than mine, and although it was unfamiliar, it was pretty easy to make dinner there. Also, the kitchen is open to the living and dining areas of the house, so we could chat as I cooked and asked where things were as Gilbert & Sullivan played cheerfully in the background. Dad loved G&S, and used to sing it merrily despite being tone deaf and having a singing voice to match. He was actually removed from music class at school and sent to learn woodworking, which was more useful to him (and us), since he built bookshelves in every house we ever lived in.

Here’s the salad, with a fork from Grammie’s fish set, along with the napkin rings and the regular silver:

And here is the pilau, in progress on the stove:

It was a good dinner. I was glad to cook from Dad’s cookbook and to enjoy the company of my much-loved family while reminiscing about Daddy. The old man wasn’t so bad!

*When Dad and I were in Russia in 1992, his wallet was stolen. Dad kept all of his money in his money in a money belt when traveling abroad, so the thieves only got a credit card which Dad promptly canceled before they could use it**. But the wallet did contain a little hand-written prayer that his mother had given him on the day he went off to university, and that he had carried with him ever since. That was all he cared about.

**He once had a credit card stolen and waited a few weeks to report it, since the thief was spending less than my mother did.

A YEAR AGO: Celebrating Dad’s birthday in many different ways.

FIVE YEARS AGO: An early start to Dad’s birthday. And some cooking, of course.

TEN YEARS AGO: A menu meal for Dad’s birthday.

As you know, I hate dealing with the post Thanksgiving turkey carcass. It’s unwieldy, icky, and makes it impossible for me to escape the unpleasant fact that I ate a formerly live creature as I dismember its bones. In my typical hypocritical way, however, this does not stop me from cooking and eating it in the first place. At least we buy free range, organic birds.

So I was delighted when Jonathan took the avian remains off my hands the day after Thanksgiving. He made it into soup and invited us over for dinner that night at Rio’s compound, where we had turkey soup with garlic bread and followed up Thanksgiving II with leftover cherry and huckleberry pies.

While the garlic bread was baking, Rio and Jonathan showed us the progress they had made with restoring the Christmas Village. Rio’s father was a famous artist who made record album covers, Time magazine covers, and posters for Broadway plays. To amuse Rio as a child, he made a little Victorian village of painted cardboard. Over the years, some of it disappeared and some of it deteriorated seriously, but after Rio bought the compound, she thought it would be fun to restore the Village.

It currently resides in the studio part of the studio/garage combo where we made the cider. Now that Jonathan is involved, a train track with trains that really run has been added:

They have also added some historical figures, like Winston Churchill and Charles Dickens, and various cows for the fields. Some of the houses have little chandeliers and paintings inside. It’s quite something, and it’s not even finished yet.

Back in the house, we had dinner by the light of this amazing Swedish contraption, also from Rio’s childhood:

It’s a wooden carousel with a wooden propeller at the top and candles at the sides. The heat from the candles makes the propeller spin the carousel around. The top layer seems to be angels, the middle a shepherd and his flock and the lowest level is Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and the three wise men, one of whom is inexplicably black while everyone else is white. Go figure.

It is a charming and delightful object, and I also liked the patterns it made on the ceiling:

After dinner, we watched The Avengers on the 1959 Predicta. It is a pretty weird show. To my mind, it seemed quite surreal. Coincidentally, it also featured trains, though there was no Christmas Village. It was a lovely evening, like another little Thanksgiving together.

It was a quieter than usual Thanksgiving at stately Suzy Manor. I had the house ready well before noon:

and the outdoor livingroom was ready as well:

Rob brought some firewood over, but we didn’t need it. It has been oddly warm all week. I have even been sleeping with the balcony door open.

Erica and Jessica could not join us for Thanksgiving after all. Megan said it was the first time in Jessica’s life that she wasn’t with our family at Thanksgiving. We really missed them. Without them, it was more like an elaborate family dinner than anything else, though there’s nothing wrong with that!

Everything turned out well, from the turkey, roasted Nana-style:

to the maple and harissa roasted carrots, potatoes expertly whipped by Jonathan, who also made a wonderful gravy, and the stuffing/dressing, which as usual I forgot about, but which happened to be perfectly done when I did remember. Jonathan and Rio brought a wild huckleberry pie (in a pie dish made by Rob), and a pie from the cherries we grew. It was quite a spread:

Jonathan brought some of last year’s cider, and we toasted Thanksgiving and the many things we are grateful for with the cider in Nana’s wine glasses.

A YEAR AGO: A much busier Thanksgiving.

FIVE YEARS AGO: A fun and festive Thanksgiving.

Well, today was Thanksgiving Eve for us. Despite an unwise consumption of adult beverages the night before, while listening to music and watching “The Partridge Family” in honor of my childhood crush, the spectacular David Cassidy, I managed to wake up before the 6 am alarm call.

Why so early on the Eve, you ask? Erica texted me saying that she was ill and may not be able to grace us with her presence, Jessica’s, and the many dishes she was planning to bring. I conferred with Megan, who opined that the best thing to do was for her to stop by the store on her way home from work and pick up the ingredients we would need to make up for the possibly missing dishes.

I wanted to be caffeinated and ready before Meg texted me at 6:30, and I was ready. She got two different kinds of bread, some apples, and some pecans for stuffing/dressing (I couldn’t deal with chestnuts this year, much as I love them), and some mixed greens for salad. She dropped them off on her way home from night shift three out of four, the last one of the week being tonight.

I put the Jack Daniel’s on to simmer with tangerine zest, sugar, and shallots while I started chopping up bread to stalenize during the day and overnight. I tossed in some chopped up pecans and then made salad dressing with honey, shallots, olive oil, and cider vinegar. By then, it was time to put the cranberries into the simmering sauce and unearth potatoes from their buckets of sand:

Everything from the garden always seems extra dirty*. I also had a bucket of rainbow carrots to scrub and prep for maple and harissa roasted carrots:

They are resting comfortably in my American grandmother’s glass platter which reads “In Remembrance”, ready for tomorrow. After that, I decanted the cranberries into my English grandmother’s star dish:

I wish I knew what happened to the little dishes that matched it. They are lost in the mists of time.

Rio stopped by with the turkey, a relatively modest 14 pounds compared to last year’s monster. She had started defrosting it on Monday, which we had actually feared was too early, but it was still partly frozen. I may have to just cook it a little longer.

After Rio left, I cleaned up the house and then settled down on the couch with the cats to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, which I had thoughtfully taped so I could fast forward through the boring parts and enjoy the delights of the Rockettes, the giant balloons, and the floats, along with the appearance of Santa and memories of being in New York for Thanksgiving years ago.

*I was telling one of my co-workers that we were going to have carrots and potatoes we had grown ourselves. She said, “Wouldn’t it be easier to just grab it off the grocery store shelves?” I said, “Yes. Yes, it would.” I didn’t add that it would probably be cheaper too.

A YEAR AGO: It was Thanksgiving Eve.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Getting ready for T-Day!

Well, this is becoming a bad habit. Get up early, go to sleep late, have a series of nightmares that wake me up throughout the night. On Thursday, I got up at 4:30 am, when Clyde joyfully leaped onto my unsuspecting stomach. It is a very effective wake up call, though more enjoyable for the leaper than the landing pad.

Since I took Friday off as a mental health day, I had an adult beverage or two after work on Thursday night while watching playoff hockey and staying up until 11:00 pm, fueled by fantasies of the Maple Leafs David beating the Goliath Washington Capitals. I know all the odds are against it, but a girl can hope.

I figured I’d sleep in until it was light outside on Freedom Friday, but I was as wrong about that as I probably am about the Maple Leafs. After a restless night of bad dreams, I finally gave up on the whole thing before 5:00 am.

After the requisite caffeination and cat duties, I threw in a load of laundry and did some cooking for during the week, including this delicious recipe. I left out the cilantro, upped the ginger, and used half sweet paprika and half smoked paprika, and threw the olives in near the end of the cooking instead of boiling them separately (Why? Why?). While things were cooking and cleaning, I finished a data entry project for my friends at the former jobette and emailed it over to them.

The jobette may not be so former after all. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but I am once again considering working Saturdays this summer.

You may recall that after a change in leadership at the jobette last year, the New Guy decided to close on Saturdays, among other unpopular decisions that ended up costing him his entire staff. After wreaking havoc in just a few short months, he quit and went back from whence he came, to the relief of all.

The current CEO seems very nice. We had a good meeting where he asked if I would consider doing data entry, blog writing, and working on Saturdays. He is willing to pay me more than I make at my real job, so it’s hard to say no, though I am a little worried about getting burned out. Decision-making, as you know, is not among my few talents. Maybe if/when I make a decision, I can finally start sleeping better.

A YEAR AGO: It was an internet-free zone at stately Suzy Manor. And there was quite the liestorm to go with it.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Meet the jobette’s newest employee, the office cat!