America The Quirky

Lately I’ve been focusing on the differences between France and America through the microscope of vocabulary.  For example, there’s no word in French that exactly means messy, as in “eating with your fingers is messy.”  There’s a word for mess, of course, but not for messiness as a natural state of affairs.  And there’s no word for fun, which is not to say that the French don’t have fun, but they have to use the English word because there’s not one French word that exactly conveys the “fun for its own sake” idea of things.  And there’s no word that exactly means quirky.  Which is to say, I guess, that the French are much more formal, neat, and serious than we are.  When we’re in France and we seem a bit peculiar, it’s because we’re Amercans.  But here, it’s because we’re quirky.

Take this Pigmobile, for example.  It’s SOMEPIG, which I think of as an only-in-America sort of vehicle.  It dispenses pulled pork, and it looks like it means business, unlike those two lounging in front of it.  When I asked them to make pig faces Shel readily, and successfully, complied, while Steve insisted on looking debonnaire.  From these examples, not being a statistician, I conclude that 50% of Americans are willing to make silly faces on demand while 100% are happy to don silly glasses, which I’m pretty sure is a much higher percentage than one would find in France.

And while it’s always aggravating, whether here or in France, when people insist on blathering  away to someone else while they’re standing right in front of you, I think of this sign as being extremely American.  It’s utterly polite and utterly snarky at the same time, which is an art we probably learned from the French, but it has its own delicious American quirkyness.  Come to think of it, I don’t think there’s a French word for snarky either.

And how about this?  It’s a simple, straightforward, tongue in cheek commentary.  Except you know what?  There is no side door.  Now how quirkily American is that?

By the way, I don’t really have a French Letters tattoo.  Silly glasses, pig faces, lunch with hippies?  Sure.  Putting my heart into my blog?  You bet.  Wearing my URL on my sleeve, as it were?  Way too quirky for me.

I Like To Be In America

“I like to be in America…” Our friend Maryse is visiting us from France, and as you can see by her radiant smile, even though she doesn’t know the song, she likes to be in America.

“Ok by me in America…” It seems to her that anything is startlingly possible here, whereas we take it for granted that we live in the land of free to be you and me.  It’s not easy being green?  Just be blue.

“Everything’s free in America…” including these mini-doughnut samples at the Bainbridge Island 4th of July Fair.

“For a small fee in America” although here, today, the proceeds of whatever was for sale often went to good causes.

It’s an essential part of visiting America in summertime, the 4th of July parties.  A delightfully homey small town celebration with dogs and kids in the parade and funny costumes everywhere you looked? Tant mieux, so much the better.

Cruising the fair before the parade started, we saw adorable-looking people we’ve never seen before,

and truly adorable people that we haven’t seen in ages, like local lovelies Jeannie and Anne.

We saw candidates for Best 4th of July Costume,

and Best Dressed Overall.  Not that there was really a contest going on, but personally, if I had one costume to choose that exemplified the spirit of this holiday, it would have been this cool tee shirt.

Overall it was a thoughtful fair, with booths advocating a better world for humans,

for animals, including Athena the Barred Owl,

and even collecting a taste of home for those serving overseas.

It was a hot, hot day and we were all roasting,

but the parade lifted our wilting spirits with cool music from the decidedly rock end of the Bach to Rock spectrum,

an unexpected level of diversity,

and schoolkids performing their hearts out on the burning pavement.  There’s really nothing more one could ask for, but we still have dinner and fireworks to come.  Do we deserve this bounty?

To my way of thinking, we’ve finally got the President we’ve been waiting for and desperately need, the country is getting back on track, and we deserve a huge round of applause for showing the world who we really are.  I don’t know about you, but me, I like to be in America!

The Cat Came Back

I find it really hard to live without a cat, and so I’ve been spending far more time than would seem necessary gazing into the little webcam that shows me how Beppo and Zazou are faring during their “vacation” at the cat hotel in the south of France.  But this morning a persistent meowing awakened me to the sight of a cat on the deck outside the bedroom.  It’s a second story deck, so I thought I might still be dreaming, but the rising sun was in my eyes and I felt wide awake and happy to see some cat, any cat.  Five minutes later the meowing came again, this time from the hallway outside the bedroom door.  It was Kofi.

Kofi is a cat that I rescued several years ago from a family with three Jack Russell terriers, whose main purpose in life was evidently to terrorize the household cats.  I brought him home, we installed him in our then-pet family of two cats and one huge and hugely gentle dog, and we were endlessly captivated by his extravagant beauty.  He spent a lot of time relaxing and getting over his past, mulling over his future.

He seemed to be good at making himself at home, but however much we cuddled and snuggled him, he never purred.  We decided that having spent his youth being beset by Jack Russells he had developed his own ideas about the proper life for a cat.  Once freed from the pesky terriers, he apparently got the notion that life as an only pet might be the best thing ever, and so, little by little,  he moved in with our neighbors, who were petless at the time and welcomed him gladly.  End of story, we thought, for a few months a beautiful cat lived with us, and then he didn’t.

We saw him every so often, out in the driveway, up on the hill, and were always glad to see him looking well.  Once or twice he came to be petted.  But today, he apparently got up onto our roof, jumped from there down to the deck, found the open door and walked through the sleeping house, to meow outside our bedroom door.  He wanted to be petted although he still didn’t purr, he wanted to be fed although the spuma di tonno I offered him wasn’t his favorite, he hung out with us for a couple of hours as if he enjoyed our company, and then he walked calmly out the door. 

He’s his own cat, and he’s figured out how to have life on his own terms, which is a special skill that not all of us have.  To know what you want, where to find it and how to get it, to go after it, enjoy it, and leave when you’re ready, now isn’t that the life?  We can only hope that he includes us in his plans for the rest of the summer.  But don’t worry Beppo and Zazou, we’re not cheating on you.  It doesn’t count if the cat doesn’t purr.

Let Every Bottle Speak

If this bottle could speak for itself, it would proclaim “she loves me!”  Other bottles would have less to boast about, on this, the morning after the Great Vermouth Taste-Off.

Thanks to some enterprising and inquisitive friends, a group of us gathered last night to pass judgment on 14 bottles of sweet vermouth.  I had gone into the evening with my personal favorite being the Punt e Mes, but I was open to the notion that somewhere out there a better vermouth was to be found.  Since from the moment I discovered Punt e Mes I never betrayed it with another vermouth, it seemed entirely possible that my affections were misplaced, had fixed too early on some less than perfect example of the vermouth family, and so I dove into the tasting with enthusiasm and high expectations.

In the order I tasted them, there were the offerings of Lejon, Stock, D’Aquino, Gallo, a homemade hyppocras, Boissière, Carpano Antica, Noilly Prat, Martini and Rossi, Cinzano, Punt e Mes, Martelletti, Vya, and Marcarini.    As we tasted, noted, chatted, it quickly became evident that each of us was looking for something different in a vermouth.  One of our hosts found many of them too herbal, while I thought that lots of them were too sweet.  There was, however, startled and unanimous agreement on the Gallo, which sparked strangled cries of “oh my god, where’s the spit bucket?” from virtually everyone.  I think I’m summing up correctly when I say that at the end of the evening the Carpano Antica, Punt e Mes, and Boissière garnered the most general approval.

But here was the kicker for me.  Almost everyone detested the Martini and Rossi, which I have to confess  amazed and crushed me.  It’s true that it’s sweet and simple, like a first love.  In fact, it was my first vermouth love, and I remember that when I  tasted it, over ice with a twist of lemon, I thought it was the best drink there ever could be.  It was herbal, a little bitter, not like anything I’d ever tasted before, and it lifted me above the Budweiser world that surrounded me.  If you’re old enough to remember when Mateus rosé was the height of sophistication, you’ll know what I mean.  That glass of Martini with a twist made me feel European and adult, transported me to the as-yet-unseen Mediterranean, where one might have such a drink on a sunny terrace in late afternoon in the company of a charming Italian, or so I imagined.

So when my fellow tasters pronounced, one after the other, that it was horrible, terrible, and even, I hesitate to say, disgusting, it was hard for me to swallow.  It’s as if someone had looked at an old snapshot of my first boyfriend and pronounced him a dog, a loser, and a dweeb of the highest order.

Happily it’s the case that I’ve graduated from both my first vermouth and my first boyfriend, but still, they’re part of my history.  I no longer want them in my life, although I’d pick the Martini over the boyfriend any day, but they do occupy a warm spot in my memories of growing up.  Back then I didn’t know that some day I’d become a moderately sophisticated adult married to my umpteenth boyfriend and living not far from the Mediterranean myself, or that I’d shift my allegiance to Punt e Mes.  But I’ll be forever fond of my sweet and simple beginnings, even though today I’m drawn to the deep, the complex, and yes, the herbal.

Green Va-Voom

No one ever has to tell me to eat more vegetables.  And you would probably be wise not to vote for me for President, because instead of doing something idiotic and subversive like Bush The First did when he famously exclaimed  “I’m the President of the United States and I don’t have to eat broccoli,” I’d be more likely to use my executive powers to make everyone join a CSA and eat vegetables three times a day.  Ok, maybe only twice a day, because even though I often do eat leftover veggies for breakfast myself, decreeing that others follow my example would definitely put me on the fast track to impeachment.

But last night, as occasionally happens even to me, I wasn’t much in the mood for cooking.  If we’d been in France I’d have ordered pizza, which would have been delivered by motor scooter, crisp and delicious, in under 20 minutes flat.  Here on the island, however, there’s no pizza worth eating, and although Shel kindly offered to make a call for me (”hello Air France, could we get a pizza delivered anytime today?”) I thought it would be prudent to have a look around the kitchen, in case inspiration should strike.  And thus was born…drum roll…thunder…lightning…one of the best and easiest things ever to do with a zucchini.  Va va voom and hey presto, kitchen magic.  I love it when that happens.  And so will you, if you happen to live in a place where furtive farmers are prone to leaving surplus zucchini in the unlocked cars of the unsuspecting public.

It turned out that in my kitchen I had a grey-striped zucchini, some organic ground pork, some Yukon Golds, some shiitakes, a bowl of leftover parsley pesto, a bag of gorgeous sugar snap peas from my CSA, and a heap of thyme and sage that I’d culled from my overflowing herb box on the deck.  So, ignoring the whispers of the pizza demon, I boiled and mashed the potatoes with the parsley pesto, which is really nothing more than a giant bunch of parsley pureed with a clove of garlic, olive oil, and a little water.  A splash of walnut oil mellowed out the assertive greenness of the flavor in a wonderful way, and voilà, herby green potatoes.  I fried some sage leaves until crisp, blanched, shocked, and buttered the sugar snaps, and assembled this vegetable-laden feast.  Oh, that tantalizing pork patty, you ask?  It too was (almost) all about the vegetables.
Pork and Zucchini Patties with a Madeira Shiitake Sauce

1 lb  ground pork, organic if possible
1 medium  zucchini,  coarsely grated
1 heaping teaspoon  fresh thyme
1/2  lb  shiitake mushrooms,  stemmed and quartered
1 heaping Tablespoon  tomato paste
1/2 cup  Madeira
3-4 T  olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Mix together the pork, grated zucchini, thyme, and some salt and pepper.  Knead well with your hands to get a homogeneous mixture.

Heat some of the olive oil in a large skillet, form the meat into 10-12 small patties, and fry them until golden on both sides and cooked through.  You may need to do this in two batches, and how much olive oil you need to add will depend on the fat content of your pork.  Mine was very lean, and so I used a good 4 Tablespoons for the whole dish.  Remove patties from pan and set aside, on a plate, to collect any juices.

If necessary, add a little more oil to the pan without washing it and saute the mushrooms over high heat, degreasing the pan lightly with a bit of the Madeira.  When the mushrooms are cooked, add the tomato paste and stir well, cooking until the paste browns slightly.  Slowly add the rest of the Madeira and stir to form a smooth sauce.  Put the patties back into the pan, along with any juices from the plate, and warm through to allow the flavors to blend.  Adjust seasoning and serve.  You’re pretty much guaranteed to forget all about pizza, at least for a day, and this way you’re in no danger of getting run over by a motor scooter.

It’s Not All Roses

It started with a garage sale.  During the month we’ve been back on our little island we’ve been wrapped in a cocoon of homecoming and culture shock, with time out for travel to San Francisco.  But now, emerging from that cocoon,  I read that there was a garage sale here on the island last week, and that it raised the relatively huge sum, as garage sales go, of $22,000.

That would be great small town news, the kind of thing that we love to read about in our local weekly paper, except for one fact.  The garage sale, and a few bake sales, and a couple of car washes, were all held to raise money to pay the island’s teachers.  Twelve teachers were recently laid off in crisis-engendered budget cuts, and the community is trying to save their jobs, one car wash at a time.

I’m trying to imagine such a thing happening in France, but I’m pretty sure that under similar circumstances people would be marching in the streets and shutting the system down, instead of baking cookies to sell.

Then this morning I was at the clinic, getting a mammogram.  If you’ve had one, you know that often the technician tries to distract you from the discomfort by chattering away while she presses and prods.  But today she told me that she’d had five patients in a row who were desperate to sell their houses, but because there are so many foreclosures and the market is awash in houses for sale, people who really need to move are thinking of giving their houses back to the bank.

I’d really never imagined that happening here in our affluent community.  But I remember that when I used to be a personal chef on the island I’d often come home with tales of young couples with young children living in million dollar houses, and wonder aloud where they got the money, how they managed to have two or three times the house we did, at half our age.  I imagine that some of those families now find themselves on the verge of giving up their homes, some of those kids’ teachers are out of a job and are unlikely to be rescued by a garage sale bonanza.  Knowing how it all unraveled doesn’t make it any easier.

After the clinic I went to buy groceries, and because these salal plants are a long way from bearing fruit, I was hunting for berries in the produce aisle.  A grocery store staff member that I’ve known for years, and who is just about exactly my age, helped me out.  When I asked her if she were thinking of retiring she said that she, along with the other folks that staff the store, had lost so much of her retirement funds in the crisis that she’d be working at least another six years, until she’s 65.

Again I thought of France, where people usually retire between 50 and 55, and where the fact that retirees got only a 4% cost of living increase on their retirements this year, an increase that was said to be held down by the crisis, brought about a national outcry that still echoes in my ears.

It’s a global financial crisis, and so even in France these days it’s not la vie en rose, but I have to say that it looks very thorny here, by comparison.

Father’s Day Symmetry

It’s funny how hard it is for me to allow things to be asymmetrical, out of balance.  Things that I can control, that is, like the arrangement of a plate.  Things I cannot control, like the fact that my father left me when I was five, and that my son’s father left him before he was born, now that too has a certain symmetry, but not the kind I enjoy. 

Somehow, in preparing this Father’s Day feast, symmetry took hold of me and wouldn’t let go.

In my perfect world, all paths lead to and away from the source, and of course the source is what we’re remembering on Father’s Day.  Speaking as a person who doesn’t even know the names of half of her grandparents, let me say that I hope that the path that led them here to America was clear to them, even though it’s invisible, incomprehensible, to me.  Our fathers, even when we don’t know who they are, where they came from or why, or where they went, they’re still a part of our path.

In our family we have stepfathers, and step mothers too for that matter.  Stepfathers stepping in after fathers stepped out.  Stepmothers rounding up the ragtag and the restless, keeping the family wheel oiled and turning.  I wish I could thank my stepfather today, just as I wish I could give my own father a good shaking.  My stepfather, my stepson, my son’s stepfather, around here it’s all about the steps, the steps we take toward wholeness.  Toward family.

We all know that not every part of family life is beautiful, sometimes it’s gloppy and gooey and grainy and sub-gorgeous.  But the bright spots are there to be grabbed  and held onto for dear life, when a family feels like quicksand, when having a father or being a father just isn’t enough to make the world run as it should.  I’d be the last one to deny that fathers do have their special magic, that’s why we all need them, but let’s face it, a lot of it’s just biology, primordial, goopy.

It’s what one makes of it, the heart and soul of fatherhood, that counts for everything.  What goes around and comes around and keeps the world turning is one good guy taking care of another, fathering, stepfathering, and bravely stepping up to the job of raising the young, a task that calls for a lot of  raising of the spirits, and a modicum of raising hell when necessary. 

I wish I had a father of my own  to salute today, but since I don’t, if you’re a father I’m tipping my hat to you.  And if you’re a stepfather, this cake is for you, because it’s not easy being step, and because stepfathers deserve a special place in all of our hearts.

Only In San Francisco

So, there we were at 4th and Market, waiting for the Amtrak bus to collect us and deliver us to the train.  We looked up, and whoa!

And before that, there we’d been, waiting for a pizza at Za’s, when I looked up to yell something to Shel  about the blasting reggae accompanying our wait, and wow!

San Francisco’s got that ineffable something, or as we’re fond of saying around here, “it has a certain je ne sais quoi but I don’t know what it is.”

In San Francisco buying bread from a pink-haired charmer seems normal,

as does standing at the feet of Sun Yat Sen in the middle of St. Mary’s Square,

in the heart of Chinatown, where cultures commingle cozily.

Where else but in San Francisco could two fearless women get 80-90 strangers waiting to ride the cable car to sing” Happy Birthday dear Dave” to a guy who didn’t even look embarrassed by the attention?

Where else can you sit under a gigantic stained glass dome and lunch on an $18 Reuben sandwich?

It’s not just everywhere that you’ll see brown pelicans giving huge container ships a run for their money,

or street musicians vying with pigeons for the last few feet of space on the edge of the continent.

Even though I haven’t lived there in more years than you might imagine,  I’ll freely admit that be it ever so quirky, ever so gorgeous, ever so free to be you and me and it and only itself, there’s no place in the world like the town I once called home.

Mon Pays Natal

Your pays natal is the place you’re from, where you were born, a special place that your heart calls home.  In my case, it’s San Francisco, and although I haven’t been here in years, that’s where I am today.  A lot has changed, but many things from my childhood are alive and well, thriving even amidst the push to rebuild and replace that overcomes all cities.

When you grow up in San Francisco, Coit Tower means a lot to you.  Visible from almost everywhere, it’s where you look to orient yourself and keep from getting lost,

it’s a place you visit as a school kid to study the WPA murals that recount California’s history,

and if you can afford the elevator, it’s a place you go to get a birdseye view of home.

Those murals, with their moving examples of socialist realist art, inspired my childhood.  California’s agricultural heritage

is alive and well today, transformed by the demands of the times.

Where once women packed and canned the bounty of San Francisco Bay,

today well-to-do gourmets put the egg before the fish.

While there are probably still some San Franciscans reading Das Capital, it’s more likely that they’re reading

menus at an Israeli restaurant (no relation),

or a Russian deli.

In place of cafés with a 25¢ lunch special

it’s the San Francisco version of a  French café, where, as I can sadly testify, one is obliged to drop $35 for two sandwiches and two single shot espressos.

Our notions of public art have changed, and instead of glorifying bucolic physical labor we offer sightseers

what, exactly?

It’s hard not to be nostalgic for the past, but then, that’s what the whole pays natal thing is about, and today, that’s my story and I’m surrendering to it.

Fiesta Mexicana

Ever since we’ve been back in the US we’ve been inhaling Mexican cuisine like oxygen.  Whether in Mexican restaurants, little roadside taquerias, or cooked at home, it tastes like the best thing in the world to us right now, spicy and tantalizing, completely unavailable during our recent time in France, and soon to become unavailable again when we return to the land of duck fat and truffles. 

Take this posole that I made for a birthday party yesterday.  No matter what you do to dress up posole, it has a lamentable tendancy to resemble a dog’s breakfast.  But in fact, appearances notwithstanding, this posole rojo is an exemplary version that blows most other posole recipes right out of the agua.

I worked from this recipe, and I recommend it highly.  Traditionally garnished with a variety of little nibbles, the only thing I changed was to use a broth made from smoked chicken carcasses instead of the water called for in the recipe.  If you have any smoked bones in the freezer, make a little broth and do as I did.  The extra richness and lightly smoky flavor only make the dish more delicious.  Also, as I often do, I made the posole the day before and set it in a slow oven for a couple of hours on the day of the party, another little trick that is guaranteed to improve almost any sort of stew.

And of course a spoonful of salsa de molcajete doesn’t hurt either.

And then there was this ensalada de chicharrones de pollo that I put together for lunch the other day.  This was one of my favorite recent inventions and it’s a great summertime salad.  Here’s what you do.

Make this recipe  for the chicharrones de pollo.  While the chicken is marinating, scrape the kernels off 2-3 ears of corn and sauté them in a little olive oil.  When the corn is barely tender, add a big pinch of ground chile and stir it through the kernels.  Squeeze the juice of a lime and a pinch of salt into the pan, stir to combine, remove the corn from the pan and set it aside.  

Chop some crisp Romaine, and toss it with chopped cilantro and sliced green onions to taste.  Make a salsa vinaigrette by adding a little oil and vinegar to your favorite bottled salsa, adjust to taste with salt and pepper, and maybe a little sugar. 

Now place the chopped greens on plates, sprinkle with the sautéed corn, place the chicharrones on top, and drizzle the whole with the salsa vinaigrette.  It’s a fiesta on a plate, and if you want to add a cerveza to the meal, I just say olé.