Progress

Apple varieties in our house thanks to the Ferry Plaza farmers' market:
1) Pink Pearl (yay!)
2) Melrose
3) Rhode Island Greening
4) Granny Smith
5) Gravenstein
6) Connell Red
7) Cortland
8) Empire
9) Jonathan
10) Philo Gold
11) Arkansas Sweet?
12) Bramley Seedling
13) Ashmead's Kernel...
...and one or two others I can't remember at the moment. Scott made little sticker labels for each apple so we can keep track. I'm tasting and taking notes, trying to create a comprehensive apple comparison chart.

Meanwhile, I did the first round of testing on an apple challah recipe. The loaves came out looking really beautiful, as seen here. But I took them out of the oven too soon. The insides were still soft, which made them collapse, and putting them back in the oven couldn't do anything at that point to restore the shape. But I like this general idea: you roll the bread up like a cinnamon bun, rather than braiding it. I'll try it again with a little less egg and oil, and cook it at a lower temperature. Hopefully that'll solve the problem.

Land of enchantment

We were in New Mexico recently, where I lived for a couple of years in my twenties. It was beautiful, restorative, delicious, and unbelievably green. They've had more rain than usual this summer -- more than the ground can absorb, actually, so there have been problems with flooding. But it was also edenic. Imagine that dramatic landscape in shades of sage and grass and blue. Every time you turn around, your mouth drops.
One of the best moments was returning to Leona's of Chimayo for lunch. If you ever make it to New Mexico, do not miss the opportunity to eat there. Fantastic carne adovada, great tamales, fresh tortillas, and Leona herself, surrounded by grandkids.
Even though Leona's is a destination restaurant with a popular mail-order business on the side, it's still run out of the same little ramshackle stand next to the Sanctuario. You'd still get wet if a hard rain came down at the right angle. Not much seems to change in New Mexico, and that's a nice thing.

Pleasures of the flesh

So here's an apple you probably won't find on the east coast: the Pink Pearl. Isn't it pretty? Like the Gravenstein, it's a summer variety, which means we're now at the tail end of the season. Sigh.

The breed is popular with apple enthusiasts, but because it bruises easily and doesn't keep well in storage, it never made it to the supermarket shelves.

To make matters worse, Pink Pearls are homely on the outside, with dull yellow-brown, faintly blushing skin and an uneven conical shape. I almost skipped over them at the farmers market myself. But they have a secret: inside, they're positively vampy, with shockingly pink, sweet-tart flesh. Even the blooms are bright pink. The fruit is crisp and tastes of raspberries and lemon custard. In fact, I baked some Pink Pearls in a galette with raspberries and they were a natural pairing.

The first Pink Pearl was hybridized in Northern California in 1944 from another red-fleshed variety called "Surprise," which, in turn, probably descended from an ancient breed of red-fleshed Turksh crabapples. "Surprise" apples were beautiful, but sour; a plant breeder named Albert Etter came up with with Pink Pearl as a way to breed more sweetness into them. So I'm giving thanks to him and to the farmers who keep these heirlooms in circulation.

Never a dull moment

We have been living through interesting times this past month. Remember that proverb, "May you live in interesting times"? Apparently Robert Kennedy quoted this "ancient Chinese curse" in a speech in South Africa in 1966. Only it turns out that there is no such curse, or at least, not in China. The only known Chinese proverb related to this sentiment reads, "It's better to be a dog in a peaceful time than be a man in a chaotic period." I'm sure it sounds more graceful in its original tongue.

Anyway, we've weathered some interesting times in recent weeks, most poignantly with the recent and much-too-soon death of Scott's uncle Ron Magram, who had a lot to teach us all about finding meaning in difficult times.

We've emerged in relatively good shape, and last week I got some very exciting news indeed. Remember that book proposal that I mentioned? Well, if all goes according to plan, my first cookbook -- everything you ever wanted to know about apples and more (that's not the title) -- will be published in Fall, 2008 by W.W. Norton. If it goes a little slower than that, it'll be more like Fall, 2009.

My editor (I have an editor!) has encouraged me to not worry too much about the dates at the moment, but I've been diving in these past couple of weeks. Hence this photo. It's an apple Dutch baby pancake I made this morning. Good (and pretty, no?), but too much flour in the batter. I think I'll get it right in the second round. There's also some cinnamon rice pudding with apple compote in the fridge. I need to figure out some sort of food distribution scheme because it's piling up.

From here on out I'm going to use this blog as a journal to record what I'm learning as I work on the book. This project is going to take a while and the incline of the road ahead is daunting from this angle. Especially since I'll be writing this on the side (though not in secret). Bird by bird, as they say. Or, in my case, apple pie by apple pie. This is the good side of "interesting."

Hell's is Heaven

I feel like a very lucky bunny because I got to spend this past weekend at one of the most beautiful spots in the West: Boulder, Utah. Or, more specifically, the Hell's Backbone Grill, a small restaurant right on the edge of the Escalante National Monument.

The story of this place is so great that even the condensed version draws you in: Two friends from Flagstaff, Blake and Jen, who divide their time between catering gigs and cooking on river rafting expeditions, decide to open a restaurant. Blake is a Buddhist, and they agree to run the place by the principles of Right Livelihood, with organic, place-based cuisine and an emphasis on local ingredients. Fair wages, recycling, all that good stuff.

Just one catch: The restaurant they find is in a tiny town in the middle of a wilderness, 4 1/2-hours from Salt Lake City, the nearest grocery store more than an hour away. There are 100 or so residents in Boulder, and most of them are devout Mormon ranchers. At first, no one will apply for the jobs they've advertised. And they can't get a liquor license.

They try reaching out. They meet with the town council, listen respectfully, and throw an ice cream social for the whole town on 4th of July. Six years later, the restaurant is thriving. After a slow start, they've become an integral part of the community (and finally have that license). Now they draw their own fan base to the town (during my stay, I met people from L.A., San Francisco, and Australia). Most importantly, they make the best biscuits I have ever had in my life.

I can't wait to go back. For more of the story (and the biscuit recipe), buy this.

...but we make no claims about boogers

Spotted on the menu this past weekend at Prather Ranch's booth in the Ferry Plaza market.

This could become a habit

I've been razzed about my former Myst fixation (which really is embarassing, actually). And I've been razzed for my love of "Starting Over" (which I am now totally over). But I take pride in my new obsession: Kombucha! Fermented tea leaves with fruit juice. Get 'em while they're hot, folks!

Scott thinks they taste like straight cider vinegar*. I think they taste like a fizzy, fruity, mild vinegar-y blend. There's a difference. The company claims they're a potent detox formula, and I do find that my energy level is higher when I drink them. But mostly, as I try to progressively wean myself off of sugar, I just like the way they taste.

And I'm not the only one. I bought my first bottle on a whim at Whole Foods. Then I noticed one of our photo editors drinking one. And she said that the other photo editor drinks them, too. And yesterday at the store, a woman saw them in my cart and said, "Oooh, where did you find those?? I can't stop drinking them!"

Which begs the question: Do they put crack in these things, or am I just living in California?



*In my original post, I wrote that Scott said they taste like puke, but he took exception to that characterization. "They're not that bad," he said.

Green

Nothing to do with food, but I've been meaning to share this quote by Wallace Stegner from a 1972 essay called "Thoughts in a Dry Land."

To appreciate the West, he said, "you have to get over the color green." I love that. "You have to quit associating beauty with gardens and lawns," he said. "You have to get used to an inhuman scale."

I was on the East Coast last week, and to my unacclimated eye it almost seemed like being underwater, with all that humid air and the waving trees. We spent a week on Martha's Vineyard and I cooked lobster, bacon-wrapped scallops, strawberry-rhubarb pie, grilled salmon, garlic shrimp, and strawberry shortcake. There's nothing better than the cooking you can do on vacation.

Now we're back and San Francisco is undergoing a surprise heat wave. I would've expected fog by now, but last night it was hot. We drove up to Twin Peaks with our neighbors Marilyn and Meredith and watched the solstice sun go down with about 100 other people. It was a Southern California sunset like you see on 1970s album covers: blue ocean with a glowing band of red, orange, pink, and yellow above it. The whole city was glowing pink and sparklingly clear, and there was just a thin whisp of fog drifting in under the Golden Gate. A night like this almost never happens here. It felt like one of those moments that you look back on later as a harbinger of good things to come.

When we got home, Meredith served papardelle topped with cabbage, fennel, halibut, and parsley-lemon butter. I was so content I fell asleep on their couch.

Back at it

I've heard from some nice folks who have been stopping by the blog and wondering about this two-month-long silence. My excuse is that I was working on a book proposal and learning how to knit. Both projects are going reasonably well but I've been "tied up". Yowza! Thanks, folks, I'll be here all weekend...

I also had a bout of viral meningitis which, while bizarre and extremely uncomfortable, was never life-threatening. On my sickbed, I tooled around with the following essay. There are themes of contamination, no doubt brought on by my inflamed meninges.

Here goes:


There comes a moment in every cook’s life when she has to choose between the sanitary thing and the necessary thing. Between risking disease and risking failure. It’s a gut decision, made in the half-second before anyone notices. I made that call on a June day in 2000. It has been my dirty little secret ever since.

Back then, my husband, Scott, and I were in what I think of as the “stealth campaigning” phase of our courtship, well past early dating and nowhere near engagement. As his birthday approached, I decided to bake a masterpiece. A “don’t let this one get away” birthday cake. I planned the party–a group tailgate at our favorite drive-in movie theater–and even called it a potluck so I could focus on my home-baked persuasion.

At the time, I lived in a not-so-former tenement building in Boston’s North End. The rent was cheap and we were afraid to make demands, so I ignored the unfinished bathroom and uninsulated walls. I tuned out the decrepit center hallway with its crumbling walls and its ancient and very slippery terrazzo stairs. I hardly thought of the hallway at all, except to reassure horrified first-time visitors that “it really gets much nicer once you come inside.”€ I went without air conditioning and baked cakes on hot summer afternoons.

And so I passed four dreamy hours on the appointed day making a golden butter layers with a chocolate ganache center and a creamy crown of chocolate buttercream. I cooled each layer in the refrigerator and cooled my wrists in glasses of ice water. I hummed and daydreamed and wrote our names in frosting. I spent so many sweltering, dreamy hours that, by the time Scott arrived to pick me up, I was running 30 minutes late.

Making your boyfriend late for his own party was not the behavior of a Keeper, and, by the set of his jaw, I could see that Scott knew this. He appeared to be ruminating on that very fact. So I went into fifth gear, grabbed the candles and matches and pillows, threw the cake into a Tupperware cake carrier which wasn’t sealing quite right but no matter, and raced out the door and down the steps, and...

I slipped. I caught my balance, but it was too late. Out flew the cake, a flying cake, slippery with heat, looping through two-and-a-half slow-motion flips and landing, face-down, on the floor. I saw it resting in a thin layer of dust motes, plaster chips, and cat hair.

I saw Scott staring at it, too dumbfounded to react. But I had to act. I slid the cake off the floor and onto the plate. The top layer was cracked, but salvageable. It had absorbed the impact for the bottom layer, which was unharmed. I had two seconds to decide. I thought of arriving, late and cakeless to the party. I thought of four wasted hours, and failing at my one task. I couldn’t lose this cake.

I ran back up to the apartment and ransacked the cupboards. There had to be frosting. My old roommate ate frosting for dinner. There had to be–and there was! Glorious, year-old chocolate frosting in a dusty purple canister. Beautiful, creamy, shelf-stable, chocolate cement! I scraped off all the contaminated buttercream, scanned the cake for little pebbles and hairs, slathered on the canned frosting, sealed the Tupperware carrier, and ran back down the stairs in two minutes flat.

Scott didn’t ask any questions. When we arrived, we saw that our friends had parked in a long row of cars and set out a dinner of cucumber salad, couscous, teriyaki chicken wings, and plenty of cold beer. The sun went down and we watched “Chicken Run,” reconsidering the wings. So I brought out the cake, confessing nothing, just lighting the candles and listening for a telltale crunch. But no one noticed anything amiss. Or if they did, they kept quiet. When the movie was over, we go out of our cars and stared at the stars. Scott said it was a great birthday.

In paradise

Greetings from Antigua! We are far afield this week, vacationing in celebration of Mom and Dad's 40th anniversary. Yesterday: tandoori snapper in St. Maarten, today: vegetable roti at Roti King in St. John's. We went for a hike this morning in the Wallings Conservation Area, where our guide pointed out banana trees, almond trees, soursop bushes, mango trees, lemongrass plants, and bay leaf trees. Have you ever smelled a just-picked lemongrass blade or bay leaf? It's something right out of paradise, and it makes the store-bought stuff seem positively anemic.

The food on our ship favors quantity over quality as expected, but the salads aren't bad. Last night we met a waiter who says the boat's executive chef is from India and if we came back, he'd hook us up with some really good curry. Fingers crossed. Meanwhile, I'm taking plenty of photos, and I'll have lots to post when I get back.

This bud's for you

Let's take a look at how our figgy little friend is doing.

Looks like he'll be ready by June! Yes, Spring is here. On the other hand, when I last checked around mid-day, it was exactly one degree warmer in Boston than it was here. So there.

How a bill becomes a law

Spent about six hours in the test kitchen today. I'm on my fifth iteration of a marinated shrimp recipe for the July issue of Sunset, and I'm pretty sure it'll need a couple more tries to get it exactly right. You want reliable recipes? Come to us.

Developing a recipe happens in two phases here. First, the writer comes up with her idea (and it's just us girls here), ingredient list, and a method, then cooks it over and over until it's done. Each time, the whole team tastes and weighs in. Next, the writer sends the text to a fellow editor for a once-over on correct recipe style.

When it comes back, the writer hands the recipe over to one of our group of freelance retesters, who prepare it exactly as written, thus serving as stand-ins for the readers. They're not allowed to improvise or correct, and so they identify your blind spots: the things that you thought you had hashed out or made clear, but didn't.

Very few food magazines make use of this step. And with all the times a retester has pointed out the holes in my own work, I've come to see how critical it is.

Soup to nuts, the process can take anywhere from a week to a month, and it's not unusual for any given recipe that we run to be made ten or fifteen times before it goes in the magazine. I fear this is one of those times. I'll be sure to post this shrimpy thorn in my side as soon as it comes out.

Boldface names

One of the confusing perks of working in the media is party invites. A PR firm sends you an invitation to some benefit dinner without making it clear if it's a publicity thing (i.e. free), or an opportunity to buy a ticket. You might want to go, but what kind of jerk calls the amfAR to ask, "Can you comp me?" Publishing salaries will never furnish your membership in the Young Friends of the Met, but if a non-profit is giving you a free meal, that's a little less money for the charity. So I usually don't go.

But every so often the invite comes at the last minute, and you can safely assume that they're just looking to fill some unsold seats. Or, it's clear that there's PR value for them in having some media present.

Such was the case last night, when I found myself at a benefit for San Francisco State's International Center for the Arts, trying to play it cool at the sight of Michael Baryshnikov eating short ribs one table away. Alaksandr Petrovsky, one table away! My Nutcracker prince! Nikolai Rodchenko, tormented Bolshoi defector in "White Nights," who must overcome his pride and beg his lover, "Hyelp me!" in a way so stirring to my pubescent imagination that I wasted years thinking tortured men were romantic. Alas, none of them could really be hyelped.

Anyway, I played it cool. And I'm happy to report that Baryshnikov's wife, Lisa Rinehart, though beautiful and an ex-dancer, is very smart-seeming and relatively age-appropriate. According to the PR rep, they have three children and live in "the country," which, in New Yorkese, probably means Connecticut or the Hudson River Valley. Though they both appeared to be having a fine time (he was seated next to Alice Waters, who was fantastically animated in his presence), they were both very light eaters and left before dessert was served.

A shame. The food was by Marcus Samuelsson of Aquavit, and it was extraordinary. Let's set aside the question of flying a New York chef in to San Francisco to cook for a local cause: the expense, the out-of-joint noses. I have wanted to try Samuelsson's food for years, and I couldn't have been happier. Smoked salmon with celeriac salad; molten foie gras; arctic char with duck tongue salad (mercifully relieved of its chewy cartillage center); short ribs with a sweet potato tart; and green apple sorbet with white chocolate mousse and fenel cream. It was the perfect menu for an event like this: interesting, without being overly challenging, but laced with one really exotic ingredient for bragging rights. Most of all, it was just so delicious. I had chills.

Taco Rabanne

Me likes the tacos. Let's just establish that upfront. Tacos + Me = BF 4 EVER.

And my hunt for the king of tacos has been snowballing of late. A rigorous, peer-reviewed process. Not complete, by any stretch. But performed with enthusiasm, and a good attitude.

So while the quest continues, I want to announce a new plateau, if not a peak. An apex?

El Huarache Loco*, at the Alemany market. The unsexy market. Saturdays, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Order the Mexico City-style tacos, which are good enough that I'm hoping that a certain native son will get his butt out here to try them already. They serve another Mexico City signature, the namesake Huarache: fresh sandal-shaped masa tortillas topped with salsa verde, cheese, meat, nopal salad, and crema.

Now, I'm no fool**. I realize that having to go to a farmer's market on Saturdays to find thse tacos gives them a certain Chowhoundian appeal. There's nothing a Chowhounder likes better than some obscure dish that's available for just one hour each week, and across town, because that's when the sister of the owner drives in from Lodi and she's the only one who knows how to make it, idiot.

But these really are terrific.

Even better, El Hurache's owner, Veronica Salazar, got her start through La Cocina, a very inspiring SF non-profit that helps women start their own food businesses by providing affordable commercial kitchen space, business training, and moral support. I love the food coming out of La Cocina (I'll devote a post to it in coming days).


* I love that the name means "The crazy sandal."

** My imaginary factchecker demands a clarification: I am, not infrequently, a fool about many things, including daytime reality TV. I do, however, try to be smart about my food.

More Mendocino finds

Did I mention that the drive to Mendocino is a bugger? First, it's twisty-turny, which means my only recourse is to do all the driving myself (or invest in a car with better handling). Extreme carsickness makes me want to die. Really, just give it up and expire.

Second, the trip from San Francisco is neatly divided into two parts: an endless, often clogged highway, and the aforementioned twisty-turny part. You crawl across one finish line only to find the second leg of the race.

Still, it is so pretty. Especially Route 182, from Sonoma to the coast. You switchback over the hills, now bright green with the rain, then coast down through wine country into the redwoods, which lead you to the churning ocean. Along the way, you can stop at Schramsberg vineyards, makers of excellent California sparklers, or buy a sack of apples and some apple balsamic vinegar from the Apple Farm in Philo. But you must always stop at Gowan's Oak Tree produce stand for the crispy apple chips. They're like potato chips, but thicker and more delicate. "Are these fried?" I asked the salesgirl. No, she said, they freeze the apples to dry them out. I bit in, and my taste buds went to Toontown. Zing! Pow! Wow! I raced out to the car with two bags. "Are these fried?" Scott asked. "No," I cried, "They're a miracle!"

We are now in the second half of Dungeness crab season and a great time has been had by all. I didn't think I'd find crustacean love beyond the Maine lobster, but Mama's got a brand new crab. We had these these fantastic Dungeness tacos at Sharon's by the Sea in Noyo Harbor, where the crab boats come in each day to deposit their catch. Sharon piles an Asian fusion-y slaw on top of the meat, which is what you see here. Those are homemade potato chips on the right.

Bread heaven

I had a getting-to-know-you visit today with my new doctor. This being San Francisco, I filled out a lengthy questionnaire about my health history, my relationships, my feelings, and my food habits. She gave me great advice, and told me it never hurts to try accupuncture. I wanted to say, "Really? It never hurts?" But I bet she gets that all the time.

One of the questionnaire items had me listing foods that I crave and foods that are comforting. That would be "bread," and "bread." And I found the most fantastic bread up in Mendocino last weekend at Café Beaujolais. Best I've had so far, and that's saying something.

The breads are baked in a wood-fired oven and sold out of a little window on the side of a cottage. Couldn't be more charming. And they are the moistest, crustiest, most flavorful loaves. We bought a fougasse and a levain, and it took some willpower to not devour them on the 4-hour drive home. In the rain, with no lunch.

So here's the question: Now that we've found it, is it...hmm, excessive to do an 8-hour round-trip just for the bread?

Spamalot

Mmmmmm.....meat cupcakes. Could I even make this up? A friend linked me to this recipe on the Hormel website. "Thought it might make a great element in a story on emetics or something along those lines," she said.

I love the yellow ribbon. It says, "Sure, you can dress up your canned pig's ass as a teatime dainty. But don't forget the troops, eating theirs straight out of the can."

Catch-up

So back in May, after we had been here for just a month or so, I wrote this post about mental maps and the challenge of learning a new city.

I'd feel like San Francisco was really home, I said, when I knew the following:

1) A good pizza place that delivers
2) Sushi within walking distance
3) Ice cream within walking distance that's just far enough away
4) A brunch place where you don't have to stand in line
5) Dim Sum, ibid
6) That place you recommend to visitors
7) That place with the young chef who just needs one good review
8) The place with the rice pudding
9) An Indian restaurant with puffy breads
10) The place where you meet friends for drinks
11) The place that becomes "your place."

So here's a progress report:

1) Pizza: The one decent delivery place we've found so far is Pizza Express. We'd like to do better.

2) Sushi: Success! Deep Sushi is a mere ten-minute walk away.

3) Ice cream that's just far enough away: That would be Mitchell's.

4) Brunch, no line: In San Francisco? Impossible. But if you get up early, you can sneak into Tartine.

5) Dim Sum: I can't believe I said "ibid." Anyway, it's City View, before 10:30 a.m..

6) Where to send visitors: That's easy. Everybody loves the Ferry Building.

7) The young chef: Can't say enough good things about Dennis Leary at Canteen.

8) Rice pudding: Help! We haven't found any good rice pudding yet...

9) Puffy Indian breads: Of the places we've tried so far, Naan n' Chutney is the puffiest.

10) Place to meet for drinks: That would require me to actually meet friends for drinks. Seriously, we'd all rather eat.

11) The place that becomes "your place": Aw, that's cute. Can't say we've found The One. But nothing beats Saturday mornings at the farmers market with Scott.

---

Bud

For anyone looking for some sign of spring, here's a baby fig on the tree outside our test kitchen.

Fig buds in February. This is all wrong. And so nice.

Enchilada day

Doesn't that sound like a good day? We're making enchiladas seven different ways for a possible story, and it looks like I will be having a plain salad for dinner.

The smell in the kitchen brings back memories of my hopeless waitressing days in Albuquerque. I liked to hide out in the kitchen, where one of the cooks let me fry tortilla chips. He always called me "mujer," and I thought he was flirting with me until I looked up the word.

One day he said, "What are you?"
"What do you mean, 'What am I?'"
"Are you Mexican? White? Spanish?"
"I'm Italian."
"Oh," he nodded, getting back to his quesadilla. "You're half-white."

Tagged, willing, and able

McPolack got me! Who can resist McPolack? She's fabulous. Here goes:

Four Jobs I've Had
1. Tobacco leaf stringer-upper -- a right of passage for the children of the Connecticut River Valley. I can still feel the inky gum on my forearms. Enjoy your cigar.
2. Frozen hamster brain slicer - neurobiology lab, Junior year.
3. Hopeless waitress
4. Dillard's salesgirl (men's deptartment...want some Sansabelts?)


Four Movies I Can Watch Over and Over
1. Amadeus
2. Room with a View
3. Annie Hall
4. It's a Wonderful Life/ White Christmas

Four Places I've Lived
1. Boston, MA
2. Albuquerque, NM
3. Peterborough, NH
4. Windsor, CT

Four TV Shows I Love
1. Starting Over (That's two plugs! Watch the ratings rise...)
2. Lost
3. CBS Sunday Morning
4. Simpsons

Five places I've vacationed (these are some favorites):
1. California coast (Big Sur & Pt. Reyes)
2. Welfleet
3. Positano
4. Bermuda ('cuz it was my honeymoon and we sat next to Seal and Heidi Klum at lunch)
5. Key West

Five of my favorite dishes:
1. Grandma's apple crisp
2. The braised pork with cognac, prunes, sage, and walnuts I made on Saturday from Gordon Hammersley's Bistro Cooking at Home.
3. The fluffy gnocchi with cream sauce and shaved white truffles I once had at No. 9 Park.
4. A good piece of fresh walnut bread with a smear of soft-ripened cheese and fresh figs.
5. As McPolack said, anything homemade with love and care.

Four sites I visit daily:
1. Friends' blogs
2. Gawker
3. Epicurious
4. Google

Five places I would rather be right now:
1. Hmmm...in a house perched on a hill in Big Sur...
2. ...with Scott and Clio...
3. ...and my niece and nephew...
4. ...and friends...
5. ...and sister and parents and in-laws. But now it's getting crowded. So everyone has their own house, but you can walk between the houses. But they don't just barge in. And my niece and nephew sleep with my sister and her husband every other night so we can get some rest. And everyone has their own car because it's a nightmare trying to coordinate everyone. And my friends have the party house that they share, but they don't mind that we have the little cottage with the best view and the hot tub because we organized the whole thing. And better restaurants in town, and a free pass to use the hot tubs at Esalen without having to get the creepy naked group massage.

Four bloggers I am tagging:
I'm burning through my list here! Any volunteers?

What's in a name #2

Growing up in New England, most of the Italians I knew were from Sicily, Calabria, Abruzzo, Naples. For all sorts of reasons, Italian-Americans from the South tended to settle in the Northeast. Meanwhile, my family, on both sides, came from the North...Piacenza and the hill towns around Tortona in Piemonte. Somehow, we ended up in Connecticut.

So it wasn't until I was in my mid-twenties that I met another Traverso who wasn't a direct relative. It was a snowy night at a dinner party in Boston, and she was from Argentina. My family tells a story about my great-grandmother Severina who came to this country via Geona. There were two boats at that port the day she left: one heading to New York, the other to Buenos Aires. Severina chose New York and made her way to Plymouth, Massachusetts where she cooked for the men who were digging the Cape Cod Canal. After she had saved up enough money, she went back to Italy to retrieve her husband and three sons. Perhaps that Argentine woman and I were long-lost cousins, but her great-grandmother had taken the other boat.

Anyway, I digress. My point is: no Traversos. So you can imagine my delight when I learned that there was a semi-famous Italian specialty market in Santa Rosa with my very same name. In fact, people have often said, upon meeting me, "Oh, Traverso as in Traverso's?" No, I didn't think so, I said, but inside I felt the thrill of belonging, if only by association.

I finally stopped by the shop a few weeks ago. The store has been open since 1922, and is run by George Traverso and his son Michael, who represent the 3rd and 4th generations, respectively. We compared family histories enough to determine that we're not cousins, though their ancestors came from an area near Genoa and did live in Hartford for a brief period. But we had a nice chat, and they gave me a cap and a t-shirt to take home. I like to put on the shirt and dance around Scott shouting, "Traversos rule the world!"

I have to admit, though: I was hoping to find a relation. In my heart of hearts, I wanted cousins and uncles and Sunday dinners. In our family line, I'm the last Traverso. The ranks have thinned on the east coast...wouldn't it be nice to find a batch of long-lost relations out here? Instead, I went looking for family and all I got was a t-shirt.

But it's a nice shirt. And the fact is, I have a big family. It's just made up of Kirsners and Vogels and Roehls and Clios now. "Resisting change doesn't recapture the past," as the saying goes. "It loses the future."

Sundance, snow pants

Spent most of last week at Sundance, working on a travel story, watching "films," turning 35, doing a little skiing, and a fair amount of eating.

35 is big. Not old, but big. No more pretending to be in your post-grad years. No more playing young and stupid when you mess up. MTV doesn't want you anymore (fine, it was never that good anyway, we were going in different directions). Looking ahead to something that looks different from the last 15 years.

But on to the festival. A quick recap:

Celebrity sightings: Maggie Gyllenhaal (prettier in person), Justin Timberlake (shorter in person, but aren't they always?), some guy from Metallica (just what you'd expect).

Favorite movie: American Blackout (Hey, turns out one person can make a difference!)

Restaurants visited: Zoom, Chimayo, Chez Betty. Chimayo was the favorite, but I gotta say, when you live in San Francisco, you're grading on a curve most everwhere else.

Yikes, does that mean I've become one of them?

Better latte than never

Behold the best chai latte I've ever had. It's from the Pine Cone Diner in lovely Point Reyes Station.

What made it so good? No added sugar, so you can control the sweetness; just the right amount of spice and heat; and a nice crown of foam. Surprising how hard it is to find that, even here in latte land.

Photo: Kirsner's cell phone

Local favorites

One of the great thrills of going back home was the chance to visit two of my old haunts in Cambridge. The first, Formaggio Kitchen, is the former employer of Jessica from Feed and Supply, and still the best cheese shop I know. Hi-Rise Bakery is a source of superior breads, pastries, and jams, and an employer of comically grumpy and disaffected art students.

I love Formaggio not just for its good looks and jaw-dropping selection. It's the cheese cave underneath the store, where all the little live things are allowed to come to their peak ripeness before they hit the floor. With that kind of care, you're always assured that the Abbaye de Belloc for which you shell out $22/lb. for will be so good, you'll only need to eat a little bit at a time. Thereby resolving your ambivalence about paying $22 for a hunk of cheese.

As for Hi-Rise, I love them for their brichoe, their jam, and their jam-filled brioche. And the shrimp salad. The cookies and cakes and pies are also buttery and tender, but I save my calories for the jam and bread.

Hi-Rise's big downside, or charm, depending on how you look at is, lies in the subduction zone of the cash register, where cranky staff meets entitled customer. This is the great risk of doing business in places like Cambridge, and I'm not sure there's much to be done about it. The millionaire, NPR-listening, gluten-sensitive buyers believe they are each more special than the next. They struggle to share the big "family table" in the middle of the store. No room! Too many exceptional people! Meanwhile, the art students fail to conceal their contempt. And I silently project I'm not one of them, really while I order a jam-filled brioche, but with the apricot-lime jam, please, not the raspberry. No, not the apricot-lemon, the apricot-lime, 'cause I really like what the lime does to the...oh, uh, thank you.

What I did on my winter vacation

Just got back from a tour of Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts. We never spent more than 2 nights in any one place, but I got to visit my hometown (that's the defunct 99-cent movie theater in the photo), Lenox, Stockbridge, Cambridge. I love that cold, dark, snowy little corner of the world.

When I lived in New Mexico in the mid-90's, I must have flown home for the holidays. I just don't remember it. But what a pleasure this time. The plane came in low over the farmland that borders Bradley Airport and looking down, I saw large snowy fields bordered by maples, each with a little lighted farmhouse in the center and snow on the roof. And, just because the scene was so perfect, I'm going to say there was smoke coming out of those chimneys. "Look!" I said. "it's New England!"

When we got down to the little baggage claim, we saw crowds of families greeting their arrivals. Rosy cheeks, laughter, embraces. Mom and Dad in the crowd. Sometimes life forgets itself and hands you your own Capra moment. The trick is to stop and take it in. And then remember it, when you're back in your quiet office, two weeks and 3000 miles away.