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."