Recently in Ponderings Category

I'm halfway done with two other posts, but am just too scatterbrained the last few days to finish them coherently. Instead, I'll confess some of the strange, perhaps even distasteful holiday foods to which I am secretly devoted. I got to thinking about the subject while planning my Thanksgiving menu. Every year, the holiday season causes some of my funny obsessions to rear their embarrassing heads. What are these dishes of shame, these celebratory foodstuffs I anticipate each year?

Well, for one, Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce. I adore that wiggly, ridged log of delightful sweet-tartness. I'm fond of cranberries generally, particularly in more respectable preparations, but that blue and white can holds a special place in my heart for reasons that go deeper than nostalgia. For one, the rich, butter-laden holiday plate needs a bright flavor note just to keep the palate awake. Of course, a well-made whole berry sauce can fill that role as well, but there's just something about that jelly texture that enthralls me. And of course, the whole point of cooking a turkey is to have leftover turkey sandwiches. My mom and I prefer ours on whole-grain bread with spicy honey mustard, a layer of cornbread dressing, and a thick slab of gelatinous cranberry goodness.

Even more humiliating, I love green bean casserole. Yes, the kind with the cream of mushroom soup and French's French-fried onions. Lord knows why. I learned to make béchamel specifically to use it instead of Campbell's cream of what ever in those kinds of old-fashioned recipes, and yet, I can't bring myself to tart up green bean casserole. It tastes perfect already, soft and creamy and salty, laden with those addictive crispy onion bits. Actually, those may be the secret of my devotion to green bean casserole. I have to buy the big can when I make it so I have plenty to munch on. They look funny, the coat the roof of your mouth, and yet, as I write this, I've developed a craving so intense my stomach just rumbled a little. I don't have the excuse of nostalgia on this one either. Since basically everyone in the world but me things this stuff is gross, I didn't really grow up with it. My grandmother makes it now, but I don't know that anyone but me eats it.

Ten weeks ago I got a once in a lifetime invitation to eat my way around Southeast Asia in the company of the most extraordinary person. It's amazing, really, how it all came about. See, I was on the plane coming home from Nashville, and you'll never guess who was sitting in the seat next to me!

Okay, not so much. That would be a much better excuse for my absence than the truth. The truth is that my real life, the life I live outside of this cozy cyber nest where my biggest concern is whether or not the yeast will bloom in warm water, kicked my butt recently. For a variety of icky, personal reasons I spent the last few days, weeks, months, forevers (it seems) moderately depressed and basically useless. I couldn't bring myself to post here pretending to be witty and sunny, pretending everything was fine. I also couldn't bear to post the truth. Day after day of "Didn't get out of bed today. Ate nine fun-size Kit-Kats. Ordered Chinese again," hardly seemed worth it. At a certain point, the fact that I wasn't posting began to feel like a failure in and of itself, one more reason not to get out of my pajamas.

Thankfully, the worst seems to be over. The gears seem to be turning again. I'm cooking, nothing worth noting, but it's nice to feel like I'm finding my feet.

I thought about turning up here again, apologizing in passing for my time away, and continuing without further comment. When you live part of your life on the internet, there's always the question of how much of yourself to reveal. It's more fun to show the cocktails and nibbles part of me than the unwashed hair, red-rimmed eyes, and pizza delivery part. In the end, I decided to address it largely because I kept getting e-mails from people wondering where I was, if I was okay, and whether or not I'd been eaten by a bear or something. At the time, I didn't really know what to say to those people (Hi Sean! Hi Payal! Hi Whitney!), but it made me think that something did need to be said.

Some years ago, Stephen gave me an acoustic cover of "Here Comes the Sun" by a folk singer named Richie Havens. The first time I heard his version, I realized it was actually a rather sad song. When George Harrison sings it, it sounds like everything bad is in the past. Richie Havens sings like all his troubles are very much in the present. He sings with a desperate hopefulness, like he believes, must believe, that he's finally seeing a sign that everything will eventually be better. He says, "I feel that ice is slowly melting;" I think I know what he means.

Hey, kids, I've been back for a week now and all is well. I've got a couple of posts stored up, but we left our camera in Nashville, and I sort of wanted to wait to post when I got it back and could include pictures. But now I'm tired of waiting, so that's that; I'll go ahead and start getting them up.

Plane tickets? Check.
Long-term parking reservation? Check.
Rental car reservation in Nashville? Check.
Plan to purchase fancy sandwiches en route to airport to eat with relish on plane while other passengers glare resentfully at their bags of peanuts and Wheat Thins? Check.

So I guess I'm on my way to Tennessee. Where it is 99 degrees. Hah. Clearly, San Francisco, and its cool climate, has made me weak. I am going to need many, many paletas to survive.

I've been trying to write this post for a week now, but honestly, I haven't known how to start. For various reasons, as the result of various outings and errands, I could convince myself I simply didn't have a moment to sit down and post. I'd compose the beginning lines in my head sometimes while Stephen and I drove back up the 101 from El Granada in the dark, but those thoughts were inevitably too maudlin for public consumption.

It was wrong to wait, there's so much to tell you. Most of it is very exciting. Really, this summer should be a pretty neat time here at 2 Tasty Ladies. First though, the inevitable thing. The real reason I couldn't make myself post this before was because I was in denial. If I wrote about what was happening, I'd have to acknowledge it, and I hadn't any desire to do that. See, my partner in blog and I, we've shown a funny tendency to be to behave in the fashion of weeping, melodramatic Victorian heroines when one or the other of us is going away. I refer specifically to a scene in the Baltimore airport on January 2, 2004, of which we rarely speak. Too embarrassing by far.

So, to avoid such a moment for as long as possible, we went our business with only the faintest attention paid to the inevitable. First we had the Last Barbecue. Then, on the Fourth of July, the Last Dinner at Tejal's house. Then the Last Dinner at my house. Then Last Pizza on the floor of her packed up apartment. Although we openly called it Last Something or Other, we didn't really believe it. We'd roll our eyes about it, and then fall back into the comfortable pillow of denial.

On Monday night, Stephen and I drove down to El Granada for a final time. We got dressed up and went to dinner at Navio in the Ritz Carlton with Tejal and Glyn. Our dinner was marvelous, the service fantastic. We talked about food, beaches, what our accents say about us, how Milton had his temperature taken at the vet. For a few hours I almost, almost forgot. We went back to their empty apartment, made small talk for a few minutes, and then we had to go. I was feeling on the verge of Victorian meltdown. Goodbyes were, at long last, said, and hugs of the sort that you hug when you know it has to last a long time were hugged. A few hours later, I don't even think they went to sleep, Tejal and Glyn drove away from their apartment, their garden, from the Bay Area. They headed off to visit family in Portland, and then Chicago before Tejal stops over for a few months in New York before joining Glyn in London.

I just finished reading the new Saveur. The pictures of Scottish berries have me decided on Eton Mess for dessert tonight--which is convenient since Glyn picked up the necessary raspberries, cream and meringues on the way home.

Another article that caught my eye: a story of an Indian restaurant serving Parsi food (Martha, remember my mum's dhansak?) called Britannia. It began in 1923 when the shopkeeper signed a 99 year lease and immediately afterwards, opened his doors to British officers stationed in Bombay. The relationship between the two is not explored. During WWII British officers occupied the restaurant and then returned it to the family in 1947.

It isn't mentioned that 1947 was a pretty big year, what with the last British Viceroy of India announcing the partitioning of the British Indian Empire into two countries: India and Pakistan. What with India's independence from Britain and all.

But neither side likes to be reminded too much of the more gruesome days of colonialism, and things did turn a bit ugly after that. So the writer is, as I so often wish I could be, appropriately subtle. Still, the writing's on the wall, so to speak. The insatiable Imperialist appetite that gobbled half the world not so long ago lives on as Britannia's (the restaurant, that is) slogan painted on the wall: "There is no love greater than the love of eating."

It's hard to say if I even would have given a thought to any of this--because so many other things happened in 1947, because nobody cares, because good things came from the British Empire's, and others' expansion too. I certainly couldn't have been without it, and we'd all be on much more limited diets for one thing, Nestlé reminds us.

In the film adaptation of Emma starring a very young Kate Beckinsale, there is a scene where everyone goes on a marvelously indulgent picnic. They pile into carriages and tromp into a fine, sundrenched field accompanied by footmen and linens and roasted joints of meat. Every time Stephen and I tromp to the beach or the park with a quilt and a chunk of cheese, I can't help but think of myself in this context.

Even if I had access to be-wigged footmen (or could convince my Dear Boy to don a powdered hairpiece for my amusement), this isn't the type of picnic I'd enjoy. Still, there is something about nibbling out in the fresh air and sunshine that makes me think about history, both literary and factual. I wonder how many leisure activities have remained pleasurable through the centuries as well as picnicing. The unremarkable act of eating transforms into a nearly Dionysian, indulgent pastime when performed while lounging on the grass. If Manet is to be believed, this has long been so.

However, just because I'm in the mood for a picnic doesn't necessarily mean I'm in the mood to plan an elegant yet casual meal suitable for packing and transportation. Hardly anything makes a girl feel less like a relaxed Elizabeth Bennet than rearranging plastic containers of salami and olives to make them fit better in the backpack.

I really, truly love to cook. Generally, the kitchen is my refuge when the rest of my life becomes chaotic. But sometimes, even the most fervant kitchen devotee needs a break. For the past week or so, given the choice between thinking of something to make for dinner, shopping for food, then cooking and blinding via grapefruit spoon, it might have been time for me to learn braille.

The nice thing about this blog being a group effort is that when one of us needs some time off, if one of us is exhausted or busy or mostly eating pizza and takeout Chinese, it's reassuring that the other person is there to make sure the site doesn't sink into nothingness.

So, I'm back (did anyone even notice I was gone?), and I've eaten some very fun, yummy things lately (nary a container of kung pao to be found in my apartment at the moment) that I can't wait to share.

I should start by saying that I am by no means freakishly terrified of illnesses of the tropics, or any sort for that matter, and quietly disapprove of companions that tsk tsk at every off putting, but delicious delight. I will almost always risk various strains of cholera for a bite of street food, and delight in tasty moulds, barely cooked meat, things made with blood. I have picked the wriggling, parasitic worms from a monkfish liver, made a pink-centred torchon of it, and feasted. I don't worry too much about these things and yet...

Having said this, I saved the oil from my potato confit--flavoured strongly with garlic and rosemary, a delicious oil for making little crusts of bread to be spread with foie gras mousse for a salad, or for frying an egg for breakfast. But on day 2, after eating the crostini and salad, in an inexplicable fit, I was driven to pour the excess strained oil away. I was paralysed by a desperate fear of botulism and simultaneously amused by the deadly, foodborne illness pun in which I found myself.