it's almost too good to be true: tomorrow, i turn in my big project. to say that i have been working on it for nearly six years would not be an exaggeration.

i got a bit of last minute editing help from my shakespeare-scholar-mentor-professor today (he mostly got rid of a bunch of commas. i have an unhealthy addiction to commas). tomorrow morning, i print and send.

soon, it will be time to cross my fingers and wait to see what happens.

wish me luck!

(this photo by lingster72 on flickr)



if you are an elle magazine reader, or just happen to be in a bookstore over the next few weeks, check out page 303 of the november issue (the one with scarlett johannson on the cover). there's a really lamely written article (i mean, is there anything new left to say about cp?) about an indian summer lunch at cannard farm, with some lovely photos. i helped cook a lot of the food that day, and put my foot down about the redcurrants. when i saw them that morning, i knew we had to sugar them even though we were pressed for time. they were incredibly perfect, and completely worth the effort.

sugared redcurrants
a few bunches of redcurrants
2 egg whites
granulated sugar

make sure the redcurrants are clean and free of debris. trim the redcurrants into 2-inch sized bunches.

lightly whisk the egg whites to break them up.

using a pastry brush, lightly coat the berries with egg whites. be very thorough to prevent gaps, and work quickly so the egg doesn't dry up.

dip the brushed currants in sugar and shake off the excess.

these make a lovely mignardise.

in a nutshell


it's one of those crazily beautiful wire sculptures at the deyoung, with its shadow


basically, it was because of my own epic stupidity: i was in a hurry, didn't choose the proper (safe) knife, and tried to cut a butternut squash when my hand holding the blade of my knife steady slipped. unfortunately, my other hand was still pushing with all of my might.

yikes!



my hand was really swollen when i took this photo.


i was strangely giddy all of friday, and free of pain. i managed to fall asleep, and woke up early, but feeling fine. a couple of friends are staying with me, and we walked up to the market to get something to eat and see annabelle (the friendly witch). i saw a friend with verbal diarrhea and made the mistake of starting a conversation--i started to get dizzy and told him i had to eat something right then. it took me a while to get something to eat and i gobbled it up, which was a bad move. i started to feel better, but then got so much worse. i had to walk home as quickly as i could and swallow a handful of advil.

my entire body was in shock. ugh. it was awful, and i wanted to lie down and die. i don't remember the last time i hurt so badly. plus, they gave me the tetanus shot in my right arm and the cut is on my left hand--there is no comfortable sleeping position.

i felt better after a while. and i felt good enough today to go to the slides. love the slides.

i cut myself.

badly.

23 stitches.

spent half the day at the emergency room during a nurses strike. thank goodness for scabs--without them i'd be left with a gaping wound in my hand.

the anaesthetic hasn't worn off yet (but he had to shoot about ten needles of it into the wound to get me numb in the first place).

i watched, fascinated, the entire time.

it looked an awful lot like when we get in whole pigs, and slice through their skin down to the flesh. it's a lot different when it's your own hand.

luckily, i missed all sorts of important tendons and nerves, so everything should be back to normal eventually.

i'll take a photo for you next time i change the dressing.


if there were a cookbook written by bob cannard, it would be out of control.

watching a farmer cook is an experience wrought with pain, hilarity, and disbelief all at once.

allow me to share a few of his cooking secrets:

one must eat the skin of the garlic clove, which is rich with fiber and nutrients. how dare you even consider throwing it out! also good to eat are grape stems (and i'm not talking about the little stem that connects the grape to the bunch, but the big stem that holds the bunch together), raw cavolo nero, and bitter unturned artichokes (the bitterness is healthy, despite what darwinism might tell you).

i may never be able to stop poking fun at bob, but the truth is that i'm hard pressed to think of any meal i'd rather eat than one at the farm.

green strings farm




i'm so happy to be able to say that green strings farm is open daily for business. this is a farm that run by bob cannard, of cannard farm, a.k.a. "the chez panisse farm."

there are a lot of little kinks being worked out at green strings, but the stand is open with plenty of produce available every day. everything, except for a few specialty items like raspberries and eggs, is $2 a pound. bob is really committed to making good, healthy produce available to everyone. no bfm or ferry plaza prices there.

there are also some pygmy goats and flavia the sow to hang out with.

i think it goes without saying that it's all grown beyond organically. just ask if you need to hear bob's DR. AL (or, the acronym i prefer--LARD) speech.

anyway, it's about a 45 minute drive from berkeley to green strings, and just a hop, skip and a jump from there to della fattoria for lunch. do i smell a road trip?

*****

i recently got a lens hood and filter for my camera (both for less than $30!), and am so pleased with the photos i've taken since. a lot less noisy.

reed danziger



i saw this artist linked on dooce, and love love love her work. and since i'm a google-stalker, i read her bio and immediately tried to find out as much info about her as i could. the crazy thing is that i've totally cooked at home of one of the gallery owners where she's shown her work. next time i'm there, i'm gonna ask about her.

snippets of emails i've been meaning to write

i think you'll be able to figure out which was meant for you:

i'm rooting for you. i have always been rooting for you and i always will. no matter what choice you make, in this, or in anything, i will love you.

what the eff are you doing working in a meatless cooperative? are you on crack? wait...don't answer that.

i just heard about this place--doesn't it sound awesome?

how's the new job? and what are you doing exactly? are you planning to come visit anytime soon?

how are rehearsals going? did you start the performances yet? are you used to florida? does anyone ever get used to florida? and what about the geckos?

i snuck a taste of the honey (don't get mad). it is so fricking good. and i love the chunky bits of honeycomb floating around.

i know you are going to think this is ridiculous (i already do), but i kind of can't stop thinking about buying this bag. don't worry, i'm not going to. i just can't stop thinking about it, though. ugh. i'm disgusted enough for the two of us.

since at this rate we are never going to meet, i'm going to give you a list of places i like and times that work for me, and you can choose one from each column. here goes: bakesale betty, ici, gioia, arinell's, michelle's yogurty yogurt, scary large whole foods, cam huong, saturday market. 10/13 morning, 10/14 afternoon, 10/21 anytime, some weekday late afternoon/early evening (not weds. or fri.) this week or next week. i think those times are good. i'm confused. as usual.

thank you. thank you. thank you.

how did the race go? are you alive? are you still paddling in your sleep?
i'm pretty sure i should be ashamed of this, but i have been having a secret love affair with intermezzo over the past month. probably because i never have anything to eat in my house and all i ever want to eat anymore is salad.

i'm also strangely obsessed with tapioca pudding. i've had it three times in the past three weeks--one cocount and two vanilla.

i think the next thing i'll make at home will be a big pot of meaty, spicy chili (with painted hills beef. it's my new favorite beef. so marbled, so good. and i talked to the rancher--it's a pretty awesome operation). and garlic bread. anyone want to come over?


my grandparents have a citrus orchard on the coast of the caspian sea in iran, and the last time i was there it was late spring, so my grandmother sent me and my aunt out to collect bitter orange blossoms for jam and orange blossom water.

we were out there all day, picking the sticky little flowers one by one. being a cook, i kept trying to come up with more efficient ways to pick the flowers, but nothing i tried worked. i even dug up a tarp out of some shed and tried to shake the flowers off the branches, but that was disastrous because it shook everything else off the tree too, and ended up creating more work.

after two days of picking blossoms, we brought them back to my grandmother. she saved about a quarter of the blossoms for jam, and distilled the rest. words cannot describe the perfume the blossoms released--the house smelled so sweet and citrusy i had to leave several times throughout the day.

the next day, i had to return to tehran, but my grandmother wanted to make me lunch first. the water in town is very hard, and unpotable, so everyone uses bottled water for everything. five years ago, my grandmother was hit by two cars, and though she's had an incredible recovery, she hasn't quite been the same since. there's a lot of forgetfulness and repetition of stories on her part--more than i remember, anyway.

as my friend arash might say, to make the story short, my grandma used the two liters of orange blossom water to rinse the rice. two days of work literally down the drain. i was so sad i had to leave before lunch was made. later, my grandma said that the rice was delicious. all i have to show for the work is this photo of my aunt with a rabbit she befriended beneath the orange trees.


i've never really liked licorice, and i can now just barely tolerate anise. but i love fennel, and wild fennel is one of my favorite things to cook with. i love going down to the train tracks and collecting it, i love that it grows everywhere, along route 37 on my way to the farm, and on the way to pt. reyes. there's a big fennel plant on the sidewalk outside our apartment building, and my landlord is obsessed with weed-whacking it. i always try to stop him, but it's not necessary. the fennel is a weed, and it grows back quickly, even stronger than before, each and every time.

i love the idea of making something from nothing. chris calls his style "cooking from weeds." one of his favorite cookbooks is patience gray's honey from a weed. it's such a sweet book, and it makes me feel like there were simpler times, once. i also love elizabeth romer's the tuscan year. i love december and january, when she talks about the norcino coming to town, and the pig slaughter.

someone sent us this book and flipping through it haphazardly several weeks ago, i saw the entry by edna lewis about her family pig slaughter each winter. as i was reading the story aloud to chris, i kept stopping to ask him if he thought it was as crazy as i did. each step of the pig slaughter from the time of year to the wandering butcher and the rendering of the lard and blowing up the bladder for the kids to play with was exactly the same as every account i'd ever heard of italian pig slaughtering traditions. it was amazing to realize that these poor southern blacks had come to have the same ways of doing this stuff as the poor rural italians. it's not such a huge mental leap, looking back at it now, but the thing is, as focused as i am on the culinary traditions of all of these other cultures, it never really occurred to me that there are true local american culinary traditions. does that make me sound dumb?
yesterday i was cursing martin the crazy farmer (he was in eat at bill's, if you've seen it) for not having called. we have a strange relationship--most of the time i want to kill him for being such a flake, but then he delivers our order (or someone else's from some other poor restaurant), and it consists of the most beautiful wild arugula/romano beans/coco biancos/piccolo fino/insert specialty produce here we've ever seen, and suddenly, all is forgiven. i think he can do no wrong, until the next week, that is.

anyway, i was cursing him because he hadn't called yet (he usually calls on wednesday, or early on thursday), and i figured i'd have to get the usual stuff i get from him from greenleaf (the big distributor we buy things like russet potatoes from). i try to buy as little from greenleaf as possible, and as much from the little guys as i can. it's taken me a very long time to get the balance right, and all it takes is some funny weather, or a broken fax machine, or martin not calling, to screw everything up again. i kept thinking i'd just go call him, but then a million other things distracted me (like every day) and i forgot about it.

he called this morning, and told me to guess where he was calling from. i said, puerto rico. i was way off. he's in nice. talk about telecommuting--imagine trying to run a farming business in salinas from the south of france. well, at least one of us gets a mediterranean vacation, right? i told him i had the best panino of my life on the street in nice (remember, phil?).

well, it might not be a late summer trip to the south of france, but provence day is tomorrow. it's supposed to be sunny, and we're having pan bagnat, so you should come see us if you're around. i'll be the one with tuna oil all over my everything.