Favorite Things

Since I have been really preoccupied lately, I haven't been writing much and what I have posted seemed (at least to one) "a bit morose".
In the spirit of spring, and to assuage any concerns about my state of mind, here is a list of things that make me really happy, particularly so in the last week:
*Note:  This is by no means a complete list, but rather a highlight of current goodies.

- Della Fattoria, aka the best bakery in the world, and all the folks associated with it.  I get to be next to Mr. Edmund, aka Poppa, one day of the week at a farmers market, and it is a true joy.

- Sitting by the fireplace long enough to feel the cold leave my perpetually chilly fingers, feet, and rear end.

- Bourbon.  Maker's Mark and I have been really tight lately, but my cousin Phil and adopted cousin Ritchie are going to introduce me to Bulleit next week.  (I think that was the one anyway.)

- The fact that I have a disproportionately smart and creative family (see above and below), and that we number so many that I keep being pleasantly surprised by "discovering" wonderful things they do.  This week?  Baby cousin Katy's visit to the farm, conspiring and shopping, watching her sew with Colleen, and talking about her blog.  (Baby girl's got chops, y'all.)

- Red Wine.  My uncle always tells the story when somebody asks "Red or White?" of Sophia Loren responding to that question by saying (with the delivery I imagine only Sophia Loren can do), "Darling... Wine Is Red." 

- My sister.  One day we'll live close enough to walk to the bar on the corner and get drunk on a Tuesday for no good reason. 

- I live in one of the best areas of the world for really good food.  Be it something straight from the market, or at one of the multitudes of amazing restaurants within a couple hours of me, I love to eat.  One of the worlds few pure pleasures.  Love it.

- Playing with puppies.  Our puppies, cousin puppies, or friend puppies; spending hours running around trails or after dinner rolling on the living room floor in a pile of puppy pulchritude; all of these are good for the soul.

- Being able to stop what I'm doing, turn my face up, and feel the warmth of the sun.

This week has reminded more than usual that it's not really the paths we take that matter as much as who accompanies us on the journey.  I sent some messages to people last weekend on the occasion of Brendan's birthday to tell them how much they mattered to me, and the responses I received were beautiful and touching and a little overwhelming.  What right have I to feel lonely with such incredible people in my life?
I am so grateful.

All The Way Home and Back Again

A lot of things have been happening and I feel like I am having a hard time catching up...

Ted Kennedy died last week. One of my first memories of my father crying had something to do with Robert Kennedy. There are countless Kennedy books on my parents bookshelves, and I've stood at JFK's Eternal Flame with my father more than a couple times to pay our respects and shed our tears for could have been. I didn't read the articles the day Edward Kennedy died nor have I watched the President's eulogy, nor did I spring for the $10 Newsweek Special Commemorative Edition... it's all happened to fast and I want to give it due time and reflect properly but it's been a week and it's getting ahead of me.

I was in Wisconsin for almost 80 hours last weekend, Madison for most of it. I walked through my high school for the first time in almost a decade and was impressed with how clean it was yet how it had only seemed to change in insignificant surface ways. I walked through with my father to see an art show of my brothers work that he did as himself and as Solve, curated in by my mother and cousin in the gallery in the high school that he almost didn't graduate from.

It was unseasonably cold but sunny and beautiful all weekend. Friday night there was an unexpected thunderstorm that I got to feel start standing on my parents front porch with a glass of whiskey in my hand and the arms of a man around me.

I found out one of my oldest and best friends is having a baby, I cried when she told me and when I saw a photo of the sonogram.

I went to the farmers market with my sister and we bought coffee, cheese curds, tomatoes, and pastries full of carbohydrates because she said that was the only thing she really wanted.

I saw my cousin get married on Saturday with almost my whole family and it was a fabulous party, complete with a wardrobe malfunction (mine), a drunk best man that quoted Macbeth and called me a bitch in the same breath (which he was quite proud of), a speech from the father-of-the-groom that brought everyone to tears, first in laughter then not, and a bad ass first dance.
Most of us drank a little too much but as always we had not nearly enough time together, and it made me want to do it all over again next weekend, and not just for the generous open bar. My family is just... well, they are amazing. Everyone thinks so. And now they've started placing bets on who will be the next cousin to get hitched.

Sunday I went to a movie. It was totally unplanned and not a movie I would have seen by myself but I was invited and I went and it actually felt like a proper and wonderful date. It was a perfect Sunday afternoon and then we met my family to eat food from the festival that happens every year in the park across the street from my parents house.

My sister slept off the fever she'd had for a day and a half by Monday morning, and we bought coffee and t-shirts from the closest coffee shop to my parents house, then walked the mile and a half downtown to see the show in honor of my brother downtown. My Dad bought us some of my favorite sandwiches on the way to my airport.

Before I knew it I was back in California. I had a scratchy throat and I cried to my sister on my two hour drive from the airport to home about not knowing what I wanted to do with my life. Then I got home and my aunt and uncle were happy to see me and I felt like I was home, and the dogs wagged their tails.

Yesterday I worked for around ten hours and today my throat's still scratchy. I have not yet blocked off time to read about Ted Kennedy, although I did manage to unpack my over packed carry-on suitcase.

Organic Schmorganic

I have been working on an essay on why I think thinking about what you are eating is so important, tying in local and organic issues, but I've been finding it difficult because it is something that I think is SO important. The fact that most of what most of us (people in this country) eat on a regular basis barely counts as food is so huge, yet most of us don't even think about it.

At some point I'll get that essay done and put it up here. In the meantime, I read (and maybe you should) this article in the Washington Post online. It discusses some specific issues with organic labeling and regulations, and just why we need to think deeper about whether or not a label has a stamp.

Some snippets:

"This is really a case of 'justice delayed is justice denied,' " said Alexis Baden-Mayer, national political director for the Organic Consumers Association. "The truly organic dairy farmers, who have their cows out in the pasture all year round, are at a huge competitive disadvantage compared to the big confinement dairies."

""I say, 'Let's find a way to bend that one, because it's not important.' . . . What are we selling? Are we selling health food? No. Consumers, they expect organic food to be growing in a greenhouse on Pluto. Hello? We live in a polluted world. It isn't pure. We are doing the best we can." -Joe Smillie, VP of a certifying firm that does certification for over 65% of the brands you find on the supermarket shelves.

I say, if you can - know your farmer. More than anything else, just try and THINK a little more about what you're eating and where it comes from.

Djibouti Independence Day!

I turned another year older a couple days ago, and I could not have asked for a more perfect weekend. I started 28 on a wave of love and joy, filled with intense gratitude and wondering how the hell I got so lucky.

I did the farmers market on Saturday morning, and some farmers and chefs started the day of well by giving me arugula, basil, tomatoes, pizza dough, and fresh mozzarella to enjoy for my birthday.
Friends arrived to the farm mid afternoon and we played in the pool with drinks and music for the rest of the day. (Lesson - if you want to get people to get to know each other quickly, throw them in swimsuits on a hot day with lots of beer and music, and make sure a few of them are from the midwest [more on that later]. Inevitable friends.)

Aunt and Uncle spearheaded dinner, which started with brick oven pizzas (with fresh eggs on top), cheeeeeeeese, and favas, had roasted chickens and veggies from the markets in the middle, and ended with a smorgasbord of desserts including lemon bars, some ridiculous pie bars, cookies, and s'mores cupcakes. Uncle started the dinner almost making me cry by toasting me with a 1981 Chateau Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande (I know that because I now have the bottle sitting right next to me on my desk. It looks important.)

Then I opened up some presents (Presents!!!) that were lovely, including a shoe necklace from the Met in NYC, a series of singing lessons (singing lessons!!! And I thought Auntie wasn't paying attention to me in the car...), pretty smelling things, books, lottery tickets, and a handmade card.

I got to listen to a few amazing save-worthy voicemails, including a birthday-version of "You are My Sunshine." The night ended with me so full, so happy, and so so grateful. I woke up to a hot gorgeous day, a run, coffee, goodies, brunch, and the Sunday paper with some lovelies. It's gonna be really hard to top 28, and that's a really good place to be.

Some moments...

"Making Mom's Proud Since 1980"

Num Nums

More Num Nums

Aftermath... (This was after a bunch of clean-up)

I woke up to Lilly's adorable feet. It was 7am Sunday morning and I woke up with "Push It" in my head, giggled and tried in vain to wake anybody else up, and took this picture instead.

Farmers Market Flowers

At the very end of packing up at the farmers market today, an adorable sweet young farmer man walked up to me with a bouquet of white flowers and said, "Do you want some more flowers?"

I hesitated because at first I wondered if he wanted to trade for something and then for another second I thought that he must surely think I was someone else, like one of the really cute coffee girls from two stalls down. I also considered for a quick moment that, since I had sold some bouquets of flowers today and I had a display arrangement still on the table, that maybe he had found this perfect bouquet on the ground somewhere and thought I had lost it.

Then it dawned on me that maybe he just thought I would like some pretty flowers and so I said, "Sure!"

He handed them to me, smiled, and walked away to me oohing and aahing with the baker next to me about how pretty they were and how sweet that was.

It occurred to me a minute later that maybe I could have asked his name as we are in the same place every Thursday morning, I loved his curly blonde hair, and it's been a while since somebody gave me flowers (regardless of whether or not it was an accident or just an end-of-market donation).

I left my heart in...

I was looking for something in my email today and I came upon this email that I sent my aunt and uncle here in California about eight months after I had left CA and accidentally stayed in Puerto Rico. I found it to describe pretty well how I feel about my (too) short time in San Francisco and the haven that is my aunt and uncle's farm a bit north of the city, where I live now.

"Anyway I miss you both terribly. I've been really homesick for Cali lately, for the city and for the farm. I miss the afternoon sun in San Fran, the way it warms everybody up and you can see smiles, I miss walking back from the Farmer's market the bags hurting my arms because I way overestimated how much I could comfortably carry, I miss my bed, I miss the dive bars where the sorority girl sits next to the tattoo artist both happily drinking PBR. I miss the taquerias, I miss the BART, I miss the Mexican preachers w/ the bullhorns by the BART. I miss both bridges. I miss my family. I miss when you go around the last curve to your house and it appears on the hill and the sun hits the pond. I miss [the dog], and the pool, and the way he bounds into the pool to get as close to you as possible even though his nails are seriously dangerous. I miss pizza from the wood oven, duck, steak, lamb, roasting tomatoes. I miss the guest room and my room in the house. Sunday morning coffee and NYTimes and laundry and martinis and wine at night. And disco party karaoke. And you both.

That was probably a vent that I could have left to myself, but it's out so there ya go. I think I see myself less and less here for long term and more and more really just giving it a year, more or less. I miss home."

It took me almost two more years and helluva bumpy road but I finally did come back to stay, going on two years now.

Breakfast at the farmers market

I was standing at a farmers market this weekend here in northern California, where we are privileged to have access to any sort of sustainably farmed/raised product.

I see a youngish couple walk by, past me and past an insane variety of produce and foods.

This man is going to town on a box of chicken nuggets from Jack-In-The-Box.