Southbound Train

Sweet Home (photos)

We walked into the grocery store two nights ago, and the sound system was playing Sweet Home Alabama, turned up just a little louder than you’d normally expect for a Publix. I heard it last week at Lowes while looking for hose coupling. We heard it, live and loud, in Rum Boogie on Beale last weekend. If I go out right now and turn on the car, there’s a substantial chance it will be on the radio. At only 50-odd miles from the border of the state everyone’s singing about, Sweet Home Alabama is the local anthem.

To be fair, we think the local radio station plays a set list heavy on Tennessee references … I’ve heard Graceland, and Walking in Memphis, and other Nashville/Tennessee/non-country referencing songs plenty, but Skynyrd seems to be king here. I’ve gone and read the history (thanks, Wikipedia) and I seem to have absorbed the lyrics now, and I keep catching myself singing along. Is this my inner southerner coming to the surface?

For illustrative purposes, I’ve loaded all the Alabama photos to Flickr, as well as photos of people’s visits. If you’ve been here since May, well, you can reminisce. D&D, I might specifically be looking at you. ;-)

Save Franklin

I don’t know if I’ve been here long enough for local activism, but I’m going to start plastering my cars with “save Franklin” stickers, and if they don’t exist, well, I’m going to start making them.

Reading the local paper last week, I found an article about some debacle called Berry Farm that is supposedly approved and being built soon … at my exit off the interstate. I like my exit fine the way it is, thank you very much, and the thought of it becoming a planned community filled with houses, condos, shopping and offices is enough to have induced a fit of angry tears. Now, when we get off the interstate, we see the Ag Center across the road, host to rodeos and garden expos and this coming week the county fair. On our side there’s a gas station, a decrepit motel and a quick stop. After that – nothing. Fields. Corn. Trees. Not much traffic, not much building, not much modernity. And I like it that way.

One of my big reasons for choosing Franklin over Nashville in the final analysis was the small town country feel. I like driving home through empty fields. I like seeing the farms, and the amazing fast growing corn, the cows sleeping in the shade and the guy out on his tractor. We chose this house for the extra space around it and around the neighborhood, south of town where there was less going on. Cool Springs has everything we need ten minutes north, and we didn’t want to be on the modern, more built up end of town. We moved out here for a reason, and as far as I can tell, so did many of the people I’ve met. Now it appears that the very sprawl I left California to get away from is coming to me.

Practically, I don’t understand how this development can be a good idea. Cool Springs is only six miles away. The planned community going in on the west side of town isn’t full, and has more houses for sale than I can count. The economy isn’t in full boom-town mode, and there is plenty of empty office space surrounded by empty commercial in all the other new developments around Franklin – why we need another is truly beyond me. Why it was approved is beyond me. I understand tax basis as well as the next citizen, but I don’t believe we live in a “build it and they will come economy.” If we build it (and ruin the rural feel that IS why many people come here) have we really improved anything?

Speaking of improving … why not improve what already exists? The main exit for Franklin takes you into town through a particularly wretched alley of huge parking lot eighties style strip malls. The same blight exists north of town. Both these areas could use to be bulldozed and rebuilt, or at the very least renovated and updated. Half the storefronts stand empty. The parking lots are vast fields of empty paved paradise. Why build new areas so that in twenty years they, too, can look cast off and run down when we can fix up what already exists, and beautify the main route into our charming, tourist attraction town?

Franklin itself is charming – and it is thriving. That’s part of why we picked it. As we’ve explored more, we’ve seen plenty of small town centers that quite honestly would put Franklin to shame if they were vital: town squares with a courthouse smack in the center, lined with brick buildings and an old theatre, big trees and pocket parks. They look like sets for 50’s movies, less the people in poodle skirts. Less any people, honestly, because no one is there. I fear they are all at the new, “convenient” places on the edges of town, big boxes of chain store low prices and generic food. The stores that are hanging on in these small towns never seem to me to be the right ones – with the right hours. Why can’t a small grocery, a hardware, a “general” department store and a few restaurants survive? Why can’t the ice cream store stay open late and combine, like it used to, with a pharmacy? If all the components were there, wouldn’t people use it? I like to think they would, that people would appreciate that they could go about their business with a bit of style, in a charming place, rather than under the fluorescence of modernity.

If, however, developers continue to suck the life from towns (and the charm from their surroundings) by building this conglomerate crap out by the interstate, what will happen? I chose to move away from this kind of development – I’m really upset about it following me. And I am SO going looking for those bumper stickers.

Big Wheels Keep on Turning

We went to Alabama last (last) Saturday, mostly because we could. Tennessee shares a border with eight states, and most of them are within a reasonable drive from us. (It is also the only state other than Mississippi that has three repeating letters its name. Useless trivia, hot July version.) Eight. Coming from southern California, where everything short of Vegas was a serious undertaking, this is a bounty of unexplored territory.

We chose Alabama because it was the closest, honestly, and because we knew nothing about it. Huntsville is only about an hour from here, and from there it takes about the same to get to Muscle Shoals, where I wanted to go solely because Lynyrd Skynyrd sings about it. For a Saturday in July with no agenda, what better reason did we need?

The drive south on I65 took very little time, and we were at the state line picking up brochures for anything and everything inside of an hour. Most of the cars in the parking lot were out of state and filled with kids and sporting equipment and what sounded like pent up frustration. We pulled up in the convertible and got a lot of dumbfounded looks, like who ARE you people and why are you in Alabama and just WHAT do you think you’re doing with that car?

The brochure racks are my downfall – always have been, always will be. Row upon row of shiny paper advertising underground caves and antique shopping and camel rides and and and. Yes, and, in this case, the Scottsboro Unclaimed Baggage Center. This caught both of our attention, Mike’s because he thought he was going to get a deal on someone’s interesting (but lost) souvenirs, and me because it appealed to the snoop in me who is always eavesdropping on the people at the next table. I can look inside people’s suitcases? Cool, let’s go.

Scottsboro is about 40 minutes outside of Huntsville, through rolling hills and fields and otherwise not much else. We did see a mud volleyball tournament en route, prompting us to make snarky comments that really don’t bear repeating. I can’t be unkind about the views, though, which were beautiful and lush and surprisingly different than Franklin, particularly in light of the fact that northern Alabama is technically part of the Tennessee Valley. The green is a little thicker in Alabama (as is the air) and the trees are festooned with kudzu in a way we don’t see around us. Snarkiness was also prompted by the people burning trash in their backyard, not more than a mile from a sign urging “don’t burn, keep Alabama the Beautiful.” Usage of “the” in relation to Alabama state slogans also prompted snark, actually, but none of this deterred the fact that Alabama is legitimately pretty.

The Unclaimed Baggage Center – is not pretty. Scottsboro itself has a charming if clearly dying downtown, but at the outer edge is unclaimed bag row, giant cheaply built warehouse structures bursting at the seams (if you believe the hype) with lost treasures from around the world. Mmm hmmm. The parking lot is packed, so I guess a lot of people DO believe the hype, but the sad fact is that 99.9% of the store was like shopping at Good Will. Used clothing, more expensive than it should be, partially used perfume, overpriced outdated electronics, a pervasive dingy smell and the uncomfortable knowledge that stranger’s skin cells coat every surface. I was a little squicked. Mike says that unclaimed baggage is bought by the pound, contents unseen. He thinks that this place is selling “the good stuff” on eBay and putting the rest of it here, and I’ll concur that what’s here better be “the rest of it” because, well, ew. We were hoping for knick nacks, bits of odd memorabilia, or at the very least good luggage. We got used clothes, a huge selection of Christian literature and a box of Depends. Also baggie upon baggie of partially used toiletries (travel sized) a surprising number of tools and more plastic key chains than I’ve ever seen in one place. I wonder, really, how baggage gets this lost – it has to sit for 90 days before it can be sold off, and airlines really do make the effort to get things back to their owners. How do you lose luggage and then not go looking for it? Of course, based on what I was seeing, maybe you’re better off without the contents of your bags.

If I was disappointed in the UBC, I was pleasantly surprised by the Muscle Shoals area. Technically, we spent most of our time in Florence, birthplace of WC Handy, location of a Frank Lloyd Wright house and possessor of a really beautiful college campus. Tuscumbia, next door, is the birthplace of Helen Keller, and Muscle Shoals itself is famous for the studios where all kinds of musicians have recorded. The towns all sit around the Tennessee River and are connected by a number of bridges, the most interesting being Wilson Dam. Driving across we could see the rocky shoals far below on one side and the high water on the other, with Florence rising up the side of the cliffs ahead of us. The dam is one of nine TVA dams along the Tennessee river, and it cost $47M to build between 1918 and 1924. It is the highest lock lift east of the Rockies, and generates some huge amount of electricity, made obvious by the power lines running away from it in all directions. I good portion, I’m sure, head back towards the huge aerospace buildings that sit on the outskirts of Huntsville, giant things with names that reminded me of cold war defense contracts.

We left Florence in the early evening and drove home in our own car ad along the Natchez Trace. The Trace is a very long and thin National Park running from Nashville to Natchez and we had it mostly to ourselves for more than an hour. The road is swooping and gentle, a well paved ribbon of speed between small meadows edged by dense trees. We took the top down and listened to the Golden Oldies station and enjoyed the simple pleasure of the drive, warm air on our faces and nothing but trees to look at.

I’m not really sure what I expected out of Alabama. Maybe nothing, really – we went on a whim, mostly because we could. I would go back – the brochure rack certainly contained more to see, and I’d like to get as far as Mobile some day – but it isn’t somewhere I felt a connection to. It seemed to me that the South became more rough-around-the-edges-Southern there – the towns a little less prosperous, the people a little more likely to stop in for an ice cream wearing nothing but combat boots and jean cutoffs, the houses a little more rundown. At least now, though, I have some idea of the southland everyone’s singing about on every radio station around here.

Ohhhh, more hurricanes!!!

Oh yes, Memphis Pat O's

New Orleans, Remembered

(Mixology Monday, first try!)

Landing in New Orleans in a steamy darkness, travelling with friends and intent on some sort of excess and disorderly conduct, what is there to do but go directly and without hesitation to the flaming water hedonistic garden pleasure dome of Pat O’s? It isn’t as though anyone expected refinement; the shocking red hurricanes that littered our table and stained our lips were exactly what we were looking for, and the hilarity at the bottom of those glasses suited everyone just fine.

 

I don’t regret any of the countless hurricanes I’ve drunk in the various flaming gardens of Pat O’s – products, completely, of their place and state of mind, I like them for what they are. In the clean, well lit and relatively sober refuge of my own home however, a shockingly crimson glass of syrup isn’t my first choice … ever. We’ve got rum to drink, though – lots of it – and hurricanes are a natural vehicle, so Mike took a stab at something a bit more refined. The idea, he says, was to take the original Hurricane recipe and “class it up” into a “proper” cocktail. And so:

Les Bontemps Roulez

1 oz White Rum
1 oz Angostura 1919 Gold Rum
1/2 oz lime juice
1/2 oz Passion Fruit Syrup
1/4 oz Maraschino Liqueur
1/4 oz Grenadine
2 dashes Peychaud's Bitters

Start by rinsing the 2 dashes of bitters around the glass.  Mix all other ingredients in shaker, strain and serve.

My first sip was a shock of vanilla from the Angostura rum. The Marachino deepens the flavor, and the grenadine lends an echo of that red syrup sweetness. The bitters, Mike says, are a geographic reminder.

I think the Angostura, though good, might be a little aggressive here, and the heathen in me might have liked a touch more of the sweetness, but all told I did enjoy the rum goodness without the sticky floors.

~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~

The Sazerac, on the other hand, starts out grown up. We did drink them on that same sticky trip three summers ago, setting out on a hot trek to the Fairmont. We staggered out of the hot and slightly hung over afternoon into the cool hotel and felt a bit wilted in such clean and carpeted surroundings. Low couches in the Sazerac bar proved difficult to get out of after the consumption of not one, but two Sazeracs in all their intense glory. I’ve never been an anise fan but the Sazerac might be the tipping point in convincing me that the balance of goodness might lie (at least for drinks) on the side of the licorice. I’ve always liked tarragon in my chicken salad, though, so Mike’s revisiting of a Sazerac in a stripped down, culinary way was a huge hit:

Sazerac Redux

1 oz Rye
3/4 oz Cognac (nothing fancy)
Tarragon Leaves
1/4 oz simple syrup (4:3)
2 dashes Peychaud's Bitters

Muddle one stem's worth of tarragon leaves with the simple syrup in a rocks glass.  Add alcohol, bitters and ice to mixture and stir 'til frigid.  Garnish with Tarragon leaf (if you're really good, candy the leaf first!)

Like the fussing with the hurricane, the idea here, per Mike, was to return to the basics of the drink, and add a modern twist. I’d love to paraphrase him, but really, I should quote:

“I find that Absinthe or Pastis lend too strong a flavor, even when rinsed around and dumped out of the glass.  The tarragon brings the Anise taste without overpowering the other ingredients.  The drink was originally made with Cognac, but combining it with the Rye gives the best of both worlds.  Sure, it seems like a real sazerac and a mint julep got into a street fight with the herb vendor, but in the end it drinks like a sazerac.”

You’ll see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico

(months ago, now, to be sure, but better late than never)

Arizona wasn’t done with us yet. As Route 66 sites go, it seems to be the gold-mine state. With the exception of the Flagstaff area, it is desert-y  --- but nowhere near as bleak as the Mojave, and I found it to be pretty. The cliffs in the distance are often spectacular, and the color spectrum veers into the red and orange there, reliving the tedium of brown and green mud.

When last we visited our heroic cross country driving selves, complete with animal contingent of doom, we were bedding down for a much interrupted spring nap in Winslow, AZ. The next morning dawned brighter and earlier than I would have hoped, given the chaos of sleeping with four animals in an unfamiliar hotel room, but the beauty of the morning took my breath away. The air was a crystalline desert clear and oddly crisp, though the sun had enough power that the difference between the shadows and the middle of the street was noticeable. I know how the middle of the street felt because I walked out there and took pictures in both directions without any real fear of being run down. It wasn’t that we were so early, or so off the beaten track, but the 66 bypass through downtown Winslow isn’t exactly hopping on a Sunday morning.

Before we left town I insisted on a photo “on the corner” and made Mike backtrack a couple of blocks to the center of Winslow where my nagging was rewarded with an actual “Standin’ on the Corner” park, complete with a mural of a girl (my lord) in a flatbed Ford, slowing down to take a look at … a statue of Glenn Frey. And, for a brief shining moment, Ponteuf.

We weren’t on the road long before detouring to the Jack Rabbit Trading Post, sadly closed (permanently or just that morning, we weren’t sure) and then looking for breakfast in Holbrook, which was also closed up tight. We did cruise the Wigwam Motel and the town square, and saw lots filled with more large dinosaurs and rocks, but the town was either at church or sleeping off Saturday night, and there was no food to be had. I’m not sure what it is about the dino and the desert and route 66, but they seem to be inseparable, and Holbrook had more than its fair share.

I thought that since we were here we should see the Petrified Forest – it used to be the reason for train hotels in this area, after all - and we took the long way through and back to I40. I don’t know what I expected, really, but I think it might have been upright petrified trees, if not full height at least like the one at Disneyland, short and humbled by time, but still unmistakably a tree. Not so. We saw short bits of log. Lying on the ground, randomly scattered across a few ridges. Up close they were beautiful, shot through with unexpected purples and pinks, but from the edge of the hot and dusty trail they were – unremarkable? I feel badly typing this, but it was true – I was underwhelmed by the petrified forest. It takes some serious imagination to picture the sere expanse of this national park as a fertile and lush prehistoric jungle; I blame my lack of breakfast for this shortfall. The landscape did more for me than the trees, and the “teepees,” an area of cone shaped formations with layered color, were enough for a couple of “wows” and “no really, can you pull overs,” as was the abandoned pueblo, complete with ancient graffiti and signs warning of snakes.

Closer to I40 and significantly shorter in driving distance, The Painted Desert section of the park proves that someone at the National Parks Service knows the strength of their offerings. I had no idea that the sand could be as vibrant as it is, or as many colors of orange and pink and yellow. Standing on an overlook, I was looking at one of those do it yourself sand art bottles, made by a young giantess with a fondness for the high wavelength end of the color spectrum. Fish-eye lens or not, I know that photos didn’t/couldn’t/won’t ever do this view justice, and I understand now why cross country travelers have been stopping to see this view for as long as there have been cross country travelers. Petrified wood be damned, this was the desert in full bloom.

On a much less culturally valuable note, I also insisted that we stop at the place that allowed (nay, encouraged) the hand feeding of ostriches. This required, much to Mike’s chagrin, a ten mile backtrack west and monies spent on red cups of ostrich feed. Posted clearly in front of the pen was a block lettered sign: “Warning – Ostrich Bite.” Anyone with a sense of humor can tell where this is going, and my thumb would like to thank you all for your concern. Duly wound up and giggly, I climbed back into the car and got a grim look from Mike, along with the assertion that we needed to get some driving done. It was noon, and we were all of thirty miles into our 549 mile trek for the day.

New Mexico is 374 miles across. Straight across, more or less, and although there is a fair amount of elevation change, the scenery itself stays pretty constant. Once the road points itself towards Albuquerque it seems like a very long, never-ending runway to getting there. This was about the point we got punchy and started emailing people photos of the view from the windshield with the caption “wish you were here.” Looking at those photos objectively, I’m not shocked that we had no takers. We got a much needed stretch and meal in Albuquerque, though, at a 50’s diner with disgustingly good chile cheeseburgers (that’s southwest chile, not campfire) and even more disgustingly good milkshakes. Then it was up and out of the city, climbing thorough ever more desert and past ever fewer towns with a stop at Cline’s Corner for drinks, beef jerky and a dust bath for the cat. I’d wanted to see the neon strip at Tucumcari, but New Mexico dealt us the cruel blow of two time changes in one day; we were seriously behind schedule and perilously close to missing dinner at the Big Texan, so we pushed on.

This was my driving day and Mike napped on an off while I pushed the speed limit with a steak in mind. The Big Texan in Amarillo is a veritable theme park of overeating, roadside attraction, restaurant and bad idea all rolled into one, and Mike wanted to go, so I was doing my damnedest to get us there in time. For those inclined to gluttony and exhibitionism, the restaurant offers a free 72oz steak dinner, complete with salad, shrimp cocktail, bread, potato, etc etc – the catch being that one has to eat said dinner on a dais in the middle of the room, and within an hour. We knew we weren’t in for that sort of torture, but we did want to eat so we were relived to pull in and see the neon Texan still waving folks inside, past the limo with longhorns mounted on the front, past the porch filled with rockers, past the saloon doors and into a movie set of Texan kitsch. We shared a rather pedestrian sized steak, and I can’t say it was the best I’ve ever had, but it was one of the most satisfying; I’d driven hard to get it, and it signaled the end of one of the more boring stretches of road we’d encountered yet. Texas hosts the midpoint of Route 66, just west of Amarillo itself, and Amarillo and the night we’d spend there marked more than half way in our journey as well.

The Old Man is Snoring

The windows are rattling in their frames, and a white flash of lightening just illuminated my otherwise darkened office. I can hear the cat complaining from the screened porch, where we’ve imprisoned him to dry off. It looks like I need a coat to get the vegetables (but I know I don’t) and I keep thinking that the train is going by, or a large delivery truck is stalled in our drive, but the sheets of gray outside the window remind me that it is just a summer storm.

Summer and storm aren’t really words that go together in the experience of a girl from California. Here, I think summer thunderstorms are as common as politeness and as necessary as sweet tea on a hot summer day. The beautiful green that blankets every inch of our property requires rain – no one has sprinklers – and the word around town is that last summer was miserable, for both the heat and the weeks without a single drop of rain. We’ve been snickering a little when people tell us this, because weeks without rain can easily describe Southern California any time of any year, and the El Nino winter that prompted me to always carry an umbrella in my trunk was an anomaly that hasn’t returned since. The nurseries here are advertising “drought-tolerant” plants, and while I know, really, that this was a serious drought for here, I have a hard time accepting that the green paradise we saw last July when we first came to look at houses was actually experiencing drought.

As new Tennesseans and new tree parents, we’re learning to say things like “we could use a little rain” and while I still feel conspicuous saying those words in the face of all this green, I know it is true. Last week we had a laundry list of trees planted: a magnolia whose placement caused a serious disturbance in the force that is our internet/phone/cable connection, a trio of redbuds, a brace of dogwoods, a solitary (but already very tall) Tennessee Tulip and a veritable orchard of fruit. We’ve been dragging hoses around and awaiting the UPS delivery of “tree gators” for a week now, babying the Japanese contingent of weeping cherry in front and fiery red maple in back, so it was a relief to see the storm clouds gathering last night. “Is that lightening?” quickly turned into “I think we might get some rain” and from there it wasn’t long until we reached “We’re going to get wet.”

Get wet we did, as we were driving back from a dinner at the bar of Flyte, making good on our promise to be regulars there in a way we never had the time or space (or good candidate restaurant) for in Pasadena. We’d come down 31 all the way from Nashville with the top down on my car when the dots on the windshield turned into plops and very quickly thereafter into rivulets. As long as we slouched we stayed mostly dry, the wind of fifty stretching the rain into silver streaks above our heads. The air was sultry but not sticky, the fresh patter and whiff of water hitting pavement and leaf swirled around the car and mixed with the radio I turned up as if in defense against the water. “If we stop, we’ll be drenched” I yell, laughing, as an 80’s dance song wails from the speakers. Slowing down is certain shower time, so we push on to the house as fast as possible, Mike running stop signs, me holding my hair in a twist to keep it from knotting and singing along. I hit the garage door button as we turn into the drive and it is up by the time we get there, spilling dry yellow into the night like landing lights. In we go, gasping, and as we stop the tiny streams held back by speed fall suddenly onto our laps and shoulders. A few errant drops bead the dash and the air vent has an odd square of condensation, from blowing cold into a warm evening, whistling in the wind. Breathless from the daring of three miles in a rainstorm with no roof, I decide that summer storms might be the most fun.

Clearing the Decks

((I've been documenting what I cook, mostly for my own edification but perhaps to get people to ask to visit, or ask to come to dinner (really! please ask!) here, but every so often I like to spend a few more words on the subject...))

We pick up our weekly CSA vegetables on Wednesdays, and that means that somewhere around Monday I have to critically examine what lurks in the vegetable drawer and find a way to use it. It isn’t that I’m not liking what we get, but it is still leaning a little towards the greens, and those aren’t the easiest to get my cooking head around, at least creatively. This Monday found a particularly large offering; I’m pretty sure I haven’t cooked enough in the face of Arugula’s Star bounty.

A trip to Publix on Sunday evening had turned up Sockeye salmon, fresh and wild and impossibly red. We bought it, remembering a summer in Redwood Shores where the local Nob Hill had it on sale for a week and we ate it exclusively, somehow not tiring of it even after the cat progressed from begging for scraps to refusing bits of actual flesh. It was as good as I remembered, broiled with a little bit of tarragon mustard and local honey, and I missed Martini weaving furrily around my ankles, asking for just a little bit.

I sliced yellow summer squash thinly and put them in a foil packet with a lemony herb so fresh that it bled into spicy, olive oil and a healthy sprinkle of the German herb salad mix I’ve been keeping on the counter. Those went in with the salmon while I tackled three bunches of young fennel, feathery tops and all, in a chef’s pan with olive oil. I wanted to add lemon but Mike had co-opted them for Pisco Sours, so I sliced the rind finely and tossed it into the pan with a spoonful of sugar and kept stirring until the whole mess was wilted together and sporting brownish black edges.

The peaches we’d bought for flavoring vodka demanded attention, too, so I picked out the most ripe candidates, peeled and sliced them and dumped them into a baking dish, topped with a little sweet short dough. I’ve always read that you should make sweet pastry dough by mushing the butter into the flour with your fingers, and this has always seemed a hassle to me that I have avoided with melting butter and stirring and using a mechanical device, but I didn’t want to dirty anything else so I used my fingers. Surprise, surprise, it was easy, quick and resulted in really light short crust dropped over of the peaches.

I made a salad, too, with (what else) CSA greens and radishes, a few dried black currants thrown in for sweetness, but the lettuce was too bitter even for me, and I ended up picking the currants and radishes out and ignoring the lettuce. I’ve been reading about grilled romaine salads recently, and maybe this lettuce has a date with the new grill, but it might be finding its way to the Piggers. They’re certainly asking noisily for fresh greens, and they aren’t picky.

I’m not quite used to cooking in this kitchen yet. I have so much space, but it seems like once I start cooking I’m out of space quickly. I miss being able to chop right on the counter, and I’m never sure if I should be using the island the way I am (facing out) or the other way, making it convenient to the sink. The expanse of counter baffles me, and I feel like things get marooned out on it and make it crowded, so I’m always shoved into little bits and corners. Having worked in a small space for years, I’m still learning how to best make use of this big one. I’ll have plenty of materials to practice with soon enough – CSA pickup is in two hours…

Here’s what we drank – Mike is calling it a Pisco Inferno, and I’m pretty pleased that I spotted the powdered egg whites on the shelf that made it possible!

1 1/2 oz Pisco
1/2 egg white
1 oz lemon juice
1 oz 4:3 Simple Syrup - 1 oz = 1 tsp sugar at this ratio

Combine all ingredients in a shaker and shake more than you think you need to - you are working up a heady foam. Pour into rocks glasses filled with ice.  Garnish with Angostura Bitters. ((He’s just taken delivery of a Misto he plans to load with bitters and flame onto the surface of the drink, per instructions from Jeffrey Morganthaler’s blog, a place I can see is going to lead us to all sorts of fun and trouble. If he (and the house) remain unexploded, it should be fun.))

Taking My Birthday Resolution Seriously

I’m starting to think that we can’t do anything in reasonable measures. We didn’t just take a trip – we travelled for three months. We didn’t just get a new house – we moved to Tennessee. We don’t just buy cars – we pick them up in Europe. I’m sensing a theme … and I fear it begun to color our drinking. It isn’t just the new wine fridge, filled past capacity. Or the hours we spent on Saturday cruising the Nashville wine and liquor shops. Oh, no, it is worse than that. Take a look at my counter:

That’s evolution there, my friends: of Rain into “Georgia peach vodka” and Bombay into “basis of a Bramble blackberry gin.” We already have a bottle of “would you like a stronger tiki drink” (also known as Pineapple Vodka) in the fridge, and I think Mike wants to hurry these two along so he can start on something new.

The LA bar scene has shifted (on the high end, anyway) to classic cocktails done right, and after a few rounds at places like Providence, Gordon Ramsay, Cut and others, we (along with D-squared) have clearly come to embrace the old school cocktail. I went on an odd liquor shopping spree last fall, coming home with a trunk full of esoterica like Heering, Applejack and Parfait Amour. Mike completed my collection at Christmas with a much coveted bottle of Crème de Violette. The volition and the ingredients were there, but the time seemed lacking. Now, with a huge kitchen, spare time a plenty and social engagements looming weeks and months on the horizon rather than days, we’re indulging in this expanded and improved hobby. Inspired by a (I suspect rather expensive, in many ways) night at Absinthe with Daniel, Mike has taken to the shaker with a vengeance. A stop at the Farmer’s Market for peaches also netted us the alluded to blackberries, so Mike set out to make a bramble. Most of the recipes call for crème de mure, but we wanted to go with the fresh. He ended up with the following:

The Blackberry Bramble
Muddle two (large) blackberries with ¾ oz of simple syrup and ¾ oz fresh squeezed lemon juice. It forms a really dark mush at the bottom of the tall glass, to which you add 1 ½ oz Hendricks gin. Fill the glass with crushed ice, then top off with club soda and stir (a step which reminded Mike that we need a cocktail stirrer) so as not to bruise the club soda (?). Garnish with a blackberry.

The nice part about drinking this at home was that when I got to the end I could go to the sink, scoop out the ice and get to the muddled berries at the bottom ... without looking like a five year old digging for the cherry in my Shirley Temple in public.

Franklin, the Beautiful

I’ve always been distrustful of the way summer is portrayed in magazines. Who actually changes their behavior in the summer to the extent that is purported? When you’re working, can “lazy summer days” and “hot evening meals” really mean anything? Who goes to summer festivals? Who has neighborhood parties?

Um, I stand corrected.

I guess the problem wasn’t the magazines, or summer: it was me. Living in 11 months of summer. And maybe Los Angeles itself. Pasadena never went all out for the Fourth – I think most of Southern California is just too cool to celebrate America, or, honestly, too disconnected from the idea to care. I expected things to be different here, in the same way that I expected corn to taste better (it does) and people to be friendlier (they are) but I didn’t have a concrete idea of how. I didn’t expect to stumble into a full color July issue magazine spread – but I have.

Thursday evening we went to the neighborhood Fourth of July party, up by the pool. I didn’t know that many people lived in our neighborhood, to be honest, and there were more kids running around in dripping bathing suits, screeching and playing with sparklers and generally looking like a promotion for All-American-Good-Clean-Summer-Fun than I thought possible. We sat with our neighbors and met other neighbors and acted neighborly, and if I’m overusing the “neighbor” word here, it’s just that the whole thing is such a novelty. We’ve had neighbors, sure, but never of the group-socializing kind. When we lived in an apartment, I didn’t know (by sight or name) the people we shared a wall with. In Redwood Shores, we had friends living a few feet away, but the overall neighborhood was not a community. It would have made sense, there, to have street parties and BBQs and gatherings at the pool, but people didn’t mix. In Altadena, the extent of “over the fence” conversation was our uphill neighbor complaining about the smoke from our BBQ. I didn’t grow up in a neighborhood either, so the whole idea of people sitting outside and talking to the people they live near is foreign, and oh so enticing. I wanted a neighborhood out of this move, and it looks like I’ve gotten one.

The BBQ dinner was catered by the association, and everyone was asked to bring “a dessert to share.” There were plates of watermelon, and a few packages of store-bought cookies and cupcakes, but the majority of the sweets were homemade, and they were good. Really good. Mike says we’ve moved to dessert land, and I have to agree – people here eat dessert, and they know how to make it. A groaning table at this party proved the point – we had all kinds of baked squares, Watergate salad and homemade banana pudding, and between that and the pulled pork sandwiches, I was pretty much in eat outside heaven. We used our portable chairs and our mini cooler and our wine sticks, and overall I felt clever to be outfitted with the requisite conveniences even though we’ve never had such an event to attend before. I think I always bought items for the idea of parties like this, much in the same spirit of “if you build it, they will come.” Maybe it worked?

It seemed oddly familiar at the time, the sitting outside and chatting and dusk and sparklers, the light buggy-ness and the smell of hot grass and the fireflies through the cordite mist – but I couldn’t place it until now, when I realize it reminded me of a hot Fourth I spent in Carthage South Dakota; I couldn’t have been more than seven. I remember a park by the river, hazy air and exploding fireworks, heat and heavy sleepiness, being slightly dirty, furred by dried sweat coated with fine dust, a lazy feeling of nothing to do and nowhere to go. It doesn’t get much smaller town than Carthage these days, and I’ve not made the connection until now, but there is a bit of that little prairie town mixed into this Southern adaptation of Ojai. Sitting under the trees, I’m not sure if I should be drinking with the adults or running with the kids: I’m new here, but somehow this feels familiar, a tradition I can slip right into, preprogrammed from ancient memory and years of wishing for it.

Franklin was throwing a party on the Fourth (and Fifth), so we headed to town mid-afternoon to wander the streets, look at the booths and listen to the live music. There were three stages, and on the main one we walked into a full-on impassioned performance of Freebird, complete with a guy with a camera phone pressing himself to the stage edge, recording every breathless second. A young guy lunged through the crowd, waving a flag and punching his fist in the air, and a bunch of people swayed and sang along. A little kid with a red white and blue tri-spiked Mohawk bounced through the crowd, grinning. I wanted to make fun of the whole spectacle, in that cynical, I’m so from California where we don’t do things like this way, but I couldn’t bring myself to dismiss it completely. Yes, it was terribly clichéd, but somehow the heart that everyone was putting into it won me over. I wasn’t lifting a lighter, or anything, but I couldn’t help smiling.

I smiled, too, later that evening when the entire neighborhood was awash in color and smoke and popping: I think everyone was setting off some sort of explosive. We could have watched any number of personal shows from the front porch, but nothing exceeds like excess, so we hopped in the car with 10 minutes to spare and raced to the town show with the top down and the radio up. We started seeing the rockets’ red glare once we crested the hill above town, and we watched it all the way to the high school parking lot on the north side of Franklin, where we parked with countless other people also staring up at the sky. Fireworks have always made me get a little teary; nostalgic for something I can’t put my finger on. These were no exception, and as I watched I saw myself like a character in a movie – sitting in a convertible on a warm summer night, watching fireworks with the radio on, in a peaceful spot in a quiet corner of a beautiful country. This was a montage scene, no doubt: girl takes big risk and moves to small town, finds love and contentment and reconnects with the meaning of life. The camera pulls back to show uplifted faces colored by the flashes of firework red and white and music swells and all is right with the world, at least for that moment. And it was.

Happy Birthday to Me

My birthday started out in an odd way. I woke up to see a brilliant sunrise over Chicago, took a photo, and screwed my eyes shut again in defense against the light, the flight attendants and the hideous five am hour. Oh yes, a red eye. No better way to make me feel older than to make me sleep for three hours and change in an airplane seat and call it a night.

I was supposed to get home Monday evening, and as much as I missed everyone in LA, I was ready to sleep in my own bed, use a real sized tube of toothpaste and check in on Mike and Gato-Plex. I left Ojai, drove to LAX, and discovered upon arrival that my flight had gone from 10 to 80 minutes delayed. Delayed enough that I would miss my connection in Denver - my connection which was the last flight to Nashville. According to the 1K desk, my last chance to get to Nashville until 10pm the following day, which just happened to be my birthday, which just happened to make me cry while standing in line and wrestling two suitcases and a large box. Which, because it was LA, didn’t prompt anyone around me to offer condolences, Kleenex or (most annoyingly) help with my box. I’m not sure, really, why I had to be more creative in routing than the United rep, but I suggested she try and get me home via Chicago, which she could… as long as I was willing to sit in LAX for eight and a half hours, before catching a red eye that would deposit me in Chicago at sunrise to catch a 6:30 to Nashville.

There didn’t seem to be anything else to do but take it, so I did, checked my box with much wrangling, made sure I was upgraded and had a really good cry on the phone with my mom while sitting in the lobby. And then I talked on the phone with everyone I could reach to harass, felt really sorry for myself, and watched an “only in LA” vignette of some camera guy harassing a star who just wanted to sit by himself and have a snack before he flew. All this excitement in the lobby of LAX. Hmmm. I used a parking shuttle to get to In n Out and had one last glorious Double Double before leaving town and then waited. And waited. And waited, waited, waited, molasses slow waited, to get on the plane. Which was delayed. A delayed flight after almost nine hours in the airport feels inevitable, really, but gee, cheery fun, they made up time on the way, and we got to Chicago early leaving me plenty of time to trek the marathon between the C gates and the F gates and wait for my flight home.

Do I sound like I’m complaining? Probably because I am, but I’m about to stop, because I did get home on my birthday, and I officially started it with a really nice plate of potato pancakes from the Pancake Pantry in Nashville, a place that we didn’t even recognize without the block and a half line wrapping around the building. Eating out on a Tuesday morning is a lot easier than a Sunday. I worked from the ever faithful kitchen table and had flowers waiting for me and a bunch of nice calls from friends and family, and chalked up the total disorientation to the red eye rather than the three weeks away from home or the new age, which made the oddness of being back here and being that much further from 30 more bearable.

Somewhere in the evening hours I had to pull it together to get to dinner, the only concession to my state being the moving forward of the reservation by thirty minutes. I made it though, showered and dressed, and I was so glad that I did, because this restaurant is a gift. We first went on a whim when Anna was here and closed the place with an impromptu kitchen tour by the chef. I knew then that I wanted to come back for my birthday, and it was worth the wait. Mike ordered an obscure cocktail that the bar staff went to a liquor store to get the ingredients for … and then they comp-ed us the beautifully made drink (an Aviation, for the record). He had emailed them about my birthday, and we had a progression of ‘just for us’ appetizer tidbits that were each better than the last: short rib (with cocoa nibs), scallops, frogs legs… we had a trio of soups (mmm, pea soup with crab) and a trio of salads – really inventive things like pecan pie (with blue cheese ice cream), pigs in a blanket (with fried goat cheese and prosciutto) and muffaletta (yeah, like the sandwich). By the time we got to entrée we were stuffed, but we did manage to share a really nice piece of pork, and the desserts were not neglected in the form of crème brulee and a birthday decorated plate with candle. We drank a good – nay, great – bottle of wine, caught up on the previous three weeks and reveled in the fact that we could be regulars at such an amazing restaurant. Flyte. Reservations now accepted for anyone coming to visit.

I’m not particularly worried about turning 33 – I kind of like the double number – but it seems odd conceptually that I could be this old. I don’t think of myself as having an age, really – it isn’t how I define myself – but if pushed I think I might say I was 27. I’m thinking that’s not so true anymore. I wonder if I’ll always think I’m 27, or if when I’m in my 40s I’ll think I’m 33… either way, I’m intending to make this a stellar year, worthy of the double number. A friend recently suggested that we should make resolutions on our birthday rather than on New Year’s – a more personal fresh start. I like it, and I’m resolving, this year, to slow down, appreciate where I am (wherever that may be) and learn to be a little more content with what’s in front of me, rather than what’s behind or ahead. Oh, and I’m resolving to drink more cocktails on the screened porch. At least that way I can say, next summer, that I did well on at least some of my resolutions. Besides, the second might help the first!

Perhaps I underestimated Nashville…

No, I’m not back to posting photos of the pantry. This is the International Market in Nashville, around the corner from Belmont College and wedged onto a slightly morning after street littered with outdoor bars, crooked student housing and a new-agey tattoo parlor. Also, and more pertinently, about 20 miles from my house, but bearing a striking resemblance to the “thai curry” section of the aforementioned pantry. I guess I should let them know that when they run low on cans of Panang, I can help out in a pinch.

The International Market serves food, too: fresh noodle dishes being at the top of my list of concerns, and has jasmine tea from a dispenser. Iced tea in TN is “sweet” or “un” – here there is also a tea silo sweating under the label “jas.” We shared a pad kee mao, because it was there and it seemed silly to pass it up, and it was … good. Better than good, actually; head and shoulders above any other Thai we’ve found here. The noodles were right: lightly elastic and with that odd patina of rice gluten grease that marks really authentic tasting stir fry. The pork tasted like pork, and the basil was fresh, and they had added Chinese broccoli which worked better than I expected. A dash of hot chili flakes and we were almost in LA. It wasn’t Sanamluang, but what is? If this is my authentic Thai food, I’m really not suffering. I would like to know, though, why they stock straw mushrooms in bulk and every Thai restaurant I’ve been to here serves soup with sliced white buttons? I need to start taking cans with me when I eat out.

Thanks to a tip from a waiter, we’ve also found real Vietnamese food, something I was sure would be out of reach here. Miss Saigon is in one of the many mini malls that make up the megalith of Cool Springs (want to buy something? I think they sell it, whatever it might be, there). It looks, inside, just like a basic Asian restaurant in LA: bare floor, oddly cheap chairs, deep booths in a garish color and “cultural art” on the walls. No matter – the menu is in both Vietnamese and English, and they pull no punches about the flavors or the ingredients. Pho can be had with beef tendon! We started with fresh spring rolls and peanut dipping sauce, and they were right. Just right – clean and cool and crisp and oh, such a relief to know I can get them here without having to make them myself. I had pho for dinner, and Mike had a noodle bowl with pork that was just as good as anything we’ve had in LA, and I think my shoulders dropped about two inches that evening, even with the amount of caffeine that must have been swirling in my syrupy café sua da. Vietnamese is perfect hot weather food, developed and adapted as it is to a land where the humidity makes Southern heat wilt in defeat. I’m looking forward to eating my way through the menu this summer.

Speaking of summer, though, I think we’ve brought California weather back with us. Days are hot, yes, but we’ve had minimal humidity and a light breeze, and even though I don’t want to be doing manual labor in the middle of the yard, I’m not uncomfortable walking. Evenings, though, are just perfect here – warm, soft, full of chirping and calling and sweet smells. I want to live outside at night, sipping some fancy drink and relaxing. It is cool enough to eat outside too, and we did that last night, eating GOOD BURRITOS. Mike found Blue Coast Burrito while I was still on the Blue Coast, and the place was clearly decorated by someone who lived in California. It is Baja-Surf in theme, but it works, as does the food, and most spectacularly, as do the fish tacos. And the guacamole. And the spicy shredded chicken, and the tortillas, which, if they aren’t Reubens-perfect are at least thin enough to taste right wrapped around meat, beans, rice, cheese and a little sour cream. I’ve been home a week and we’ve been there twice and I’m wondering if I can talk Mike into going back. Like, oh, tomorrow? They also carry Las Paletas, gourmet Mexican-style popsicles made by a small company in Nashville. I had the plum, and the best way I can describe it was eating real Italian gelato frozen into popsicle form. It may not be Southern, but it is going to be something I feed people who come here to visit.

I’ve had BBQ since I was back too, twice, and I’m enjoying my CSA vegetables and my Viking and my kitchen, but it is awfully comforting to know that I have options here when it comes to food that hasn’t been boiled with a bit of salt pork. Aside from the people (and let’s not muddy the fact that there is no comparison here in terms of ‘how much’) going back to LA reminded me that one of the things I miss most is the wide availability of different types of food. Not that there aren’t good options here, and some really fabulous food, but I was feeling a bit scratchy that I couldn’t run out for pho here. Now I can. Tennessee is a new boyfriend this week, pulling out all the stops to make me happy. I’m enjoying the attention.