Southbound Train

Country Bumpkins in the Big City

While it is absolutely still true that we have no friends here in Tennessee, we DO have friends in Atlanta.  Good friends. Smart, funny friends. Friends who like to eat out and drink cocktails and bum around the mall. Friends who had the foresight to move into a great neighborhood with a local gelato place that is probably the best we’ve had in the US. Friends who, I fear, are going to get very sick of us, because Atlanta is only three hours away, and we like car trips.

I had a list of shopping needs for Atlanta, places I’m used to having (the Container Store, Trader Joes, Crate & Barrel, le sigh) and Atlanta, she delivered. Our trunk was full when we headed home, and I was amazed at how excited I was to go in a real mall with stores I hadn’t seen in months.  I felt like such a kid, ohhing and ahhing at the big city with the big buildings and the nice Nordstrom and the busy traffic. And the huge huge houses that we drove past in Buckhead, the kind of huge that makes whatever salary I make every year look like small change.

When we first visited Atlanta in 2005, I liked it well enough, but downtown seemed deserted,  mid-town was a little scruffy and the whole place felt disjointed, like a city without a personality. Now, though, mid-town is a city in its own right, packed with neat little stores, interesting restaurants, places I wanted to stop and poke around. Huge Centennial park seems to spill over its boundaries, making all the streets fanning out from it similarly green and tree shaded. People sit out in cafes and on sidewalks, and we had to stand in a line reaching down the street every time we walked for gelato. Eating well is easy, from scruffy diner breakfast to swanky small plates dinner; I also managed a Chipotle burrito. Oh, Chipotle.

A weekend hanging out in Atlanta was a lot like a weekend hanging out in LA, or in Nashville, except we shared it with people who hang out the same way we do – sleep in a little, go out for breakfast, randomly shop while running errands, cocktail hour dragging long into dinner hour. Silly conversation and maybe a game? It was pretty perfect, and on our drive home we decided that it was kind of like hanging out with ourselves – our smarter, more educated selves. (Nothing like being friends with two PhDs to put my own diploma in perspective.)

I did feel rather small town and provincial, though. It amazed me how quickly I’ve gotten into the habit of living in a small place, and how easy I have it here. Traffic is waiting for two cars to pass so we can pull out of 31 Flavors. Crowded is the line for the Genius Bar at the Apple store (again). I am so clearly spoiled. We’ve given up some convenience, being here (though not much, if I’m pressed for honesty) but what we’ve gotten in return is the easy life. I feel spoiled, and a little simple, that all it takes to make me happy these days is a fox in my backyard but so be it. I’m working on the not revolutionary but difficult idea of being content with what where and who I am, so I’m trying not to judge myself for what makes me smile. Next time I visit Atlanta, though, I’m determined to not drive around with my mouth open and make stupid comments about how busy it all is. I moved to the country but I didn’t grow up in it. Perspective, perspective, perspective. Y’all.

Fair Summer Afternoon

When I was in grade school, the fair was held in the fall. October, maybe? I remember wearing sweaters, and jeans. Hot steaming bowls of fat white noodles, always from the plainest food stand in the fair (just to the left as you turned into the midway of grease) were the best treat. Valdemar and the other kids with 4-H animals got to take a week off of school to go to the fair. Crisp afternoons lit with slanting light giving way to cold evenings, fog rolling in and smelling of sea.

By the time I raised 4-H pigs, that week off of school to hang around the livestock barns, shoveling shavings and making fun of the girls with lambs was long gone. Most of the fairs I remember, and certainly the ones I participated, in happened in August; shorts and icy lemonades supplanted jeans and fry bread. The Japanese noodles never tasted as good when it was hot, but the dipped ice cream bars were better, and the smells of the fair – grease and dust and hot electrical wires and sugar (glorious sugar) were intensified. It could be cold, even in August, by the Ventura beach, but in my memory days at the fair are always hot, intense, a little sticky.

I’ve never been to a fair I like as much as Ventura’s. Somehow it has managed to stay exactly as I remember it, and I like it all: the Fine Art area where I can always spot watercolors from my art teacher, the tacky commercial barns packed with hucksters and their products. The filtered water guy with the seven foot continuously running faucet and the knife salesman and the jewelry cleaning solutions and over against the wall the mini donut machine, little circles of dough bobbing along in golden grease – I don’t think these things ever change. In the Floriculture building, I see the Kelly family dynasty of displays, always desert themed. I probably know a couple of people selling things. The gem and mineral building by the gate has cool stuff under black lights, and fish, and a photography section. The giant kids hall where my stuff was displayed: art and baking and table settings, thank you very much – kids are still entering the same things I did, except the kids belong to the people I competed against.  I’d blame this wistful recitation on age, but I’ve been nostalgic since I was little, so I suspect it will just get worse with time. I love the fair.

Ventura these days is a bit further than it used to be, though, so we went to the Williamson County fair last Saturday. It had been a scorcher of a week but had cooled down nicely in time for us to wander over to the Ag Center Saturday mid-day, hungry for grease and sugar. This fair has only been going for the past few years – it isn’t big. The commercial exhibits are mostly around the indoor arena – chiropractors and local businesses, and a meet and greet with the police department. The 4-H clubs have project exhibits scattered around, and the midway is small. The livestock is done in stages, but we caught part of a sheep show and some poultry judging, and took in the petting zoo, complete with porcupines and camels. There were rabbits and a draft horse and a longhorn steer, a giant pig with piglets and a few alpacas and that unique, sweet odor of a livestock barn, fur and hair and dust and hay and grain and dirt and spilled sodas, wet animal and old French fries, and wow, I’m selling it, but nothing smells quite so sweet as memory.

The Ventura ladies haven’t got a thing on the Tennessee women in the Home Arts rooms; the quilts and hand work and canning here were nicer than I’ve ever seen. There was a 4-H cake auction happening later in the afternoon and we ate curly fries and frozen treats and a corn dog while we listened to a brass band play Beatles songs. Kids rode the same rides that I rode when I fit into a 3 foot glittered race car and a big military transport plane did a fly by, and I was filled with nostalgia, for this fair, for the fair of my childhood. Fairs are transitory – by now the grounds, here and in Ventura, are vacant again. The wind is pushing an empty cotton candy bag across well trampled grass, a forgotten toy lingers against a post, the PA broadcasts nothing but silence. The fair has packed up and moved down the road, but it will be back next year, the same buzz and smell and sound and cheap glitter in the dust, the same good feelings and nostalgia, the same dreamlike quality. And I’ll be there, three with a painted face, seven in a sweater, eleven with Pippi, sixteen with a pig, thirty-four with a smile.

more fair photos

Mixology Monday, Local Style

My kitchen is overflowing with vegetables – specifically vegetables of vine growing origin. I suspect that everyone else in Middle Tennessee has piles of squash and cucumbers right now too, because it is August in this fertile land and squash, in particular, seem to grow like weeds. The squash is good steamed, or in pasta, or on pizza, and I have plans to deal with some excess in the form of bread. Breathe a sigh of relief, all around, because I am not making squash into a drink. The cucumbers, on the other hand, have been clustering around the bar, and it seemed unfair to relegate them to only becoming the stir stick of my Pimms Cup.

I’d been reading about a cucumber soup that called for juicing (rather than grating), saw a recipe for cucumber granita, and then, while looking for space to put more Cucumis sativus into the fridge, I bumped into my home cured gravlax. The random inputs assembled themselves into a cool, pale green and refreshing drink, with the added benefit of not having to put the cucumbers away.

I used two Lemon cucumbers, unpeeled, from our CSA basket, with one Garden Sweet Burpless (partially peeled) thrown in for a little more color. The juicer made quick work of those and a whole lemon, rind and all. I tossed in a knob of ginger with the lemon, so coming out of the juicer I had a pale green pitcher of cool and a frothy yellow pitcher of spicy. These two went into an icy shaker and were joined by the gravlax inspired (and all important alcoholic) element of akavit. Poured into cocktail glasses, the resulting drink looked cool and refreshing and lent itself to the absolutely corny moniker of ‘the cool cucumber’ for which I make no apologies.

Even with the heat of the ginger, this was a thin drink – the watery quality of the cucumber and the briskness of the akavit made it taste a little like spiked spa water. On a hot evening following a blazing day this wasn’t a disappointment, but upon review I’d use a lime or two instead of the lemon, which was what I had when inspiration struck. I made a second batch and added a little simple syrup which, while it rounded out the flavors, also dulled the crispness of the akavit that finished the drink; I wouldn’t do that again. I don’t know how many Tennesseans drink akavit, but that cucumber, grown about 15 miles from my house, sure is local.

“the cool cucumber”

1 oz akavit
2 oz cucumber juice, strained
½ oz lemon/ginger juice, strained

Shake, strain into cold cocktail glasses, garnish with (what else?) a cucumber circle.

 

Leftovers

The worst part of houseguests is that they leave. I know the saying, sure, that fish and houseguests, after three days, stink. And, I suppose, that can be true (for some guests) (and for some hosts) but not for me. I like having people here to make breakfast for, or leave the coffee on the counter for, to entertain and feed and iron pillowcases in advance of. I feel so domestically accomplished having their favorite treats in the cupboard, sharing new iced tea flavors, baking a welcoming cake. I like taking them out to eat and stopping to read historical markers and pretending I’m on vacation in my own town. Nothing has, as yet, made me appreciate where we’ve moved to as much as showing it to the people I care about. I notice how green the fields are, how lush the trees, how charming the main street. I get to do the visitor things and marvel at how much there is to do and how we don’t have time to do it all. I want them to stay, and stay – prolonging the companionship and the hiatus from life’s petty annoyances. Return tickets are at risk in my house. Ooops – was that your boarding pass? The guinea pigs were hungry, you see.

We’ve done pretty well on the visitor front since we moved here – my mom has even been twice – but it is always hard to drop off the people I love at the airport. My eyes leak and I sigh a lot and Mike wonders what he is going to do to amuse me while I feel terribly sorry for myself. If I could, I suppose I would move everyone I care about here (and really, you’d like it, I promise) but the next best thing would be to know when they were coming back. Like a purchased plane ticket, an impending visit is a way to mark time, to count the passing of the days when I work in my messy office and don’t talk to anyone but Mike and wonder why I’m feeling prickly or tired. I don’t, honestly, expect anyone to come all the time, or give up other things to come here just to keep me from drinking alone, but I wouldn’t feel badly if everyone decided to come back sooner rather than later, either. (In case y’all missed it, by the way, that was an open invitation.)

Liking guests fits into my larger desire to take care of people, I suppose. I’m afflicted with a deep need to “fix” things for people in my life; to make things better, solve a problem, right a wrong. I want to supply the magic answer that just makes the trouble go away. Clearly if reincarnation is the way of things, I was a man in my last life. Having people here, in my home, I feel I’m responsible for their happiness – and that I can shield them from the rest of the world. In my bubble, I’m in charge, and everyone will be happy … and if not deeply happy, at least content, well fed and well watered (I do know my limitations.) Breakfast out – with pie. A four person game of rock band. Drinks on the screened porch. Oysters, freshly shucked, at the kitchen counter. An illicit dip in the pool. A road trip, maybe, or dancing barefoot with the fireflies. I can do these things, and while they might not be solving the problems of the world, I like to think that for a fleeting moment, at least, we’re all happy in the doing of them.

For our most recent guests, I made angel food cake. When they left, the remainder of it sat forlornly on the cake stand for a few days. I didn’t really have the heart to throw it out, I didn’t want to eat it alone, and together, the cake and I grew a little stale and rough around the edges. Having looked forward to the D&D visit ever since we moved, I was wallowing in a real post-Christmas-nothing-left-to-look-forward-to funk; the cake (lacking the emotion needed for a self pitying crisis) was drying out. After a couple of days I came to terms with the fact that we are here and they are there and there isn’t anything I can do about that but get on with things. Letting the house get messy and myself grumpy wasn’t bringing anyone back to visit, and the cake needed to be dealt with. Rather than tossing it, though, I cut up some peaches and bought some milk and turned the whole sad mess into bread pudding, a dessert quite improved, I think, by the use of angel food cake and liberal dollops of brown sugar bourbon hard sauce.

I don’t miss you all any less, but I’m learning (slowly) to lessen the ache.

Tastes Like Summer

Summer has fully and wholeheartedly arrived. It has been hot, and sticky, and hot. And have I mentioned hot? I don’t mind, really – it is late July and I’d be disappointed if it wasn’t sultry. Our first summer in Redwood Shores was beautiful, sunny and warm and we sat on our patio and looked at the water and generally gloated at our good fortune. We paid for that gloating every consecutive summer when it would be windy and foggy and so unpleasant that we wore sweatshirts to eat outside. So summer heat is just fine with me, but it does lead to cravings for the pool, ice cream cones and food that tastes fresh and clean and just assembled.

I think that “thrown together” look of summer dishes in magazines is about as real as the “inner glow” look of makeup. It looks simple but always takes more effort than I think it should to execute, and the results (at least in food) often seem to me to remain disparate, if beautiful, parts. Imagine my surprise this week, then, when an abundance of yellow squash led to this:

Ribbons of yellow squash, cooked no more than having the hot pasta thrown over them. Bocconcini . Basil and oregano from my planter boxes, olive oil, salt, pepper. This tasted like summer. It was warm but not hot, bright in flavor from all the herbs and sunny from the squash and thrown together with little effort. I don’t rightly know how it happened, but as far as I’m concerned, it can happen again. And again. And a few more times, until the heat leaves the air and we’re taking sweatshirts to the patio, which I don’t think will be for quite some time.