something like this

Every summer, as most of you know, we head back to Boston for a few weeks to see our family and spend some time at the beach. When I was growing up, I’d start planning for our August beach weeks sometime around now, in March, when the grey and the cold and the slush were just never ending. Not much has changed, except now I have two kids who do the same thing. We might not have slush, but we are already pining for Boston and the beach.

Most of the huge joy of this trip is seeing our extended family – there are cousins and aunts and uncles and second cousins and greats and once removeds and twice returneds… there are even some great greats. It’s awesome, and our kids are lucky to know so many members of their big wonderful family. The only hard part of the visit is how much it makes us miss everyone when we’re not there.

Last summer, the kids and I were at Rosemary Pool one late afternoon with our cousins Eileen and Kevin and their three superb kids, and they were kind enough to invite us over for dinner. It was a perfect end to a perfect day, and it fit neatly into our conniving scheme to not cook for ourselves once during our vacation. Don’t look at me – it was all Honey’s idea. We rocked up to Eileen and Kevin’s that night, and even from the driveway we could smell the delicious dinner cooking. We were impressed, then excited, then suspicious, because I swear they left the pool at the same time we did. Sure, we made a pit stop at Trader Joe’s (and bumped into Mary, which was a treat), but it wasn’t nearly enough time to get the whole neighborhood smelling so good. Something was up that night – some kind of superhero dinner thing – because the the food they cooked was beyond delicious. They made a pasta sauce that was so amazing I swooned, but they told me that they’d never give me the recipe, not even if I saved them all from a burning building, and I’ve never had that divine sauce again.

Ok so that last line is a teeny bit untrue. They did give me the recipe, but I can’t find the very important, specific tomatoes required, so I haven’t had the sauce again. Humph. I’ve never been a great one for making sauce – it always seems to come out thin and uninspired instead of rich and beautiful. (I know I know, story of my life.) Well a couple of weeks ago I stumbled across a new way of making sauce that’s making up for lost time. It’s a slow-roasted sauce, and it’s easy (yay!) and really quite good.

You take a bunch of tomatoes (8ish has worked well for us), slice them in half, and toss them in a large ziplock bag. Add some veggies if you like – onion, red pepper, mushroom – just wash them and chop them a bit, although the pieces can be pretty big. Then add some olive oil, a splash of balsamic vinegar, some honey, salt and pepper, garlic. I like to save any herbs until the end. Close up the bag and shake it all about until all the contents have mingled and gotten to know each other, then roll everything out of the bag and into a pan (like a brownie pan) and slow roast the whole thing at about 280 for the afternoon. I’m not kidding – you let it cook for about 4 hours.

When it’s cooked, you just pop it in the blender and you’re done. You can tweak the spices and throw in some fresh herbs to tailor it to your taste, but that’s it. No blanching or peeling or stirring or anything. It makes the house smell divine and it has a lovely flavor. There you have it – sauce. This should tide me over until July. 

Ok, east coasters, avert your eyes. That goes for you, too, midwesterners. In fact, let’s just say if you live someplace that actually has winter, cover your ears and say, “lalalalalala I’m not listening” or something. But the rest of you, look! 

Wow!! This is the hail that fell on our back deck this afternoon. It’s been stormy weather around town today – alternating blue skies with sheeting rain, hail, thunder, lightning and gusting winds. 

Lately the weather here has been grey and sentimental, but this, this is bold and capricious! Very exciting. It does hail here from time to time, but the thunder is thrilling. I’ve heard it thunder here only a handful of times since I moved here – and when I say a handful, I mean that literally; you’ll hear one good clap of thunder, and that’s it – show’s over, folks, please make your way to the exits. Today we had TWO claps of thunder, so we’ve met our quota for the next three years. 

It was a good day for cooking, so I baked a chicken using the easiest method in the world. Basically, you poke a couple of lemons all over with one of those turkey skewer thingies, and pop them in the chicken (after you’ve rinsed and salted and peppered it) and bake it. It couldn’t be easier, but it always comes out perfectly moist and delicious. My friend Susie gave me the recipe a year or two ago, and it’s my favorite way to cook a chicken now. 

Tonight I also cubed and roasted some butternut squash and sweet potato, and for dinner we layered shredded spinach (raw), couscous, roasted veggies, basil, chicken (veggie burger for Tom) and then a few dollops of Jalapeño Chutney from the farmer’s market. The chutney adds a nice flavor – sweet and spicy at the same time.

Anyway, I thought I’d throw that in there just because it ended up tasting good and I know I’m always looking for new ideas for dinner, and I’m bound to forget this one. Some day I’ll come across this post in the archives and think – ooh! That sounds good.

To fill out my random assortment tonight, I’ll also mention another TED lecturer I checked out yesterday – Chris Abani. He’s a writer and poet from Nigeria, and his stories are powerful and funny and horrifying. Not always an easy listen, but a number of excerpts from the talk I heard yesterday have lingered at the front of my mind all day today. 

One was a great line from his mother, who used to say, “Anything a man can do, I can fix.”

Another was this observation:

“What I’ve come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion. Every day acts of compassion.”

I like that “simple accumulation.” Today we listened, or complimented, or remembered, or thanked, or noticed – and added to that accumulation.

Remember Valentine’s Day? I know – it was such a long time ago. The memory is still fresh for me because I still have a bit of lingering carpal tunnel from cutting out approximately eight thousand hearts. Don’t get me wrong – I love love love making valentines with the kids. It’s one of my favorite things. In fact, I like doing it so much that I get a little over-invested and consequently never get my own finished. If you’re still waiting for one, it should probably arrive just in time for Saint Patrick’s Day.

For the teachers this year, we decided to make some bags of chocolate cookies.

We made Hershey’s chocolate cookies from an original 1980’s recipe clipped from… ah yes – Seventeen Magazine.

It all began one afternoon when I was hanging out with my friend Cindy, flipping through her Seventeen, and we came across this recipe. She jumped up and said, “Let’s make these!!” and I thought, “You can do that?” I guess I must have started baking a bit at home by then, but I can’t really remember a time when I saw a recipe and thought – “I’m going to make this right now.” I thought she was wild! (Don’t even get me started about the time my friend Meredith decided we should make pecan pie for dessert one night at her house. Just the memory of it still makes me a little lightheaded.) I might have been just the slightest bit timid back then.

So this recipe has been with me since high school, but I don’t break it out very often. Not because I don’t like them. I like them too much. Anyone who knows me could quickly tell you I’m not squeamish about sweets. But these guys – I have to give them all away, pronto, or I will eat them. I will eat every one of them, and it’s embarrassing. 

On Valentine’s day, we started out the day with breakfast at the Dipsea.

This cafe is right on the water, and the morning was grey and rainy – the perfect cozy breakfast stop. It’s also right across the street from the studio where I take ballet, and I was able to hit class after our breakfast. Heaven.

Later in the morning, two of our west coast godchildren came over to play and then sleep over. We had such a great time! One of them had mentioned off-handedly the weekend before that he would like to try chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream made with chocolate instead of vanilla ice cream. Now that’s my kind of wish! Let’s face it – he’s ten, and I’m occasionally concerned that my fairy godmother powers will wane when he becomes a teenager. I’m hoping to stay helpful to him just by sheer love, but it’s always nice when you can grant a tangible wish. I love this egg-free chocolate chip cookie dough from the days when egg was still on Hot Wheels’ no fly list, and it was just the thing to use. We all got to mash up our chocolate ice cream with frozen cookie dough, and it was ahhhmazing.

Is it really possible that I’ve resisted using an n’ in my blog titles for an entire year? Yes it is. I had to check my list of posts, and it’s hard to believe, but true. So watch out, y’all, because this might be the year of the apostrophe. 

ANYway, last weekend was a nice one here. Amy and Andy had our kids over to play on Saturday morning and Tom and I drove into SF to have a breakfast date and a stroll around Chestnut street. We had a lovely breakfast at The Grove, which is this very cozy offbeat kind of place РI love it because they have at least a dozen different types of seating arrangements to choose from. There are traditional small caf̩ tables with chairs, tables with benches, benches built in around a fireplace, and a random odd assortment of reclaimed seating from heaven only knows where. Theater-style seats and wooden blocks and cushy old couches.

I love a place like this because you can tailor your seating to the light, your mood, or even what you’re eating. You know the feeling; sometimes you want your tea in a mug and other times it’s just better in a teacup. Or, you love to eat cereal out of the ceramic bowl your son painted, but your sorbet really needs to go in that vintage cut glass dish you got at the flea market. 

Right. So Saturday we ended up in an ideal sunny corner by the door, and I got the bench seat, which just made my day. Tom was so taken by his perfect toast that he took a picture, which you can see here if you’d like. (Funny thing about that shot is that he seems to have missed his toast and focused on his Vegemite, which yes, he carried with him that morning. That’s devotion.)

After a beautiful breakfast we wandered around Chestnut for a while. We each got some quality time in heaven that morning – Tom in his and I in mine. Seriously – I could spend a week in that place. It’s awesome. After that, we took a walk down by Chrissy Field and watched the crazy surfers out by Fort Point. 

The rest of the weekend was also lovely. Honey had a couple of birthday parties to go to, and we had fun using recycled paper and yarn to wrap up her gifts. Here’s a shot of one of them:

I have this huge foldout mailer from Veer that I’ve been saving because it’s covered with tiny photos from their stock and I love the look of it. We used that and some extra bits of yarn to wrap up this packet. Some party highlights:

- sleepover with swimming and TWO movies

- ’sleep’ part of the over started after 11pm

- art party the next day

- soap making with tiny plastic bug inclusions!

Life is seriously good, and all the girls were completely washed up by about 3pm on Sunday. 

The other weekend’s accomplishment was raisin bread, which I’ve been promising to bake for about a month and a half.

I used the recipe from the King Arthur Cookbook that Mum gave me years ago, and it was GOOD. 

So that’s the weekend wrap-up, brought to you in timely fashion on Wednesday (or Thursday for you Aussies and East Coasters).

Love n’ stuff,

laura

The first thing that happened this morning was I woke up at 6:30 thinking about worker compensation issues. This is good and bad; good because we just hired a cool new employee at Good Dog, and bad because it was 6:30 am on a Saturday and our kids hadn’t woken up yet. There can only be a handful of miraculous events for which the sole appropriate observation is sleeping through them, so you can see I missed a major opportunity today.

Just when things were looking grim for the start of this weekend, Honey popped into our room and asked, “What kind of tea would you like this morning?”

Now, I am fortunate enough to have a few friends who read this blog of mine, and some of them have kids who are younger than ours. It is to them that I say – I have a message for you from the future. Eight is great.

Eight is great. Eight is a number I do not h…wait! There’s more. She popped back a few minutes later and asked if she could please cut up a few pieces of fruit and put them on a platter for me. There were fine chopping and platter hand gestures involved. Feeling very much like the Queen of England, I replied that we would not be at all distressed if she were to slice some fruit for our royal personage.

Here’s what happened next:

Breakfast and knitting in bed. Things are definitely looking up.

Now that’s more like it.

Happy Australia Day, everyone! Here are some Anzacs for you.

Honey stayed home from school Friday with a bad throat and general achy sickness, and I realized that there are, actually, a few good things to say about sick days, particularly if you’re not hugely sick. You get a bonus day with your house and your mother all to yourself. If you’re lucky, you miss a spelling test. AND you get soup.

I was excited about this one because I had some homemade stock in the freezer that I needed to use up, and it ended up tasting just right. Can you possibly go wrong with soup that incorporates ravioli? I think not.

One of my favorite Thanksgivings here in California started with a long bike ride with our great friends Lori and Michael and their son, who is a bit older than Hot Wheels. We feel like we’ve known them all our lives. That Thanksgiving, we decided to each try making a dish that we’d never made before. It ended up being remarkably delicious and fun. (It helps to try this idea with friends who wouldn’t care a bit if your recipe bombed or the soup turned blue. It doesn’t hurt to have a couple of bottles of good wine for backup.)

On Saturday, we all got together and tried it again.

 

Michael made this ridiculously delicious pumpkin and red onion dish with a cilantro/parsley pesto. Phenomenal. We had also roasted some potatoes and sweet potatoes, and the pesto was great on those, too.

 

I made roasted beets with cornbread croutons, citrus vinaigrette, goat cheese and bacon (Tom got the pretend kind), using a recipe from Bon Appetit. That came out well, once the beets were finally finished. They took forever. Fortunately I’d taken my own advice in the wine department.

 

Lori was batting cleanup with her first-ever bundt cake. It was a chocolate cake with dulce de leche sauce. I kid you not. It was a thing of beauty.

At the end of the evening, Lori thought the bundt was a little dry, but that criticism doesn’t quite resonate with my stomach, as I’ve just polished off two pieces this evening. Perhaps I should ask her to make it a bit more dry the next time?

Now that, Ellen, gets categorized under tasty!!

How do you say thank you to friends who let you drop your children off at their homes at 7:30 am because you have an 8 am meeting? Hopefully with bags of orange cranberry scones. ‘Cause that’s all I got this morning. Well, that and my winsome smile.