In other news, I’m going on vacation this week. THIS WEEK. Might cry from happiness.
STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE. Biscuits coated in sugar, macerated strawberries, whipped cream.
Oxtails glazed in red wine and chicken broth and mirepoix and mushrooms, pearl couscous dusted with sea salt, roasted broccoli, broccoflower, carrots. Broccoflower: just not as great as cauliflower. Everything else: pretty perfect.
Fettuccine with preserved lemon and roasted garlic. Well, actually, we made this with sautéed garlic since I didn’t realize that roasting garlic takes AN HOUR. And with pickled lemons instead of preserved, but the difference appears to be sugar (preserved lemons just have salt) (and we couldn’t find preserved lemons anywhere, even in the fancy organic co-op and the warehouse-ish international foods market).
It’s subtle, but interesting, just the right amount of fragrance from the parsley and brightness from the lemon. And, you know, butter.
Mainly: it’s easy, yet indulgent.
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I julienned a potato with my sadly neglected mandoline and fried it in a pan for a long, long time and the hash browns turned out greasy and soft. The trick to get them crispy, I found out just now, is to squeeze the water out.
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I feel like I’ve had a head cold for two weeks, but it’s just allergies, or maybe the “just” deserves quotation marks and an angry underline. I am now in that phase where I refuse to take any more Claritin or other combination of antihistamines because it’s not that bad, but bad enough that I go through fistfuls of tissues and wiggle my nose and squint and generally look displeased and cranky as I do things. Three years ago, I tried raw local honey and a neti pot; the honey didn’t work, though it was tasty, and I discovered that using a neti pot feels similar to drowning.
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Adulthood so far is paying bills, scheduling your own checkups, trying to locate conveniences and efficiencies. When I was little, I was enormously terrified of doing things by myself, things that were grown-up: ordering fast food, going through the airport and getting on a plane, putting gas in the car. They seemed so impossible. Now I realize most things are laid out for you for ultimate convenience, and you just follow the pattern.
Sometimes, though, you don’t know the pattern, and then you just deal with being nervous and unsure and foolish, for a little while.
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Mango honey wine. Pickled carrots and radishes again. Pork tenderloin, again, for those magic sandwiches. Bagels with lox and veggie cream cheese and red onions; add capers, if you wish.
Broth is the essence of hot pot, and Little Pepper Hot Pot’s are delicious on their own—the milky-white house style as smooth and rich as tonkotsu ramen broth, and its spicy companion roiling with red oil, chile peppers, Sichuan peppercorns, and slices of ginger. Hard as it may be to envision draining the pot, that time will come, and when it does, no matter how much you’ve devoured thus far, it’s worth ladling the now-super-seasoned remnants into a fresh bowl and sipping it like soup.
What’s up with this festival trend? Huarache sandals and fringed shorts. California tousle. Flower headbands. The days go longer. It now seems surreal that there is so much warmth. You can say it thrives. While I was walking to the library, there was a girl standing at the street light, fresh from school. She was waiting for the crosswalk, eating an ice cream cone. I could guess from where. Here is the kind of place where there are only so many places, and yet it’s the biggest place for a while. When I was growing up, I couldn’t tell you why spring was probably called spring. The palm trees were always there.
Here, though: their gardens are glowing with redbud and violets.
It’s Friday night and the last week of classes and the college kids outside are literally howling. I’ve been out of school a year. I think: It will continue forever. They will stomp on in their cargo shorts and flip flops. Forever drunk, forever done with finals, forever giddy.
