A Portland Moment

Moments of synchronicity seem to happen more frequently these days. I'm not sure why. Is it that I'm finally driving this bus in the direction it was always meant to go? Or am I just noticing it more often than I used to?

My partner, Ben, had a piece of art in the Cascade Aids Project auction Saturday night. We got ourselves all cleaned up and fancy, me in a shorty black dress and pink brocade jacket Prince may have worn back in the day. Ben in his sharkskin suit and red-checked tie. We drove over to the Bison Building at NE 9th and Flanders, a great industrial space which had been turned into a cocktail party art gallery. After getting set up with drinks and snackage (the best Dirty martini I think I've had in my life). We looked at the art and then I stole away to listen to legendary diva, Linda Hornbuckle and her band play some old school soul and R&B.

During the first set, as is the custom in P-town, not a body on the floor was shaking it and I have to admit I was shy to be the tipsy fifty-year old woman dancing alone. I stood off to the side and just watched. My god, that woman can sing! Deep soulful tunes that had me swaying despite myself. The second set really got the party started and the dance floor soon became hot, crowded and jumping. Just like it ought to be.

A woman nearby put her evening bag on top of the packet with our drink tickets so at some point we started talking. Turns out this glamorous woman also had been married to a man who was married to his addiction. Turns out she, too, had to leave in a rush and suffered for years from what we'd now call post traumatic stress disorder. She said to me that when women do finally leave, "We just get stronger." I agreed. I told her about my book, Little Green and a little about my own history, how hard it is to walk away and not go back, how frightening it is to start over but once you're out you would never go back to that other kind of fear. The fear that's all about if he's drunk, if he's high, if he's mad--all the shit you can't control. She told me her sisters are both still in abusive relationships. I asked her if she'd seen her ex since she left him. She said that he still lives in the town where her family resides. When she goes home to visit, she can count on him showing up unannounced. "It's like he can smell me." I know that feeling. I wonder sometimes if I'll ever be free of it. Yes, I'm stronger in some ways, but at what cost?

If the statistics are right, one out of four women will experience violence a the hands of someone she knows. Maybe it isn't really surprising I would meet a stranger at a crowded and unlikely event and find that we share experiences that had us nodding in recognition during our brief conversation. There are too many of us out there, ladies. Far too many of us.

Ninja Writing Practice

When I worked as a preschool teacher there were a couple of different ways you could approach making art with little kids. The first way--the only way for a very long time--was to have a project that focused on the end result. A teacher would spend hours cutting out hearts or pumpkins, or long, long ago Christmas tree shapes and making all these uniform pieces that could be easily assembled by a four-year old child with minimal mess and uniform results for all children. There weren't choices about color, shape or size. There was a wrong way and a right way to make the project and it was obvious to everyone. A child who ventured to make something different by choice or chance weren't called creative by lots of the teachers I worked with--they were just plain naughty and probably not allowed to have extra supplies.
The other way to do art with kids is all about enjoying the making and doing. It's much messier than the other way. Paint will be spilled, glue, too. Supplies will be decimated. Pumpkins may end up triangular and not the standard orange circle. Odd (to the adult eye, anyway) color combinations will probably arise. Children encouraged to experiment and take risks regardless of the mess involved will discover things about the materials and themselves that are more important than the product at the end of the line. I'd like to suggest that not much changes as we get older.
Writing is kind of like a messy art project for me. I don't know where I'm going when I start. Something shiny grabs me and won't leave me alone. An image, a sentence fragment I overhear at a coffee shop, some little piece of conversation I can't quit thinking about. I start wondering why a sad brown-eyed woman is moving her family in the rain on the bus and what her oldest kid is thinking about during the long ride across town, each kid carrying a box or garbage bag stuffed with clothes. I don't have an outline for the story because I'm writing to find out what happens next and it will take some time to figure it out. Of course, I can't really know what anyone else experiences except in my imagination. That's the beauty in this whole "process" approach to writing, and to life. Writing a story is like playing make believe when you're about seven-years old. You can lose yourself in time and space. It's magic when you're doing it and thankfully it doesn't require any special skill set to do it.
Writing is just writing--a practice, if you like, or a discipline, an art, a craft. We sit down with our tools and quiet up. We pay attention and soon enough we're writing and the time melts away. Later there will be revision and maybe soup if I get off my ass and make it but not until later.

Read You A Novel

On Sunday, in the New York Times Book Review, I was delighted to find a full page review of Gina Ochsner's latest book, The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight. It's a book I'm recommending to everyone I know and not just because the woman wrote a lovely blurb for my own little book. I'm telling people to read it because I haven't had such great luck with my adventures in reading lately.

I use the Sunday Times to give me guidance about books. I make a list in the back of my journal titled "Books To Read", but so many of those books fail to keep me in their stories and that, my friends, is what I want--to be kept like a mistress in the tight box of a good story. I've given up on famous books by famous writers who need better editing. I'm not naming names here. Suffice to say of the NY Times book list, I've started many and finished few. I've been aching for a story--a good, well-told story about characters I wanted to live with and cozy up tight with while my spring allergies rage. I wanted a book that could withstand a heavy dose of Benadryl and weepy red-rimmed eyes. A book that could keep me awake in bed and make me want to return to its unturned pages first thing in the morning.
When I saw that Gina Ochsner was about to publish her first novel, I was excited. I like her short stories a lot. She's won just about every literary award and grant for the quality of her amazing little stories, and she lives in Salem, Oregon, for chrissakes, so of course I've got to love her work, but novels are what I love best. And finally she has one!
I won't say too much about plot. I won't use words like magic realism or post modernity. I will say there's a place you've never been "The All-Russian All-Cosmopolitan Museum". There is grinding, horrific poverty.There are latrines and street kids and much to do about toaster ovens and icons. There is a character who dreams of being a fish and a dead man who refuses to be buried. And there is a woman who should be hopeless but isn't. Read this book. Read it now.

Ovenless

Our oven broke. It's not the first time or the worst time. The worst was a couple of years ago at Thanksgiving. I had to truck our turkey up and down the stairs to Tammy's oven (much smaller than ours) and rearrange it on a different pan because the ROASTER DIDN'T FIT! That time the service repair guy came out and fiddled around to get our not-so-Magic Chef working again. Of course he didn't come out until after Christmas, so the baking I usually do wasn't done either.

I've known for some time the stove could and probably would go out on me again--two of the burners have to be lit manually and have never worked quite right, but two weeks ago on a Friday evening when I decided to make pizza with sun-dried tomato pesto, chevre, spinach and olives, I didn't realize I was baking my very last thing in that oven. I think the thermometer burned out. 450 for thirty minutes did the poor thing in. The next morning I turned the oven on to make some home fries for breakfast and after an hour it was barely warm.

Ben and I went to Standard Appliance on Martin Luther King Day. We went early determined to find a gas stove and have it installed by nightfall--so much for determination. First I have to say I don't love shopping, especially for expensive things I can't afford. The store was pretty empty when we first arrived. We were greeted by two salespeople standing on either side of the door--an older balding man in a suit and a woman in her thirties with long red hair. She was packed tight as a tick into a low cut sweater and poly-blend pants. She had on heels. It was kind of like going to a not so popular kids birthday party. I felt as if they'd been waiting at the door a very long time with their little faces pressed against the windows waiting for fresh meat like us to saunter in the door. We said hello and the woman shadowed us into the store introducing herself and asking questions. I'm sure she was nice, but I hate being followed around when I shop. I also hate when people I don't know keep calling me by name as if we are friends--"Oh I cook too, Kim. I love my Jennair, Kim. Kim, what color are you thinking?" Frankly, Kim wanted to color her gone. She finally showed us where the gas stoves were and then didn't leave even when I nicely and with great effort said we'd probably just look and let her know if we had questions.

What I was looking for was a plain, old-school stove--gas burners that self light, easy to clean, sturdy, good sized oven. If my dream stove was a vehicle it would be a standard transmission truck from the 60's. But alas, what they had on the floor were ovens that proofed bread and dried apples and worked on a timer that could be set weekly and came with a book the size of a Henry James novel. I know what happens to those manuals that come with appliances--they disappear unread and you can never figure out how to work whatever it was you bought. I didn't want a stove with too many "features". I wanted and still want a basic stove. The only ones they had that fit the bill were the Wolf and Vikings and why is it that the most basic of appliances cost $4000 dollars or more?

We almost bought a Jennair with the bread proofing and apple drying and a 100 page manual that I know I'd never read or figure out if I did. But I didn't want to spend $1300 for something I didn't love. We decided to shop around--on-line, restaurant supply stores, craiglist, ebay--and not rush into an appliance the way we tend to rush into things only to regret them sooner than we hope to.

For now that means my project and resolution to bake all our bread this year has been put on indefinite hold. No more pizzas, no more oven roasted vegetables, no more warm plates for cornmeal pancakes on Saturday mornings, no chocolate chip cookies and no Guiness cake. Hell, no more tater tots. A girl could weep, I tell you, just weep.

Low Self-Steam

Is it laziness? Fear of failure? Or is it perpetual procrastination that fuels this dead-zone of inactivity writing-wise. Since I sold the rights to my first novel, Little Green, I've had a terrible time sitting down to actually write. I thought starting this blog would give me the assignment I need to produce a little something, something on a regular basis and keep my writing feet wet. Nice thought, but as you can see by the giant gaps in time between posts I'm not actually doing it. Other things I'm not actually doing:

The yoga class I say I'm signing up for every term.
Getting rid of the piles of papers lurking in small and large piles all over the house.
Cleaning the refrigerator and defrosting the freezer.
Going through all closets, drawers and boxes--sorting, and dumping and only keeping the essential stuff.
Sending short stories off to magazines and contests.
Writing on book number 2.

Enough! It's so easy to feel bad about every blessed thing I think I should do and don't. So what have I do that I do with love and happiness everyday?
I write in my journal and stick things in there with a glue stick and I even draw in there sometimes.
I've quit watching tv and started listening to Radio Moth on NPR.
I've been reading like crazy: Animal Vegetable and Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver; The Children's Book by AS Byatt; A Gate At The Top of the Stairs by Lorrie Moore; My Life in France by Julia Child; The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb.
I've also been cooking a lot and looking forward to a bigger, better garden in the spring.

Every year I have a little cooking goal in mind--something I want to master for myself and this year it's looking like bread is it. When I taught preschool I made bread with the kids all the time. The oldest kids in my class could whip up a batch of Tassajara bread without a recipe by the end of the school year. There's nothing better than the experience of making bread. It is a supremely tactile and sensual thing to do. From the kneading of the dough and the smell of the yeast as it rises to the taste of the first delicious bite every step pulls me into the present moment and connects me to all the people baking for their families all over the world. So my goal this year is to do all the bread making for or family unit. I want to develop a sourdough starter from scratch and keep it going through the year. My mentor-teacher-friend Tony has been baking from a starter for his family (a much larger unit than mine) for decades. He makes a killer whole wheat seeded loaf--long and slim as a baton--with so much dense and hearty flavor it's a meal in itself. Now that I've given up meat and am heading toward a mostly vegan diet I think it's time to get baking. This is the recipe I used with my preschool kids. If you've never baked a loaf of bread this is the recipe to start with. I got it from the Tassajara Cookbook back in the 80's. It never fails:
1 package (2 1/2 tsp) active dry yeast
2 1/2 cups warm water (baby bath temp)
1 T honey
1 T oil
Put it all together in a bowl and wait for 10 minutes for the yeast to get fuzzy.
Stir in 2 cups of flour and 1 T kosher salt. Keep adding flour and stirring until you can't stir in any more and then dump the dough on a floured surface. Add flour a cup at a time and knead until you have a smooth ball of dough. Put the dough in an oiled bowl in a warm place (not too hot) and cover with a dish towel. An hour later it should be doubled in size. Turn it out on a lightly floured surface and shape into two loaves. Slide those babies into greased loaf pans and cover again for another hour. Turn the oven on to 350 and when the loaves have risen pop them into the oven for about 40 minutes--until they are golden brown and sound hollow when you thump them. Let the loaves cool on a rack before slicing them or just eat it hot and fresh out the box slathered with jam or honey or butter or all the above!

Lazy Day Risotto

Saturday our trip to Sauvie's Island for pumpkins was rained out so Ben and I went to look at lighting fixtures. We took the money we'd stashed from the U-Price-It garage sale we had back in August and headed out. New lighting in the dining room has been on my wish list for a long time. Before the early nights of autumn turn the room into a cave I swore we'd have more light to eat by. I do love candles and the white Christmas lights around the window and a blazing fire in the wood stove, but our dining room is so dark you really can't see the food on your plate well enough to know what you're eating. There's no central light in the middle of the room over the table. We used to have one of those halogen floor lamps but I was afraid to plug it in when it started smoking recently.
After traveling to three different lighting stores we decided the light we both liked best was at Schoolhouse Electric and that we'd need at least three more garage sales with better stuff to sell in order to afford it. We stopped by Uncle Paul's Produce on the way home. I bought 3 pumpkins and a Brussel sprout tree--that was the best deal of the day. The tree was $2.49 and loaded with about 2 pounds of Brussels. That night for dinner we had roasted Brussel sprouts and mushroom risotto. At the Asian market you can buy those big bags of dried shitake mushrooms. When I hydrate them I save the broth to use as a base with onions, shallots, garlic and a bay leaf from our bay tree. The taste of fresh bay is soooooo much more wonderous than those tired dried up leaves you get at the store. After all the broth veggies are cooking away I throw in half a bottle of white wine, the mushroom broth and I keep it on the simmer while I start the risotto. On the right kind of day--as was Saturday--nothing is more comforting than standing in your socks in front of the stove listening to Luciana Souza while stirring a wide and shallow (sounds like some boy's I've known) pan of arborio rice (1 cup) in a slab of butter, adding the mushrooms (I'm poor so I used about a pound total of chopped Crimini and the hydrated shitake chopped roughly). The trick is to just relax and stir all on the lazy side. After the rice is coated with the butter and the rice is becoming slightly colored I dump in a goodly glass of the same white wine I used for the broth. This time it was Sauvignon Blanc. Let the wine evaporate and then start adding the mushroom broth that's simmering on the next burner. Everytime the broth evaporates add a bit more. Don't add too much at the same time and keep stirring. All told it takes about forty minutes start to finish. When the rice is tender stir in a good dollop of butter, some parm (half a cuppish) and taste for salt. It's so full of creamy goodness all you need is a glass of wine, some of those Brussels and later on a good, hot bath. Have your kitchen helper do the dishes--the other good thing about risotto is only two pans to clean!

Recent Discoveries/Things to Do With Green Tomatoes

Okay, so I've been Missing in Action for three months. Here's a short list of my new best discoveries:

Zout removes most grease stains. These grease stains are on almost all my clothes because I am a messy cook and an even messier eater. Even the ones that have baked in by repeated washing and drying.

The Rack has angora/wool socks for 4.98 a pair.

The Smart Wool ski socks make excellent kneehighs and stay up even on girls with thick calves--they are at The Rack for 9.98--but they're wool you can wash them and they're warm and they rock!

Check out Carla Bruni--hot French-chick singer. Good cooking music and you don't have to feel bad for not knowing the lyrics because THEY'RE IN FRENCH!

Best book I've read in a bit--"The Gathering" by Anne Enright--won the 2007 Man Booker prize. It's dark but funny in spots and you got to love the whole Irish thing. It's the story of a woman going home to attend her brother's funeral. The Hegarty's have a ridiculouly large Irish Catholic family and plenty of skeletons in every blessed closet starting with their Grandmother Ada. Our narrator is trying to piece together what the truth of her family might be. An excerpt: "The British, I decide, only bury people when they are so dead, you need another word for it. The British wait so long for a funeral that people gather not so much to mourn, as to complain that the corpse is till hanging around. There is a queue, they say on the phone (the British love a queue)."

"Heat" by Bill Buford. The book on CD from our local library is great to listen to while I make dinner. The actor reading the book is a little annoying at first, but the story itself about an aspiring cook who spends a year working for Mario Batteli (?) first as a kitchen slave all the way up to sous chef is funny. I also heartily recommend Sydney Portier's "Measure of a Man" read by him--now there's a voice I can listen to no matter what he's saying.

The other thing that's on my list are GREEN TOMATOES! Last weekend I pulled two of my tomato plants--the ones with plenty of green fruit left on the vine. I know the tomatoes would ripen if I left them alone (you can pull the whole plant and hang it upside down in a cool dark place and the tomatoes will ripen slowly giving you ripe fruit all the way into December) but what I want are GREEN tomatoes. Last year I experimented with green tomato chutney and it was so delicious I decided that this year I would plan for it so I grew two of my plants in a spot that didn't get as much sun and I had a ton of greenies. I used the basic chutney recipe from the Joy but it wasn't spicy enough for my jaded buds. Here's what I did:

Chop up 5 cups of green tomatoes, 1 onion, 3-5 cloves of garlic, 2 jalapeno peppers, 1/2 cup candied ginger, 2 red peppers. Put them in a big old pot with 2 cups brown sugar, 2 cups apple cider vinegar and a cup of golden raisins. Bring to a low boil and cook for about 2 hours until the juice is syrupy. You're going to want to open the windows--it's a pungent bastard. After it's done you can cool it and freeze in baggies or all those empty yogurt containers you should put in the recycling and don't, or while it's still hot you can put it in clean hot mason jars with lids that have been submerged in boiling water. That should make the jar seal and then it will keep until the Second Coming of Christ. The recipe is easy to double. Excellent on turkey sandwiches after Thanksgiving or on a grilled sharp cheddar cheese sandwich. I've made tuna salad out of it too. Excellent with a bowl of rice or a curry. Excellent by the spoonful. I've made a bit more than a gallon and will make another batch this weekend. Giddy up!