Trying New Things - Part II - One Thing Leads to Another

They say the garden is a metaphor for life.

I'm convinced that pie was invented by a gardener who had too much ugly fruit about to spoil. 

Last summer, I planted three tomato starters and finally had success. I had an abundance of cherry tomatoes at my community garden bed and a coworker who brought shopping bags of her tomato harvest to the break room. We also started to have heat waves of 110 degrees and I began to wonder: how do you sun dry tomatoes?  Next thing I knew, I was watching YouTube videos of handsome Italian chefs preserving tomatoes many different ways. I experimented with some of them. Them meaning tomatoes...not Italian chefs. 

My preferred method was to dry my tomatoes in the oven overnight. They taste like candy! Once I learned that dehydrating is so easy and brings out such intense flavor, I started to dehydrate everything. You almost can’t screw it up.  It’s a great way to not waste fruits and vegetables that are starting to wilt. And the flavors are much better than packaged store-bought. 

Once I had all this dehydrated food, I looked for ways to add them to recipes. My favorite recipe was to sauté zucchini, peppers and garlic, then put them with the dried tomatoes and a little olive oil into the food processor. 

Then came the office plants. Mid-summer, my desk moved next to a window in the office. The first thing I did was to  buy a few indoor plants. This was new territory for me. At first they all thrived, then they began to fail. To save them, I clipped a healthy part and stuck it in water. Roots sprouted quickly and suddenly I had new "free" plants! This is propagating - another new thing! The minute I discovered free plants, I began to carry scissors in my purse so that I could take clippings of anything I wanted along the road or from other people’s gardens. 

If you can picture me collecting clippings everywhere and sticking them in yogurt containers and empty bottles, you may wonder: what will you do with all these plants? Rogue gardening. I will stick a plant in the ground anywhere to see if it will grow. You can fill in empty little spaces with cute plants. You just have to be OK with going out of your way to water them and to experience a lot of failure. 

And then....somewhere in the middle of all this propagating, planting and harvesting, we adopted a load of carnivorous plants when Greg’s niece and her husband moved out of state and had to leave them behind. We had no idea what we were taking on. We got two trays of plants, books and a shopping bag with accessories (magnifying glass, watering bottles, misters, etc). We immediately learned that these sensitive plants don’t like the chemicals in our tap water, so I buy them filtered water at the grocery store. They want to be misted as often as possible and they are the thirstiest plants you’ve ever seen so the filtered water goes fast. 

Fortunately Liane worked with these plants at the Conservatory of Flowers and gave us lots of good advice. The plants are doing really well, which is ironic. I quickly killed the hardy indoor office plants that supposedly needed little light or water. But these sensitive high maintenance carnivorous plants are very happy. We are doing our best to give them a rain forest environment in our dry California living room. 

Yes - I shop and water and mist so that Larry, Moe and Curly can enjoy a spa and gourmet meal every day.  I don't have a spa. I don't even have a bathtub in our new house, just a shower. Technically we do have a bathtub, but it's outside in the middle of the garden near the hose. Wait...my tub is outdoors but my plants get to bathe indoors. Something is wrong!

So the garden is a perfect metaphor for life. You start with one plot with a few outdoor plants and next thing you know, you've got plants and food all over the place and all kinds of things that keep them alive or make them taste good. One thing leads to another. Some things thrive, others wilt. You tackle the pests. With stupidity and perseverance, you move the same compost pile four times to get it to the right spot. You try to control the weeds which will never be under control. You pride yourself on growing the best tomato you've ever tasted and you realize you just killed your cucumbers. And you can't wait to start all over again. 

Patience and Fortitude

If Lon Chaney, Man of a Thousand Faces, was worthy of a Hollywood movie, then I get a movie about me too. I am Woman of a Thousand Projects. 

We are settling into the Decker house. Who knew that Projects have children and grandchildren! You start one and it gives birth to more but without the nine month waiting period. You unhook an old washing machine today and you need a bucket now and a plumber tomorrow. 

Luckily we have a miracle called YouTube. I don’t know how we got things done before YouTube. You can learn anything!  Today I watched videos on planting strawberries and how to harvest the artichokes that are just reaching full size in our new garden. We’ve met new neighbors who gave us advice on solar panels. I enjoyed a free lunch at Meyer’s Restaurant Supply and got a tutorial on induction-ready pots while I shopped their biggest sale of the year. Then Vonnie, the sales lady at Ace Hardware, patiently recommended garden tools. When she heard I was replacing tools after my garden bag had been stolen, she gave me a personal gift - little pruners she bought at the Dollar Store. I’m grateful that people are so kind and enthusiastic to be helpful.

If you followed that last paragraph then you realize I will be using a new garden tool to cut artichokes for the first time and cook them in a new pot on the intimidating “professional” stove.  I watched a YouTube on that stove too…which is why I’m afraid of it! I’ve cooked on open campfires, electric and gas ranges, but don’t ask me why I have "high performance" anxiety about this stove. Maybe it's their choice of words? Or that I had to get new pots because the old ones from Target could melt on this thing? Or that large fires belong outdoors, not in my kitchen?

Have you ever seen the stone lions in front of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and 42 Street?  I went on the library’s free tour last week and found it fascinating and inspiring. Of course now I want a room at home to look like the Rose Reading Room. I can dream! 

The lions were installed in 1911 and were given people-like names to honor the founders. But in the1930’s, the mayor re-named them to qualities he felt New Yorkers would need to survive the economic depression. I think they are qualities one must have when faced with a Thousand Projects. The lions are named

 ---  Patience and Fortitude ---

How to Prepare for Passover

I read a few online versions of How to Prepare for Passover.  The technical parts are pretty thorough but I don't understand how they missed these steps: 

Four weeks before:  Discuss who to invite to the seder. Speculate who will accept or decline and why. Come up with potential second tier guests.

Three weeks before:  Compose a menu and an order for the kosher ready-made food company. The one with the better chicken soup (not watery and not too salty) and brisket (they sent a nice one last year). Place order for ready-made foods before the cut-off date or you’ll be stuck with nothing. Take into account all dietary preferences: kosher, vegan, low fiber (Crohn’s), low sugar, and which leftovers we like best. 

Two weeks before:  Shop for household items that are broken or need a refresh, consult family members on how to get unfound items on Amazon to arrive in time to install them. 

One week before: Arrive at Mom’s house to begin final preparations. Visit all grocery stores within one mile radius to see their Passover selection. Note if they have Manischewitz, Streit’s or an Israeli brand. Note the prices and quantities. Grab the good stuff now before it’s gone. If you don’t find, ask if they are getting more in before the holiday starts. Decide if you can wait that long or make do with an inferior substitute. If you find what you want but the price seems high, see if you can get it elsewhere - you can always come back and overpay later. If you find what you want but in a larger-than-desired quantity, stand in the aisle and think about it for 10 minutes, trading advice with other confused shoppers until you make a decision that will leave you dissatisfied. 

[Side note: I am on time and performed this step yesterday. I went to 5 grocery stores on the Upper West Side in Manhattan to scout who has what and to pick up the obvious.]

3-5 days before:  Clean out the highest shelves in the kitchen, the ones you saved for last, if you have the energy and don’t want to bother the cleaning lady to do. Start staging all the food:  Passover non-perishables in shopping bags in the bedroom, perishables tucked in the fridge out-of-sight-and-easy-reach; chametz up front and center because you have to finish it all before Friday at 9am. 

1 day before:  Make the matzo balls and charoset. Buy the greens. Open the folding tables and chairs. Wait all day for the caterer’s food delivery. Call the caterer a few times between 6-10pm to ask if the driver is really on his way. At 11pm, look at your watch every 3 minutes and grumble: where is he? how late do they deliver?  At 11:45pm, jump and answer the door for the delivery guy. Get your wallet and add a few dollars to the tip you prepared because the poor guy is still delivering at midnight. 

Day of Seder:  At 8:45am remind all the sleepy people shuffling into the kitchen that they have 15 minutes to eat the last of the chametz left on the kitchen table. After that, they are ON THEIR OWN. Watch all family members conveniently leave and head for Starbucks. Remind them that they better be home by 3pm to rest and take showers and clean the bathroom so it looks decent before company arrives. 

These are the sacred rituals that all Jewish households perform. It’s a favorite holiday. Excitement builds as you go through these steps. As my mother and I prepare together, we stop for a moment to acknowledge:  oh yes, we actually enjoy doing this! 

Chag Samach 

Happy Holiday

Pickles and Parsley

What exactly can you do with all the unworthy looking leftovers, garnishes and free condiments on your restaurant table? Here's what I do with mine:

Pickles
Chop into tiny pieces. Mix mayo and ketchup; add the chopped pickles. You've just made Thousand Island dressing. Add chopped pickles to plain mayo - that's tartar sauce. 

Parsley
Did you know parsley is considered a superfood?  It's  better than kale. Parsley ranked #8 on the Top 10 superfood list. Kale didn't make the Top 10. Fresh or wilted, it can be finely chopped and sprinkled over or into anything - salads, soups, grains, on top of your sandwich. You can also dry it in the oven at the lowest temperature and then you've got it preserved for future use. BTW, watercress is superfood #1.  I started growing it in pots. It's a lovely little green, really easy to grow and makes me feel rather British and smart. 

Peppers (jalapeños or any kind) 
For gringos like me who don't know the difference between them but I'm afraid they are too hot and I don't want to buy them and find out the hard way, I'm happy to take a few pieces home that are left on my plate. This is typically when ordering pho or at Mexican place. Someone's done all the dirty work of washing and chopping and I didn't have to get it on my hands. I can taste it at the restaurant and find out what I'm dealing with. The first and only time I diced a jalapeno, I thought I washed my hands pretty well but many hours later when I took my contact lenses out....big mistake! I don't have to tell you how awful it was. 

Jams and jellies - individual servings
Mix apricot or orange jam and mustard and you get a perfect glaze for anything. Just paint it or spoon it on early in the cooking. It can caramelize if you burn it a bit.  Yummy!   Add any flavor to plain yogurt. I add a spoonful to sweeten the juices of a fresh fruit salad.  Melt it in the microwave for a few seconds (with our without booze) and it becomes a sauce for ice cream, whipped cream, leftover dry cake. 

Sliced tomatoes, lettuce, onion  
Have you ever sautéed them - separately or together?  They are a stand-alone for sautéing but I add them to other vegetables I am cooking or in an omelette or soup. Any wilted vegetable can be chopped and cooked and added to a soup. 

Ketchup, mustard, mayo, artificial sweeteners, creamers  
I keep a few of each of these for just in case. We usually don't keep mayo or ketchup in the house. The bottles would last forever. You never know when you need a little bit. A teaspoon of mustard added to oil and vinegar makes a lovely salad dressing. There is always a guest who wants a no-cal sweetener. And we sometimes run out of milk and I prefer a little cream in my morning coffee. One teaspoon of preserved half & half won't kill me. 

My favorite   
The Bread Basket - Restaurants are not allowed to serve anything on your table to anyone else. They should be throwing your bread into the trash. I consider that the cost has already been worked into the prices - I've already paid for it. I'm just rescuing it from the dumpster and making sure it gets to my toaster.

Never
The one free condiment I have never found use for:  Chinese take-out mustard packets. That stuff is really horrible! 

Now you know. If you avoid going to restaurant together, I will understand. 

Expensive Weekend

We were sailing along, peaceful and calm. And then suddenly....

A nice house was listed on a Wednesday,
We went to see it on Thursday
We made an offer to buy it on Friday
The offer was accepted on Saturday morning
We got a flat tire driving to see the house again on Saturday evening
So we bought a new car on Sunday

Our new home is at 107 Decker Street, Santa Rosa, CA 95401

You can write this one in ink.  We're not planning to move again. This is it. 

The house is a 1946 bungalow in the historic West End neighborhood near the Santa Rosa train station. We are within walking distance to many shops and restaurants. The view from our living room and dining area is the DeTurk Round Barn, a beautifully restored building from the late 1800's. 

The property has a garage and a large out-building which is mostly good for storage, possibly to turn into a dwelling. There is a very large garden area with raised beds and fruit trees and a fantastic watering system. The previous owners put in a lot of upgrades to support their farm-to-table lifestyle and love for entertaining. 

There are a few interesting unique features. You'll have to visit us to find out what they are!

After the wildfires in October, we were not optimistic about finding a house. There was already a shortage of homes before the fires, then a greater scarcity and very high prices. Many buyers were snapping up houses with all cash at 20% over asking price. We got lucky. 

As for the car, we had already done research and test drives and had decided on a Subaru CrossTrek. We got busy and hadn't found the time to actually go buy one. A flat tire that supposedly could not be repaired just as we were about to embark on a house purchase was the catalyst to just get it over with. We managed to buy the car after closing hours on that Sunday night. 

It all happened very quickly. So that was an expensive weekend.

We just moved in and the first days are like camping. We are afraid of the fancy appliances we inherited. Hanging up curtains with masking tape doesn't work. And the bathroom sink is not a great place to hand wash your pantyhose. But I managed to cook a meal without blowing up the house or melting a frying pan and Greg figured out how to turn on the heat without rubbing sticks together. 

Housewarming party plans are in process. 

Trying New Things, Part I - Courage

When I started writing this blog, I said I’d be trying new things and I even made it my tagline. So…what have I tried?

I have a list!  

So what? We all try new things every day. Let me start with 
what didn’t make the list

new job    

new friends

new foods

restaurants  

places    

clothing

What did make the list

Blog

Playing music in public

These two things took some courage. I’m shy, you know. 

Blog
What started as weekly cheery notes to a very sick friend turned into a blog. Sadly, my friend didn’t make it but feedback from you and a prompting from my kids encouraged me to continue. The prospect of public writing is daunting. I never was able to keep a journal. Would I be able to keep a blog going?  Would anyone read it?  I don’t exactly know who reads it. I see no statistics except a count of page views. I don’t know who subscribed to follow by email. If everyone gets an email, there are no page views. So I could be writing to an audience of zero! 

I’m happy to say that writing has been therapeutic and has kept me connected to so many people I normally would not have heard from. I hear from people by email or in person. I’m astonished to learn who reads this!  

I learned that reading blog posts is less burden for friends and family, even though it’s less personal. Replies or comments are not necessary. You read at your leisure and that’s it.

Playing music in public

Performing at piano recitals or in front of any audience during 10 years of lessons in my childhood caused me complete panic. I play decently if I think no one is listening but the minute I know someone is listening, I get the worst stage fright, forget all the notes and completely bungle the piece.

Fast forward to age 45 when I took a few lessons and joined a banjo band. Strumming chords in the rhythm section was one of the most fun things I ever did. Being part of a group of musicians and watching audiences sing and dance to our music made me very happy. But the banjo was not my passion and strumming chords when playing alone wasn’t interesting. 

Then I began to fall in love with Irish music. I discovered that there are “sessions” - informal Irish jam sessions in pubs and restaurants all over the world. You can just show up and join them with your instrument. I chose to learn the tin whistle. I was ready for something new, portable enough for my purse, and that played melody. I also wanted to learn how to play tunes by ear and not be focused and dependent on reading notes. 

The most challenging part of playing the whistle in a session is that when it’s your turn to choose a tune, you need to start playing it solo - until the others join in. SOLO strikes fear into my heart. But I decided I *absolutely had to* overcome the fear. New instrument. New group. New brave me. 

And I did it!  I’ve played at sessions at the Redwood Cafe in Cotati, California and the William Barnacle Tavern in New York.  I’ve also managed to play piano in some public spaces a couple of times as background music. I’ve played on a piano next to a baggage carousel in the Rome airport, on the main street of Santa Cruz during a Ragtime Festival, and in a guest house in Mendocino while people were eating dinner. It does get a tiny bit easier each time. I’ve found audiences in these informal venues very encouraging.  

Trying new things is adventurous and uplifting. Please tell me which new things you've tried. That inspires me. 

Foraging

I save almost every scrap of leftovers at restaurants. If there are 3 french fries left on my plate, I take them home. Cut ‘em up and fry them again with a few onions and you get a fantastic "home fries" brunch omelette. Those little packets of parmesan that come with your take-out pizza?  They make an excellent topping for bruschetta or addition to oil & vinegar salad dressing. 

What started out as saving food to not be wasteful has become an opportunity to embellish home cooking with things that I would never have the patience to cook myself or that are sold in quantities too large for my needs. I would never buy a spice jar full of hot red pepper flakes. But those little packets from the pizza place are perfect for perking up a soup. 

Presentation is everything. What looks dull in a familiar packet, looks amazing in pretty little dishes with a garnish. My favorite are those little square packets of jam you get at diners. How else can I get Concord Grape jelly, Apricot jam and Orange marmalade next to my weekend scones without filling the door of my refrigerator with whole jars of jam that will last months? 

I think we can blame my father for this habit. Unable to consume large portions and enjoying a nosh every hour, Dad took home restaurant leftovers back in the day when a doggy bag was one plastic bag that said Fido on it with scraps from everyone’s plate dumped into it. He always kept a couple of napkins and sandwich baggies in his pocket, harvested the dry food, and enjoyed the rest of his meal leisurely over the next few hours. 

We are grazers. I also enjoy walking along, resting on a bench and fishing a leftover roll or cookie out of my pocket. When the kids were little, I always had snacks to help them get through the day. Now it’s tidbits for me and for cooking. 

Greg may have been a bit horrified at first, but now he’s a convert. He happily pushes his plate towards mine and asks, “Want to take my parsley and pickle? Here’s a clean napkin.”   

Do you know what you can do with parsley????